Places Never Called Special
A nostalgic exploration in microfiction
Think of home-
Who met you in the morning, kissed you before the bell? How many nights spent dreaming in the same bed year after year?
Ash in the Earth, just memories forgotten. Parts so deeply ingrained that time could never erode them.
-tell me what you remember.
Crows; bent beaks and greasy wings - perched on fences, light poles. Circling, waiting for scraps to be forgotten. The biggest crows I've ever seen.
Birds continue to circle but you and I are gone. As you depart, a thousand children take your place. They'll share your fears and repeat your mistakes.
About the Creator
Zack Graham
Zack is a writer from Arizona. He's fascinated with fiction and philosophy.
Current Serializations:
Ghosts of Gravsmith
Sushi - Off the Grid!
Contact: [email protected]
Reader insights
Outstanding
Excellent work. Looking forward to reading more!
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Compelling and original writing
Creative use of language & vocab
Heartfelt and relatable
The story invoked strong personal emotions
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More stories from Zack Graham and writers in Fiction and other communities.
Symposia
Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky - this was a relatively new phenomena. Like all terrestrial bonds, though, the horizon was rekindled and made new. Parts of the whole were highlighted and polished to last forever; that went for all relationships, aware or otherwise.
By Zack Grahamabout a year ago in Fiction
At the Sheltering Doors
The doors, they always scrambled for the doors first. When they arrive and always by night it was a race to desperately bar the creatures entry to the house in the slow crawl of numb feet that the dream would impose upon him. He never seemed fast enough and the creatures uninhibited by the same constraints always made the doors first. The houses in his dream-scapes vary night to night - Some are mansions, others shacks and some are distorted contortions of his childhood home which burned down when he was ten. But the doors are always the same – frail, loose hinged and never could be fully shut. The creatures too vary – twisted and corrupted forms of animals and people familiar to him: family dogs preternaturally swollen to twice their size with rotting coats of mange and slicked damp with dark liquids of decay. The people too were bloated vestiges of ones vaguely familiar to him but whose names escape him. Their eyes gorged wide with dark blood which streaked their mottled faces in crusted trails like lost rivers which hung from their chins swinging in ropy columns beneath paling yellowed teeth. To let them break through would mean death. This he knew with grave certainty. At the door was desperation and panic as their stench emanated forth, sickly and pungent like vomit and mold and ending in a gruesome exhalation like cancer, the stench sticky and clinging invading his nostrils and lungs never to be expunged. Then in the sudden waking he never knew if he repelled them or not.
By Kevin Rolly4 days ago in Horror
Comments (6)
Brilliant work, Zack! 🖤
Your words flow with such grace and beauty.
Zack, I appreciate your use of descriptive language that created such vivid imagery! This was such a deep and thought provoking piece, leaving me to ponder the meaning of what it is to be a parent and the strength it takes to endure it.
Brilliant imagery used to ram the point home 😁
Being a parent, especially a new one, makes you ponder numerous such things. It tears you apart to know that they will one day face the pains you have faced yourself; the loss of loved ones, of you. The pain of failure. The pressure of society. Solace comes in realizing they will also share the joys and happiness and love and wonder of the world. Remember that those positive moments will far outnumber the negative.
Contemplative, sobering & driving its point home where it will forever be embraced, near to our hearts. Powerfully evocative.