Tag: Musings on a Rock

The dragon lay dying in a field of ash and shattered stone. Its great body, once a mountain of muscle and magic, trembled with each shallow breath. The golden fire in its eyes had dulled to embers.

Sir Aldric had never seen a dragon so close before—never without a sword raised, never without the intention to kill. Yet here he stood, weaponless, staring at the magnificent creature crumbling before him.

The dragon’s voice rumbled like distant thunder. “I ask of you one favour.”

Aldric hesitated. He had come here to slay the beast, to return to the kingdom as a hero. But there was no victory in this. Not now.

“What do you ask of me?” he said at last.

The dragon lifted a claw, barely able to keep aloft. Clutched within was a smooth oval stone, black as starless midnight.

“Take this,” said the dragon. “Carry it to the highest peak beyond the Valley of Echoes… There, place it beneath the moonlight and speak my name… Vorthalax.”

Aldric took the stone. It was warm to the touch, pulsing with something that felt almost like a heartbeat.

With a final sigh, Vorthalax’s great eyes slid shut. The ground trembled as the last dragon of the realm took its final breath.

The journey to the Valley of Echoes was perilous, but Aldric had faced worse. He climbed the jagged cliffs, his hands bloodied and raw, until at last he reached the highest peak. The moon hung high, silver light washing over the land.

He knelt and placed the stone upon the frostbitten rock. The wind stilled. The world fell into an eerie silence.

Aldric steadied himself. “Vorthalax,” he proclaimed into the sky above.

The air shimmered. Shadows coiled like smoke. Then, from the darkness, an enormous creature emerged, rocks cracking under its weight.

It was another dragon, slightly smaller than Vorthalax, and with scales the colour of the night sky. Its golden eyes burned with a sense of something between sorrow and hope.

“You have brought him… home,” the dragon rumbled.

Aldric didn’t understand, but he didn’t need to. The stone at his feet split open, and from within, a warm golden light spilled forth, rising like mist.

The dragon leaned forward, pressing its forehead to the light. A sound filled the air—something between a sigh and a melody.

Then, just as quickly as it had begun, the light faded.

The dragon looked at Aldric, eyes shimmering with the intensity of flame.

“Thank you,” it said, bowing its head. Then, with a great beat of its wings, the dragon soared into the sky, disappearing into the stars.

Aldric remained on the mountain for a long while, watching the night, the wind carrying a name he now understood.

Vorthalax had only ever wanted to go home.

Mira had always been a light sleeper, which was why she installed the camera in the first place. The noises at night under her bed—soft scratches, the faint shuffle of movement—were too subtle to be rats but too irregular to be the house settling. The security camera wasn’t fancy, just a cheap model above her bedroom door, bluetoothed to her phone. It captured everything, motion-triggered and timestamped. She let it run for a week before reviewing the footage.

At first, nothing. Just the usual: her natural movements asleep in bed. But on the third night, at precisely 3:13 a.m., she noticed the footage had jumped.

She rewound. Played it frame by frame. 3:11 a.m., 3:12 a.m. Jump. 3:14 a.m. No flicker, no static, no glitchy distortion. Just a clean, surgical cut. Sixty seconds, gone.

A fault in the camera, maybe? Mira scrolled back. The night before, 3:13 a.m. disappeared again. And the night before that.

She set an alarm for the next night, waking her at 3:10 a.m. She lay in bed, phone in hand, staring at the blue glow of the camera’s indicator light.

At 3:12 a.m., nothing happened.

At 3:13 a.m., the room flickered. Mira felt an impossible sensation—like being yanked out of her body, as if she had stepped between two film frames and fallen into the gap.

She wasn’t in bed anymore.

She was standing in a corridor. No doors. No windows. The air was dense, thick with the smell of damp stone and something metallic, like old blood. The walls—if they were walls—stretched endlessly in both directions, made of something rough and uneven, like brick but colder. She reached out instinctively, fingertips grazing the surface. It was wet.

The darkness wasn’t total. A dim, pulsing light flickered from an unseen source, casting long, jagged shadows along the walls. The corridor wasn’t silent, either. Beneath the hush, Mira heard something—a faint, rhythmic tapping, like footsteps. Not hurried, not hesitant. Deliberate.

The footsteps grew closer. Mira tried to move, but her legs would not respond… A whisper brushed against her ears—not a voice, but the sensation of sound just before it forms, like a word caught at the edge of existence.

Then—she was back in bed, the weight of the duvet pressed against her. Her phone was still in her hand. She gasped, lungs burning as if she’d been holding her breath for too long.

3:14 a.m.

A notification buzzed. The recording was available.

Mira hesitated, then pressed play.

Sixty seconds of perfect darkness.

Then, at the very end, in the silence between frames—

The voice.

“Almost time.”

The silence was the worst part.

Adam had thought he’d grow used to it, but after ten months of empty streets and hollow buildings, it only got heavier. The world had ended with an explosion of silence, not fire. People had just vanished. One day they were there, living their ordinary lives, and the next, gone. No bodies. No explanations. Just an empty planet with the lights still on.

He had scoured the cities, called out into the void, but no one answered.

He spent his days raiding supermarkets, driving stolen sports cars down abandoned highways, and reading through books he never had time for before. He lived in a penthouse suite, drank the best whisky, and watched old movies as if the world hadn’t stopped turning.

And at night, he wrote. Someone had to record what happened. He filled notebook after notebook, chronicling the days, the loneliness, the aching weight of survival.

He poured himself a drink, sat by candlelight, and opened a fresh page.

Day 313.

I am still here.

The words looked small, fragile. He idly tapped his pen on the table, trying to think of something more profound. Something meaningful.

Then came the knock at the door.

A soft, deliberate tap, tap, tap.

His glass slipped from his hand, shattering on the floor.

The knocking came again.

Tap, tap, tap.

Adam stared at the door. It was impossible. He had spent months searching, calling out, scouring each abandoned city, every dead street.

There was no one left.

No one but him.

He stood slowly, his legs stiff from shock. He grabbed the gun from the table—one of many he’d taken from a police station—but his hands were shaking so badly he could barely hold it steady.

Another three knocks.

Louder this time. More urgent.

Adam stepped forward.

“Who’s there?” he called, his voice hoarse from non-exercise.

No answer.

He hesitated. The instinctive part of his mind screamed at him to run. But where? There was nowhere to go.

He tightened his grip on the gun and reached for the door handle.

Slowly, carefully, he turned it.

The door creaked open an inch. Then another. Then—

Nothing.

The hallway was empty.

Adam stepped outside the door, glancing both ways. The city below the ceiling-high hallway windows stretched out in its eerie, abandoned silence. He was alone. Again.

Had he imagined it? Was the isolation finally driving him mad?

He shakily lowered the gun. He let out a small, nervous laugh. Maybe it was just the building settling. Or the wind. Or—

He turned back to go inside.

And stopped.

The candle he had lit was flickering violently.

Adam raised the gun, stepping forward on unsteady feet. His voice trembled. “Who’s there?”

The candlelight shifted shadows against the walls.

Then, from deep inside the apartment, a voice answered.

“You are not the last.”

The voice had come from the darkness beyond the candlelight, low and steady, neither rushed nor panicked. Just… certain.

His finger rubbed the trigger. “Step out where I can see you,” he said, forcing steel into his voice.

Silence.

The candle flickered, the shadows on the walls stretching and shifting unnaturally, as if something was moving just beyond the edge of sight.

“I said—”

Then, footsteps. Slow. Deliberate.

A figure emerged from the gloom.

At first, Adam thought it was a woman. Slender, tall, moving with an eerie grace. But as it stepped into the candle’s glow, something was… wrong.

The face was human. Almost. But the skin was too smooth, the features too symmetrical, like a sculpture of a person rather than the real thing. The eyes—God, the eyes—were black pools, swallowing the light.

Adam took a half step back, gun raised. “What are you?”

The figure tilted its head, as if considering the question.

“We were waiting for you to ask.”

“We?”

The thing said nothing.

Instead, it moved aside—just slightly. Just enough for Adam to see the hallway behind it.

And the others.

Dozens of them. Standing perfectly still in the darkness. Watching.

Adam’s instincts screamed at him to run, to fight, to do something—but his body refused to move.

The first figure took another step towards him. “You were never alone,” it said.

Adam fired.

The shot rang out.  But the figure was still standing.

The bullet hole in its forehead closed in an instant, the skin knitting together like water swallowing a stone.

It stepped forward and reached out, resting a too-cold hand on his shoulder. Adam tried to pull away, but his muscles locked, frozen in place. His vision blurred.

Then, for the first time in months, the city was no longer silent.

From the streets below, from the alleyways and the empty buildings, from every shadowed corner, voices began to rise.

Soft at first. Then growing. Then deafening.

And as Adams’ world faded to black, the last thing he heard was the voices, calling out one final truth.

“Now, you are one of us.”

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.