Bloody hell. I’m a hairdresser not a miracle worker, thinks Pauline, running her hands over the bleached helmet of hair in front of her.

“How do you mean?” Pauline asks, smiling professionally into the mirror. 

“You know.” The client swirls her hands around her head as though that provides some clarity. “Edgy.”

Pauline grips a handful of crispy hair. “We could take some weight off the back here and I could give you a layered bob?” 

Say yes. Please. A bob is quick and easy. 

“A bob is stylish and it’s a cut that’s always in fashion,” she says hopefully. 

“Yes, but is it edgy?” Asks the client. 

No, it’s not bloody edgy! But since you haven’t given me a clue as to what you actually do want, I’m stabbing in the dark here!  “It all depends on how edgy you want to go,” says Pauline calmly. “I could give you a buzz cut and we could dye it blue if you like. Now that’s edgy!” She hopes her sarcasm isn’t showing. 

The client laughs nervously. “I don’t think so. I want a complete change, you see. I want to go short and I want it edgy.” 

At last. We’re getting somewhere. Short. Right. 

“Okay, short it is. Do you want to go with bangs? We can do them full or to the side.” 

Let’s start with an easy decision. Pauline sweeps the client’s hair into a side parting. 

“Oh no! Not side bangs,” shrieks the client. “Not with my high forehead!” Pauline clenches her teeth and repositions the hair into a middle parting. 

“How about that?”

The client’s eyes narrow. “Now I look like a pair of drapes.” 

Why don’t I just set fire to it and save us both the bother? 

Pauline pushes the words back down her throat. “Okay then!” she shouts cheerfully. “Short and no bangs it is!”

Over at the sink, Pauline does her best with the conditioner but it isn’t going to scratch the surface of what this fire hazard needs. She goes through the motions with the complementary head massage then guides her lady back to the chair.

Poised with comb and scissors, Pauline stands behind her client. 

“Can you leave it long at the sides?” The client announces from under a curtain of damp hair. 

“Long at the sides? But I thought we were going short?” Pauline’s temples begin to throb.

“I want to feel like I’ve got short hair but I don’t want to go too short. See?” 

No. Pauline doesn’t see. “What if I leave it long at the sides so you can tuck it behind your ears?” 

“Alright then. And don’t go too short at the back either. About to here.” The client saws her hand back and forth across the side of her neck.

Pauline watches helplessly. 

Let me get you a real saw, she offers silently. Pauline bares her teeth in what she hopes resembles a smile. “So. You don’t want it short, then?” 

“I want it short but not short short,” says the client like Pauline is five years old.

She’d love to pull that Velcro really tight around the neck of the woman’s plastic gown. 

Don’t you know you’re not making any sense? Pauline feels her hands sliding towards her client’s throat. 

“So. You’re really saying a bob, then?” 

“No. We’re still going short but not short short.” Pauline catches the client’s clipped tone. 

Don’t get snotty with me! I’m the one trying to read minds here! Pauline pushes her mouth into a smile. “Okay. Just so I’ve got this right, then. We’re going short but not short short, and we’re leaving it long at the sides and jaw length at the back. Right?”  Pauline’s losing the will to live. 

“That’s right.” The client’s mouth is now set in a tight line. 

That’s my tip out of the window. 

As she douses the client’s newly blow-dried bob with hairspray, Pauline breathes a sigh of relief. At least the woman’s stopped glowering at her in the mirror. 

Kimberly pops her head over Pauline’s mirror. 

“Pauline, your next lady is here. She wants me to give you a heads up that she’s wanting a change. Says she wants something edgy.” 

Pauline feels her fist tighten around the blade of her scissors.  

Now retired from college teaching, Jayne Evans is enjoying a rekindled passion for writing. As well as writing short stories and flash fiction, Jayne is also working on her first novel which is based on true events and set in Toronto in 1930. Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail and Quick Brown Fox and she has written for CERIC Magazine and Moving2Canada.

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

My face contorts as I pull away from him.

“What?” he asks as he studies my expression.

“I can’t,” I answer and move my head from side to side.

“You’re still thinking about her?” He crosses his arms over his chest, injured.

I put my fingertips to my lips and turn my eyes away. I need to think. I try to decipher what my body is telling me. And I hear Jacob huff.

“Veronica.” He says my name as though I’m being disciplined. Like a parent frustrated with their child who’s taking too long to tie their shoelaces before school. As if we’re running late to get somewhere. Losing time.

But I’m not sure whose schedule I should be working with.

I feel like a clock is ticking inside my veins. The strong rhythm of the gears makes my hands shake. I can’t read the numbers. Jacob is counting along to the second hand and I’m not privy to the sound of each tick.

My body tells me the time on his watch is trivial. Wounds do not heal on demand.

“It’s like I can taste her,” I finally manage to say. I know it’s not the reply Jacob was hoping for. In an instant, I can see that reflected in the way his lip curls on just the left side of his mouth. How slowly he blinks at me. The angle his head takes when a hard breath escapes from him.

“You can’t taste her.”

I taste something.

Someone.

That’s not my husband on my tongue.

“It’s been four months, Veronica.”

 His words are an incantation. I shake my head to knock the bewitchment out of my ears.  “I apologized,” Jacob continues. “We did the counseling like you wanted. I gave you space, time…”

He rattles off all the reasons I should forget it happened. Forget her: the faceless woman in our bed I found him with. It’s her voice I continue to hear in the corners of the room. Rather, the sounds Jacob extricated from her as he buried himself inside her.

Her face is every woman I pass in the street. Replaces mine in the mirror. Is in the reflection of light on my husband’s pupils when he looks at me.

She is everywhere even though Jacob swears she is no longer anywhere. She is dancing on his tongue with every word his mouth forms.

 She is here, lingering in my mouth after this first kiss since that horrible afternoon. “We aren’t going to move past this if you won’t let it go,” Jacob finishes his repetitive monologue.

I let him kiss me again. This time I can taste his desperation to be intimate with me. To erase my hesitance. To continue on as though she never happened.

I push him away. 

She did happen.

“I’m not ready,” I say with a sprinkling of my distress.

“When, then? Huh? How long are you going to keep punishing me? You can’t expect me to wait around for your forgiveness forever.”

Why shouldn’t I expect him to wait longer? To be patient and empathetic with me?

Suddenly, I understand the aftereffect of his kiss. My hand is at my mouth again, afraid to say it out loud.

“That taste,” I mumble.

Jacob’s patience frays. He questions my taste buds before humoring me. His words and tone feel mismatched. Like he doesn’t care about the sensation swimming around my mouth. His objective is to get us into bed together.

“It’s ashes,” I tell him.

He scoffs.

“Veronica, I haven’t smoked since I was a teenager.”

A part of me knew he wouldn’t grasp what I meant, but I feel disappointment anyway.

“You set our marriage on fire when you slept with her.”

“What?”

His disposition speeds up the ticking. I feel the pulse in my throat. It’s time. The alarm is silent, but I hear it.

“I think it’s over, Jacob.” I swallow the clock back down and take a deep breath in. “All that’s left between us is ashes. It’s burned to the ground. Not even the foundation is left.”

My husband’s eyes widen before his lips gather into a frown. The blood vessel at his temple swells and his jaw muscles flex.

I imagine more words will only make this moment worse. I don’t want to fight anymore. I turn from him and think about what I’ll pack to take to my mother’s. It’s too hard to sleep in a bed that can’t feel like ours again.

“That’s it?”

I remain silent and head for our closet.

“All that work for nothing?”

I look back at him. “Was it really all for nothing?”

“Yeah, if you’re still going to leave me. Why did I bother with any of it?” He puts his hands on his hips.

“So, you’re saying I should have saved you some time and money and just ended things four months ago?”

“Yes.” He realizes he answered too quickly and struggles to recover. “I mean, no.”

“That’s why I can taste her on your lips, Jacob.” I feel pressure building in my chest as the clock speeds up once more. Words start to get caught in my throat. “If you haven’t forgotten about her, then how can I?”

He lets out a long sigh instead of a retort.

Somehow I thought there would be more tears for this. More salt on our cheeks.

And then, I wonder who actually started this fire.

Tinamarie Cox lives in Arizona with her husband, two children, and rescue felines. Her written and visual work has appeared in many online and print publications under various genres. She has two poetry chapbooks with Bottlecap Press: Self-Destruction in Small Doses, and A Collection of Morning Hours. Her first full-length poetry collection, Through a Sea Laced with Midnight Hues, was released in 2025 with Nymeria Publishing. You can follow her on socials @tinamariethinkstoomuch and explore more of her work at tinamariethinkstoomuch.weebly.com.

If you enjoyed this story, show your support on Patreon.

We’re signing Annie’s card when Carol from Occupational Health comes up with her trolley, laden with Braeburns and bananas, because it’s Fruity Friday. She witters about Vitamin C, and claims we’re being corporately responsible with wonky shapes and zero packaging. At least she laughs when we ask if she could slip us a bag of fun-sized Mars Bars.

On our way to Meeting Room Two we pass Axel in Actuarial, finessing his “working hours to retirement“ spreadsheet. “I’m factoring in leap years, a sickie a month, and one funeral a quarter,” he says. He points to the cell at the top, showing the seconds ticking away while he works on this, his “meisterwerk“.

As we wait with our warm prosecco, Beth from Reception announces she’s set the Tier One drinks machine to free vend, using the code she’s charmed out of the engineer. Dana and Carly from Death Claims google face paint and pointy hats for the Halloween dress-down day, shaking their heads again over Nicki the intern’s “inappropriate” costume at the calypso party. 

Through the window we see Sahid from Sales strolling with Minty from Compliance. We know he’s sick of flogging savings plans, dreams of an off-grid yurt in the Pennines or Mendips, longs for Minty to shout “Yes, Sahid! Take me with you!” But, like him, we know his copper-haired companion has six-year-old twins and a boyfriend with medals for cage fighting.

It’s the day, with Annie tearful at the front with her flowers and memories, we agree this isn’t such a bad place to work, what with the pension scheme, subsidised restaurant and occasional calypso party. It’s also the day the board announces we’re merging with Credit Suisse, that this office will be closing, that consultations on redundancies will start this very day.

Chris Cottom lives near Macclesfield, UK. His work features in 100 Word Story, Fictive Dream, FlashFlood, Flash Frontier, Gooseberry Pie, Leon Literary Review, MoonPark Review, NFFD NZ, Oyster River Pages, Roi Fainéant, The Lascaux Review, and elsewhere.

If you enjoyed this story, show your support on Patreon.

Me! Voted most likely to succeed, but at what? Life? Or being screwed over? Right now, living in my brother’s dark, dank, and dirty basement, but his wife wants me out. Next stop? Some rat-infested boardinghouse. 

I am on my knees.

Am I to blame? No! Not entirely. Mostly, I blame others, and I know that sounds like a copout but believe me, in my case, it’s true. 

For instance, my parents. 

The year we moved to the new neighborhood — I’d just turned 10 — the textile mill laid Dad off and the hospital cut back Mom’s hours on the cleaning crew. They’d barely scrounged enough money for the house, mainly to get us kids away from where we’d been renting. I wore hand-me-downs and bobos until they fell apart.

Then, the incident.

I shoplifted for the only time in my life. At Moe’s Sporting Goods. I stuffed a baseball mitt under my winter coat and walked out, shocked by how easily I could pull this off. My parents found out. I don’t know how, but they did. They made me return it. I asked if my older brother could come with me.  

“No.”

I carried the mitt in a brown bag, and I dawdled outside of Moe’s until I was sure that there were no other customers. When I entered, the bells on the door jingled.

Head bowed, I approached the counter. My embarrassment inflamed my face, and I knew that even my big ears blushed when I dumped the mitt onto the counter in front of Moe Jr. 

He must have been about 18 at the time. He looked at the glove for a few torturous moments and then whistled.

“You’re my new shortstop,” he decided.

He hadn’t even looked at me and yet, somehow, he knew. They nicknamed me “Blanket” because I covered the whole right side of the infield for the Little League team that Moe’s sponsored. He gave me the mitt, as well as his old banged up bicycle so that I could get a paper route and contribute to the family by at least making my own spending money. No more bobos for me! Converse!

Still, that memory makes me tremble when I think of how it could have so easily played out in different ways, ninety-five percent of them awful. 

But my parents never doubted that they did the right thing, those goody-goods. So, yes, I blame them. I too often in business chose to be honest rather than clever and paid the price for it.

Who else?

Oh, yeah. My high school teacher, Mr. Blandix. I also blame him. In senior year, I’d been accepted to Sacktower University; ready to take out $100,000 in loans in order to get a degree in English lit. Mr. Blandix sent my business term paper to a friend of his at another college and from that they uncovered my aptitude, and I got a full free ride — but I’d have to major in business. Still, who’s to say I wouldn’t have become a great novelist? So, I blame Mr. Blandix, too. 

Who else?

Teresa. I blame her. We met a few years after college, and we knew. In three months, engaged. In six months, Teresa is dead. How? Stupidity. Firefighters were on the way that winter night, their sirens getting louder. That didn’t matter to the mother, however. She took one look at the babysitter choking on the pavement and started to run into the burning house. A neighbor held her back. The woman stopped struggling only after Teresa promised that she’d get the baby. Teresa thought that she could dodge the flames. 

And she did, too. She dashed inside, saved that baby. They took Teresa to the ER just to make sure. She protested — “I’m fine” — but she went. And died on the way. Heart attack caused by smoke inhalation. Then, a few years later I marry my first disaster that led directly to my first bankruptcy. 

So, yes, Teresa’s to blame as well for my crap circumstances. 

Right? 

I squint at my boxes of stuff stacked in a corner of the basement. The salvaging from my once comfortable life.

A door opens and my brother calls down, saying that IRS agents want me to contact them. He works from home and usually would have texted me because normal conversation takes too long. I suspect he worries about leaving an electronic trail.

He lingers at the top of the stairs. I know what that means. He’s concerned about guilt by association. Nobody wants the IRS poking about nearby even if they’re not the focus. His wife wants me out. He wants me out. Boardinghouse here I come. 

I can’t really blame them for wanting me gone.

That thought allows an altered perspective to invade. Suddenly, I feel like a detective in one of those crime shows, blinkered by initial assumptions, only to find that they don’t hold up.   

My parents sacrificed for me. Mr. Blandix steered me toward a lucrative career. Teresa taught me about love and courage.

So, who’s really to blame for my circumstances?

I do know who to blame. 

I stand, pick up the pillow I’d been kneeling upon, brush it off and fling it back onto the tattered couch that’s been my bed the last couple of weeks. 

I shake my fist at the ceiling.

You!

I blame You!

Why do I even talk to You? You did this to me, God! You stand back and just watch as my life implodes! God’s not great nor good. God’s indifferent. I blame You! We’re done, God! This is Jake Dakota’s last prayer! And, as usual, I don’t expect an answer.

Amen!

Frank Diamond’s poem, “Labor Day,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize Award. His short stories have appeared in RavensPerch, the Examined Life Journal, Nzuri Journal of Coastline College, and the Fredericksburg Literary & Art Review, and The Fictional Café among many other publications. He has had poetry published in many publications. He lives in Langhorne, Pa.

Like what we do? Be a Patreon supporter.

The ratatat-tat of the shatterproof glass by my seat window doesn’t bother me. A drunken man stumbles around, like a cripple, but I don’t care. He gets on board, and I keep to myself.

I’ve got my books, my studies to protect me. I’m taking American Lit. We’re studying that attic-dwelling chick, the one who always wrote about death. Foster kids get to go to college for free. It’s a little-known secret, so don’t spread it, or everyone will want to get into the system.

The next stop arrives, and I happen to glance up. A little girl walks alongside her mother from a distance, like G and M in the alphabet. The mother is angry, already ten steps ahead, as the child slips through the closing doors.

The mother snaps, slinging the girl across the seat like a ball off a paddle. “Sit your bony ass down,” she hisses, depositing the girl across from her.

The smell of alcohol hangs thick in the air. The woman’s hair is dyed orange, dry and brittle, looking ready to be chopped into cornmeal. She wears a cheap, stained shirt, and her bra straps hang out — dirty, like she never bothered to wash them. The shape of her body is spilling out of her dungarees. It’s not her poverty that embarrasses me, or even the fact that she drinks during the day — it’s the lack of love for her daughter.

I bow my head, but I can’t help but look again. The girl’s pitch-black eyes remind me of myself. Her clothes are too small for her thin body — high-water pants, tight and worn, covered in lint. She’s darker than a brown paper bag, with thick, wide African nostrils and unkempt hair. The cruelest thing you can do to a black girl is not fix her hair. This girl’s hair was especially damaged from neglect. Black hair is deceptive — it looks wiry and tough, but it breaks easily when it’s not cared for. After all these years, there’s still a patch in my hair that won’t grow.

The car jolts as we enter the tunnel, the chain hook rattling.

“Mommy, what if the train goes in the wrong tunnel?” the girl asks.

Her mother snaps, “Shut the hell up, I ain’t got time for your foolishness.”

At the next stop, the tracks are hot. A rat as big as a cat struts across them. For a second, my mother’s face morphs with this woman’s. I see her fresh like the flash of a knife slicing through stars with steel stillness — the blade blood-stained, tear-stained. If I had a death wish, I’d walk up to that mother and tell her she should smile at her girl.  Pretend she has golden hair instead of dark skin. Pretend her name is Colleen or Jenny, not the ghetto name you gave her, a name that even the other ghetto girls think is too ghetto.

I can’t study Dickinson anymore. I’ve never done drugs, but right then, I think I’d like to try something — Crystal meth, maybe, or at least marijuana, then methadone.

Maybe that’ll numb my mind.

I think even more, and I wish I were dead, like my father. Found on the North

Side, a gun cold and heavy in his stiffening hand.

Being in the system took me South, to a place where doctors, lawyers, professionals, and professors outnumbered the hustlers, whiners, and prostitutes. Until I was 10, I lived in various HUD buildings. The last one was condemned by neglect, and the residents let it fall apart piece by piece. I remember how the fiberglass ate at me alive, how I had to dig myself out from under the wreckage like I was in some disaster film.

I study this woman, as she sucks her teeth and rolls her eyes, scowling at her daughter and anyone else who dares to look her way.

(The NAACP sued the school district because the kids were coming to school shoeless and smelling of urine. The school even had a great Christmas play, but no parents showed up. The solution? Buy more buses — 500 inner-city kids sent out to the suburbs. Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.)

I never found out the girl’s name, and in the litany of life’s guardians, I wanted to lock her in a box marked “fragile.” The next stop comes, and I feel my arm jerk — my shoulder aches.

I watch the girl being pushed, cursed at, and dragged along.

I wouldn’t call what I witness ignorance or even hatred — it’s just tradition.

Allison Whittenberg is an award winning novelist and playwright. Her poetry has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, and New Orleans Review. Whittenberg is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee. They Were Horrible Cooks is her collection of poetry.

Patreon makes Every Day Fiction possible.

A HORSE’S PLOW WE WON’T ALLOW

Their voices cracked hollow, like imaginary whips against which they rebelled.

“Ignorant jackasses,” Gertie muttered. “The field’s been fallow for weeks.”

The other cows barely twitched their ears. Gertie dropped hers down, retreating from the mulish boycott toward a shade tree at the pasture’s edge. With a grunt, she sank into the cool turf, sweet cud rising in her throat, drowning out the donkeys’ clamor beneath the steady churn of her own chewing.

“Excuse me.”

Gertie’s eyes snapped open, her ears pinned back. An orange-and-cream tabby perched on a branch above her, eyes amber-bright in the shade, head tilted, grinning.

“Trouble with the rabble-rousers out there?” it purred.

“I’m a cow,” Gertie replied flatly. “Dissatisfaction isn’t the brand.”

“That’s right,” said the cat, its voice sliding into that of a radio announcer:

Our milk comes from contented cows!

It leaned closer. “Until your teats are dry and they grind you into hamburger.”

Gertie lurched upright. “How rude!”

“Am I wrong?”

Her jaw stilled, the cud caught mid-chew. A long moment passed. “I guess I never thought of it that way.”

A shiver rippled across her hide. She glanced at the empty stall next to the barn where the old bull once bellowed. She remembered Molly’s calf — its panicked bleat fading as the trailer disappeared into the horizon at dawn.

Molly never recovered. She hadn’t made a sound since.

“I don’t like the thought,” Gertie said, her eyelids clamped down, blocking out the empty stall. “But I’ve made peace with my purpose.”

“Yes, purpose,” said the cat, “a word used to keep the simple in line.” It waved its paw toward the herd. “Like those bovine buffoons out there.”

Gertie pursed her lips, gazing past the herd toward the pasture’s edge, where the fencing gave way to scrub and thistle. Her muscles tensed.

A sudden bellow sounded. Gertie turned to see Molly’s head wedged between two rungs of the fence, tongue lashing wildly at a thistle mere inches beyond reach.

Gertie rose. She lifted her front hoof — one step, then another. She froze, leg suspended. Molly’s panicked eyes rolled white.

The cat slithered lower, claws flexed, until it dangled inches from Gertie’s ear. “That’s it,” it whispered, whiskers brushing her side. “Just a few steps further.” Its breath was cloying and sweet — the words oozed into Gertie’s ear like spoiled honey.

Bootsteps thudded across the pasture. The farmer’s whistle split the air — two sharp notes.

The cat froze. Gertie’s ears swiveled, her body remembering: stand, walk, eat. The other cows were already moving toward the gate. The farmer’s silhouette disappeared behind the barn.

“What are you waiting for?” the cat hissed. “Before the butcher comes for you!”

Molly, convulsing, finally wrenched her head free and lumbered into line with the others.

Gertie swung her head back toward the cat — its eyes wide, its grin slick and greedy. Its stomach growled, a string of saliva glistening at the corner of its mouth.

Gertie’s pulse drummed in her throat. The fence line blurred in her peripheral vision. She drew a long breath, pressing her hooves into the turf. “You don’t want me free,” she said. “You want me lost — picked apart when the coyotes are through.”

The cat’s eyes shuttered, its grin twitching.

“Maybe I am just someone else’s hamburger,” she continued, “But I’d rather be a purposeful meal than carrion for a scavenger.”

The cat hissed, ears flat. It spat, twisting away — tail lashing like a tattered flag — and vanished into the tall grass.

Gertie’s breath left her in one long stream, stirring the grass at her hooves. Somewhere in the distance, the donkeys resumed picketing:

A FARMER’S GREED WILL MEET STAMPEDE!

Gertie eased herself once more into the worn patch of turf beneath the tree, warm and familiar. She felt the cud rising again, though the sweetness sat strangely on her tongue this time.

She drifted toward sleep, dreaming of a cat’s hollow trill echoing across a barren horizon as witless donkeys gave chase, convinced it was leading them to paradise.

The pasture stretched endlessly around her.

Joshua Nash is a husband and father in Lockhart, Texas, whose other reveries have appeared in 101 Words and Nail Polish Stories.

Help us keep the daily stories coming with Patreon.

One night, we’re on this snatch and grab op, when, on our way up to the objective, she doesn’t catch the scent of this one Soviet era mine buried in the dirt on the edge of a pomegranate orchard. They covered over the smell somehow, with diesel or mud and, well, you can guess what happened next. Guys running, radios crackling, dust and bust-open pomegranates everywhere, their red sticky bits all over everyone. They call in the medevac. Her handler, Bronco, he’s got shrapnel up and down his leg but she’s — turns out, she’s the one took the brunt of the blast. She doesn’t whine, or yelp, or cry, not once, even as the minutes tick by, a panicked waiting in the darkness, before the flaps of the bird could be heard and it finally finds where we are and settles and sends stinging nettle-sands over pomegranates and all. We slide her onto the stretcher, load her into the bird, wave goodbye, as the bird lifts up, and the onboard medic slips an IV into the vein in her foreleg — to stop the bleeding, treat for shock — same as you would for any person, any fellow soldier, or, at least, we try to.

She hardly knows what’s happened to her or what’s going to happen. “It’s gonna be alright,” Bronco tells her, riding alongside her. “It’ll be alright, girl.” A tactically gloved hand reaches out in the green cabin light to soothe her but, before the bird can haul ass over those hills that touched the sky, to reach the field hospital in the next valley, she’s already gone down that dark path in the woods where only the shades of heroes tread.

I kept a picture of her saved to my desktop a long time. I’d show it to people at work. In the picture, she’s all geared up, grinning, that glimmer in her eye. People always liked that picture of her. I’m not even sure where it is anymore. 

J.G.P. MacAdam is the first in his family to earn a college degree. His publications can be found in The Colorado Review, The Atticus Review, JMWW, Pithead Chapel and Consequence, among others. His novelette “A Square of Dirt” about the birth, life and death of a firebase in the Tangi Valley, Afghanistan is available from ELJ Editions. You can find him at jgpmacadam.com.

Thank you for your Patreon support; it means a lot to us.

Windy Pines 2.6 miles.

Other than the time of day, the images are identical. The trailhead signs are weathered in the same places and an ancient pine tree looms behind them, ready to topple with the right gust of wind. Splotches of bird droppings are crusted in the same place, confirming my suspicions. It rained two days ago, so these photos were taken in the last 48 hours. The air is still, but a chill runs through me anyway, sneaking beneath my windbreaker and wrapping my arms in goosebumps. 

“Shall we?” Deputy Phillips asks, her lips pressed in a thin, bloodless line.

I nod, and follow her up the trail. Thirty yards ahead, we find the origin of the second photo — a pine tree with a missing branch and a tangle of purple flowers wilting at its base. When the photo was taken, the flowers were in full bloom. So much can change in so little time.

A lump rises in my throat. I know what we will find at the top of this mountain if we are lucky, and I’m praying we aren’t. The work we do is bittersweet. We provide closure, often at the expense of people’s hopes. 

My deputy pulls out her personal cell phone and takes a picture of the photo side by side with the tree. Our pace increases as we make our way forward, following the switchback trail.

We almost walk right past the third photo: a trio of boulders poking out of the ground. In the picture, harsh midday sunlight casts shadows from the peaks, making the rocks appear larger than they are. We both squint, but confirm the location is the same.

“Is that…?” asks Phillips, trailing off as she points. 

A small, dried dot of rust. I pull a swab and evidence bag from my pocket and collect the sample. When the swab comes away red, we have to expect the worst. 

There are 38 pictures in the envelope, each printed on glossy paper in perfect clarity. Our lab analyzed them for DNA, but we aren’t that lucky. Whoever did this is diligent, careful to only reveal what they want us to see.

I grabbed a handful of evidence bags from the lab before we left, but with 35 locations ahead of us, I’m afraid it isn’t enough. Worse, I’m afraid what we’ll find is too large for an evidence bag. 

The winding path up the side of the mountain yields something new every three to four stops — some strands of blonde hair here, a few shirt fibers there. My head spins from the elevation and the implications. With three stops to go, I know we should turn back. This trail should be blocked from visitors and a team of forensic analysts should be combing the mountainside. 

But I can’t let her stay there that long. Alone.

Phillips seems to agree with me, because she doesn’t suggest going back to the cruiser either. We take our photo, collect the shoelace that dangles from a twig, and move on down the trail. We keep going until we reach the summit. It’s too far. The previous clues were clumped together, no more than 150 yards apart. We’ve gone more than triple that distance and have nothing to show for it.

For the first time today, we come up short. The photo shows a bulbous mushroom reigning over a pile of dried pine needles. We go back to the previous clue and start our search again. It’s Phillips who steps off the trail and takes her flashlight around the forest floor. 

“Here,” she bellows. 

The wind shifted the needles, hiding away the mushroom. A series of brown dots and a chunk of dark flesh underneath the cap confirm this is the same one from the picture. We continue straight into the trees, leaving the gravel behind us.

Two photos left, and we discover a silver earring on a bed of moss. When I press down on a similar patch nearby, the moss holds its shape. Based on the way the earring is balanced just so, I think it was placed here intentionally, not dropped. The girl’s mother confirmed this morning Gretta owned a pair exactly like it. They were a graduation gift from her grandfather. She was planning to go to grad school in the fall, but now I’m worried someone else will have to take her place.

The final picture shows only the fabric of the t-shirt Gretta Hanson was believed to be wearing when she left for a hike two days ago. While there are no clues to the location of the final photo, we press forward wordlessly. Between two large pine trees, we win this perverse treasure hunt. 

In less than 48 hours, her body has changed. While mornings like this one are cold, the afternoon sun burns away the clouds and bakes the mountainside with hundred degree days. What flesh remains on Gretta’s body is red from the abuse. The rest has been ravaged by animals, or so we hope. The lab will give us more answers, and our missing persons report will become a homicide. 

The hardest part of a case like this isn’t finding the body. The worst thing that ever happened to Gretta has already happened, but her mother’s worst fear will be confirmed. That’s the part I hate the most. But that will come later. 

Maire E. Brown graduated with a degree in writing in 2022, and hasn’t stopped typing since. When she isn’t writing fiction, she’s working as a proposal writer or escaping into someone else’s stories. Maire and her partner live in the Pacific Northwest with their dog, Rigby, and spend time exploring the world around them.

Patreon keeps us going. You can be part of that.

I want to comfort her but I fear that my words might sound hypocritical for I too am grappling with mixed feelings about her father getting married tomorrow.

“It’ll be alright, honey,” I say. “Everything will be just the same as it is now.”

“Everything’s rotten now!” she snaps.

Jenny had never been one to talk much about her feelings but I knew that the pain she felt was deep. After her father left, I’d often hear her crying alone in her room. I knew she had never given up hope of her father and me getting back together… maybe I hadn’t either. But tomorrow would put an end to the quiet longings we both had over the past two years.

“I’m not going,” I hear my daughter say.

“You’ll go,” I respond gently.

“No. I hate him!”

Jenny jumps up and I hear her footsteps moving quickly up the stairs. Then comes the sound of her bedroom door slamming shut.

I wait a few minutes and walk upstairs. I stand in front of her door, take a deep breath and knock.

She is sitting on her bed. The Little Prince lies opened on her lap.

I had first read The Little Prince to Jenny when she was six years old. She’d cried at the ending and when I told her it wasn’t real, she announced there were some things adults would never understand. I wonder if that’s why she’s reading it now.

“Let’s go for a drive,” I say. “I feel like getting out of the house for awhile.”

She looks at me suspiciously. “Where?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Just for a drive.”

I don’t know where I’m going as I head north on the Parkway. Jenny and I have both been silent since we got in the car.

“Where are we going?” Jenny asks, breaking the silence.

“I’m not sure yet,” I say. “But we’ll know when we get there.”

I can feel Jennifer looking at me disapprovingly. She is at the age where any unexpected or frivolous act by an adult, especially me, is intolerable.

I pull off on an exit for Bedford Hills. Her father and I used to take Jennifer to a park around here.

I make a right turn on a familiar looking road and there it is. I park the car.

“Doesn’t this place seem familiar?” I ask as we walk along a narrow cement paved path.

Jenny shrugs.

“Your dad and I used to take you here,” I say as I sit down on a wooden bench with a view of the lake.

“Why are we here?” she asks.

Now I shrug my shoulders. “It seemed like a nice place to re-visit some old memories, good memories.”

Jennifer walks to the lake. She squats down and her hand plays with the water.

She’s so angry, I think sadly — so hurt. I remember being in this very spot with a lively, bright eyed little girl, and a loving husband and father. It wasn’t that long ago and yet it seems like an eternity. I take a deep breath of the cool evening air and suddenly I feel more at peace than I’ve felt in some time.

I sigh as I get up and walk toward the lake. “What are you thinking?” I ask Jenny as I squat down next to her.

No answer.

“I remember when you were five years old,” I say. “You drove me and your father crazy because you always wanted to come here and feed the ducks. But when the ducks came near you, you’d cry and want to go home. Then the next weekend, you’d want to come back and do it again.”

A smile forms on Jenny’s lips which she quickly withdraws.

“Your dad loves you very much, Jen,” I say.

“No he doesn’t,” she responds as she stares down at her hand which is hovering above the water.

“He does, Jen.”

Jenny whirls her head around to face me. “Then why did he leave me!”

There are tears in her eyes as she turns her head quickly away from me and focuses back on the water.

“He didn’t leave you,” I say softly. “He left me. We just weren’t happy anymore.”

Jenny jumps up. “It’s not fair. I’m the one who has to pay for it!”

Jenny is crying. She turns her back on me and walks a short distance, stopping in front of a large oak tree. I can see her running her hand gently over the surface of the tree.

I walk over to her. “You’re right,” I say.

She turns her head slowly to face me, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“It’s not fair that you’ve been hurt. But sometimes life isn’t fair, Jen. But we have to move on and accept that things change.”

Jenny looks away, her eyes fixated on the lake. “Some changes are rotten,” she says.

“I know,” I say, “but we can’t dwell on the past. All we have left from the past is memories and you have a lot of happy memories from when you dad was at home. Now it’s time to go on, to stop being angry, and to make new memories.”

Now she looks back at the tree and runs her hand over the names and initials that have been carved in it over the years. “Here it is,” she says softly.

“What?” I ask as I lean down to see what she’s pointing to.

“Daddy carved this in the tree when I was six… I’ll never forget.”

I look at the carving. It reads “Jenny — Daddy’s little girl.”

She turns to face me and I hold her in my arms. “I love you, mom,” she says.

“I love you, Jen,” I say.

Jill Potter is a psychologist and re-emerging writer from New York whose stories were previously published in a variety of literary and women’s magazines in the U.S. and Scotland. She has worked with Broadway and Off Broadway scripts as an editor and advisor and she is currently working on a screenplay based on a true story from the 1920s.

Regular reader? We need your Patreon support.

This was on his eighth birthday. Little Bella, a mere six months at the time, had ruined his party with her constant crying and screaming, and she then threw up on the cake before Buck could have even a single slice. So instead of delicious double-decker red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, Buck’s father had to run out to the corner market for a store-bought slab that resembled a frosted cinderblock.

All because of his selfish, needy little sister. Ever since Bella was born, she’d sucked up all the attention in the house. Even before she was born, really. Almost from the time his mother had found out she was going to have another baby, it had become all about the impending bundle of joy. Buck had started to feel invisible.

He had naively thought that on his birthday he would be the center of attention again, at least for a little while. No such luck.

So when his mother stuck the candle shaped like the number 8 in the cake and lit the wick, he had closed his eyes, wished his sister had never been born, and blew out the candle.

As soon as he opened his eyes, he knew his wish had come true. The slab cake had disappeared, replaced with the red velvet he had wanted. His father sat across the table, smiling gently at him. “What did you wish for?”

Buck mimicked zipping his lips shut. “I can’t tell you that.”

The highchair where Bella had sat was gone, along with Bella herself. His grandmother and grandfather remained, though they somehow looked older. His mother was nowhere to be seen.

He took a beat to enjoy the silence, no baby wailing as if being scalded. He smiled so wide he thought his face might just split in two.

His first inkling that his wish had gone wrong was when his father picked up the knife and started to cut the cake. That was his mother’s job. Always his mother’s job.

“Where’s Mom?” he asked.

His grandparents both winced in unison, as if he’d used a bad word. His father’s smile wilted and he just looked sad.

“Buddy, we’ve been over this. When your mother lost the baby, she couldn’t deal with it. She wanted to go be with your baby sister.”

Buck went cold all over, as if he’d been pushed in a tub full of ice water. “You mean… are you saying Mommy’s…?” He couldn’t bring himself to finish the question.

His grandmother was weeping now, while his grandfather held her and whispered that it would be okay. His father even looked near tears.

“She’s in heaven looking down on us now like a guardian angel.”

This wasn’t what Buck had meant by his wish. This wasn’t what he had meant at all. Could he undo it, unwish his wish?

He glanced at the candle, a wispy line of smoke trailing up from the extinguished wick, and thought he might have to wait until next year. Maybe on his ninth birthday he could make it right.

MG Allan loves telling stories above all else. He spent his childhood making up stories in his head, and now he’s spending his adult life writing them down.

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