Tag: flash fiction

Detective Alan Graves surveyed the crime scene with the detached precision of a surgeon. The victim lay sprawled across the plush carpet, blood soaking into the fibres. A single bullet wound to the forehead. No signs of forced entry. No murder weapon in sight.

It was a locked-room mystery. The kind that made headlines.

His partner, Detective Lisa Monroe, paced behind him, flipping through her notepad. “Witnesses say they heard a gunshot around midnight. No one saw anything. No security footage.”

Alan frowned. “Who found the body?”

“The housekeeper. Came in this morning. Called it in right away. Says the victim had no enemies.”

Alan nodded, crouching beside the corpse. There was something familiar about the victim’s face… the shape of his jaw… even the way his hair curled at the temples.

He stood quickly, nausea rising. “Did we get an ID?”

Lisa handed him a driver’s licence in a plastic evidence bag. “Yeah. Name’s Alan Graves.”

Alan stared. The photo. The name. The birthdate. It was him.

The world tilted.

“What is this?” he exclaimed.

Lisa’s expression shifted—concerned, wary. “Alan… are you okay?”

He clutched his head. He remembered everything. Going home last night. Pouring a drink. The cold weight of the gun in his hand. The silence before the shot.

And then—nothing.

Alan looked at the corpse again.

It was impossible.

And yet…

Lisa’s voice was distant now, tinny, like she was speaking from underwater. “Alan?”

His vision blurred. A rush of vertigo took him, buckling his knees.

As he collapsed, Lisa’s voice was the last thing he heard. Calm. Certain.

“Alan. It’s solved… the case is now closed.”

Jon woke up to find his hand flickering. His fingers blinked in and out of existence, like a glitching hologram. He groaned. Not again.

Scrambling out of bed, he grabbed his phone and tapped open the Existence+ app. A red banner flashed across the screen:

Your subscription has expired. Renew now to avoid full dissolution.

“Shit!” he cursed. He had meant to pay it last night, but payday was delayed until noon. That left him in a tricky spot.

He hurried to the bathroom, avoiding his reflection. His face always blurred when his subscription lapsed—his own eyes looking at him like they belonged to someone else. He splashed water on his face, but then his hand went right through the tap. He was already starting to phase out.

He could still move, still breathe, still exist—for now. But if he didn’t pay soon, the system would begin retracting him. First fingers, then limbs, then memories. The worst part was the memory rollback, the gradual unravelling of the mind.

He dressed quickly, ignoring the way his shirt flickered against his chest.

At the office, the door scanner beeped red. Denied. His work subscription had clearly been bundled with his existence plan. He pounded on the glass. “Come on, Carl, let me in!”

Carl, his manager, looked at him through the window. “Jon… I’m sorry. You know the policy. Get yourself sorted, then come back.”

Jon’s voice wavered. “But I don’t have my money yet. I need it now… I just need a few hours—”

Carl activated the blinds, which drew shut.

Jon staggered away. His legs flickered, struggling to hold his weight. He checked his phone. The notification had changed:

Subscription Termination in 10 minutes.

He tapped the Renew Now button, hoping the app might give him a grace period. The screen flashed:

Insufficient Funds. Please upgrade to Existence+ Pro for emergency overdraft protection.

His fingers dissolved first. Then his arms.

He turned and hurried down the street. People ignored him now. His presence no longer triggered facial recognition. Store doors didn’t slide open for him. A mother pushed her pram right through him without noticing.

His phone dropped to the ground as his torso unravelled like smoke. On the pavement, the phone vibrated one final time. A cheery message popped up:

We’re sorry to see you go!

Jon opened his mouth to scream, but his voice had already been revoked.

The flat was perfect—at least, that’s what Cassie had thought when she first moved in. Affordable rent, a decent view of the park, and most importantly, no damp. A rare find in London.

But in the hallway, opposite the bathroom, was a door that shouldn’t be there. Cassie was certain it hadn’t been there when she first viewed the place. The estate agent had walked her through every inch of the floor space, pointing out the period features, the “charming” creaky floorboards, and the dodgy boiler that he’d assured her was “practically brand new.” But this door… this door was new.

She stood in front of it, pressing a hand against the wood. The paint was a shade darker than the rest of the flat’s off-white doors, and lumpy in patches, like it had been applied in a hurry. She rattled the handle. It didn’t budge. No keyhole, no markings—just a plain, inexplicable door where there shouldn’t be one.

Cassie frowned. “Weird,” she muttered to herself.

Over the next few days, she tried to ignore it. She told herself it must’ve been there all along, that she’d simply overlooked it in her excitement about the move.

Then, the knocking started.

It came late at night, soft and rhythmic.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Cassie sat bolt upright in bed the first time she heard it. She held her breath, listening. Maybe it was the neighbours. These old flats had thin walls, and sound carried.

But no. It was coming from inside. From that door.

She didn’t sleep much that night.

The next morning, she approached it cautiously, pressing her ear against the wood. Silence. Maybe she’d imagined it. Stress and moving fatigue could do that, right?

By the next night, she knew she hadn’t imagined anything.

Tap. Tap. Tap. At 3:13 a.m.

Cassie started leaving the hallway light on, watching the door from the safety of her bedroom. Nothing changed—just the knocking. Relentlessly precise. Three precise knocks. Always starting at 3:13. Never a second earlier, never a second later.

She called the landlord in the morning. “There’s a door in my hallway,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “It wasn’t there before.”

A pause. Then, “What door?”

Cassie’s grip tightened on the phone. “The one opposite the bathroom. It’s locked, and… I think someone might be—” She hesitated, feeling ridiculous. “Knocking.”

The landlord sighed, like he’d heard it all before. “That flat’s been empty a while. Maybe you’re hearing things. Old buildings creak.”

“But it’s not creaking,” she insisted. “It’s knocking.”

A longer pause. “I’ll send someone round,” the landlord said, but Cassie suspected the comment was just to get her off the phone.

That night, she stayed up again, staring at the door. The clock ticked over to 3:13.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Cassie couldn’t take it anymore. She grabbed a hammer from a toolbox she hadn’t finished unpacking yet, and marched over to the door. “Who’s there?” she demanded, raising it in her hand.

No answer.

She swung. The hammer struck the wood… but instead of splintering, it felt… wrong. Like hitting something soft beneath the surface. Something that moved.

She backed away slowly, dropping the hammer. “No!” Cassie grabbed her coat and keys and hurried out of the flat, leaving the door behind.

When she returned the next morning, dreading what she might find, the door was gone. The wall was smooth, freshly painted. No sign it had ever existed.

She stood there for a while, staring at the empty space.

Later, when she called the landlord again, he insisted there had never been a door.

And at 3:13 a.m. that night, from somewhere within the hall wall, Cassie heard it.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Jim woke up groggy, and there it was—tattooed in stark black ink across the inside of his wrist: “Expires 26/11/2025”. Today’s date.

He stumbled out of bed, nearly tripping over yesterday’s discarded jeans, and rushed to the mirror. He turned his wrist under the bright bathroom light, hoping maybe it was a pen’s ink, or a trick of the eye, but the skin was smooth and unblemished except for those markings—stark, unwavering.

He scrubbed it furiously with soap and water. Nothing.

“Okay,” he said to himself, pacing the small bathroom. “Okay, think.”

People don’t just get expiration dates. That’s not how the world works. This was probably some weird stress-induced hallucination. Work had been rough lately, and he’d barely been sleeping. Maybe it was his brain’s way of telling him to take a break.

But what if it wasn’t?

Jim glanced at the clock—8:12 a.m. He had to do something. He wasn’t going to just sit around and wait to… expire.

He grabbed his phone and dialled his sister.

“Hey,” Lilly answered, her voice still thick with sleep. “What’s up?”

“I’ve got a problem,” Jim said, his voice shaking more than he wanted it to. “I woke up this morning and there’s… there’s a date on my wrist.”

A pause. “Like… a tattoo?”

“No. I mean, yes. But not one I put there. It just… appeared.”

Lilly sighed. “Jim, is this another weird dream thing? Because last time you called me about a talking cat.”

“This isn’t like that, Lil,” he snapped. “It’s today’s date. What if it means I’m going to—” He couldn’t bring himself to say it. “You know.”

Lilly groaned. “You’re not going to die, Jim.”

“How do you know?”

A longer pause this time. “I don’t,” she admitted. “But you’re not exactly the healthiest person in the world. Maybe the clinic is warning you to lay off the late-night kebabs.”

Jim glanced at his wrist again. It hadn’t faded. If anything, the ink seemed darker now, bolder.

“I think I need to see someone,” he said.

“Like a doctor? Or a priest?” Lilly asked dryly.

“I don’t know. Both?”

She sighed again. “Look, just… take it easy today. Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Easy for you to say,” Jim muttered, hanging up.

He spent the rest of the morning on edge, jumping at every unexpected noise—the creak of the floorboards, the sudden ring of his phone. He stayed indoors, afraid to step outside, afraid that the universe might be waiting for him out there with a well-placed bus or a rogue piano falling from a window.

Hours crawled by, and nothing happened. He watched the clock intensely. 1:00 p.m., 3:30 p.m.

By 6:45 p.m., Jim was sitting on his sofa, breathing deeply. Maybe this had been a coincidence. Some weird, unexplained phenomenon that didn’t actually mean anything.

And then the doorbell rang.

Jim stared at the door. He glanced at his wrist—no change.

The bell rang again. He forced himself to stand up and walk to the door.

When he opened it, a man in a dark suit stood there, holding a clipboard. He was tall, thin, with eyes too sharp and a smile too polite.

“Mr Jim Evans?” the man asked.

“Yeah?”

The man nodded and flipped through the pages on his clipboard. “Just confirming. You are aware today is your expiration date?”

“You mean… it’s real?”

“Oh yes.” The man looked up with an expressionless face. “But don’t worry. It’s nothing painful. Just… a bureaucratic formality, really.”

Jim edged away. “I don’t—I don’t want to expire.”

“Ah, well.” The man stepped inside uninvited, shutting the door behind him. “We don’t always get a say in these things, Mr Evans.”

Jim glanced around, looking for an escape.

The visitor reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, sleek push-button device. With a soft click, the world faded to black.

When Jim woke up, he was lying in bed. His heart was pounding as usual, sweat was dampening his sheets, but something felt… different. He scrambled to check his wrist. The date was gone.

He sat up, gasping. A dream? A hallucination?

His phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number:

Your expiration date has been renewed. Don’t waste it.

Once, kings and queens trembled at the mere thought of my name. Gold piled high beneath my claws, and knights perished trying to steal a single coin. Bards sang of my fury, my fire, my wings casting shadows over trembling villages. But now?

Now, I sit outside a tavern with a crudely painted sign: “DRAGON FOR HIRE”.

It’s pathetic, I know. But what else can an old firedrake do? The kingdoms have moved on. No one wants their villages burned anymore. They have knights with shining swords who negotiate treaties instead of lopping off heads. And don’t get me started on the wizards—smug little bastards with their flashy spells and their clever ways of making my fire seem… obsolete.

I sigh, curling my tail around me, the tip flicking absently against a barrel. A few townsfolk pass by, giving me wary glances but nothing more. Not fear, not awe. Just mild irritation, as if I’m a nuisance—a dragon-shaped inconvenience blocking the street.

I glance down at the sign, wondering if I should adjust the wording. “Mild Arson for Hire” has a nice ring to it. Maybe “Pest Control: Will Roast Rats”. No. Too desperate.

Just as I’m about to pack up and sulk back to my cave, a small voice pipes up.

“I need a dragon.”

I peer down, and there stands a girl no older than eleven, dressed in patched clothes and carrying a basket full of what smells suspiciously like turnips. She squints up at me, entirely unimpressed.

I snort. “And what, exactly, do you need a dragon for?”

She tilts her head, considering. “Protection.”

I straighten a little, intrigued. “Protection from what? Bandits? Marauding knights? An evil sorcerer?”

She shakes her head. “Billy Tanner.”

“Billy… Tanner?”

She sighs, shifting the basket to her other arm. “He keeps stealing my turnips.”

I stare at her, waiting for the punchline. It doesn’t come.

“You want to hire a dragon,” I say slowly, “to scare off a turnip thief?”

She nods. “I can pay.”

My tail flicks. “How much?”

She rummages in her pocket and pulls out a single copper coin. It’s dull and worn, and not worth much, but she holds it out with the same gravity as if it were a king’s ransom.

I look at the coin. I look at her. And then, because I have truly reached rock bottom, I sigh and say, “Fine.”

Her face lights up. “Really?”

I shrug, stretching my wings with a theatrical flare that sends nearby chickens scattering. “Work is work.”

She grins and leads me through the village, where people step hurriedly out of my way, some muttering complaints about property damage and the fire hazard I apparently represent.

We reach the field where Billy Tanner, a wiry boy with more dirt than manners, is rooting through the girl’s vegetable patch. He looks up, sees me towering over him, and freezes.

I rumble low in my throat, letting a thin plume of smoke curl from my nostrils. “Is there a problem here, Billy?”

Billy Tanner pales. “N-no, sir!” He drops the turnip like it’s cursed and sprints off, vanishing over the hill.

The girl beams at me. “That was amazing!”

I huff, feeling slightly ridiculous. “Yes, well. Next time, consider installing a fence.”

She hands me the coin, placing it carefully in my claw. “Thanks, Mr Dragon.”

I watch her go, feeling an odd warmth in my chest that has nothing to do with fire.

Maybe the world has changed, but perhaps there’s still a place for an old dragon after all.

I glance at my sign and, with a decisive claw, replace the old wording.

“DRAGON FOR HIRE – Reasonable Rates. Turnip Protection Available.”

Business might just be looking up.

The bell above the door chimed softly as Samuel stepped inside, the rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee welcoming him.

He shuffled to his usual spot by the window, the one with the best view of the bustling street outside. And, as always, he ordered two cups of coffee—one black, one with just a dash of milk.

The waitress, a young woman with kind eyes and an understanding smile, never asked why. She simply placed both cups on the table, offered her usual, “Here you go, Sam,” and walked away.

Samuel sat there, hands wrapped around his cup, as the world passed by. He could still see her there, across from him—the way she used to rest her chin on one hand, stirring her coffee absentmindedly with the other.

He smiled faintly, remembering how she’d always teased him about ordering the same thing every day. And he’d laugh, because it was true. He liked routine. He liked knowing she’d always be there, sitting across from him.

But now, the seat in front of him remained empty. It had been two years since she was gone, but Samuel still ordered her coffee. He couldn’t bear the thought of the table with only one cup sitting there.

He reached for the cup meant for her, fingers trembling slightly as he traced the rim. He never drank it, just let it sit there, letting the steam rise and vanish into the air. It was enough to imagine, just for a little while, that she was still with him.

Outside, life carried on. People hurried past the café window, chasing buses, checking their watches, lost in the urgency of their lives. But inside, time moved differently. Slowly. Softly.

Samuel sighed and glanced down at the coffee across from him, still untouched, still waiting.

Maybe one day he’d stop ordering it. Maybe one day he’d sit at a different table, or come at a different time, or maybe even stay home altogether.

But not today. Today, he let the coffee sit, let the memory linger, and let himself believe—just for a moment—that love never truly dies.

He was staring out of the train window, his expression distant, as though his thoughts were somewhere far beyond the station’s railway tracks. He looked older, but not by much. The familiar furrow between his brows remained—the same small crease that appeared when he was thinking too hard, the one she used to smooth away with her fingertips.

Sarah’s fingers twitched against her paper coffee cup, her mind racing through the possibilities. Should she get up? Wave? Call his name?

But she didn’t move. Instead, she watched him the way she used to, quietly, observing him in the way only someone who once loved him could. Her eyes traced the familiar lines of his face, the shape of his jaw, the way his lips parted slightly as though he were about to speak.

And then, as if he could feel her gaze, David turned his head towards her. He blinked, his expression shifting—recognition, surprise, something deeper.

Her train lurched forward. She saw his lips part wider, the distance swallowing the words he might have been about to say. She held his gaze for as long as she could, watching as he disappeared out of sight.

Sarah dropped her head against the glass. In another life, she might have jumped off the train. In another life, she might have smiled and said hello.

But not this life.

She let him become a memory again, left behind on a station in a city she would soon pass through and forget.

In the city of Glaustrum, everything was colour-coded. From the moment you were born, you were assigned a colour—blue for the labourers, red for the managers, gold for the leisured. The colour dictated your home, your income, your friends, and even the food you were allowed to eat. No one questioned it; they simply accepted their place within the spectrum.

Marla had never questioned her role as an auxiliary colour, Green. Greens were the healers, the caretakers. It was an honourable colour, her mother had told her, and Marla had believed it—until the day she saw the impossible.

It happened in the marketplace, amidst the stalls of tightly controlled colours—scarlet apples for the Reds, indigo fish for the Blues, glittering pastries reserved for the Golds. She was weaving through the crowd when she saw it.

A man. Dressed in white.

White was for the Unseen, the ones who had been cast out, stripped of their place in society. Yet here he was, standing in plain view, looking directly at her with eyes too sharp, too knowing.

She looked away briefly, slightly embarrassed by his gaze, but when her eyes quickly gravitated backs, he was gone.

For days, she tried to push the image from her mind. It must have been a trick of the light. But then, the colours around her started to shift. She noticed it in the mornings, the way the sky wasn’t quite blue anymore but tinged with something deeper, richer. The streets seemed less sterile, the shop signs seemed brighter, almost alive.

And then she began seeing other colours.

Colours that didn’t belong. A child’s toy, shimmering in hues she couldn’t name. A flicker of lavender in a Red district. A flash of silver on a Blue’s collar. The world was changing—or maybe it had always been like this, and she had only now begun to see.

Her mother noticed the change in her. “Marla, you’re distracted,” she chided. “Stay focused on your duties. The Council monitors everything.”

The Council. The faceless enforcers of the Colour Code. What would they do to her if they knew she was seeing beyond the approved spectrum? She already knew the answer. She would be disappeared, like her father had been when she was born.

The man dressed in white returned a week later, in the crowded bustle of a train station. This time, he didn’t disappear. He walked straight towards her, his voice low but insistent.

“You’re seeing it now, aren’t you?”

Marla flinched. “Seeing what?”

“The truth,” he said.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a prism. He held it up to the station lights, and suddenly, the entire platform fractured into a riot of colours Marla had never known existed.

The reds were no longer red—they were scarlet, crimson, blood. The blues became sapphire, cerulean, indigo. There were colours she had no words for, and beneath them all, the shimmering pulse of something raw and uncontained.

He pressed the prism into her hand. “You can either look away, or you can start seeing everything.”

She hesitated. It was safer to live within the Colour Code, to let its rules dictate her place. But the thought of those shimmering shades, those unnamed possibilities—she couldn’t let them go.

Marla closed her fingers around the prism and, for the first time in her life, made a choice outside of the code. She realised she would never see the world in the same way again.

When Ester woke up, her skin was aglow with scars. At first, she thought it must be the sunlight breaking through the blinds, casting strange patterns on her arms and neck. But when she stepped closer to the mirror, there they were—faint, shimmering lines, crisscrossing her skin. Some were so faint they barely flickered, but others glowed brighter, red threads pulsing as though alive.

Ester had prided herself on her honesty. While others wore their glowing marks openly—reminders of small deceptions, unspoken truths, or bold-faced lies—her skin had always been clear. She had never been like them. Not a liar.

And yet, here the lines were. Her hands reached for the bathroom sink, gripping its edges for balance. She tried to think of a recent lie, something she’d said that might explain this. A harmless white lie, perhaps? But nothing came to mind.

She leaned closer to the mirror, inspecting her face. A single line stretched from the corner of her jaw to her temple, faint yet unmistakable. It burned softly, like an ember. She traced it with her fingertips and felt the heat.

Her mind flitted through the past days, weeks—years. She tried to pinpoint a moment, an untruth, anything to explain why her once-pristine skin now bore these marks.

She stood back, staring at her reflection, the pale lines burning in the morning light. Slowly, pieces of her life came into focus, like fragments of an old, half-forgotten photograph.

There was the job offer for that dream marine biologist role on the other side of the world she’d never dared to accept. “It’s too risky. Better stick with something safe.” The faintest mark on her collarbone flickered now, a dull reminder of that choice.

There was the friend she had loved in silence, convincing herself it was better not to speak. “It would ruin everything,” she had told herself. But the truth was simpler: she had been afraid. The glowing scar on her wrist faintly pulsed in response to the memory.

There were many moments like these. The job she took out of convenience, despite hating every minute of it. The opportunities she let slip by because she had convinced herself she wasn’t ready. Each mark told its story.

Back in her bedroom, she sank down on the edge of the bed, staring at her arms. The brightest mark ran the length of her forearm. She knew exactly what it meant. It wasn’t just one moment—it was the culmination of all the chances not taken.

The truth burned through her now, the glow of her marks impossible to ignore. They were a map of every compromise, every excuse, every self-deception. She had spent her life pretending she had made the right choices. But the marks didn’t lie.

Ester sat there for a long time, staring at the burns etched into her skin. She didn’t know what came next, whether the marks would ever fade or if she would be forced to carry them forever.

But for the first time in years, she couldn’t look away from herself. She couldn’t pretend anymore.