Here’s another micro-story inspired by a prompt shared by
over at . You can read his story here:
Clocking in at 334 words, this one got away from me a bit… so maybe it’s not quite a “micro,” technically speaking—but fuck it, who’s counting? (Says the guy who just offered a precise word count, lol.)
Anyway, what I love most about the story is how much of the mystery I’ve left in your hands. With ultra-short tales, I often find you have to leave the reader—hey, that’s you!—with a fair amount of legroom to work things out for themselves because there’s just not enough space for you to explain everything.
And with a subject like “the paranormal,” I think I’d be foolish to even try. That’s why the last line is by far the scariest part of the story for me. Those three words terrify most of us most of the time, after all.
So make of it what you will, but regardless, I hope you enjoy.
c.d.
paranormal
“Maybe what we call ‘paranormal’ is actually just the underside of reality poking through,” Tabitha said. “Maybe there’s nothing irregular or abnormal about it. We just think there is because we’re not used to seeing it.”
She knew such ontological musing entertained their clients, even if it tried her partner, Jason’s, patience.
“Poking through what?” he asked, his tone weary, as he burrowed deeper into an occluded basement made lousy with the detritus of middle-class life.
“I don’t know…” she replied.
Jason nodded, shrugged, and kept searching, aided by the illuminating beam of a pocket Maglite.
“And what is it exactly that’s poking through, Tabby?”
“I don’t know!” she repeated emphatically.
“Well, if you ever figure it out, be sure to let me kn—.”
His sentence, like his presence in the dark, crowded basement, ended abruptly.
As her eyes searched the now-empty space he’d occupied, Tabitha screamed Jason’s name over and over but received no reply. Overpowered by terror and confusion, she quickly fled the basement without bothering to gather up her remaining equipment.
The client, a 74-year-old recent widow named Betty-Anne Morris, met Tabitha at the front door. Her eyes wide with confusion.
“We have to leave, Mrs. Morris. We have to leave right now,” Tabitha said, pressing the old woman toward the door perhaps a bit too roughly.
Tabitha pleaded with the confused and reluctant woman, unable to convey what she had seen or overcome her panic. “Please. Please,” she kept repeating, “hurry, Mrs. Morris. We have to get out of here right now. Do you hear me? We need to leave this place immediately!”
“But why?” the old woman asked, confused and unwilling to abandon her home, which she’d shared with her now-departed husband for over forty years. “Where’s the other one? The man. Your partner. I don’t understand... What did you see down there?”
Tabitha looked straight into Betty-Anne Morris’ pale blue eyes and uttered three words which threatened to unravel her increasingly tenuous grip on sanity.
“I don’t know.”
It’s great to have you back!