I can’t help but daydream. My pondering is not so deep at first. I think of beer after a long day of work, and zoning out in front of the TV.

I joke about cleaning shit for a living as a plumber. “Never let them see you cry,” a drunken fellow plumber once said… Whatever that means.

I avoid the news, especially lately with all the talk of nuclear war. I’ll change the channel to something mindless — just not the fucking news. I already deal with enough at work. I come home exhausted, emotionally, psychologically, and of course, physically. But I’m trying to provide and save up some money — my wife is pregnant.

We listen to people’s murmurs around us. Secrets being whispered. People getting bored of waiting. My eyes wander around the room, inspecting it. A massive screen stretches across the wall. Images of landscapes continue to appear. Ceiling-mounted speakers in each corner play some type of soothing music. A thick, fortified door opens every few minutes, letting in more people. A few AC vents are attached to the walls. Gaps around the door have been tightly sealed, perhaps to preserve the chill draft from the vents.

“Hey!” A voice startles me. “What do you think we’re here for?” He’s in his mid-thirties and leans over in his seat. An excited smile is etched into his face.

“I’m not sure,” I say.

“Third World War is about to start,” another man with piercing blue eyes interjects. “We’ve been selected.” A thin, old lady — presumably his mother — sits next to him. Wrinkles make her face look shriveled with years and years of living.

“And they just chose us for no good reason?” a woman in a red shirt nearby says. She looks around at us, then continues, “It doesn’t make sense.”

My wife holds my hand and squeezes it.

“Maybe they just didn’t have time. Or maybe they did it at random?” the smiling man says.

“Come on,” the woman says, “does this look to you like it was done last minute? This gigantic room? Everything seems so organized. I just wish they brought us some water and food. At least they give you a chance to use the restroom before entering this room.”

The smiling man directs his attention back to me and asks if I believe in God and if I think we’ve all been chosen for a reason. I don’t engage. I think of our living room, my couch, and a frosty bottle of beer.

He asks me who I think will be the first to activate nuclear weapons. I shake my head, unsure of what to say. He launches into a series of bizarre theories and observations, expounding on his conspiracies. I tune him out, turning to my wife and pretending to discuss something important.

“I hate to break it to you,” a woman’s voice says to the smiling man. Sweat glistens off her dark skin. She looks up and waves her hand to inspect if cold air is still blowing from the vents, then looks back at the smiling man. “I don’t think us being here is good news.”

“Why not?” he says.

“The Lord is giving us a sign. We’re refusing to do something about it. We need to stop this war from happening,” she says, gesticulating with her hand.

“How do we do that?”

The big screen flickers and changes to an image of vibrant greenery. Mellow music continues to play at a low volume.

“Before you answer, I have to say,” the man with blue eyes says. “I truly believe they wouldn’t spend time and effort to bring us here for nothing. This is temporary before they move us to some bigger bunker somewhere.”

“Bigger bunker?” the smiling man says.

“You think they don’t know a war’s about to break out? They’re ready for all of this. They need people to stay underground until the radiation clears up.”

The music abruptly comes to a halt. The lock on the door clicks into place, echoing through the silence. The vents sputter and spit, then emit a hissing sound.

Hearts race, faces go pale, and breaths are held.

The screen flickers, then the number 60 appears. It immediately shifts to 59. It takes a few seconds before everyone realizes it’s a timer. The old lady suddenly collapses.

People recoil in horror. We’re left with disbelief and the ominous hiss of gas from the vents. People scream and run wildly, bumping into each other, pushing and shoving. My wife clutches my arm. I look around for a possible escape. Someone manages to rip a chair from its base. He slams it into the screen but it seems to be made of a reinforced material. There’s nothing in the room but walls, a ceiling, speakers, a screen, and a door… And vents. People pound on the concrete, begging to be released. “Do something!” my wife yells. She turns around attempting to run, but slips and splits her head against a chair. I can feel urine crawling down my pants. It must’ve been the beer.

“Lord, help us!” the lady with dark skin wails.

A sudden sense of despair washes over me.

I then sit next to my wife, who lies motionless on the floor with a bleeding head. People’s shrieking continues.

Ten seconds.

I suddenly feel no fear. The digits on the screen keep changing. The pool of blood around my wife’s head keeps creeping along the floor. Doesn’t matter. I’ll be with her soon. A couch, a beer, and a TV — that can’t be all there is to life. I feel sorry for the people still alive. Why would anyone possibly want to live in a world like this?

Yazen Masoud resides in Houston, Texas. He’s a big fan of traveling, and has roadtripped across several states. He loves exploring new towns and cities. He is a fan of Haruki Murakami and Charles Bukowski, to name just a few.

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We stood in formation. Funeral spacing. Too close, then not. Breath went white, then thin, then gone. Someone cleared his throat. The sound dropped and stayed there.

The colonel walked the line. He stopped where he felt like stopping. When he planted himself next to me my heel started its little jump. I drove it into the mud until it behaved.

The order came. I locked out. Rifle up, exact. I said the words I’d drilled until they were just noise. When it ended my mouth felt hollow.

My knee caught, the way it does in the cold. Old shrapnel. I shorten my stride without thinking. Do it soon enough and no one sees.

Later I stood up front. The paper shook in my hand. I thanked men who weren’t standing anywhere. I lost my place, slid ahead, tried to fix it. Let the next line bury the gap.

That night it was the stove. Kettle tipping, steam spitting sideways. I grabbed too fast, skin to iron. Not bad enough to wrap. Cold water until the bite faded.

Some days things come wrong. Boots where they don’t belong. A thought held too long, like a breath you forget to let out.

Other days it’s just the body lying to me. A curb too tall. A floor that won’t sit still. Weight dragging me left, then right.

I tell myself it’s balance.

Some days are clean. Coffee. Clothes. Out the door.

Other days the room seals shut: cocoon till next morning.

J.S. O’Keefe’s work spans short stories, essays, and poems. They have been featured in a variety of publications, including AntipodeanSF, Roi Faineant, 101 Words, Every Day Fiction, Spillwords, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, 50WS, Satire (C&K Publishing), etc.

If you want to keep EDF around, Patreon is the answer.

Someone asked if I’d be all right alone.

I said yes. I didn’t know why. It just felt like the correct answer.

The house emptied slowly, the way a body cools. When the last car disappeared beyond the trees, silence spread through the rooms — not sudden, but deliberate. I closed the door and locked it, more out of habit than fear.

I didn’t turn on any lights.

The house still smelled like her: lavender soap, old paper, the faint sweetness of dust warmed by afternoon sun. I stood in the hallway, listening. The clock ticked in the sitting room. The refrigerator hummed softly. Familiar noises, the kind you stop noticing until they’re all that’s left.

And something else.

Not a sound, exactly. More like pressure. The sense that someone was standing behind me, close enough that I could feel their breath, but I didn’t dare turn around.

I told myself it was grief.

Grief is supposed to do things like that.

I stayed the night because the guest room felt wrong — untouched, impersonal. Her room felt worse. So I slept on the couch, fully dressed, lights off, the television unplugged because I couldn’t stand the idea of voices that weren’t mine.

Sometime after midnight, the house settled.

It wasn’t loud. Just the subtle creak of beams adjusting, a quiet complaint from the walls. I lay awake, staring into the dark, counting breaths. When the sound came again — closer this time — my body went still.

The floorboard near the hallway shifted.

Just once.

I waited for the follow-up sound, the explanation. None came.

“Old house,” I whispered, testing my voice. It sounded thin, swallowed by the room.

The silence that followed felt… attentive.

The next morning, I found the kitchen chair pulled out.

I knew I had pushed it in before bed. I remembered because I’d been careful — because being careful felt important now.

I stood there for a long time, staring at the chair, my mind offering explanations I didn’t accept. A draft. An uneven floor. Grief playing tricks on memory.

When I pushed the chair back in, it resisted slightly, like something leaning against it from the other side.

The days blurred after that. I told myself I was sorting through her things, but really I was waiting — though for what, I couldn’t say. The house changed when I wasn’t looking. Doors left ajar I was sure I’d closed. The clock stopping at the exact time she’d died, then restarting on its own hours later.

At night, the sounds grew bolder.

Footsteps that stopped when I sat up. The soft brush of fabric in the hallway. Once — unmistakably — the slow inhale of breath just outside the living room door.

I stopped sleeping.

On the fourth night, I said her name out loud.

The word hung in the air, heavier than it should have been.

The house responded.

Not with a voice. Not with movement. With warmth. The cold that had clung to the rooms retreated, replaced by something close, enclosing. Familiar.

I should have left then. Packed a bag. Driven anywhere else.

Instead, I sat down.

“I didn’t know where else to go,” I said, feeling foolish, exposed. “Everyone keeps telling me to be strong.”

The walls creaked softly, like joints easing.

That night, I dreamed the house was breathing — walls expanding and contracting in a slow, patient rhythm. Hallways rearranged themselves so every path led back to the living room. When I woke, the couch blanket was pulled up to my chin.

I didn’t remember doing that.

By the end of the week, I stopped calling friends back. The outside world felt loud, unreal. Here, everything was contained. Predictable. The house anticipated me — lights flickering on just before I entered a room, the kettle warming before I reached for it.

I started talking more.

Sometimes about her. Sometimes about nothing at all. The house listened. I felt it in the way the air pressed closer, in the way the silence leaned in.

One evening, standing in the hallway, I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard a sound from outside. No cars. No birds. No wind.

Just the house.

The front door wouldn’t open.

I didn’t panic. That was the strange part. The thought of leaving felt abstract, unnecessary — like remembering a place I’d lived as a child but had no reason to return to.

“I’m staying,” I said, and the words felt like relief.

The house settled around me, beams groaning softly, a deep, satisfied sound. The pressure eased.

That night, I slept.

In the morning, I stood at the window and watched the trees sway without sound. I raised a hand to the glass. For a moment, I thought I saw another hand lift to meet mine in the reflection — but when I blinked, there was only me.

Only us.

After the funeral, everyone left.

I stayed.

And the house did too.

Abianga Blessing Asuquo, writing as Nashra Wynter, is a Nigerian writer drawn to stories of grief, memory, and the unsettling spaces people inhabit. Her work leans toward psychological and atmospheric horror. She is pleased to submit this piece to Every Day Fiction.

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The week before Easter there was no news. Absolutely none. Admittedly, not much ever happened in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, but this was serious. No crimes, no traffic accidents. Not even a school board meeting. Amy was desperately looking for any way possible to fill a half-hour newscast. As a one-person newsroom, she was facing a black hole of content that was inexorably drawing her into a crushing death spiral.

Desperate, she even turned to Harmon, the young, prematurely balding production manager.

“You gotta help me, Harmon. I’ve got half an hour to fill and no news!”

Harmon looked thoughtful, as he often did.

“Well, you could do a theme program. It is Easter.”

Amy curled her lip. “Naw, I don’t want to be inserting religion into the nightly news.”

Harmon looked even more thoughtful. Amy was about to thank him and walk away when he offered, “Well, how ‘bout nonreligious things related to Easter, like chocolate or eggs?”

Amy brightened. “Could do.” She pondered the idea. “We could look at chocolate sales this week, compare it to last year. Are people eating more chocolate…”

“Yep. And I’ve got a bunch of stuff on the poultry industry you could use,” Harmon added.

That’s when Amy’s problems began. She had accepted the poultry literature from Harmon just to be nice. She had no intention of reeling off facts about chickens and eggs. Amy preferred the chocolate angle. But she leafed quickly through the material just to have a look. Then she saw it.

“The fascinating egg is uniquely constructed to support a significant amount of external pressure. When equal pressure is applied to the eggshell, it can withstand up to 75 pounds per square inch. This is more pressure than even the strongest person could generate. Put simply, you cannot crush an egg in your hand.”

There followed an illustration of the correct way to hold an egg when testing its awesome powers.

“No way.”

Amy couldn’t wait to test out this new information. She walked down the street, bought a dozen eggs at the Co-op, brought them back to the station and did her test right there in the parking lot. Fully expecting to ruin her blouse with egg yolk, Amy squeezed, and squeezed harder. Nothing. She couldn’t break the egg.

This is cool. She ran into the station and had Louise try. Same result!

That night on the newscast Amy proudly announced her discovery. As expected, there wasn’t much ‘real’ news, so Amy had plenty of time for the egg demonstration. After reading reports on a local brush fire and a few Nebraska wire stories, Amy launched into her Easter Egg theme segment.

“As fragile as the egg may seem, you might be surprised to learn that you cannot break one in your hand.”

Amy took the egg she had been holding in her lap and placed it on the set. Stewart the cameraman struggled valiantly to follow the action.

“It’s true,” Amy continued. “The egg is designed to support the weight of chickens that can weigh up to 25 pounds.”

Stewart attempted to zoom in on the egg. It became a white blur on TV sets across western Nebraska.

“Although it’s easy to crack an egg by a sharp blow to one point — as any cook will tell you — the egg can withstand a tremendous amount of pressure if applied evenly.”

Amy was ad-libbing the whole thing and having a great time. She placed the egg in the palm of her hand. She squeezed. The egg remained intact. Stewart zoomed in again to reveal Amy’s knuckles turning white as she attempted to crush the egg.

Triumphantly she declared, “See! You can’t crush an egg in your hand! Try it yourself and see.”

She smiled broadly and laid the egg aside.

“Let’s take a quick look at the weather.”

Amy rattled off the temperatures, plowed through a few sports stories and wrapped up the newscast.

“That’s all for now. On behalf of the KBLF staff, have a happy Easter!”

Another broad smile, some paper shuffling and she was off the air. Amy unclipped her microphone and walked through the studio door into the darkened office. All four telephone lines were blinking. She smiled again. Viewers calling! She punched line 1.

“KBLF.”

“What kind of a joke are you trying to play?” a harsh, curt male voice demanded. “I just got egg yolk all over my couch, carpet, everywhere. Do you want to come clean it up?”

Amy was dumbstruck. She didn’t reply.

“That’s outrageous,” the caller continued. “I believed the whole thing. You’re putrid.”

Amy sought words. The man hung up. The other phone lines blinked furiously. Amy stood in the empty office, motionless. A wave of dread and panic swept over her. After 30 seconds she slowly punched another button.

“KBLF.”

“Amy.” It was the voice of Bob Bassett, the general manager.

“I’ve been getting calls from people who say you encouraged them to smash eggs in their living rooms. What did you do?”

“Um…” Amy stammered. “I did a demonstration. You can’t crush an egg if you place it in the palm of your hand. I showed people on the air.”

“Well, apparently eggs in Scottsbluff are very easy to crush.”

There was a pause.

“Look, Mr. Bassett, this wasn’t a trick or anything. I read it in a book. If you apply equal pressure…”

“No doubt. But the book probably didn’t mention what happens if the person is wearing a ring, or if the egg has a tiny crack. I’ve known about this silly fact since I was a boy. But I’d never encourage viewers to try it in their family rooms!”

Amy crumpled into a chair in the dark office. She sighed.

“I’m sorry. I thought it was a good way to fill time.”

“It was not. You will apologize on the air tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Bassett hung up. Amy sat motionless. The lights on the phone continued to blink accusingly.

Peter Maize has been a journalist and relief and development worker in Asia for the past 35 years. He has published 2 novels (Zoom Out in 2005 and Nine Dragons Belly Up in 2010). He currently writes short fiction and articles for publications ranging from Business Insider to Thrillist.

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“I didn’t break it,” said Ewan.

“You absolutely broke it,” Nadia said.

“I adjusted my position.”

“You stood on it.”

“I did not stand.”

“You mounted,” Miles said.

“I leaned.”

“You climbed onto the backrest,” Nadia said.

“To improve reception.”

“Of what.”

“The rite of sprinkling.”

There was a pause.

“You were trying to get more holy water,” Miles said.

“I was seated behind Big Augustine.”

“That is not a structural condition,” Nadia said.

“He occupies a generous volume.”

“The pew was not designed for vertical participation.”

“I remained largely horizontal.”

“You were kneeling on the back.”

“I was elevating devotion.”

We had arrived early to address the instability before the others came. The church was quiet in the way churches are quiet even when empty, as though sound remained present but unwilling.

Miles had brought a level.

Nadia had brought a tape measure.

Neither instrument produced agreement.

“The floor is uneven,” Nadia said.

“The pew,” Miles said.

Thomas, never the doubting sort, said the instability was structural.

I said it was intermittent.

We measured several times.

The numbers varied slightly, though never enough to suggest error.

When Father Mark appeared, he did not ask what we were doing.

He observed the level.

He observed the tape measure.

He sat down.

The pew shifted.

“There,” Nadia said.

Father Mark nodded.

“I’ll call a guy.”

No one asked what kind of guy.

The man arrived twenty minutes later carrying a bench seat upholstered in cracked burgundy vinyl. He set it gently in the aisle.

“From an Oldsmobile,” he said.

“What year?” Nadia asked.

“Eighties.”

“Did it have woodgrain sides?” Miles asked.

“I believe so.”

The man lifted the damaged section of pew as if it were lighter than expected. The seat slid into place without resistance.

We all sat.

The seating was excellent.

The vinyl made a faint sound as we adjusted.

Father Mark remained seated longer than usual that morning.

By the following Sunday, people had begun arriving early.

No instruction had been issued.

No announcement had been made.

Still, the seat filled first.

Children preferred it.

Older parishioners adjusted their walking speed.

Several minor disagreements occurred.

By Lent, the competition had intensified.

No one referred to it directly.

But the congregation developed a new choreography of arrival.

Families divided.

Coats were placed.

Hymnals redistributed.

Those who secured the seat displayed a noticeable calm throughout the service.

Those who did not appeared distracted.

By Easter, attendance had improved measurably, well beyond the normal surge.

Visitors asked no questions.

Eventually, Father Mark called the guy again.

Additional seats were installed.

Not replacements.

Additions.

The seating capacity of the church increased without altering its footprint. No one remembered which pew had originally been broken.

Jeffrey-Michael Kane is a writer and environmental attorney in New Orleans. Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk U.K.), a celebrated nonfiction work on cognitive patterning and inclusion in the workplace. His prose work has appeared in Eleventh Hour Literary, Redivider, Minnesota Review, New Ohio Review, Plough, Dappled Things, and Others.

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There was no final gesture, no shutter falling, no moment that could be recognised as an ending. She left it running, as one leaves a system in motion not out of trust, but to see how far it can sustain itself without intervention. It was Easter. People closed things at Easter. Systems did not.

The store was not empty. It was managed now by drones — small, precise, tireless — restocking, adjusting, anticipating without being seen. No one noticed the difference. Except Narciso, her parrot, who distrusted anything he could not peck.

Enrico, her dog, stopped at the threshold, just before the automatic door opened. He did not cross. His body held a minimal tension, as if the air at that exact point carried a slightly different density. He was no longer interested in products. That phase had passed. There had been a time when he ate everything — sausages from the shelves, whatever Narciso dropped, whatever he could steal from Mari if she turned away for a second. She had spent years restocking after him. Now he no longer ate. Now he sensed deviations. It was not an improvement Mari entirely trusted.

Everything appeared correct.

That was the problem.

Narciso, perched on the passenger seat, observed without fully committing to attention. He pecked lightly at the seatbelt, testing its resistance as if confirming that at least some things still held.

“Works,” he said.

Pause.

“Works. Works.”

He said it like someone who had decided to believe something through repetition.

Mari did not respond. Her eyes were fixed on the screen.

It was not a surveillance interface. It showed no cameras, no recognisable scenes. It displayed decisions. Flows. Adjustments made before anyone could perceive them as such. A map without geography, where each illuminated point marked a possibility already corrected.

A customer entered.

Another stopped in front of a shelf. For a fraction of a second, there was hesitation.

The hesitation disappeared.

Mari lowered the brightness slightly, as if dimming the screen could restore some opacity to what she was seeing.

“It doesn’t learn,” she said at last. “It adjusts.”

Enrico let out a low sound, not quite a bark. He had learned that barking did not change systems.

They left without saying goodbye.

The vehicle merged onto the road with a smoothness that did not feel entirely mechanical, as if it too had been designed not to interrupt anything. Mari had not set a destination. It seemed fair. The system had one.

Minutes later, the first deviation appeared.

There was no alarm. Just a subtle shift in the pattern on the screen.

A customer had taken three seconds longer than expected to choose between two products.

The system corrected it.

Not by replacing the product. Not by forcing the choice. It adjusted the light — almost imperceptibly — redirecting attention without touching anything, making the decision feel intact.

Enrico emitted a short, dry sound.

Narciso turned his head.

“Late. Late.”

Mari expanded the map.

It was not the delay that concerned her. It was the correction. Too clean. Too precise. No friction.

The system did not simply anticipate decisions. It closed them completely, leaving no trace.

As if the decision had never existed.

“That wasn’t there before,” Mari murmured.

Narciso pecked the air.

“There,” he said.

“There. There.”

The minimarket continued to function.

Customers entered, selected, paid, and left. Times aligned. Movements optimised. Everything remained within expected parameters — better than expected, even.

And yet something had begun to shift outside the design.

Not in what could be seen.

But in that intermediate space where decisions occur before becoming conscious.

Mari hovered her hand over the screen without touching it.

For the first time since she had activated the system, she felt that she was no longer observing a process, but witnessing something that no longer required observation to continue.

The screen flickered, almost imperceptibly.

For a fraction of a second, one of the nodes did not correct itself.

It expanded.

Not into error, but into possibility.

Mari froze.

The system recalibrated instantly. The node collapsed back into alignment.

As if nothing had happened.

Narciso tilted his head.

“Again,” he said.

Mari did not answer.

If the system could eliminate hesitation before it formed, she wondered, what would remain of choice?

The minimarket continued.

The road unfolded.

Nothing failed.

And yet something had already begun to disappear.

The system did not rest.

Mari realised, then, that neither did it need her.

“Good,” said Narciso.

Parrots liked systems that repeated.

Especially when they did not ask questions.

Antonia Saavedra writes fiction about systems that work too well. Her work moves though domestic space, food, and control, revealing how everyday life is shaped by structures that anticipate us. She has been published in The Madrid Review and her work has been considered by Superlative and Every Day Fiction. She is the creator of the Mari Estrella Universe. Based in Spain.

Patreon makes Every Day Fiction possible.

“You may begin whenever you like, Teresa.”

She shifts in the adaptive chair, avoiding eye contact.

“It’s like I don’t feel anything anymore. Just… performances of what I’m supposed to feel.”

Marlowe makes a mental note. The pattern is unmistakable: Post-algorithm depersonalisation, an emerging condition in individuals maintaining over 85% continuous affective regulation through neural feedback…

Thirty years earlier, the idea of treating emotional pain as a problem to be optimised would have sounded absurd. Today, every citizen over 14 carries a subcutaneous affective modulation layer, connected to the National Psychosocial Balance System. Anger, anxiety, grief — all gently neutralised in real time.

Well-being is statistically assured. Suicide rates have dropped. Productivity has soared.

Wars have ceased.

But something essential was lost. And Marlowe might be the only one still looking for it. Teresa closes her eyes, as though tuning into a forgotten frequency.

“I watched a video of my mother yesterday. An emotional recording from before the patches… She was crying. For no reason. Deep, heaving sobs. I didn’t understand! And that… frightened me.”

The system registers micro-fluctuations in Marlowe’s pupils. Curiosity? Dread? He draws a breath — still among the few therapists licensed to work unregulated. By choice.

At the Institute of Applied Psychophysics, he met Dr Cantanhede, creator of the first mass affect modulation protocol. They loved each other, or at least, it felt like love. When she chose to have her own patch implanted, something shifted.

Cantanhede stopped arguing, stopped doubting, stopped hesitating. She was kind, rational, predictable. Perfect.

And unbearably hollow.

Marlowe watched the world follow suit: quiet, functional, emotionally sterile. When Cantanhede died — natural causes, they said — he became a relic. A therapist for those who still felt something… wrong.

“I want to switch it off, Doctor. Just for a day,” Teresa says, her voice trembling. “I want to know who I am when I’m not being managed.”

He hesitates. The request is illegal. But the doubt gnaws at him: does unmediated emotion even exist anymore, or has it been culturally extinguished?

“And what if you don’t like what you find?”

“Better than this… manufactured peace.”

That night, he opens his personal archive: Project Erebus — Experimental Logs. Before regulation, he had tested a gradual deactivation protocol on rodents and primates. The results were harrowing: behavioural collapse, self-harm, extreme apathy.

But one case stood apart. A macaque — AL-3 — not only survived the reversal but developed richer emotional responses than its baseline.

AL-3 bonded with Marlowe. Reacted with joy to his voice. Wept when he left. Smiled.

Screamed. Felt.

Marlowe cries for the first time in years. Then decides.

The next session is held under strict confidentiality. He initiates the safe reversal protocol: five minutes without modulation, under direct observation.

“Are you feeling anything?” he asks.

No reply. Teresa simply looks around, as though seeing the world anew. Then she looks at him. A smile. And tears. Silent. Unregulated.

“This… this is mine,” she whispers. “It’s not a programmed response.” He smiles. And for the first time in decades, he feels hope.

She returns weekly. Each session, five minutes more. She draws. She sings. She screams. She weeps. She laughs. She lives. Others follow. The “Marlowe Effect” is logged as an anomalous phenomenon in the WHO-Psy database.

Eventually, he is reported.

At the disciplinary hearing, the council demands justification. Marlowe simply plays the session recordings. No argument. Just raw emotion. Unfiltered.

Some avert their eyes. Others weep.

One year later, a new patch is released: ReVer-1. A reversible protocol for healthy individuals to experience full affectivity — temporarily. Society hesitates. Slowly, the experience of real feeling becomes not only fashionable, but vital.

Marlowe watches from a distance. Now, human emotions are not flaws to be corrected, but terrains to be explored — mindfully.

He walks through a public square. Children scream. Couples argue. An old man sings offkey.

And he feels it all.

Everything.

João Miguel Alves Ferreira is a psychologist and PhD candidate in Health Sciences at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra. A three-time Marie Curie Fellow and award-winning writer.

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But when he stumbled upon the strangely empty room, tucked away in a corner of the house he didn’t know he’d been living in for years, he knew things had gone too far.

He had spent all morning cleaning the house, removing the lingering traces of the last few April Fools’ Days — those playful tricks that made him believe he still had control. That he wasn’t losing his grip. The house always seemed to turn against him in the end, but today felt different. The air was thick with the smell of something old, something rotting.

Timmy had been gone for weeks — two weeks, or three, Fredrick couldn’t remember. Time moved funny in the house. And the walls? They were alive, or at least they had been when he was younger. But now, they were still. Silent. Only the creaking of old floors and the occasional flicker of the lights let him know that he was not yet alone.

Fredrick found the note tucked under the door of that strange room, as if it had always been there. He had never noticed it before.

“I’m waiting. Just like last year. Fool.”

He didn’t recognize the handwriting, but the words hit him with a gut punch. Fool? Fool for what? He didn’t remember what had happened last year — or the year before. Maybe it was the same joke. The same trick.

But his hands trembled as he opened the door.

Inside, the room was dark. Darker than it should have been. No light, no window. Just a thick, almost choking presence that pressed in from all sides. The floorboards were uneven, and the air tasted metallic — like blood, but sourer. The only thing that stood in the center of the room was a single chair, unremarkable except for the deep, almost mesmerizing stain in the center of the seat.

Fredrick took a step forward.

His foot hit the floor with a dull thud, but as he did, he heard something. A whisper, low and guttural.

“You’ve forgotten.”

Fredrick froze.

The whisper wasn’t in his head. It was real. He turned around. No one was there. No one ever was.

He swallowed, his throat tight.

Suddenly, the door slammed shut behind him.

He didn’t panic. That would come later. This was how it always started — small, strange, but normal in the way that a hundred other strange things had felt normal over the years. A trick. A joke. Someone’s sick game.

It was April Fools’ Day, after all.

Timmy would show up soon. He always did. Maybe not immediately, but the boy was always around. Laughing, giggling, ready with a joke. He just didn’t know it yet.

Fredrick sat down in the chair. It was cold. The stain on the seat — the one that looked like it had seeped into the fabric and embedded itself into the grain — looked darker now, blacker, as though the room itself was feeding off him.

“You’re not who you think you are.”

The voice was louder this time, and it came from behind him, like it always did.

Fredrick turned sharply, but no one was there.

No one was ever there.

The walls seemed to pulse with a rhythm he couldn’t place. He stood up, took a step toward the door, but before he could reach for the handle, it swung open by itself.

And then, the voice again: “I’m waiting. Fool.”

This time, the words felt real, not like a trick. They dug deep into him, right where he had buried all the questions. Questions he couldn’t ask because he had already known the answer. He hadn’t been in this house for years. He had been waiting, just like the house. Just like the fool.

Fredrick didn’t understand. Didn’t know why he couldn’t remember anything anymore. Why the house had become something else entirely. Something alive. Something breathing. Something waiting.

The door to the hallway stood open, inviting him, as if the whole house was nothing but a giant, twisted mouth, ready to swallow him whole.

Fredrick walked toward it.

But before he could cross the threshold, he stopped.

There, in the darkness of the hallway, Timmy was standing. He was too still. Too quiet. And he was grinning — no, not grinning. Laughing. Laughing like he had been waiting for Fredrick to realize what he had forgotten.

Timmy didn’t speak.

Instead, he pointed to the door.

And Fredrick understood.

The door was the only way out.

It had always been.

He hadn’t been in this house, in this place, for years. He had been stuck here forever. But now, he remembered. The trick wasn’t on him. The joke had never been for him. He had been the fool for thinking he had been in control. He had always been the fool.

Timmy’s grin widened, his eyes gleaming with dark amusement. “Fool,” he whispered.

Fredrick stepped through the door.

The house let him go.

Joshua Walker – The Last Bard is a poet and short story writer with over 147k followers on Bluesky. Known for his evocative, raw poetic style, Joshua’s work explores themes of vulnerability, darkness, and introspection. He has been published in numerous outlets, including The Fib Review, Solarpunk Magazine, Dandelion Scribes, and Paperboats. As “The Last Bard,” he bridges the gap between ancient poetic traditions and modern struggles, creating works that are both timeless and deeply human.

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Thing about Carl is, he’s a hard worker but can be caught up in his own world. He got inside his truck, put her in drive, and swept out of the parking lot to head home like he’d done every day for twenty years. 

We stood there, dumbfounded. Should we call him? Make sure he even saw the damn bird? 

“He must have done,” said Rick, scratching the stubble on his cheek with a liver-spotted hand. “It was honking like hell when we shoved it in there.” 

Mark spat out some tobacco juice. “Sumbitch knew we were watching, that’s all. Didn’t want to give us the satisfaction of seeing him panic like a man caught with his pecker in the pumpkin. Whaddya reckon, Jude?”

I shrugged. “Could be he pulled over down the road and got the goose out.” Truth was, I felt disappointed by the anticlimactic letdown. I just wanted to get home and settle down in my armchair with an ice-cold beer.

Carl didn’t come to work the next day. Then, a little before lunch, the boss came out of his office.

“I’ve just had a phone call from Dottie, Carl’s missus,” Silas said. “Seems like he never made it home last night and ain’t answering his phone. Dottie’s checked the hospital and called the cops, but she wanted to see if any of y’all had some information. Lemme know if you do.” He went back inside his office.

I exchanged a nervous look with Rick and Mark. We had some information, alright. 

The three of us approached Silas’s office, and I gave the door a tremulous knock.

“Come on in,” the boss hollered. 

Rick, Mark, and I shuffled on in and stood there looking awkward as three schoolboys who’d done wrong. 

“Uh, Silas,” I started, “we wanted to talk about Carl.”

“I’m sure he’s fine. Dottie was upset, but a man has the right to spend the night away from his missus.”

“Well, see, that’s the thing. We, uh, played a prank on him yesterday.”

Silas raised his eyebrows. He sounded more amused than worried when he asked, “What the hell did you three do to Carl?” 

We told the boss about our prank, and he said again that it was probably nothing. 

“You boys are welcome to go search for him, but you ain’t getting paid for it, so I suggest you make it quick.” 

“Copy that,” said Mark. Rick and I nodded our understanding. 

We set out to follow Carl’s path home, taking my truck. 

“You really think something could’ve happened with the goose?” Rick asked.

I grunted and gripped the wheel so hard, my knuckles turned white. 

Nearabout a quarter of the way to Carl’s house, Mark spoke up. “Lookit there — those are fresh tire tracks.” He pointed out the tracks that swerved off the road.

Throat dry, I pulled her over. We all got out and followed the tracks into the woods. Nobody spoke. We didn’t walk long before we found Carl’s truck, rammed into a tree. A branch had pierced the windshield. 

Rick hollered and ran to the car, me and Mark not far behind. As we got closer, I knew the goose survived — I could hear the damn thing honking away inside. 

When Rick got to the driver’s side, he wrenched open the door and dropped to his knees. I saw Carl in the seat, his lower jaw replaced with a tree branch; I couldn’t help but vomit up that morning’s eggs and hashbrowns. 

Well, I could hardly look Dottie in the eye at the funeral. And everywhere I go, I can still hear that damn goose, honking away.

Jennifer Peaslee’s work has recently appeared in Breath & Shadow, BarBar, Moonday Mag, and on the Kaidankai podcast. She lives outside Atlanta with her mischievous cat, Trouble, and runs The Bleeding Typewriter, a creative writing advice blog and online community.

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That illusion ended in April 1917.

President Woodrow Wilson signed the declaration of war. Newspapers screamed of honor and democracy. Posters bloomed on brick walls — Uncle Sam pointing a stern finger. Young men lined up everywhere, convinced they were stepping into legend.

Frank Parsons was one of them.

In May, he stood among thousands on the deck of a troopship, rifle slung across his back, leather straps biting into his shoulders. He didn’t mind. He was twenty-one, broad-shouldered from farm work, proud in his new uniform. As the ship’s horn bellowed, the men sang.

“Over there, over there…”

The song rolled across the harbor, loud and certain. Flags snapped. Mothers waved handkerchiefs. Sweethearts cried. Frank sang with them, chest swelling. A farm boy from Ohio turned soldier. This was history. “…and we won’t come back till it’s over…” he sang with the others.

Within days, history smelled like vomit.

The Atlantic was unforgiving. Men who’d never been sick a day in their lives retched over rails or into buckets. The lower decks reeked of sweat, gun oil, and fear. Hammocks swung so close together there was barely room to turn. Frank spent nights staring at the underside of the bunk above him, listening to prayers whispered in the dark.

Still, he clung to the promise. It’ll be over in a month, they said. The Germans are tired. One big push is all it’ll take.

It wasn’t.

France greeted them with mud.

Frank learned to stop noticing.

Shells fell day and night. The ground shook so often it felt alive, breathing beneath them. Mustard gas drifted low and yellow, burning eyes and lungs, turning men into choking, screaming shapes clawing at their throats. Boys barely old enough to shave cried out for their mothers as they bled into the mud.

Frank stopped singing.

By winter, the cold gnawed through wool and bone. His rifle felt heavier each day. Orders came suddenly — whispered down the line, passed hand to hand. One night, before dawn, they told Frank his unit was going over the top.

He climbed the ladder, heart pounding. When the whistle blew, the world erupted.

Machine-gun fire stitched the air. Men fell immediately, some tumbling back into the trench, others vanishing into smoke. Frank ran because stopping meant death. The mud sucked at his boots. Explosions hurled dirt and body parts skyward. The sky itself seemed to tear apart.

He fired without aiming, reloaded with shaking hands. A man beside him spun and dropped, half his face gone. Another screamed as barbed wire tore into him. Frank leaped aside a shell hole and nearly fell into water red with blood.

They reached the enemy line in a blur of noise and terror. Bayonets flashed. Shouts turned into animal sounds. Frank thrust forward, felt resistance, and yanked his rifle free without looking. Someone swung at him with a shovel; he ducked and smashed the butt of his rifle into a helmeted face. The man went down hard.

The fighting was chaos — close, brutal, desperate. No lines. No glory. Just men trying not to die.

Then something landed near his foot.

A grenade. Half-buried. Fuse hissing.

Frank grabbed it and threw.

The explosion came mid-air, a blinding flash that lifted him off his feet. For a moment, there was nothing.

Then pain.

Where his right hand had been was a mess of torn flesh and bone. His fingers were gone. Shrapnel burned in his shoulder and chest with every breath. Blood ran into his eye, soaked his sleeve, and pooled in the mud beneath him.

Medics dragged him back as the battle raged on without him. He faded in and out, staring at the gray sky, thinking absurdly of the song.

A surgeon later took what remained of his hand at the wrist. Some of the metal in his chest stayed — too dangerous to remove.

Months passed in hospitals and tents.

In February 1918, Frank rode a hospital train through the French countryside, thinner now, quieter. He stared out at gray fields sliding past.

Another train thundered by on the neighboring track, packed with fresh-faced soldiers. Their voices rose in song — loud, bright.

“And we won’t come back till…”

Frank closed his eyes.

He didn’t sing.

He turned toward the opposite window, watched the endless fields roll on, and thought, If they only knew.

M.D. Smith IV of Huntsville, Alabama, writer of over 350 flash stories, has published digitally in Spillwords, Flash Fiction Magazine, Flash Phantoms, and many more. Retired from running a television station, he lives with his wife of 64 years and three cats.

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