The Laundromat Man

Posted on April 3, 2026 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

The Laundromat Man waited until his prey walked in with that familiar Winnie the Pooh sheet.

He didn’t believe in coincidences anymore, only patterns. Patterns in fabric, in routines, in people. The sheet was once a brilliant shade of sky blue, maybe cheerful. But now it sagged at the corners, worn thin from too many washes, too many nights of being clutched by small hands that needed comfort. He noticed those things. Always had.

From behind the counter, he didn’t look up right away. He never did. Instead, he listened. The hollow clatter of the door. The hesitant pause just inside. The soft shift of a laundry basket against denim. Then the sigh. There was always a sigh.

He lifted his eyes just enough to see her reflection in the convex security mirror mounted near the ceiling. Early twenties, maybe. Hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. No ring. No companion. Just a phone clutched in one hand and a basket hooked into the crook of her elbow. She looked tired. She always seemed to look tired. Like life had put her through the ringer twice. He turned a page in the paperback he wasn’t reading.

Three weeks, he thought. That’s how long he’d been watching her. Not obsessively, not at first. He noticed her the same way he noticed everything: quietly, patiently, letting details gather until they formed something solid.

She always came in on Tuesdays or Fridays. Always after 10 p.m. Always alone. Always with that same sheet tucked into the basket, folded on top like a flag. Sometimes there were tiny shirts beneath it, pastel colors, cartoon prints. Once, a pair of socks so small he could have mistaken them for doll clothes. He never saw a child. That mattered.

The machines hummed to life as she loaded them, one by one. She moved efficiently, like someone who had done this too many times to think about it anymore. Coins clinked into slots. A detergent bottle—cheap, generic—was poured carefully, as if she were measuring out something precious.

He watched her hands. Hands told stories people didn’t realize they were telling. No fresh bruises tonight. No shaking. No frantic glances at the door. That meant stability—at least for now. A routine life. A predictable life. Those were the easiest to interrupt.

He stood slowly, stretching like a man stiff from sitting too long. The bell above the door didn’t ring; no one else had come in. Good, he thought. It rarely did at this hour, but he never relied on luck.

“Evening,” he said, voice mild, practiced. She startled anyway. They always did.

“Oh—hi,” she replied, offering a quick, polite smile that didn’t reach her eyes. First contact. Brief. Harmless.

“You should use machine six,” he added. “It spins better. Less noise.”

“Thanks,” she said, already turning back to her task. He nodded and returned to his chair, as if that were the end of it. But it never was.

He had owned the laundromat for eleven years. Before that, it belonged to a man who didn’t notice things. Who didn’t care about patterns. Who left lights flickering and machines broken and people unseen. The Laundromat Man noticed everything. He replaced the bulbs. Repaired the machines. Installed cameras—not for security, but for studying customers. He learned the rhythms of the neighborhood the way a musician learns tempo. He knew who came in after work. Who came in drunk. Who came in with families. Who came in alone. And most importantly: who kept coming back alone.

He never rushed. That was the mistake of lesser men, the ones who got caught, the ones who made headlines for a week before being forgotten. He preferred something quieter. Something that stretched. Observation first. Then understanding. Then selection.

She sat in one of the molded plastic chairs, scrolling through her phone. Every few seconds, she glanced at the machines, as if willing them to finish faster. He knew what she was thinking. I should’ve come earlier. I shouldn’t be here this late. Just one more load. The mind of someone caught between necessity and unease. He had a notebook beneath the counter. He didn’t take it out right then—never in front of them—but he didn’t need to. He had already written her down.

Tuesday/Friday.

10:15–11:30 p.m.

Apartments down the street (likely—based on direction of arrival).

Child: approx. 3–5 years old (inferred).

No partner observed.

He wondered what her name was. Names were the last thing he learned. By then, it hardly mattered.

The machines clicked, shifted, began their slow churn. Water sloshed. The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead.

“You come here often?” he asked after a while, as if the thought had just occurred to him. She hesitated. A flicker of caution.

“Yeah… I guess,” she said. “It’s close.”

“Convenient,” he replied.

She nodded, then added, “And it’s clean.”

That almost made him smile.

“I try,” he said.

Silence returned, but it was different now. Thinner. A thread had been pulled. He could see it in the way she shifted in her seat, the way her phone no longer held her full attention. Awareness had crept in. Good. Fear needed time to grow.

Weeks passed before he made his next move. Over the years, he had learned to be patient, allow time to lower his targets’ defenses. A greeting that lasted a second longer. A question about the weather. A comment about the machines. Each interaction small enough to dismiss, but large enough for him to remember.

He learned her schedule more precisely. Learned the nights she almost didn’t come. Learned the way she checked her phone more frequently near the end of each cycle—waiting, perhaps, for a message that rarely came. Once, she fell asleep in the chair. That told him everything. Exhaustion meant vulnerability. Vulnerability meant opportunity. But still, he waited.

The night he chose was colder than the others that week. The kind of cold that kept people inside, that emptied streets and silenced neighborhoods. Even the hum of passing cars seemed distant, muted.

She arrived ten minutes later than usual. The Winnie the Pooh sheet was there, as always. He watched her through the mirror, noting the slight tension in her shoulders, the way she glanced at the door twice before settling in. Instinct was whispering to her. It always did. He stood, locking the front door with a quiet click.

“We close early tonight,” he said.

Her head snapped up. “Oh—I didn’t realize—”

“It’s alright,” he interrupted gently. “You can finish your load.”

She hesitated. The machines continued their steady rhythm, indifferent.

“I can come back—” she started.

“No need,” he said. “Wouldn’t want you dragging all that back out in the cold.”

Another pause. Then, reluctantly, she nodded. “Okay.”

He smiled. Not the kind of smile people noticed. The kind that stayed hidden, just beneath the surface, where patterns lived and patience paid off. The Laundromat Man returned to his chair, but he didn’t pick up the book this time. He didn’t need to pretend anymore.

Across the room, the machines spun faster, building toward their final cycle. The sheet would come out warm, damp, soft, smelling faintly of detergent and something like comfort. He wondered, briefly, if the child would notice its absence. If anyone would. He already knew the answer.

And as the timer ticked down, as the hum of the machines filled the empty space, he watched her—not as a stranger, not as a customer—but as something he had been shaping for months. Something inevitable. Something chosen.

The timer buzzed—loud, abrupt, final. She flinched. It was such a small thing, but to him it felt ceremonial. A signal that the waiting part was over.

“Let me give you a hand,” he said, already on his feet.

“I can get it,” she replied quickly, standing a little too fast. Her knee bumped the chair with a hollow knock. He noticed that, too. She seemed rushed, nervous. Good, he thought.

“Of course,” he said, stepping aside.

He watched her cross the room, watched the way she kept a small distance between them without making it obvious. Her instincts were sharpening. The animal part of her brain waking up, sensing something it couldn’t yet name.

The washer door swung open with a wet suction sound. Steam curled into the air. She reached in, pulling out the small clothes first—tiny shirts, soft socks, a pair of pajamas with faded stars. Then the sheet. Winnie the Pooh, smiling up through years of wear. She held it for a moment longer than necessary, as if grounding herself.

“You’ve got a kid,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

She stiffened. “Yeah.”

“How old?”

“Four.” A lie. He almost admired it. Quick. Defensive. Wrong.

“Nice age,” he murmured.

She didn’t respond. Just turned toward the dryers, stuffing clothes in with more force than needed. The machine doors slammed. Coins dropped. The low roar of heat replaced the churn of water. And still—no one else came in.

He moved behind the counter again, but not to sit. Instead, he opened the small drawer beneath it. Inside, everything was arranged with care. No chaos. Never chaos. Chaos was for people who didn’t understand control. People who couldn’t exercise restraint. A ring of keys. A folded cloth. A small bottle. He selected only the keys. Tonight didn’t require anything else. He closed the drawer softly.

Across the room, she had resumed her seat—but differently now. Her body angled toward the door. Her phone held tighter. Her eyes flicking up more often.

“Do you live around here?” he asked.

She hesitated longer this time. “Yeah.”

“Close enough to walk?”

“…Sometimes.” Another lie. He nodded, as if cataloging something mundane.

“Neighborhood’s gotten quieter,” he said. “Used to be more people out at night.”

“Yeah,” she said quickly. “I noticed.”

Her voice carried something now. Agreement as defense. Keep it normal. Keep it safe. But normal was already gone.

Minutes stretched. The dryers thumped in steady rhythm, like a heartbeat echoing through metal. He walked the perimeter of the laundromat slowly, checking machines that didn’t need checking. Testing doors that were already locked.

When he reached the front, he tugged the handle once more. Firm. Secure. She watched him do it.

“Just making sure,” he said lightly.

“Right…” she replied. Her leg started bouncing. There it was. Fear, finally found a foothold.

“Hey,” she said suddenly. “How much longer do they run?”

“About twenty minutes.” Her eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. Twenty minutes might as well have been an hour.

“I think I’ll just… take them a little damp,” she said, standing again. “Finish at home.”

He tilted his head, as if considering what she said.

“They’ll mildew,” he said. “Especially the sheet.”

Her jaw tightened. “It’ll be fine.”

A small silence passed between them. Then he nodded.

“Of course,” he said. “Your call.”

He stepped back, giving her space. Too much space. That unsettled her more. She moved quickly, opening the dryer before it finished. Heat spilled out. The clothes were warm, but not dry. She didn’t care. She shoved them into her basket in uneven piles, fingers fumbling slightly. The sheet came last. It always came last. She folded it halfway, then stopped, pressing it down into the basket instead. No time for neatness. No time for routine. Just leave. Just get out.

She turned toward the door. He was already there. Not blocking it. Just… near it. Keys in hand.

“I can unlock it,” he said.

Her breath caught—just barely.

“Thanks,” she said.

He stepped closer. Too close. Up close, he could see the fine details—the faint dark circles under her eyes, the tiny scar near her chin, the way her pupils had widened. He slid the key into the lock. Paused.

“You know,” he said softly, “you almost didn’t come tonight.”

Her grip tightened on the basket. “What?”

“Tuesday,” he continued. “You were late. Ten minutes.”

Silence. Heavy. Immediate. Suffocating.

“I—I don’t—”

“And last Friday,” he added, turning the key slowly, “you checked your phone seventeen times.”

Her face drained of color. The lock clicked. But he didn’t open the door.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said. “It makes you predictable.”

Now she stepped back.

“Open the door,” she said. Not polite anymore. Not friendly.

“Of course,” he replied. But he still didn’t move.

“I just think,” he went on, voice almost conversational, “people underestimate how much they reveal without realizing it.”

“Open. The door.”

He looked at her then—not through a mirror, not from across the room—but directly. Fully. For the first time. And there was nothing mild in his expression now. Nothing practiced. Just clarity.

“You were easier than most,” he said. The words landed like a blow. She dropped the basket. Clothes spilled across the floor—small shirts, socks, the edge of that blue and yellow sheet unfurling like a flag surrendering to gravity. She lunged for the door. He moved faster. The key turned back. The lock held. And in the reflection of the glass, under the hum of dying machines, the Laundromat Man reached for her—as everything he had patiently built finally began to unfold. Her hand slammed against the glass.

“Help!” she screamed, the word cracking in her throat as she fumbled for the handle again. It didn’t budge. She sprinted around the bank of machines in the middle of the room. Behind her, she heard him move. Not rushing. Never rushing. That was what broke something in her—not the locked door, not the empty street outside—but the calm certainty of his footsteps. She spun around just as he reached for her again. But instinct had finally caught up to her fear.

She grabbed the first thing her hand found—the metal laundry cart. She shoved it forward with everything she had. It crashed into him, hard enough to force him back a step, the wheels shrieking against the tile. It wasn’t enough to stop him—but it was enough to interrupt him. Enough to buy her a second. And a second was everything. She ran.

Not toward the door—her mind already abandoning that option—but toward the back hallway, where a flickering EXIT sign glowed red above a narrow door she had barely noticed before. He hadn’t expected that. Not because it wasn’t there. But because no one ever chose it. People always ran for the obvious way out. Predictable. Safe. Wrong. For the first time, his pace changed. He moved faster.

The hallway was darker than the laundromat, the fluorescent lights giving way to a single dim bulb that buzzed like it might die at any moment. She hit the door hard. Locked.

“Please—please—” she whispered, hands shaking as she clawed at the push bar. It didn’t move. Behind her, the footsteps were closer now. Measured—but no longer slow. Her chest tightened. Vision narrowing. Her eyes darted wildly—and landed on a red box mounted on the wall.

FIRE ALARM.

She didn’t hesitate. She smashed it.

The sound exploded through the building. A shrieking, mechanical scream that shattered the silence, bouncing off tile and metal and concrete. Lights began to strobe. The Laundromat Man stopped. Just for a fraction of a second, but it was enough. Enough for something to fracture in the careful structure he had built around this moment. Noise. Attention. Unpredictability. He hated all of it.

She rammed the door again. This time, it gave. Not fully—but enough. A crack. Cold air spilled through. She forced her fingers into it and pushed, forcing the door open inch by inch with a strength she didn’t know she had. Behind her, he moved again. Faster now. Not calm anymore. Not patient.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” he said, his voice cutting through the alarm, sharper than before.

She didn’t look back. The door opened wide enough. She slipped through—and stumbled out into the cold night air. The alley behind the laundromat was empty, but not silent. The alarm screamed behind her, echoing into the street beyond. Lights flickered on in nearby buildings. A window opened somewhere above.

“What the hell—?” A voice. Someone else. She ran toward it.

“Help!” she cried, her voice breaking apart. “Help me!”

He stopped at the doorway but didn’t step outside. Didn’t follow. He watched her run instead. Watched as the distance grew. Watched as the world—loud, chaotic, unpredictable—closed back in around her. His jaw tightened. Not from anger, not quite. Something colder. Something calculating. This wasn’t failure. Failure was sloppy. Failure was careless. This—this was a variable. And variables could be studied. Adjusted for. Corrected.

He stepped back inside. The alarm still blared. The machines still hummed, winding down toward silence. On the floor near the front door, the basket lay overturned. Clothes scattered. And right there on the bottom of the pile—the Winnie the Pooh sheet. He walked over to it slowly. Picked it up. Held it in both hands. It was still warm, still soft. Still carrying the faint scent of detergent… and something else now. Something sharper. Something human. He folded it neatly and placed it on the counter.

Then reached for the phone. Not to call for help, but to report a break-in. A disturbance. A frightened customer who had “panicked.” His voice, when he spoke, was calm again. Measured. Believable.

“I think someone triggered the fire alarm,” he said. “You should send someone to check it out.”

He hung up. Silence began to creep back in as the alarm finally cut off, leaving only the low hum of machines and the distant murmur of waking neighbors. The Laundromat Man looked down at the folded sheet and smiled faintly. Patterns didn’t disappear. They just changed. And now—he knew hers even better than before.

The police came and went before dawn. They walked the floor, glanced at the machines, jotted notes they would later forget. One officer lingered longer than the others, eyes tracing the room as if trying to feel something beneath the surface—but even that passed. There were no signs of forced entry. No visible struggle. Just a frightened woman who couldn’t quite explain what had happened without sounding uncertain of her own memory. Panic, they called it. Stress. Late night nerves. The Laundromat Man stood behind the counter, answering every question with quiet precision.

“Yes, she seemed startled.”

“No, I didn’t see anyone else.”

“Yes, I locked the door early—it’s been colder lately. You know how that goes.”

Always reasonable. Always helpful. Always forgettable. When they left, the laundromat returned to its natural state—sterile, humming, empty. But something had shifted. Not in the room, in him.

For the first time in years, he had miscalculated. Not in the details. Not in the pattern. But in the outcome. He hadn’t accounted for disruption, for noise. For a moment of chaos strong enough to fracture control. He didn’t resent her for escaping. Resentment was emotional. Messy. He preferred clarity. And clarity told him something simple: she had changed the pattern.

Weeks passed. He reopened at his usual hours. Cleaned the machines. Replaced the broken alarm box. Reset everything to the way it had been. Customers returned. Different faces. Familiar routines. But not hers. She didn’t come back. People like her—once shaken awake—either disappeared or adapted. And he needed to know which.

He found her three weeks later. Not by luck. Nothing ever happened by luck. Patterns always left traces. A different laundromat, two miles away. Earlier in the evening. Not alone this time—another woman beside her, talking, laughing too loudly in that brittle way people do when they’re trying to reclaim something. But the signs were still there. The glances. The tension. The awareness. She hadn’t returned to sleep. Good, he thought. That made her more interesting.

He didn’t approach her. Didn’t speak. Didn’t let her see him. He simply watched from a distance, standing across the street in the shadow of a closed storefront, observing how she moved now. Less predictable. More cautious. But still… structured. Still human. Still bound by routine, even if she tried to break it. Everyone was.

He followed her only once. Far enough to understand, but not far enough to be noticed. She eventually made her way to an apartment complex. He watched as she walked up the stairs. Saw the lights come to life in a third floor window. Saw a child’s silhouette appear in the same window—small, restless, alive. So the child was real. He filed that away.

That night, he returned to his laundromat and sat behind the counter, the folded Winnie the Pooh sheet resting where he had left it. He hadn’t washed it. Hadn’t touched it since. It remained exactly as it was the night she ran. A preserved moment. A reminder. Not of failure—but of adjustment. He unfolded it slowly, smoothing the worn fabric across the counter. The cartoon bear smiled up at him, unchanged, untouched by fear or consequence. He studied it the way he studied everything. Not for what it was. But for what it revealed.

“She learned,” he murmured.A quiet acknowledgment. Respect, in its own way.

Then, after a moment: “So will I.”

The Laundromat Man did not rush back into old habits. He expanded them. Different nights. Different profiles. Less reliance on routine. More attention to interruption—to noise, to unpredictability, to the variables he had once dismissed. He adapted. Because that was the difference between being caught—and continuing.

Months later, on a night thick with summer heat, the bell above the door chimed softly. He didn’t look up right away. He listened. The door closing. The pause. The shift of weight. But something was different. No basket. No coins. No movement toward the machines. He raised his eyes. And saw her, standing just inside the laundromat. Alone. But not the same. Her posture was steadier. Her eyes clearer. Fear still lived there—but it had changed shape. Hardened into something sharper. Something deliberate.

“You remember me,” she said. It wasn’t a question. He studied her for a long moment. Then nodded once.

“Yes.”

Silence stretched between them. The machines hummed. The lights buzzed.

“You were right,” she said finally. “About patterns.”

His head tilted slightly.“Oh?”

“I was predictable,” she continued. “Easy to watch. Easy to follow.”

A faint smile touched his lips. “You adapted.”

“I did.”

She took a step forward. Then another. Not hesitant. Measured. Controlled. And now—he noticed it. The subtle weight in her jacket pocket. The way her hand hovered near it. Prepared.

“You shouldn’t have come back,” he said quietly.

“Neither should you,” she replied. She moved another step closer. The air between them tightening.

“You’re not afraid,” he observed.

“I am,” she said. “I just decided that wasn’t enough anymore.”

He considered that. Fear that didn’t paralyze. Fear that moved. That acted instead of reacted. That changed outcomes. That was dangerous.

Outside, a car slowed. Headlights swept briefly across the windows then lingered. Another followed. And another. He noticed. His eyes flicked toward the door—just for a second. Just long enough. That was all she needed.

“Now,” she said. The word was soft. But it carried. The door burst open. Voices filled the room.

“Police! Don’t move!”

The illusion shattered instantly—noise, chaos, interruption flooding in from every direction. Exactly what he had once dismissed. Exactly what she had learned to use. He didn’t run, didn’t resist. He simply stood there, as the pattern finally closed around him. Hands raised. Expression calm. But his eyes—his eyes found hers one last time. They weren’t angry, not even afraid. Just… understanding. A final calculation, coming to its inevitable conclusion.

As they took him away, the laundromat fell silent again. Machines winding down. Lights steady. The world returning to something like normal. She stood alone in the center of it, breathing hard, the weight of everything settling into her bones. On the counter—the Winnie the Pooh sheet. Folded. Waiting. She walked over to it slowly. Picked it up. Held it close for a moment—feeling the warmth that wasn’t there anymore. Then turned—and walked out into the night, leaving it behind. This time—on her terms.

Lost Ones

Posted on February 26, 2026 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

The bathroom light was still on. It hummed faintly behind the closed door, a thin strip of yellow spilling across the hallway carpet. Four plastic tests lay on the sink counter, lined up like tiny white verdicts. All of them said the same thing. Positive.

Lena stared at them until the word blurred. Her hands were trembling—not with fear, not exactly. It felt more like standing on the edge of something enormous and bright. Something terrifying and miraculous all at once. She pressed a palm to her stomach.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, and then she laughed—a small, disbelieving sound. “Oh my God.”

In the living room, Marcus was stretched across their secondhand couch, laptop balanced on his knees, a spreadsheet open. He was muttering under his breath about rent and hours and how his manager had cut his shifts again.

“Babe?” he called. “You okay in there?”

The bathroom door clicked open. Lena stepped out slowly, the tests clenched in her hand. Her face looked pale, but her eyes were shining in a way he hadn’t seen before.

Marcus sat up immediately. “Hey, what happened?”

She didn’t answer right away. She walked toward him like someone walking through water. Then she held out her hand.

“Well?” he asked, already bracing.

She held a pregnancy test out like evidence in a trial. “I’m pregnant.”

The word cracked through the room. He stared at the stick, then at her.

“Are you sure?”

Her laugh was sharp. “No, Marcus, I just collect positive pregnancy tests for fun.”

He winced. “That’s not what I—”

“I took four.”

Silence. For a split second, something like awe crossed his expression. Then it shifted. Tightened. His brain started calculating before he could stop it. Rent. Bills. His cut shifts. Her car that barely started in the mornings.

“Pregnant,” he repeated.

She nodded, a breathless smile breaking through. “We’re going to have a baby.”

Silence. Marcus swallowed. He set the laptop aside slowly, as if any sudden movement might shatter something fragile.

“Okay,” he said carefully. The smile on her face faltered.

“Okay?” she echoed.

He ran a hand through his hair. “I mean… okay. Wow. That’s… wow.”

She waited for him to stand. To pull her into a hug. To laugh. To say this is crazy and beautiful and we’ll figure it out. He didn’t. Instead, he leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the carpet.

“How far along do you think you are?”

“I don’t know. Maybe five weeks? Six?” She hugged herself. “I missed my period and I just—I knew.”

He nodded slowly. Too slowly.

“Marcus,” she said, her voice thinning, “say something.”

“I’m trying.”

His mind was already racing ahead: rent due next week, the electric bill they were late on, the cracked windshield they still hadn’t fixed. His community college tuition. Her part-time job at the café that barely covered groceries.

“You look like someone just told you you’re going to prison.”

“Because this is serious, Lena!”

“It’s also exciting,” she shot back. “Or did that not cross your mind?”

He stood up abruptly. “Of course it crossed my mind! But do you want me to throw confetti? We can barely afford groceries!”

“We’ll make it work.”

“How?” His voice rose. “With what money? With what space? We’re in a one-bedroom apartment with mold in the bathroom!”

“So we move!”

“With what savings?!” he barked.

She flinched but didn’t back down. “People figure it out all the time.”

“Yeah, and they’re drowning half the time.”

“At least they try.”

He froze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re already looking for an exit.”

“No I am not.”

“You haven’t said one single positive thing since I walked out of that bathroom.”

“Because I’m not an idiot, Lena!” he snapped. “This isn’t some Instagram announcement. This is eighteen years. Minimum.”

Her face hardened. “You think I don’t know that?”

“I think you’re romanticizing this.”

“Oh my God.” She threw the test onto the coffee table. “You think I’m stupid.”

“I think you’re emotional.”

Her jaw dropped. “Wow.”

“Don’t twist my words.”

“You just said I’m emotional.”

“You are!” he shot back. “You’re running on adrenaline and hormones and—”

“Say it.” She stepped toward him. “Say what you’re actually thinking.”

He hesitated.

“That we’re not ready,” he said finally.

“And?”

“And that maybe we should think about whether this is the right time.”

Her voice dropped to ice. “Whether what is the right time?”

He looked away.

“Say it, Marcus.”

He swallowed. “Whether we should… go through with it.”

The air left her lungs like he’d punched her.

“Go through with it,” she repeated. “You mean have your child?”

“I mean make a decision that doesn’t wreck our lives.”

Her eyes blazed. “So that’s what this is? A wreck?”

“You don’t even need to think about it?” she asked, voice trembling with disbelief.

“I am thinking about it!” he barked. “That’s the problem!”

“You mean you’re thinking about how screwed you are.”

“I’m thinking about how screwed we are.”

“No,” she shot back. “You’re thinking about yourself.”

He spun toward her. “Oh, that’s rich.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, it is! Because you’re acting like this is some miracle dropped from the sky instead of a disaster.”

“A disaster?” Her voice broke. “That’s what you think our child is?”

“I think it’s terrible timing!”

“You don’t get perfect timing!” she screamed. “Life doesn’t send you a calendar invite!”

He dragged his hands down his face. “We are twenty-two. We are broke. We fight about gas money. And now you want to bring a baby into that?”

She stepped closer, trembling. “I don’t want to bring a baby into it. The baby is already here.”

“It’s barely the size of a seed!”

“It’s still ours!”

He shook his head, backing away like she was something dangerous. “We have options.”

There it was again. Options. Her expression hardened into something almost unrecognizable.

“You mean an abortion.”

He didn’t answer.

“That’s what you mean.”

“I mean we don’t have to ruin our lives because of one mistake!”

The second the word left his mouth, he knew. Mistake. Lena stared at him like he had just slapped her across the face.

“Say that again,” she whispered.

“I didn’t mean—”

“Say it again.”

He didn’t.

“You think this baby is a mistake?” she asked, voice shaking with fury. “You think I am stupid enough to call it that?”

“I meant the situation!”

“No. You meant the baby.”

He looked away.

Her chest rose and fell rapidly. “My mom was nineteen. Nineteen. Everyone told her I was a mistake too.”

“I’m not everyone!”

“You sound exactly like them!”

He snapped. “Your mom struggled her entire life, Lena! You told me she cried in the kitchen because she couldn’t afford groceries!”

“And she still chose me!”

“And she never finished school!” he shot back. “She never got out of that crappy apartment!”

“At least she didn’t kill her kid to make it easier!”

The word hung there. Kill.

Marcus recoiled. “That’s not what I’m saying, Lena! Quit putting words in my mouth!”

“That’s what it feels like.”

“You don’t get to twist it into murder because I’m scared!”

“You don’t get to dress it up as logic because you’re selfish!”

He stepped forward, eyes blazing. “Selfish? You think I’m selfish for not wanting to drag a kid through poverty?”

“I think you’re selfish because you’re scared you’ll end up stuck.”

His jaw tightened. “You don’t know what it’s like.”

“No?” she fired back. “To have a dad who bailed? To grow up watching your mom do everything alone? No, I definitely don’t know anything about that.”

He pointed at her, shaking. “Do not compare this to him.”

“How is it different?”

“I am still here!”

“For now!”

That statement landed with the subtlety of an atomic bomb.

“For now?” he repeated. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?!”

“You know what it means,” she said, tears streaming but voice vicious. “The second this got real, you were looking for a way out.”

“I’m trying to prevent a disaster!”

“You’re trying to erase responsibility!”

“I didn’t ask for this!”

He realized too late that he should’ve kept that to himself. The words were already out there, doing more damage than he could have imagined. Her face went white-hot.

“You didn’t ask for this?” she repeated slowly. “The fuck you mean you didn’t ask for this?!”

“You think I did this alone?” she demanded. “You think I got pregnant by myself?”

“That’s not what I—”

“You were there, Marcus. Every single time.”

He slammed his hand against the wall. “I know that!”

“Then stop acting like I trapped you!”

“I didn’t say that!”

“You don’t have to!” she screamed. “It’s all over your face!”

He stared at her, something ugly rising in him. “If you keep this baby—”

She froze.

“If I keep it?”

He swallowed, but he didn’t back down.

“If you keep this baby without thinking this through… don’t expect me to just pretend that I wasn’t against it.”

The room went silent.

“Are you threatening me, Marcus?” she asked quietly.

“I’m telling you I don’t know if I can do this. If we should do this.”

“There it is,” she said, voice hollow. “You’re leaving.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You just did.”

He ran his hands through his locs, pacing like a trapped animal. “I am not my father.”

“Then prove it. Because from where I’m standing, you sure as hell look like him.”

“I’m trying!”

“No,” she said, tears cutting down her face. “You’re doing exactly what he did. Panicking. Looking for escape routes. Making it about how unfair it is to you.”

“Because it is unfair!” he exploded. “Everything was finally starting to feel stable!”

Her eyes went cold.

“So that’s it,” she said. “I’m chaos.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“But it is.”

He felt something in his chest crack. “I am terrified I’m going to become him,” he admitted, voice raw. “That I’ll wake up one day and resent you. Or the kid. That I’ll look at our life and feel trapped.”

“And you think I’m not terrified?” she shot back. “You think I don’t know what it costs to do this, especially if I have to do it alone?”

The words echoed. Alone. They both heard it. He looked at her stomach. Then at her face.

“You’re really going to do this,” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

“Even if I’m not ready?”

“Yes.”

There was a long, awful pause.

“And if I can’t?” he asked.

Her voice broke, but she didn’t look away.

“Then you’ll just be another ain’t shit ass nigga who left.”

That did it. He grabbed his jacket off the chair.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“I need air.”

“Of course you do.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Don’t do what? Call it what it is?”

He stopped at the door, hand on the knob.

“I’m not him,” he said again, but it sounded weaker now.

She stood in the middle of the living room, one hand protectively over her stomach, the other shaking at her side.

“Then stop proving me right.”

He hesitated. For half a second, it looked like he might come back. Like he might choose to not follow his father’s footsteps and stay. Instead, he opened the door and stepped out into the night, letting it slam behind him.

The apartment felt enormous without him in it. Lena stood there, alone, breathing hard, the echo of the door still ringing in her ears. In the bathroom, the light still hummed. On the sink, three other tests lay in a neat row. Positive. Damning.And suddenly, so was the silence.

The Second Novel

Posted on February 12, 2026 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

His computer crashed and suddenly all of his work disappeared. The screen went black without ceremony: no warning spin, no flicker of mercy. Just darkness. And in that darkness, the hollow reflection of Daniel Mercer’s face stared back at him.

For a moment, he didn’t breathe. Six months of work. One hundred and twelve thousand words. Gone.

“No, no, no, no…” His fingers hovered over the keyboard as if refusing to accept the verdict. He jabbed the power button. Nothing. He unplugged the cord, plugged it back in. Still nothing. His pulse thudded in his ears, loud enough to drown out the rain battering the apartment windows. He had been so close.

After his debut novel, The Glass Orchard, exploded onto bestseller lists, Daniel had become the literary golden child. Interviews. Podcasts. A film option. Readers calling him “the next great voice of his generation.”

And then came the calls for the second book. The one that would really matter. The one that would prove he wasn’t a fluke.

For months, he had written and deleted. Drafted and abandoned. His publisher’s emails had grown increasingly strained in their politeness.

Just checking in!

We’re excited to see where this is going.

We’ll need a draft by the end of the quarter to stay on schedule.

Fans were less polite.

When’s the next book?

Don’t pull a one-hit wonder on us.

Hope you’re actually writing and not just enjoying the fame.

The words had crawled under his skin.

And then, three months ago, it happened. The idea. It struck him like lightning. A story about memory and identity. About a man who wakes each morning in a different version of his life. It was sharp, intimate, strange in exactly the right way. It felt dangerous. It felt honest. It felt like something worth writing. Daniel had barely slept since.

Tonight, he had written the final chapter. The final page. The final sentence. He had leaned back, staring at the blinking cursor beneath the words:

He finally understood that the life he was chasing had been his all along.

A fitting ending. A triumphant one. And then the screen went black.

Now he was on the floor beside his desk, screwdriver in hand, staring at the open belly of his laptop like a surgeon mid–failed operation.

“Come on,” he muttered. “Don’t do this.”

He wasn’t a hardware expert. He knew this. But desperation has a way of making the most amateur of us bold. He removed and reattached the battery. He searched his phone for emergency repair tutorials. He tried different outlets. Different chargers. He held the power button down for thirty seconds, sixty seconds, ninety. Nothing.

The silence in the apartment grew heavy. His thoughts spiraled. You should have printed it. You should have backed it up manually. You should have known better.

His deadline was in forty-eight hours. His editor had made that crystal clear.

No extensions this time, Daniel. Marketing’s already in motion.

He imagined the headlines if he failed.

Sophomore slump confirmed.

Mercer can’t repeat debut magic.

He sank back against the couch, the disassembled laptop resting uselessly on the coffee table. The rain kept falling, steady and indifferent. He felt foolish for having believed he’d outrun the pressure. For thinking inspiration alone could save him from the weight of expectation. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe the book wasn’t good enough. Maybe he wasn’t.

His phone buzzed. A notification from a fan account: a photo of someone’s dog curled up with a worn copy of The Glass Orchard. Captioned: Still my favorite book of all time.

The kindness of it hurt more than criticism. Daniel pressed his palms to his eyes. Think Daniel, think. Backups. You had to create backups in case this happened. He had meant to buy an external hard drive months ago. He never did. He had told himself he would. He had told interviews he was “meticulous about process.”

He laughed bitterly. Unless—

His hands froze mid–gesture. Cloud server.

When he bought the laptop, the technician had insisted on enabling automatic cloud backup.

“It syncs in the background,” she had said cheerfully. “You won’t even notice it.”

He hadn’t thought about it since.

Daniel scrambled to his feet so quickly he nearly knocked over the coffee table. He grabbed his phone, opened the cloud app with shaking fingers, and logged in.

Loading. Loading. The spinning circle felt like mockery. And then—

Folders. Documents. A list of file names with tiny timestamps beside them.

His heart pounded harder. He tapped the manuscript folder. There it was.

Second_Novel_Draft_v27.

Last synced: 11:42 PM.

He glanced at the microwave clock.

11:47 PM.

Five minutes ago.

A strangled sound escaped him—half laugh, half sob.

He opened the document preview. The text filled the screen. Chapter titles. Paragraphs. His words. All of it. He scrolled to the bottom. The final sentence.

He finally understood that the life he was chasing had been his all along.

Daniel slid down against the kitchen cabinet, phone clutched to his chest. Relief flooded him so violently it left him dizzy. It wasn’t gone. He wasn’t finished. Not yet.

The laptop would need repair. The formatting would need checking. There would still be edits. Rewrites. Doubt. But the story existed.

And maybe that was the lesson he’d been circling all along—the thing his first book had taught him before success made him forget: Stories aren’t fragile because of technology or deadlines. They’re fragile because of fear.

He had written this one not to outdo his first book, not to silence critics, not to satisfy algorithms—but because he finally found something he needed to say.

Daniel wiped his face and let out a long breath. Tomorrow, he would borrow a friend’s computer. He would download the manuscript. He would send it to his editor. Tonight, he simply sat there in the dim kitchen light, listening to the rain and feeling, for the first time in months, like a writer again.

The Soldier

Posted on January 31, 2026 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

I could hear the bullets split the wind as they whizzed past my ears, a vicious, insectile sound that made my neck curl into my shoulders like I could somehow disappear into my own spine. The world had narrowed to fragments: dust bursting from the wall in front of me, the metallic bite of cordite in the air, the radio crackling nonsense and panic all at once. My finger rested on the trigger, a familiar pressure point I’d trained into muscle memory, and yet it felt like it belonged to someone else.

“Contact left!” someone shouted. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was the voice in my head repeating what it had learned was necessary to survive.

I pressed my cheek harder into the stock of my rifle and peered down the sight. Shapes moved between ruined doorways across the street—figures, not faces. Targets, not people. That was the language they taught us. Clean words for messy things. I had used them before, plenty of times, without hesitation. Pull, recoil, adjust, breathe. Simple. But this time something snagged.

A memory, stupid and small, floated up uninvited. My mother’s hands, always smelling faintly of soap, cupping my face the day I left. “Remember who you are,” she’d said. Not be brave. Not come back a hero. Remember who you are.

Another burst of gunfire stitched the wall above my head, snapping me back into the moment. Chips of concrete rained down my collar. I tasted grit and fear. My heart hammered so hard it felt like it might bruise me from the inside. I leaned out just enough to fire. The rifle bucked. Once. Twice. The sound was deafening, final. I didn’t know if I hit anything. I didn’t want to know.

We advanced by inches, then feet. Shouting. Smoke. The street smelled like burning trash and hot metal. I caught a glimpse of one of them; close now, too close, ducking behind an overturned cart. He couldn’t have been much older than me. That thought landed heavy, as if age itself carried moral weight.

I lined him up in my sights. Center mass. That’s what they drilled into us. Efficiency over everything. My finger began to tighten. And then he looked at me. Not in a dramatic way. No slow-motion revelation. Just a glance, quick and startled, like a deer realizing too late it’s been seen. His eyes were dark, wide, terrified. Exactly like mine must have been.

My finger froze. A voice screamed inside my skull: Do it. Do it or you die. Do it or your friend dies. Do it because this is what you’re here for. Another voice, quieter, infuriatingly calm, asked, What happens after?

I thought of the men I’d already killed. Faces I pretended not to remember, yet somehow always did. I thought of the nights when sleep came in jagged pieces, when I woke choking on dreams I couldn’t explain to anyone back home. I thought of how every time I pulled the trigger, something in me flinched, just a little, like a wire being bent again and again.

Gunfire erupted to my right. One of ours went down, yelling, clutching his leg. The spell shattered. Training surged back, angry and urgent. I fired again, not aiming now, just reacting. The figure across the street vanished from view.

We pushed forward, because that’s what momentum demands. Because stopping meant thinking, and thinking felt dangerous.

Minutes or hours later, time had lost its meaning by then, we took the building. The shooting slowed, then stopped. The silence afterward was worse, thick and accusing. My ears rang. My hands shook as the adrenaline drained away, leaving something hollow behind.

Inside, I found him. He lay slumped against a wall, the overturned cart nowhere in sight. Blood darkened his shirt, blooming like an ugly flower. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. He looked younger up close. Younger than I’d thought. Younger than I was. I don’t know if it was my bullet. That uncertainty should have comforted me. It didn’t.

I crouched there longer than necessary, my rifle hanging uselessly from its sling. All I could think was that somewhere, someone had told him to remember who he was, too. Somewhere, a mother waited for a knock on the door.

The radio crackled again, orders spilling out, already moving on to the next objective. The war had no room for my pause, my doubt, my sudden, aching clarity.

As I stood and followed the others, my legs heavy, I understood something with terrible certainty: the real firefight wasn’t over. It wasn’t even close. It had lodged itself inside me, a battle between the soldier I’d been shaped into and the person I was still trying, desperately, not to lose. And no one had taught me how to win that one.

Tomb of the Forgotten King

Posted on January 10, 2026 by M. Bradley under General, Short Stories

Fear forced his heart to beat like a bass drum as he opened the door, each violent thud echoing in his chest as stone scraped against stone. The slab resisted at first, as though weighing his worth, then finally gave way with a low, anguished groan. A breath of air escaped the tomb: cold, ancient, and fouled with something that made his stomach turn. It was not merely dust. It was the smell of confinement, of time compressed into rot.

Elias Kade stood frozen, one hand braced against the door, the other gripping his lantern so tightly his knuckles had turned white and his palm began to ache. The flame flickered, its light stretching weakly into the darkness beyond. He had imagined this moment countless times while hunched over cracked manuscripts and brittle maps, tracing burial chambers with the tip of his finger. In those imaginings, he had felt awe. Reverence. Triumph. Not this.

The darkness inside the tomb was dense, almost tactile, pressing outward as if eager to spill into the world. Elias felt it brush against his face, cold as damp linen. His instincts screamed at him to step back, to seal the door and retreat to the safety of daylight and research libraries and colleagues and rational explanations. But he had not come this far to turn away.

“This is real,” he whispered, though the words sounded thin and uncertain in the narrow corridor. He stepped across the threshold.

The temperature dropped immediately. The warmth of the desert sun vanished as if severed by the stone door, replaced by a chill that seeped through his boots and crawled upward, settling deep in his bones. The lantern’s glow revealed walls carved floor to ceiling in hieroglyphs: prayers, offerings, processions meant to guide a king safely into the afterlife. The carvings were sharp, their edges unnaturally crisp, as though the artisans had finished their work only days ago instead of millennia. Elias swallowed hard. Impossible, he told himself. Dry climate. Exceptional preservation.

The shadows clung stubbornly to the recesses between the carvings, refusing to disperse even when he brought the lantern closer. For a fleeting moment, he thought one of the figures turned its head. He blinked rapidly, heart racing.

“Get a grip,” he muttered.

This was his first excavation. Until now, his career had been confined to climate-controlled rooms and academic conferences, his hands more accustomed to paper than stone. When the opportunity to join the excavation team arose, when they needed someone fluent in archaic inscriptions, someone who knew the burial customs of minor dynasties, he had accepted without hesitation. Unearthing the tomb of a long-forgotten king was the chance of a lifetime. He had not considered what it would feel like to be alone with the dead.

The corridor widened ever so gradually, and then opened into the burial chamber. Elias halted at the threshold, breath catching in his throat. The room was vast, its ceiling supported by thick pillars carved with protective prayers. They rose like petrified sentinels, each etched with symbols meant to ward off intruders. The air felt heavier here, pressing down on his chest, making each breath an effort.

At the center of the chamber lay the sarcophagus. It was massive, black stone veined with pale lines like cracks in bone. Its surface was smooth, unmarred by time or theft. No chisel marks. No fractures. No signs of intrusion. Untouched since it was placed in the room. Elias felt a thrill of fear cut through him. Untouched tombs were rare. Untouched tombs were dangerous. He approached slowly, lantern held high. The light glinted off the stone, revealing inscriptions running along the lid. He recognized the name immediately.

Khetamun. A minor king. Barely a footnote in most historical records. A ruler whose reign had been brief and poorly documented. Yet nothing about this tomb spoke of insignificance.

As Elias circled the sarcophagus, he noticed something odd. Certain honorifics had been scratched away, their elegant symbols replaced with crude, jagged markings. The workmanship was frantic, uneven, as if carved by a trembling hand.

“Defacement?” Elias murmured, crouching closer.

The markings were not random. They formed a pattern, one he did not recognize. A chill crawled up his spine. The lantern flickered.

Elias straightened sharply, heart leaping into his throat. The flame wavered, shrank, then steadied. He exhaled shakily, though his breath fogged in the cold air.

“Old oxygen pocket,” he reasoned aloud. “Air circulation.”

His voice echoed strangely, lingering longer than it should have. As he turned back toward the sarcophagus, he became aware of a sensation he could not immediately name. A pressure behind his eyes. A faint ringing in his ears. Then he heard it.

A sound: soft, indistinct. Like breath brushing past his ear. Elias spun around, lantern swinging wildly. The chamber remained empty, the shadows pooled at the edges of the room.

“Hello?” he called out meekly, hating the tremble in his voice. Silence answered him. Thick. Watchful. Almost ominous.

He laughed weakly. “You’re alone,” he told himself. “You knew this would be unsettling.” But the laughter died quickly.

Drawn by a force he could not explain, Elias returned to the sarcophagus. His fingers brushed the stone, recoiling from the unnatural cold. He found the mechanism almost by accident, disguised seamlessly within the carvings. His hands hesitated.

Every rational part of him urged caution: documentation, consultation, procedure. But another voice whispered beneath those thoughts, insistent and hungry. Open it.

He pushed. The lid shifted with a shriek of stone on stone, the sound reverberating through the chamber like a scream. Dust billowed upward, stinging his eyes and throat. Elias coughed, waving the lantern to clear his vision. When the dust settled, he leaned over the open sarcophagus. Inside lay the remains of Khetamun.

The body was wrapped in linen, blackened and fused to brittle bone. Gold amulets rested against the chest, their surfaces dulled and corroded as though something had eaten at them from within. The skull tilted slightly, jaw parted, frozen in an eternal attempt to speak.

But it was the wall behind the sarcophagus that stole Elias’s breath. Carved deep into the stone, crude and unmistakable, were words that did not belong to ritual or reverence.

I WAS NOT MEANT TO DIE

The lantern shook violently in Elias’s grip.

“No,” he whispered. “That’s… that’s impossible.”

The pressure behind his eyes intensified, blossoming into pain. Images flooded his mind: parched land cracking beneath a merciless sun, a king kneeling before silent gods, priests chanting words they barely understood. A ritual meant to bind a soul to the land, to save a dying kingdom. A ritual that failed.

The whisper returned, louder now, layered upon itself. “I am still here.”

The shadows along the walls began to move. They stretched and twisted, peeling themselves free from the carvings, forming long, clawed shapes that reached toward the sarcophagus and toward him. The temperature plummeted, frost creeping along the stone floor.

Elias staggered back, heart hammering wildly against the inside of his chest. “I’m sorry,” he gasped. “I didn’t know.”

The whispers swelled into a chorus, grief and rage intertwined. “You opened the door!”

Driven by pure terror and instinct, Elias slammed the sarcophagus lid shut. The stone sealed with a thunderous crack that shook the chamber. The shadows recoiled, snapping back into the walls like smoke caught in a sudden wind. Silence fell. Elias collapsed to his knees, sobbing, the lantern clutched against his chest. He did not know how long he stayed there, afraid to move, afraid to breathe.

When he finally fled the tomb, stumbling back into the brutal sunlight, he felt hollowed out, as though something had followed him to the threshold and pressed itself deep into his memory.

The discovery would make headlines. Scholars would praise his translation, his courage, his contribution to history. But Elias would never return to the field again. And sometimes, late at night, buried deep in the quiet stacks of a research library, he swore he could still feel cold breath against his ear; and hear a voice that has been waiting far too long for the door to open again.

First Hunt

Posted on November 29, 2025 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

He was finally entering manhood and now was the time. Storm Runner stood at the edge of the high ridge overlooking the valley, breath frosting in the crisp morning air. He had barely crossed thirteen summers, but today he would walk with the hunters. Today, he would be counted among the grown men of the Ani-watu—the River People—his tribe nestled deep in the rolling green hills of the early American frontier.

A thin mist clung to the forest below, blurring the shapes of trees so they appeared like spirits rising from the earth. Storm Runner tightened his grip on the bow he had carved himself, smoothing his thumb across the polished wood. His father’s voice echoed in his memory.

“Tools are only as strong as the heart guiding them.”

His father, Black Cedar, emerged beside him, tall and broad, carrying the quiet confidence of a seasoned warrior. “You breathe too fast,” he murmured.

Storm Runner exhaled and nodded, trying to steady himself.

“It is good to feel fear,” Black Cedar said. “It shows the heart is awake. But do not let it rule your hands.”

Storm Runner wanted to answer with something wise or strong, but all he managed was a tight smile. His father didn’t seem to mind.

The party gathered—ten men, all respected hunters. Strong Elk, who laughed even in the face of hardship; Two Rivers, whose tracking skills were unmatched; and old Gray Squirrel, the elder who had hunted more winters than any man alive. A few offered Storm Runner nods of encouragement; others simply watched to see how the boy would carry himself. Today was tradition. Today was responsibility. Today was everything.

They moved at dawn, slipping into the forest like shadows. Storm Runner walked near the rear, his senses alive. Every cracking twig, every whisper of wind through branches, felt magnified. The forest was waking with them: birds scratching in the underbrush, distant rustle of deer, the burbling creek ahead.

Gray Squirrel knelt by the water, dipping his fingers into the soft mud. “Deer passed here not long ago,” he whispered. “A buck. Heavy.”

The men nodded. They began to follow the trail, steps soft and deliberate. Storm Runner bent low to study the tracks. His grandfather, Ghost Wind, had drilled lessons into him on how to read the land. “A track is a story,” he had said. “If you listen, the earth will tell you what happened.”

Storm Runner traced the shape, noticing the deep impression of the hooves—yes, a large buck, moving steadily but not fleeing. The boy smiled faintly as pride warmed his chest. He was ready.

They stalked deeper into the woods, weaving between towering pines. After an hour, they spotted their prey grazing in a glade. The buck was magnificent—antlers branching like small trees, fur shimmering in the dappled light. Storm Runner’s breath caught. This was the moment. But just as Strong Elk began to signal positions, the forest shifted. The birds went quiet. The breeze stilled. The world tightened around them.

Storm Runner felt it before anyone else—the unease creeping in like a cold finger tracing his spine. He opened his mouth to warn the men. But before the words could come out, a gunshot cracked across the valley. The buck bolted. Men dove behind trees. Another shot followed, then a third, echoing through the forest. Shouts carried through the trees—harsh, commanding voices. Storm Runner froze for a heartbeat before Black Cedar grabbed him by the arm and pulled him behind a fallen log.

“Soldiers,” he hissed. “Union soldiers.”

Storm Runner’s heart hammered. Why were soldiers here? Their lands were far from towns or battlefields. The Ani-watu tried to stay hidden from the war tearing the country apart. But war often wandered where it didn’t belong.

Blue-coated figures emerged through the brush, rifles raised. Though only a dozen or so, they moved with grim purpose.

Two Rivers muttered, “They must have tracked us. Or the deer.”

No one believed that. The soldiers spread quickly, forming a loose semicircle. They were coming for the hunters. Storm Runner clutched his bow, hands trembling. Black Cedar crouched beside him, eyes fierce but calm.

“Remember what I taught you. The forest is your ally. Listen.”

Storm Runner nodded, though panic clawed at his chest. The men around him looked tense. Some were already wounded from the first shots. They were outnumbered, exposed. Another volley of gunfire blasted through the clearing. Bark splintered. A warrior cried out. Storm Runner squeezed his eyes shut for an instant.

“Listen, boy,” Ghost Wind’s voice whispered in memory. “When fear speaks too loudly, hear the world instead.”

He forced his breath to slow. Through the chaos, he listened. The creek. The slope of the ridge. The cluster of pine needles masking soft, unstable ground. The deer path looping behind the soldiers. The world was speaking.

Storm Runner tugged at his father’s arm. “The ridge,” he whispered. “It’s soft. We can trap them there.”

Black Cedar met his gaze. He didn’t question the boy. Not today.

“Go,” he said. “Tell the others.”

The boy slid through the brush like a fox, keeping low, weaving between trees. Shots cracked overhead but missed, the soldiers distracted by the warriors’ evasive movements. Storm Runner reached Strong Elk first.

“We must draw them toward the ridge,” he whispered urgently. “The ground there will collapse under many feet.”

Strong Elk blinked. Then a grin spread across his bearded face. “Ahh. Ghost Wind’s trick.” He slapped the boy’s shoulder. “Go, tell the others!”

Storm Runner raced from man to man, relaying the plan. Soon the warriors shifted subtly into new positions, moving with practiced silence. A sharp whistle—Storm Runner’s signal—cut through the trees. Arrows flew. Warriors darted between trees like living shadows. The soldiers, believing they were pushing the hunters back, surged forward with renewed aggression. Right toward the ridge.

Storm Runner scrambled up the side of the slope. He remembered he and his grandfather testing the hillside last spring, Ghost Wind saying, “One day you will use even the land as your shield.”

He struck the ground with his bow, hard and rhythmic. The soil loosened. Pebbles tumbled.

Below, the soldiers advanced in a line—too many men on too unstable a slope. The earth groaned. Then it gave way. A roar of sliding earth filled the forest as the ridge collapsed, sweeping half the platoon down in a cascade of mud, stone, and broken tree limbs. Men screamed, some trapped, others scrambling desperately. The remaining soldiers staggered back in shock. That was the moment.

The Ani-watu warriors emerged from the trees with fierce cries, arrows and spears flashing. Strong Elk led the charge, his battle roar echoing across the valley. Black Cedar’s blade struck like lightning. Even old Gray Squirrel moved with age-forgotten speed.

Storm Runner, still on the ridge above, fired arrows to cover them—each shot guided by instinct, training, and the beating heart of the forest around him. The soldiers faltered, morale broken. Some fled outright, disappearing into the trees. The battle was over within minutes.

Silence fell slowly, hesitant to return. Storm Runner climbed down, limbs trembling. The men gathered, some wounded, all exhausted—but alive.

Strong Elk clapped the boy on the back hard enough to jolt him. “You saved us all, little warrior.”

Two Rivers nodded. “A plan worthy of Ghost Wind himself.”

Black Cedar approached last. No words at first. Just a warm, steady hand on his son’s shoulder.

“You listened,” he said quietly. “You trusted the land. You trusted yourself. Today, the spirits walk proudly beside you.”

Storm Runner swallowed hard as emotion swelled in his chest. A hush settled as Gray Squirrel stepped forward, leaning heavily on his staff. He studied Storm Runner for a long moment.

“Storm Runner,” he said in a voice like rustling leaves, “you entered the forest today as a boy. But you return from it as something else.”

Storm Runner lifted his chin, meeting the elder’s wise, weathered gaze.

“You have earned your place among the men of the Ani-watu,” Gray Squirrel declared. “From this day on, you stand as a warrior of the River People.”

A murmur of approval rippled through the group. Black Cedar’s eyes shone with fierce pride. Storm Runner felt his heart grow fuller than he thought possible.

He walked home with them beneath the fading afternoon light. The land was quiet again, but it felt changed—more alive, as if acknowledging him. He had entered the hunt a child. He returned a warrior. And the forest knew his name.

Celeste the Fearless

Posted on October 26, 2025 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

The crowd let out a collective sigh. They had never seen such a daring feat.

High above the sawdust ring, the trapeze platforms swayed gently beneath the canvas dome. The tent lights shimmered off gold sequins, painting the air with glittering dust. Celeste stood on her perch, her toes curling over the edge, her heartbeat matching the steady rhythm of the drums below.

Across the void, Marco waited. His hands, chalked white, hung at his sides, fingers flexing in anticipation. They didn’t need words—hadn’t for years. Every glance, every subtle tilt of the head was its own language.

The drumroll built. Celeste inhaled. And then—flight. She leapt into the void, a comet streaking through the spotlight. The crowd gasped as she spun—one, two, three flawless rotations. Her body cut the air cleanly, every line poetry. Marco reached out, hands outstretched—and the rope snapped.

The sound was soft but sharp, like a sigh of betrayal. The bar twisted, momentum spiraling into chaos. For a moment, Celeste’s world turned upside down—sky, faces, light, sky again.

Marco lunged, fingertips grazing air. But Celeste’s instincts, honed from a lifetime of falling and catching herself, took over. She spun midair, eyes finding the second trapeze swinging below. It was there for safety, though no one had ever needed it. Until now.

Her body bent like a bow, and—whump!—she caught the bar, her wrists screaming in protest. The tent fell silent for a heartbeat. Then erupted.

Cheers rose like thunder. Marco clung to his own trapeze, head bowed in relief, while Celeste hung laughing, half in disbelief, half in triumph. When she dropped lightly into the net, roses showered from every direction, and the ringmaster’s booming voice filled the air:

“Ladies and gentlemen—Celeste the Fearless!”

Later, backstage, the cheers still echoed faintly through the canvas walls. The smell of sawdust and greasepaint lingered, mixed with the metallic tang of sweat and adrenaline. Celeste sat on a battered trunk, still in costume, sequins dulled by chalk and dust.

Marco burst in, still pale. “You scared the life out of me,” he said hoarsely.

She smiled faintly, tracing the red rope burns across her palms. “That’s the thing about flying,” she murmured. “You don’t really know what it means until you almost fall.”

He sank onto the trunk beside her. For a moment, neither spoke. The silence between them was thick with unspoken things — years of partnership, of missed chances, of something that hovered between friendship and something deeper.

“Do you remember the first time you caught me?” she asked softly.

He smiled at the memory. “You kicked me in the ribs.”

“I was terrified.”

“You still are,” he said gently. “You just hide it better.”

Celeste looked at him then, her eyes bright but distant. “When I’m up there,” she said, “everything makes sense. The noise, the lights, the danger. It’s like I finally become who I’m supposed to be. Not Celeste the orphan, not Celeste the performer — just… Celeste, the one who flies.”

Marco hesitated, then took her hand. “You don’t have to keep proving you can fly.”

She smiled sadly. “Don’t I?”

That night, long after the audience had gone and the tent lights dimmed, Celeste returned to the rig. The air was cool and still, the ropes creaking faintly in the dark. She climbed the ladder, higher and higher, until the world below disappeared.

From up there, she could see everything—the empty seats, the scattered petals, the ghost of applause that still lingered in her ears.

She took one breath, and leapt.

There was no drumroll this time, no spotlight. Only the sound of wind rushing past and the steady beat of her own heart—wild, alive, unbroken.

The Stranger

Posted on October 20, 2025 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

It was close to noon and the sun was high in the sky. Suddenly, I felt the dry wind shift—an omen, maybe, or just another gust from the endless desert. Either way, I slowed my horse and looked down at the town that shimmered in the distance like a mirage. A crooked sign creaked in the heat: Redwater Gulch.

The place looked half-alive, half-dead. A few wagons rattled down the main street, their wheels kicking up more dust than sense. Folks moved quick, heads down, like they were afraid the sunlight itself might take notice. I’d seen towns like that before—broken by fear, hollowed out by men who took what they wanted and left the rest to rot.

I wasn’t looking for trouble. I was just passing through, trying to make it to San Francisco before winter. I’d promised myself I was done getting involved in other people’s fights. Trouble, though—it has a way of finding a man, especially one who’s trying to leave it behind.

At the saloon, I tied up my horse and pushed through the batwing doors. The air inside was thick with stale whiskey and something else—tension. Every conversation died the moment I stepped in. Eyes flicked toward me, sizing me up, deciding if I was worth noticing. Then they went back to their drinks. That suited me fine.

“Whiskey,” I said, sliding a coin across the bar. The barkeep, a thin man with a mustache that drooped like wilted grass, poured me a glass without a word.

After a moment, I asked, “Town always this quiet?”

He hesitated. “Depends who’s askin’.”

“Just a traveler.”

“Then best you keep trav’lin’.” His eyes darted toward the door.

That’s when the sound came—a roar of hooves, followed by laughter. Harsh, cruel laughter. I turned to see five men ride up, dust clouds billowing behind them. Their leader, a tall man in a black coat with silver spurs, didn’t bother tying his horse. He just dismounted and strode inside like he owned the place.

“Afternoon, folks,” he drawled. “We’re collectin’ today. Sheriff says taxes are due.”

The barkeep paled. “But—Sheriff Harlan said next week—”

The man backhanded him across the face, sending him sprawling. “Sheriff Harlan don’t say nothin’ no more unless I tell him to.”

Nobody moved. Nobody breathed. Just the sound of my own heartbeat and the faint rattle of spurs as the gang laughed again. I clenched my jaw. This wasn’t my fight. I wasn’t here to play hero.

But as I watched that barkeep crawl to his knees, blood dripping from his mouth, I caught sight of a little girl peeking through the saloon’s back door—her face streaked with dirt and fear. And something in me shifted.

I’d told myself I was done fighting. But some things, a man can’t ride away from. I tossed back the last of my whiskey, set the glass down, and turned toward the man in the black coat.

“Seems to me,” I said quietly, “you boys forgot to say please.”

The saloon went silent again, only this time it was a different kind of quiet—sharp, expectant. The kind that comes before a storm breaks.

The man in the black coat turned his head slowly, eyes narrowing. “You say somethin’, stranger?”

I met his gaze. “You heard me.”

He smiled—thin and humorless. “You must be new. See, folks around here know better than to talk to me that way.” He brushed his coat aside, revealing the butt of a revolver polished from use. “Name’s Clay Harker. This here’s my town.”

I didn’t answer. My hand rested easy on the bar, nowhere near my gun. That made him frown. Bullies like him, they feed off fear—they don’t know what to do when a man doesn’t flinch.

He took a step closer. “You think you’re faster than me, mister?”

“No,” I said. “Just better.”

The room held its breath. Then everything happened at once—his hand darted for his gun, the barkeep shouted, a glass shattered somewhere behind me. But I’d already drawn. My Colt barked once, the sound deafening in the small room.

Clay Harker staggered back, a look of shock twisting his face. His gun clattered to the floor. The bullet had taken him clean through the shoulder—enough to end the fight, but not his life. I holstered my revolver before his men even realized what had happened.

“Pick him up,” I said evenly. “And get out of town.”

One of the gang—barely more than a boy—moved like he wanted to go for his weapon. I looked at him, and whatever he saw in my eyes changed his mind. They gathered up Harker, cursing under their breath, and rode out in a spray of dust and fear.

When the sound of hooves faded, the room stayed quiet. Then someone whispered, “Who is he?”

I didn’t answer. I just turned to the barkeep, who was pressing a rag to his split lip. “You got a doctor in town?”

He nodded, still staring.

“Send him after Harker,” I said. “I didn’t shoot to kill.”

Then I pushed through the saloon doors and stepped into the blazing sunlight.

That night, I lay in the boarding house, listening to the distant creak of wind against the shutters. I should’ve left right then, while I still could. But something about this place—it wouldn’t let me go. The way folks moved in silence. The way the sheriff avoided my eyes when I passed him on the street. This wasn’t over. Harker would be back, and he’d bring hell with him. I’d told myself I didn’t care. But lying there in the dark, I knew better. Some debts aren’t paid in gold or whiskey. Some are paid in blood—and I had a feeling Redwater Gulch had plenty left to spill.

Morning came slow and gray, a thin mist hanging over Redwater Gulch like the ghost of a storm that never came. The town woke wary, every door creaking open as though afraid to make too much noise.

I stepped out of the boarding house, boots crunching on the frost-tipped dirt. The night’s cool had settled the dust, but it wouldn’t last long under the desert sun. A few townsfolk watched me from behind their curtains. One woman, old enough to remember better days, gave me the faintest nod.

The saloon looked different in daylight—less menace, more ruin. I pushed inside and found the barkeep sweeping up glass. He looked up, startled.

“You still here?” he asked.

“Just passing through,” I said, though even I didn’t sound convinced. “Figured I’d see how bad things got after last night.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “You mean after you shot Clay Harker in front o’ half the town? Folks don’t forget a thing like that. They’ll be talkin’ about it till the day he rides back—because he will ride back.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

He stopped sweeping and leaned on the broom. “You don’t understand. Harker’s got near twenty men. They run the mines, the freight wagons, even the sheriff. No law here but theirs.”

I didn’t reply. I’d seen towns like this before—where the law wore a badge but answered to fear.

“Sheriff around?” I asked.

The barkeep nodded toward the jailhouse across the street. “If you can call him that.”

The sheriff’s office was dim, smelling of stale tobacco and dust. Sheriff Harlan sat behind his desk, hat tipped low, hands folded like he’d been praying too long. He looked up as I entered, his face lined deep from years of doing nothing but surviving.

“Heard you stirred up trouble,” he said.

“Just evened the odds.”

“Odds can’t be evened here. You should move on, mister. Before Harker comes back meaner than before.”

I studied him for a long moment. “You scared?”

He let out a tired breath. “You don’t live long in this town unless you are.”

I leaned against the wall. “There’s a difference between livin’ scared and dyin’ ashamed.”

He didn’t answer, but his jaw twitched. That told me plenty.

When I stepped back outside, the sun had burned through the mist. Townsfolk were beginning to stir—timid, uncertain. I saw the little girl from the saloon standing near the general store, clutching her mother’s hand. She gave me a shy wave. That small, simple thing hit harder than I cared to admit. Because in her eyes, I wasn’t just a stranger anymore. I was the first sign of hope they’d had in years. And I knew right then: whatever road I’d meant to travel, it ended here.

That evening, as the town settled into its uneasy quiet, I sat on the edge of the boarding house porch cleaning my revolver. The sun was setting, bleeding gold and red across the sky like a wound.

The barkeep came up behind me. “If you’re plannin’ to stay,” he said quietly, “folks’ll stand with you. Maybe not all of ’em, but enough.”

I nodded, not looking up. “I ain’t lookin’ to start a war.”

He hesitated. “You already did.”

I glanced toward the horizon, where a thin line of dust rose against the dying light—riders, maybe a dozen or more, coming hard and fast.

“Then I reckon it’s time to finish it,” I said, slipping the revolver back into its holster.

By sundown, the horizon had swallowed that dust trail whole, but the feeling it left behind clung to Redwater like smoke after a fire. Word spread fast — Clay Harker’s riders had been spotted out near the mesa, twenty strong, maybe more.

The townsfolk gathered in the saloon, whispering like people at a funeral. Sheriff Harlan stood near the back, hat in hand, eyes down. When I stepped through the doors, the murmurs died.

“Looks like they’re comin’,” I said.

The barkeep nodded. “Be here by mornin’, most likely. We can run, maybe hide up in the hills—”

“No.” My voice came out sharper than I meant. “You run, they’ll hunt you down one by one. You hide, they’ll burn the town to the ground. Either way, you lose.”

A silence fell. Every face turned toward me, hollowed by fear but searching for something—anything—to hold onto.

The sheriff spoke finally. “You talk like you’ve fought men like Harker before.”

“I have,” I said. “And I’ve buried enough of them to know there’s only one way this ends.”

That night, we gathered what we could—rifles from old trunks, shotguns from wagons, even a few pitchforks from the stables. Half the guns wouldn’t fire straight, and the other half hadn’t been cleaned since the last war. Still, the people worked with quiet purpose. Fear can freeze a town, but it can also light a fire when the right spark comes along.

I found the little girl again, sitting on a barrel outside the general store. Her name was Emma. She asked if I was going to make the bad men go away.

“I’ll do what I can,” I told her.

“My pa used to say that,” she said. “Before they took the mine.”

I didn’t ask what happened to him. I didn’t need to.

Later, I found the sheriff sitting alone on the jailhouse steps, polishing his old Winchester. He looked up when I approached.

“You really think we can win?” he asked.

I sat beside him. “I think men like Harker only win because folks let them. You stand your ground, you got a chance. You don’t, you’re already beat.”

He gave a tired laugh. “You sound like you been sheriff before.”

“Once,” I said.

That caught him off guard. “What happened?”

I stared out at the street, where the wind chased dust down the empty road. “Same story, different town. Tried to keep the peace. Lost too many good people doin’ it. Figured maybe I’d earned my rest.”

He nodded slowly. “Guess rest’ll have to wait.”

By midnight, the town was ready—or as ready as it could be. The old church bell was rigged as a warning signal, rifles were posted at windows, and the main street was lined with sandbags and overturned wagons. I walked the line one last time, checking sights, offering what words I could. The people looked different now. Still scared, but standing taller.

When I reached the edge of town, I could see the faint orange glow of campfires out in the desert. Harker’s men. Waiting for dawn. I rested my hand on my revolver, feeling the weight of it—and everything that came with it. Tomorrow, the sun would rise on Redwater Gulch. Whether it rose on free people or ashes, that was yet to be decided.

Dawn came cold and slow. The desert sky bruised purple and red, the kind of light that makes the land look half-dead, half-born again. I was already up, standing in the middle of the main street, the dust pale beneath my boots. The air was so still you could hear the creak of every board and the beat of every heart hiding behind those windows.

Then the silence broke—the distant thunder of hooves rolling in like a storm. Clay Harker rode at the front, one arm bound in a sling, rage twisting his face. His men followed in a jagged line, rifles slung, eyes mean and hungry. They slowed as they reached the edge of town, the horses snorting clouds into the morning chill.

“Redwater Gulch!” Harker’s voice carried like thunder. “You had your fun. Now you’ll pay double for it.”

No one answered.

He laughed, sharp and cruel. “Where’s that hero of yours? The man with the fancy draw?”

I stepped out from the haze, hat low, coat flapping in the breeze. “Right here.”

Harker’s grin faltered. “You should’ve kept ridin’, stranger.”

“Thought about it,” I said. “Then I saw what kind of man runs this town. Decided it needed a change.”

He spat into the dust. “You ain’t changin’ nothin’ but the undertaker’s workload.”

He raised his hand—the signal.

The first shots cracked the morning open. Gunfire tore through the air, echoing off the buildings. Windows shattered, horses screamed, men shouted. The townsfolk fired back from the saloon balcony and the store rooftops. Smoke rose fast, curling into the brightening sky. Harker’s riders tried to push through, but the barricades held. One went down in the street; another tumbled from his horse, rifle spinning from his grasp.

I moved through the chaos like I’d done it a hundred times before—which, truth be told, I had. My revolver roared twice, three times. Two of Harker’s men fell. The third turned tail, vanishing into the haze.

Beside me, Sheriff Harlan fired from behind a wagon, his jaw set firm. For the first time, I saw something in his eyes that wasn’t fear—it was resolve.

“Keep their heads down!” I shouted.

He nodded, reloading fast.

A bullet tore through my sleeve, grazing my arm. I dropped behind cover, gritting my teeth. Harker’s men were closing in now, moving between buildings, trying to flank us. I could hear their boots, their curses, their panic.

Then—a sound I didn’t expect—the church bell. It rang once, twice… then again, steady and strong. The whole town seemed to rise with it. Men and women I hadn’t even seen the night before stepped out with rifles, shovels, even kitchen knives. They took to the street like they’d been waiting years for this moment. The tide turned.

Harker saw it too. His face twisted with fury. He spurred his horse forward, straight toward me.

“You think you can take what’s mine?” he shouted, drawing his gun.

I stood in the street, revolver at my side. “You never owned it to begin with.”

He fired first. I fired last. His shot went wide. Mine didn’t. Harker tumbled from his saddle, hitting the dust hard. For a moment, everything stopped. Smoke drifted through the rising light, curling around him as he tried to lift his gun again.

I walked forward, boots crunching.

“Go on,” he rasped. “Finish it.”

I looked down at him—a man who’d built his power on fear and broken backs—and shook my head.

“No. You’ll stand trial. The town deserves that.”

I turned to the sheriff. “Harlan—you still got a badge. Time to use it.”

The sheriff stepped forward, voice steady for the first time. “Clay Harker, you’re under arrest.”

By noon, the smoke had cleared. The dead were buried, the wounded tended to. The townsfolk stood together in the street, blinking like they were seeing daylight for the first time.

Emma ran up, tugging my coat. “Are you stayin’?”

I smiled faintly. “No, little one. My road keeps goin’ west.”

“But who’ll keep us safe?”

I looked to Sheriff Harlan, who stood tall now, hat back on his head, his rifle slung with pride. “You’ve already got someone.”

Then I mounted my horse, tipped my hat, and started down the dusty road. The town faded behind me, but the sound of that church bell followed—clear and strong, not as a warning this time, but as a promise.

The Chase

Posted on September 7, 2025 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

The young man jumped the turnstiles and bolted for the subway. He dived into the train just as the doors closed behind him. His chest heaved, every breath burning like fire in his lungs. The car rattled forward, fluorescent lights flickering overhead, but his reflection in the grimy windows was what caught his eye. Pale. Wide-eyed. Sweat rolling down his temple.

He scanned the passengers: a woman cradling a grocery bag, a teenager bobbing his head to music, a man in a business suit dozing with his briefcase balanced on his lap. None of them looked like killers. None of them looked like the person who had been chasing him for three blocks. But he knew better than to trust appearances.

The message on his phone replayed in his mind, each word seared into memory: You’ve seen too much. Run while you still can. The problem was—he had no idea what he had seen.

He shifted to the end of the car, his back pressed against the cool metal door. His ears strained for footsteps, a scrape of leather on tile, a whisper of breath out of place. The assassin—whoever they were—wasn’t far behind. He could feel it.

The train roared through the tunnel, lights streaking across the glass like fire. For a moment, he dared to believe he’d shaken his pursuer. Then he saw it.

Across the aisle, in the distorted reflection of the subway window, a shadow moved differently than the rest—slower, deliberate, a figure standing perfectly still while the others swayed with the train’s rhythm.

His heart stuttered. They had made it onto the train.

The young man’s grip tightened on the overhead rail, knuckles whitening. He didn’t dare turn his head fully—any sudden move might give him away—but the reflection confirmed what his instincts already screamed: someone was watching.

The subway car jolted around a bend, throwing passengers against one another. A bag of oranges spilled across the floor, rolling under seats. The commotion bought him a heartbeat, but in that blur of chaos, he glimpsed a face.

Sharp eyes. Unblinking. Fixed on him.

His stomach lurched.

The stranger didn’t push forward, didn’t rush him. They only adjusted their stance, steady against the sway of the train, like a predator conserving energy before the strike.

The young man forced himself to breathe through his nose, shallow, trying not to look like prey. The doors at the end of the car loomed behind him, marked Do Not Enter. He could cut through them if he was desperate enough—he was already desperate enough. But what waited in the next car? More passengers? Or another shadow?

A bead of sweat slipped down his spine. He glanced at the emergency stop lever. Yanking it would trap them both underground, draw attention… but attention might be the only thing keeping him alive.

The train roared louder, the lights flickering, plunging the car into momentary darkness. When they snapped back on, the shadow had moved—closer.

Too close.

The lights steadied, humming overhead. The young man’s pulse hammered in his ears, louder than the train itself. He couldn’t stay still. Not with that shadow closing in.

He shoved off from the door and staggered down the aisle, weaving through startled passengers. A man cursed as his newspaper was knocked from his hands. Someone else shouted, but the young man didn’t look back. He didn’t have to—the rhythm of footsteps, too calm, too measured, stalked behind him.

The train screeched into the next station. The moment the doors hissed open, he lunged through, spilling onto the platform. He sprinted past the yellow line, dodging commuters, then—without warning—dove back into a different car just as the doors chimed. They closed behind him with a metallic snap.

He staggered upright, chest heaving. Different faces now: a pair of kids in hoodies laughing over a phone, an old woman knitting, a construction worker slumped asleep. For a breath, he almost believed he’d done it—he’d shaken the shadow.

Then, in the narrow window of the connecting door, he saw movement. The assassin hadn’t hesitated. They’d slipped into the car behind him. The young man’s stomach clenched. The game was still on.

The young man’s lungs burned as he gripped the metal handle of the connecting door. He couldn’t keep playing cat-and-mouse through train cars. Sooner or later, the predator would close the gap.

The subway lurched, brakes squealing as it barreled toward the next station. He had only seconds.

He yanked the emergency release. The handle fought him, stiff with rust, but then it gave with a groan. Cold, foul air surged in as the door cracked open to the tunnel beyond—a black maw lined with cables and dripping pipes.

Passengers shouted behind him. Someone grabbed his sleeve, yelling, “Hey, are you crazy?” He tore free, heart pounding, and hurled himself into the dark.

The train’s roar swallowed him. Heat and grit blasted his face as it screamed past, shaking the tunnel walls. For a moment he was blind, deaf, crushed beneath the weight of sound and darkness. Then—silence. The train was gone.

He crouched low, palms pressed to the damp concrete, fighting for breath. The tunnel stretched endlessly in both directions, lit only by sickly bulbs that flickered like dying stars. Every shadow seemed to twitch.

A new sound rose, steady, unhurried. Footsteps. They had followed him.

He scrambled to his feet and bolted into the black, ducking beneath pipes, skirting pools of oily water. Rats scattered ahead of him, their squeals echoing in the void. The tunnel curved sharply, splitting in two directions. No signs. No map. Just choices.

Behind him, the footsteps grew louder.

He skidded to a halt at the split, chest heaving, sweat stinging his eyes. Left? Right? The bulbs flickered weakly, one side glowing pale, the other swallowed in near-total dark.

The footsteps were closer now, echoing like a heartbeat through the tunnel.

No time.

He plunged into the dark.

The ground sloped sharply downward, slick with grime. His sneakers slipped, sending him tumbling to his hands and knees. He caught himself on the rough concrete, skin tearing across his palms, but he didn’t dare stop. His breath came ragged, too loud in the suffocating silence.

Somewhere above, the lighter tunnel still hummed faintly with power—the assassin’s footsteps following, steady as ever.

But here in the black? He could see nothing. Only feel. The walls pressed closer, the ceiling lower. Pipes ran overhead, dripping water onto his neck like icy fingers.

He stumbled forward blindly, hands brushing the wall, until his foot met empty air. He froze—then fell.

He landed hard on his side in shallow water, the stink of mildew filling his nose. Pain shot through his ribs, but he shoved himself up, coughing. The tunnel here was wider, lined with rusted maintenance doors. A current tugged at his shoes—an underground drainage channel.

For one breath, he thought he’d lost them. Then he heard it. A clang above. The hiss of metal. The assassin was coming down, too.

The splash of water echoed through the drainage tunnel. The young man froze, chest heaving, ears straining. Every drop from the pipes, every ripple on the surface, sounded like a gunshot.

He crouched low, pressing himself against the cold wall. His soaked clothes clung to his skin, making every shiver feel like a beacon.

Another sound followed—the scrape of boots sliding down metal, then the dull thud of a landing. The assassin was in the tunnel.

The footsteps resumed. Slow. Measured. Patient.

The young man’s throat tightened. Whoever they were, they weren’t rushing. They didn’t have to. The assassin knew the tunnel was a trap, that there was only so far he could run before the dark swallowed him whole.

He spotted one of the rusted maintenance doors just ahead, half off its hinges. With trembling fingers, he eased it open just wide enough to slip inside. The hinges groaned softly. Too loud. He froze, pulse thundering in his ears.

The footsteps stopped. Silence.

He held his breath, every muscle locked, waiting for the next sound. Seconds stretched into eternity. Then came it came:

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Something metallic brushed the wall, moving slowly along the tunnel, as if the assassin was dragging a weapon across the stone. A cruel signal: I know you’re here.

The young man squeezed deeper into the cramped space, pressing his back against rusted pipes. His breath fogged in the dark. He couldn’t run now. Not without giving himself away. He had to think. Outsmart. Endure.

But the taps were drawing closer.

The young man’s fingers brushed along the damp floor until they closed around a chunk of broken concrete. Small. Heavy enough to echo. His hands trembled so badly he nearly dropped it.

The metallic tapping was just outside now, each scrape followed by a pause, as though the assassin was listening for his heartbeat.

He swallowed hard, counted silently—one, two, three—then snapped his arm out and hurled the rock into the darkness down the tunnel.

The clatter was deafening. It bounced against concrete, splashed into water, ricocheted again before fading.

For an agonizing second, nothing. Then the footsteps shifted—quick, purposeful—heading toward the sound.

The young man pressed both hands over his mouth to muffle his gasps. He waited, forcing himself not to bolt, not to make a sound, until the echoes faded down the tunnel.

Only then did he slip from his hiding place, moving silently as he could in the opposite direction. Every step was careful, deliberate, his sneakers barely breaking the water’s surface.

He rounded a bend—and stopped dead.

Ahead, the tunnel narrowed into a choke point. A rusted iron grate blocked the way, bars welded into the stone. Too tight to squeeze through. Too solid to break.

And behind him, faint but growing again, came the echo of returning footsteps. The assassin had realized the trick.

The young man’s pulse slammed in his ears as he pressed against the grate. It didn’t budge. No escape that way. His eyes darted around, scanning the tunnel. Pipes ran overhead, thick with condensation. One of them dripped steadily, the water sizzling faintly when it hit the ground. Steam hissed through the cracks—hot water, maybe even steam under pressure.

An idea sparked.

He scrambled up the wall, fingers slipping against slime until he caught hold of the lowest pipe. The metal burned his skin, but he held on, bracing himself. He twisted the old valve with both hands. It resisted, corroded with rust, but gave with a shriek that echoed like a scream.

The footsteps behind him paused.

He twisted harder. With a crack, the valve snapped half-open—and scalding steam gushed out, filling the tunnel with a blinding white cloud. The hiss drowned out the assassin’s steps, filled every inch of the suffocating dark.

He dropped down, crouched low beneath the billowing cloud, heart hammering.

A silhouette emerged in the mist. Tall. Slow. The assassin’s outline blurred, weapon raised, hunting by sound.

The young man scooped another piece of rubble and hurled it to the far side of the tunnel. The clang echoed, and the shadow turned instantly, advancing toward the noise.

Through the fog, he slipped behind them, inching past the predator with each shallow, silent breath. The heat blistered his skin, the steam choked his lungs, but he forced himself to move. One mistake, one splash too loud, and it was over.

He reached the other side of the cloud, lungs searing, and ducked into the blind darkness beyond. For now, he had gained a few precious steps. But the assassin hadn’t given up. The chase was far from over.

The steam thinned as he staggered deeper into the tunnel, coughing into his sleeve. His skin stung, raw from the scalding mist, but he forced himself forward, blind in the dark.

Every nerve screamed at him to keep running. Yet he knew running was only half a step from tripping—and tripping was death.

So he slowed. Listened.

The hiss of steam still lingered behind him, but beneath it, faint and steady, came the scrape of boots. The assassin hadn’t lost him. They were following with the patience of someone who never needed to rush.

The young man’s eyes adjusted enough to make out shapes: pipes, slick walls, the shallow ribbon of water snaking along the floor. His hand brushed against another maintenance door—this one jammed shut. No use.

The tunnel sloped downward again, narrowing, until the ceiling forced him to duck. The walls seemed to close in, damp stone pressing tight. The air grew heavy, thick with mildew and rot.

The footsteps followed. Unbroken. Unhurried.

His chest tightened. It was just him and the shadow now, swallowed by the underground, locked in a world where no one else would ever know if he vanished.

The assassin’s presence pressed closer, not just a sound but a weight he could feel—like gravity itself bending toward him.

He clenched his fists, scanning the tunnel for anything, anything that could tilt the game again. But here, in this cramped artery of the city, there was no room to run, no place to hide.

Just predator and prey, separated by the thickness of his own ragged breath.

The tunnel seemed to shrink with every step. The ceiling pressed lower, forcing him into a crouch, then almost a crawl. The walls glistened with slime, brushing his shoulders as if the earth itself wanted to close in and trap him.

His breath came shallow, ragged. Each inhale tasted of rust and mold, thick enough to choke him.

The footsteps behind him never quickened, never faltered. The assassin was in no hurry. They knew panic would do their work for them.

The young man pressed a trembling hand against the stone, grounding himself, fighting the rising tide inside his chest. Don’t lose it. Don’t give them what they want. But the darkness crawled with phantom movement. Every drop of water plinking into the channel sounded like a footstep just ahead.

He turned a corner—and found the tunnel narrowing into a culvert barely wide enough for one person to squeeze through. Beyond it, he saw only deeper dark. No guarantee of safety. No guarantee of anything.

He hesitated. Behind him, the scrape of boots stopped. Silence swelled, vast and suffocating. He could feel the assassin’s presence, just out of sight. Waiting. Listening.

The young man’s throat burned. His muscles screamed to bolt, to crawl into that black culvert and vanish—but he knew the sound of his scrambling would give him away instantly.

So he froze. One hand braced against the wall. The other pressed to his mouth, smothering his own breath. Heartbeat pounding so hard it felt like it might echo off the stone.

And for a long, unbearable moment, nothing moved. The tunnel wasn’t a tunnel anymore. It was a tomb.

The quiet pressed so heavy it hurt his ears. His lungs screamed for air, but he kept his hand clamped over his mouth, fighting the tremor in his chest.

Then—CLANG.

The sound exploded behind him. Metal on stone, sharp and violent, like a blade smashed against the wall. It ripped through the silence, ricocheting down the tunnel in jagged echoes.

The young man flinched so hard he nearly cried out. His hand slipped from the wall, splashing into the shallow water at his feet. The ripples sounded deafening, carrying down the tunnel.

The assassin knew exactly where he was now.

Panic detonated in his chest. He scrambled into the narrow culvert, scraping his shoulders raw on stone, forcing himself deeper into the black. Every inch forward felt like suffocating inside a coffin.

Behind him, the footsteps returned—faster this time. The predator was closing in, their patience traded for pursuit.

The young man clawed through the choke point, lungs burning, clothes tearing, the tunnel pressing tighter with every desperate shove.

And then, through the dark ahead, he saw it—a faint, flickering light.

The faint glow wavered, a trembling promise in the dark. The young man shoved harder through the culvert, skin tearing on rough stone as he dragged himself toward it. His ribs screamed, his lungs clawed for air, but the light pulled him forward like a lifeline.

At last the tunnel widened, spitting him into a dripping chamber no bigger than a closet. Overhead, the glow came from a rusted grate, a square of streetlight filtering down from the world above.

A ladder rose to it—iron rungs slick with condensation, bolted into the wall. Hope flared sharp and dangerous in his chest.

He leapt for the ladder, gripping the freezing metal with raw palms. Pain shot up his arms, but he hauled himself upward, rung by rung. His breath rasped loud in the confined space, echoing like a beacon.

Below, the footsteps grew louder. The scrape of steel against concrete. The assassin was almost at the culvert.

The young man’s heart pounded. He climbed faster, boots slipping on the wet rungs. He reached the grate and shoved. It groaned but held, rusted into place.

Panic clawed at him. He braced his shoulder against the iron and rammed it again. And again. The metal shrieked, flakes of rust showering his face.

Then, at last—with a violent crack—the grate gave way, swinging open to the night. Cold air rushed down, sweet and sharp.

He dragged himself onto the street, sprawling across asphalt slick with rain. Headlights streaked past, the city alive around him, oblivious.

But even as he gulped the open air, his eyes darted to the dark hole yawning at his feet. Because down there, in the shadows, the assassin was still coming.

The young man staggered upright, legs trembling, lungs clawing for air. Neon bled across wet pavement, horns blared, and the crush of the city surged around him. Pedestrians shoved past without a second glance. To them, he was just another frantic stranger.

But he knew better. He risked one glance over his shoulder. A shadow unfurled from the tunnel grate, rising with terrifying calm. The assassin hauled themselves into the street, blending seamlessly into the press of bodies, a shark in a school of fish.

The young man bolted. He tore through a crosswalk against the light, headlights screaming as cars swerved and brakes screeched. A driver leaned on his horn, cursing. The young man didn’t slow. His sneakers slapped against slick asphalt, water spraying in his wake.

Behind him, impossibly steady, the shadow followed. No shouts. No rush. Just relentless pursuit.

He darted into an alley, dodging trash bags and fire escapes. A chain-link fence loomed at the far end—too high, too slick with rain to climb quickly. He skidded to a halt, chest heaving, before veering sideways through a narrow cut that spat him back onto another street.

The city was alive with noise—sirens wailing in the distance, the thrum of a subway below, the endless buzz of voices—but all of it blurred into nothing against the sound he couldn’t escape: Footsteps. Still following. Still closing. Every turn, every sprint, bought him only seconds. The assassin never tired.

The young man burst into a crowded plaza, the glow of a massive electronic billboard drenching the space in blue light. Tourists snapped photos, vendors shouted, music pulsed from hidden speakers.

For the first time, he hesitated. In this sea of people, he might vanish. Or the assassin might strike.

The young man’s eyes darted across the plaza. Crowds. Vendors. A stack of crates beside a street cart, overloaded with sizzling food and hissing oil. Perfect tinder.

He barreled forward, shoulder slamming into the cart. The vendor shrieked as it tipped, pans clattering, flames leaping higher as oil splashed onto the burner. Smoke belched upward, acrid and choking.

The crowd exploded into motion. Shouts. Screams. People scattered in every direction, clutching their children, spilling drinks, dropping bags. Some pulled out phones, filming instead of fleeing.

The young man didn’t wait to see. He dove into the tide of bodies, forcing himself deeper into the stampede. His chest burned, his vision tunneled, but the chaos gave him cover.

Behind him, the shadow cut through the panic like it was nothing. Unhurried. Unstoppable. While others shoved and stumbled, the assassin moved with precision, eyes locked on their prey.

The young man shoved past a group of tourists, ducking behind a toppled sign. For a heartbeat, he lost sight of the figure. Just smoke, flashing lights, and screaming voices.

Then he saw them again—emerging from the haze, closer than before. His stomach lurched. The chaos wasn’t slowing the assassin. It was slowing him.

He bolted toward the edge of the plaza, vaulting a bench, slipping on the slick concrete as sirens wailed closer. Police were coming. Cameras were already up. The whole world was watching.

But even that didn’t matter. Because when he glanced back, the assassin was still there—unshaken, unmasked, utterly unafraid of being seen.

The plaza seethed with panic. Sirens closed in, smoke curled higher, the crowd surged like a living thing. The young man shoved through bodies, desperate to stay ahead, his lungs scraping raw.

Then—amid the storm of noise—something cut through. A voice. Low. Steady. Close.

“Run faster.”

His blood froze.

He whipped his head around, and there—just a few strides back—the assassin walked with terrifying calm, eyes locked on his. Their lips had barely moved, yet the words sliced through the clamor as if meant for him alone.

No one else noticed. Not the cops shoving through the smoke, not the crowd screaming and filming, not the tourists clutching their children. To them, the assassin was just another shadow in the chaos.

But to him? They were the only figures in the world. His legs nearly buckled. His chest clenched so tight he thought he’d suffocate.

“You won’t get away,” the assassin said, not raising their voice. Just loud enough for him to hear, as if the air itself carried the words to his ears.

The young man stumbled back, almost tripping over a fallen sign. He wanted to scream, to point, to beg someone to see—but his throat locked shut. Because part of him knew: if he drew attention, if the crowd turned their eyes, the assassin would strike right then and there.

And no one would even understand what had happened.

He bolted again, heart in his mouth, the words echoing inside his skull.

Run faster. You won’t get away.

The young man tore through the edge of the plaza, his pulse slamming in his ears. He didn’t dare look back—but he felt them. Always there.

The words still echoed inside him, every syllable sharp as glass: Run faster. You won’t get away.

He shoved down a side street, neon lights dripping off wet pavement. The press of the crowd thinned here, but the noise of the city roared on—music blaring from a bar, a delivery truck unloading crates, a stray dog barking at shadows.

And then, over it all—a whistle. Two notes. Low, deliberate. He froze mid-step.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t urgent. It was casual, like someone idly whistling on their way home. But he knew. He knew. The assassin was behind him.

The young man’s stomach turned cold. The sound didn’t pursue—it lingered. Each note floating toward him, carried by the damp night air.

He darted forward again, ducking into another alley. His sneakers splashed through puddles, his hands scraped brick as he shoved himself deeper into the dark. For a heartbeat, he thought he’d gained ground, that maybe the sound was gone.

Then the whistling changed. Now it came from the alley ahead. Soft. Patient. Waiting.

The young man’s heart nearly stopped. He staggered back, chest heaving, realizing too late: it wasn’t just pursuit. The assassin was herding him.

Every turn, every desperate move, had been allowed. Orchestrated. And still, through the night, that quiet tune wove itself around him like a snare.

The young man pressed his back to the wet brick, gasping, the whistled notes curling through the dark like smoke.

Panic clawed at his throat, begging to take over. To run, to thrash, to scream. But something in the rhythm of that whistle stopped him. It wasn’t random. It wasn’t careless. It was control. And control was exactly what the assassin wanted.

His breath steadied, just barely. No. I can’t give it to them. I can’t keep running blind. That’s what they want.

He forced himself to listen—not just to the whistle, but to everything. The hum of a neon sign. The clink of bottles from the bar down the block. A delivery truck idling, its engine sputtering. The city wasn’t empty. The city was alive, chaotic, full of things he could use.

His eyes darted upward. Fire escapes zigzagged along the buildings, ladders dangling just out of reach. Overflowing trash bins lined the alley. A stack of pallets leaned against a loading dock. Not weapons. Not yet. But pieces. Tools.

He crouched lower, drawing a steadying breath, mind racing. If the assassin was herding him, he could flip it. Make the alley his snare.

The whistle came again. Closer this time. The young man’s fear hardened into something else. Not courage. Not yet. But something sharper. Survival.

He wouldn’t outrun the shadow. Not tonight. But maybe—just maybe—he could outthink it.

The young man’s gaze locked on the stack of pallets near the loading dock. An idea sparked, sharp and dangerous.

He crept toward them, every step deliberate now, no longer the frantic scrambling of prey. The whistle still echoed, closing in, patient as ever.

He grabbed a glass bottle from a trash bin, heart hammering. With a sharp flick, he hurled it down the far end of the alley. The shatter rang out like a gunshot, bouncing between brick walls.

He didn’t wait. He shoved the pallets hard, toppling them with a crash, then slipped into the narrow gap beneath the loading dock. Cold, damp concrete scraped his back as he pressed flat, hidden in the shadows.

The alley fell still, the smoke and city noise muffled by his heartbeat. Then—footsteps. Measured. Unhurried. The assassin entered the alley.

The whistle came again, soft and deliberate, but this time it angled toward the sound of breaking glass.

The young man didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. He watched through a sliver of light as the assassin’s silhouette passed the loading dock, melting deeper into the dark where the shards glittered on wet pavement. The shadow vanished.

The young man lay frozen, every muscle screaming to flee, but he forced himself still until the whistle faded, swallowed by the city. Only then did he crawl from hiding, soaked, shivering, shaking with the weight of what he’d just done.

He wasn’t safe. Not even close. The assassin would return. But for now—for one stolen moment in the city’s endless night—he had slipped the noose. And survival, tonight, was enough.

The Road to Nowhere

Posted on April 26, 2025 by M. Bradley under Short Stories

The car came to an abrupt stop. It was pitch black outside and the wind was howling. Ben tightened his grip on the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening. In the passenger seat, Mia turned toward him, her voice tight with panic.

“Why did you stop?”

“The engine,” Ben said. “It just… shut off.”

In the back, Chris leaned forward between the front seats. “You gotta be kidding me.”

Lily and Jason shifted uncomfortably, each pressing closer to the middle as if somehow the darkness outside could seep through the car windows and drag them out. Ben tried the ignition again. The engine clicked uselessly. No headlights, no dashboard lights, not even a flicker. Jason tapped on his phone. “No service. Not even one bar.”

Chris cursed under his breath. “We should’ve taken the main highway. This shortcut—”

“It wasn’t supposed to be a shortcut,” Ben snapped. “It’s a mapped road. It’s just… isolated.”

Outside, the wind tore through the barren trees that lined the narrow road. Their skeletal branches scratched against one another, making a sound like dry bones.

For a few minutes, they sat in heavy silence, listening to the howl of the wind and the occasional rattle of the car as gusts rocked it gently on its suspension. Then came a new noise. A faint, rhythmic tapping against the passenger window.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Mia jumped. “What was that?”

Ben grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment, clicking it on with shaking hands. The beam cut through the dark — but there was nothing there. Just the endless stretch of empty, broken asphalt and the wild sway of trees.

“It’s just the wind,” Lily whispered, though no one sounded convinced.

Ben lowered the flashlight, and everyone stared. Fresh muddy handprints streaked across the window.

“Okay, no,” Chris said, his voice cracking. “Nope. Nope. I’m not sitting here waiting for something to smash in.”

Jason, impulsive and stubborn, yanked the door handle and stepped out before anyone could stop him. “I’m checking it out. Probably some creep messing with us.”

“Jason!” Mia shouted, but the wind tore her voice away.

They watched him step away from the car, the beam of Ben’s flashlight wobbling over his figure as he moved farther down the road. Two steps. Three. Then, just beyond the edge of the light, something moved. Not Jason. A pale, hunched figure slipped between the trees. The flashlight flickered. The light died. In the dark, they heard Jason’s voice — high-pitched, terrified, “Something’s here!”

A wet, tearing sound followed. Then silence.

“No,” Lily sobbed. “We have to help him!”

Ben grabbed her wrist as she lunged for the door. “No. Stay inside.”

Mia huddled close to Ben, whispering prayers under her breath. Chris fumbled in the back seat for something — anything — to defend themselves. Another noise. A dragging, scraping sound from the back of the car. Chris turned around, his breath fogging the glass as he peered into the darkness.

“I see something… it’s him! Jason!”

Ben looked too. A shape moved behind the car, slow and awkward, dragging a foot like it was broken. Mia’s hand clutched Ben’s arm. “That’s not Jason,” she whispered.

Chris didn’t listen. He grabbed the flashlight, flung the door open, and ran toward the figure.

“Chris!” Ben shouted.

The figure straightened suddenly, its head cocking at an unnatural angle. Chris froze. The flashlight dropped. The figure lunged. Chris’s scream was cut short. The flashlight rolled on the asphalt, its beam swinging crazily. Ben slammed the car door shut and locked it. Lily and Mia clutched each other, sobbing.

Inside the car, the air grew colder, damper. Ben’s breath came in ragged gasps. Outside, movement circled the vehicle, scratching and tapping, faint and persistent.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Ben gritted his teeth, trying to keep his mind from unraveling. “We wait until sunrise,” he said, voice shaking. “We don’t move. We don’t open the doors for anything.”

Time twisted and distorted. Minutes stretched into hours. The night pressed heavier against the windows. At some point, Mia began murmuring to herself, rocking slightly. Lily clutched her necklace, whispering apologies, prayers, or maybe both. The tapping stopped. A new sound replaced it: voices. Jason’s voice. Chris’s voice. Calling their names.

“Ben… Mia… Lily… open the door. It’s okay now. It’s safe.”

Ben squeezed his eyes shut. He wasn’t stupid. It wasn’t them. The voices grew more persistent, more urgent, a dissonant chorus just outside the car. Sometimes they laughed. Sometimes they cried. Ben held on until his knuckles ached.

Finally, after what felt like an eternity, a faint light bled over the horizon, painting the road and the trees in gray. Ben dared to open his eyes fully. The voices were gone. No figures circled the car. No tapping on the windows.

“Morning,” he whispered. “It’s morning.”

He unlocked the door and pushed it open. Cold air rushed in, sharp and biting. His legs felt stiff as he climbed out, blinking against the rising sun. The road was empty. Silent. No sign of Jason. No sign of Chris. No footprints, no blood. Not even the flashlight. Just the empty woods — and the faint feeling that they were still being watched.

Mia and Lily stumbled out after him. None of them spoke. There was nothing to say. Ben glanced back at the car one last time before they started walking. In the condensation on the rear windshield, a message had been scrawled in dripping letters.

SEE YOU SOON.

In My Own Words…

Thoughts, Rants and Ramblings from the Mind of an Average Man… That Just Happens to Be Anything But…

Tag Archives: fear

The Laundromat Man

Lost Ones

The Second Novel

The Soldier

Tomb of the Forgotten King

First Hunt

Celeste the Fearless

The Stranger

The Chase

The Road to Nowhere

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