Speaker 1: Welcome to Fiction Revies. For each episode is a short story, rewritten, reimagined,
and reshaped into a different genre, which is chosen at random.
Our story this week is called coming Back. It is
in the horror genre, and it is the first version
of the story. By the time Cole reached the clearing,
the sun was already sinking, smearing the sky and bruised
purples and burnt gold. The house sat in the middle
of the field, stubborn, defiant. It shouldn't be standing, not
after the fire, not after the collapse, not after what
he'd done. A faint wind moved through the weeds, hissen
around charred posts and blackened beams. The roofs sagged in
the middle. The front porch leaned. Smoke stains crawled up
the siding like ribcages. The windows were all blown out,
dark and hollow. Good, Cole thought, at least you cannot
disappoint dead things. He shifted the empty pack on his shoulders,
empty for now. If he was right, there was still
a hidden cash of antibiotics, painkillers, bandages, antiseptics, tucked behind
a panel in the pantry wall. Supplies no one else
knew about but him. Supplies that could keep people alive,
people who no longer wanted anything to do with them.
He could still hear Jenna's voice from the settlement, flat
and tired. We're not asking you to fix it, Coal,
just stop making it worse. Her hand had tightened around
her son's shoulders when he walked past, as if coal
might break the child just by existing too close, cold
and argue. You know they followed him once, they believed
him once, but the last time he said, trust me,
I know what I'm doing. People died. He looked at
the house again, at the warped front door hanging off
its hinges. You promised you'd stay away from that place,
Jenna said, crossing our arms, eyes hard. Nothing good at
the end of that road. We don't know what is
still there, He replied, I have to try. They needed antibiotics,
they needed real pain meds, needed anything more than boiled water,
reused rags and hope winter was clawing closer. Infection didn't
care that. They were tired of being afraid it would
get cold soon, and that never made it easier. Now
standing in front of the house, he took a breath.
The air tasted faintly of ash and mold, or maybe
that was just a memory. Thickness throat. He stepped forward,
boots sinking into the soft, overgrown dirt. Get in, get
the supplies, get out, he said to himself, simple on paper.
Cole climbed the cracked porch steps. They groaned under his weight,
a long, complaining sound that set his teeth on edge.
Up close, the door was worse than it looked from
a distance, swollen, warped, its paint blistered and peeling from
the fire and from years of weather. For a moment,
he saw the way it had been solid wood, a
brass handle, polished by a thousand casual touches, a welcome
met that read this is fine with a cartoon dog.
Jenna had laughed at the first time she'd visited. That
was before the world turned, before the shortages, before the
desperate armed strangers, before the arguments on the porch, the shouting,
the gunshot, the whoosh of fire racing along the wall.
Was hungry and unwilling to stop. Before he decided he
knew better than everyone else. Cole set his shoulder against
the door and pushed it. Resisted, then lurched inward with
a guttural scrape, A cloud of cold, stale air rolled
over him, carrying the smells of mold, wet ash, and
something sweet underneath, like fruit that had been forgotten in
the fridge. He stepped inside. The silence hid first, not
the easy quiet of an empty home, but a hollow,
padded stillness that swallowed sound. No wind, no birds, just
the slow settling of rotten wood, and his own breathing,
too loud in his ears. The living room was a wreck.
The ceiling had partially collapsed, dirty insulation hung down and
sagging tuffs. The couch was half burned, springs ex bosed
like ribs. A dark handprint was seared into the wall
near the doorway, the fingers spread wide, locked in a
permanent blistered reach. Cole's chest tightened. He knew that handprint,
knew who had slammed a palm against the wall. While
the fires climbed, coughing and begging for help, he tore
his eyes away. He forced his focus to the layout
living room, kitchen, beyond pantry, off the kitchen, back corner,
lower wall, behind the shelving, where he installed the false panel.
Like an over cautious prepper, he walked carefully. The floor
complained under each step, the long boards groaning and flexing.
Dust spun lazily in the thin light filterin through the
broken windows. At the entrance to the dining room, his
boots bumped something soft. He looked down. A child's shoe
lay and the debris melted pink. The rubber walked into
it like a little blackened curl. Cole's throat locked. He
hadn't thought about all that could happen when he shouted
at the armed man on the porch that there were
children inside the house. Hadn't thought, in the middle of
his righteous fury to consider who else lived there before
he accused the man of profiting off of desperate neighbors.
He stepped around to the shoe without touching it. It
felt like a line he shouldn't cross. In the kitchen doorway,
he had to duck under a low hanging beam. The
roof sank of wet brought and old smoke, cabinets sagging
off the walls at odd angles. Mold carpeted the counters
in furious black patches. The sink was full of rubble
and a dead bird. The pantry door stood closed. His
hope sank slightly. He remembered leaving it wide open that night,
cupboards spilling flour and canned beans. As he grabbed whatever
he could carry, Smoke had crawled along the ceiling. Heat
licked at his back. Maa had screamed his name from
the hallway. When he was so focused on what he
could say, he didn't consider who needed saving. Cole's fingers
tightened on the hatchet at his belt. Without thinking, he
crossed the kitchen and wrapped his hand around the pantry knob.
It was cold and slick under his palm. He opened
the door. The darkness breathed out. The narrow pantry. Shelves
were half collapsed, jars shattered on the floor. The smell
inside was worse, mildew, dust, a faint sour taste. He knelt,
reaching behind the lowest shelf, where the hidden panel should be.
His fingers scraped along bare walls, no latch, his pulse hitching,
he searched higher, lower along the baseboards. Nothing, no metal,
no raised edge, just rough wood. No, he muttered, come on,
come on. He pulled the shelf away from the wall
with a grunt. It snapped loose, spilling a cascade of
dirt and glass onto the floor behind it. The wall
was solid, newer boards, cleaner than the rest, seamless. The
panel was gone. Someone had been here, someone who knew
exactly where the look. His heart beat slammed in his ears.
If the supplies were gone, if he went back with nothing,
they'd be right to shut him out for good. He
would have risked everything for another failure. Hole straightened slowly,
the pantry closing in around him. The house seemed to
hold its breath. He stepped back into the kitchen. That's
when he heard it. A soft creak above him, one
floor up. A weight shifted on old boards. Not an animal,
not the wind footsteps. Coal's hand found the hatchet properly.
This time. He stood still, letting his own breathing quiet.
The sound came again, two slow steps, then a pause,
like whoever was up there was listening to. He swallowed hello.
His voice sounded thin in the ruined room. No answer.
The silence thickened. He considered leaving, walking out the way
he came across the clearing, back along the cracked road,
back to the settlement with empty hands and a simple story.
Houses empty supplies are gone, I tried, But leaving meant
staying exactly who he was in their eyes, who he
was in his own eyes. He moved toward the living room, forward,
where the stairs rose along the far wall, or had risen.
Half the staircase had collapsed. Only a crooked spine of
steps clung to the wall. Now the landing above was
a slice of deep shadow. Coal stepped closer, heart thudding
a little too fast. If you're here for the same
thing I was, I'm not looking for a fight, he called,
Just talk to me. Silence. Then a boy drifted down
from the landing, so soft he almost thought he imagined it.
He stopped dead. His brain supplied the memory before he
could push it away. Mars's face streaked, with eyes wide,
hand on his arm yelling his name over the roar
of the fire coal. We have to go, We have
to go now. He hadn't heard her voice since he
buried what was left of her. He licked his lips.
Who's there? The house creaked, beams shifting. Something moved just
beyond the railing, a shape. It appeared to lean in
his direction. He couldn't make out a face, just an outline.
It was too still. The voice came again, and clearer
this time. You shouldn't have come back. The sound crawled
under his skin. It was almost hers, almost the cadence,
the softness, but it was hollow, like someone was repeating
the lines without understanding them. He took a step back
without meaning to the floor creaked. The figure didn't react,
didn't flinch, just watched. Coal cleared his throat. If you're
squatting up there, I don't care. I just need medicine.
Then I'll go. And there was silence for a while,
then softly come up stairs. A chill slid down his spine. No,
he said, automatically, stairs, don't look too friendly. Somewhere in
the house gave out a low, dragging groan. Dust sifted
from the ceiling. The figure at the landing seemed to
ripple just a fraction, then drifted backwards out of sight.
Cole realized he was holding his breath. He let it
out slowly. If someone was up there, and he was
almost sure that there was, they'd have access to the
whole second floor. If supplies had been moved, they might
have gone somewhere else in the house, somewhere safer than
a burnt pantry, somewhere sealed. He remembered the small storage
closet at the end of the upstairs hall. He'd always
meant to tear it out and expand the room behind
it to make more space, but he never had. He
glanced at the broken stairs again. This is stupid, he thought,
you're going to die, and hear chasing ghosts and hopes.
Then he remembered the kid at the settlement, the one
with the infected leg, feverish and glassy eyed. He thought
of the way that Jenna looked at him when she
thought he wasn't paying attention, like she wanted to forgive him,
and couldn't find a way o grid his teeth. He
didn't risk the stairs. Instead, he took the hallway at
the back of the living room, the one that had
led to the ground floor bedrooms and the tiny closet
where he kept his tools, the one They used to
smell like laundry detergent and Mars shampoo. Now it smelled
like wet dirt and old plaster. Wallpaper peeled in long
strips from the walls. His old bedroom door hung half open,
shadows pooled inside. He kept walking. Mar's door stood across
from his. He did not look. His ladder was where
he had left it. He stayed focused get in, get
the supplies, get out. The narrow storage closet waited at
the end of the hall door. Leaning slightly inward, Coal
took hold of the knob, half expecting it to be
jerked from the other side. It turned easily cold. Air
swept out when he opened it, sharper than the chill
the hallway. The closet was small, barely deep enough for
him to stand inside. Empty shelves lined the walls with
the back. The back was wrong. The boards were newer, straighter,
not scorched or warped. Someone had replaced them after the
fire reinforced them. He stepped in the walls, feeling too
close around his shoulders. Coal ran his fingers over the boards, solid,
no seams. He knocked The wood gave back a dull,
thick sound, but underneath it faintly it echoed hollow. He
glanced over his shoulder. The hallway was empty, the doors
on either side remained closed. If someone hid the supplies,
this is exactly where they'd do it. He raised the
hatchet and brought it down on the boards. The first
flow barely dented them. The second sent a spider web
crack across the surface. By the fourth hit wood splintered,
a narrow gap opening between the planks. Dust puffed into
his face. He coughed, blinking grit out of his eyes.
From the other side of the wall came a sound, soft, labored.
He heard breathing, coal froze. It wasn't the slow, wet
rasp he'd heard above him earlier. This was different, smaller trembling,
a voice, followed muffled by wood coal. His heart jolted
so hard it hurt. That was her, not the hollow
mimic from the landing, not the bronz cadence from his memory.
This sounded like Mara, the way she used to talk
when they were alone in the kitchen table at two
in the morning, Small, tired, honest. His throat went dry.
Mara a quiet shivering inhale from behind the boards. I'm cold,
she whispered. He cracked wider than the walls, pressing his
palms against the wood. It was icy, almost burning. I'm
here now, he said, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have. The
house rumbled around him, a long groan running through the beams,
as if the structure disapproved. Cole raised the hatchet again
and tore into the boards, splinters flew. The whole widened
enough for fingers than a hand, and his arm he
pulled the broken wood aside. Each time he ripped a
piece free, the cold rushed in sharper. He shoved the
last board down with a grunt. Behind the wall was
a narrow space, a secret room, no windows, bare studs,
and tucked into the back corner, knees pulled up to
her chest, arms wrapped around her shins. Mara or her
shape at least. Her shadowed hair hung in clumps around
her face. Her clothes were the ones she'd worn that night, smoked,
stained jeans, a shirt he vaguely remembered teasing her about.
Her skin was pale, stretched thin across her cheeks. Her
eyes and the beam of his flashlight were wide and dark,
pupils swallowing almost all the color. Cold. She whispered, voice
hoarse and breaking. You came back. He fell to his knees,
without meaning to. Every apology he'd swallowed for years, piled
up behind his teeth. At once, I thought you were dead.
She flinched at the word, a tiny twitch in her shoulders. Cold,
she repeated, and the way she said it and made
his chest hurt. He slid one knee closer across the
dusty floor. I'll get you out, he said. Well, he
stopped looking at her hand, her fingers where they clutched
her own arm. They were wrong, too long, the nails dark, cracked,
thicker than nails ought to be. He took a step back.
She followed his stare, then slowly uncurled her grip, stretching
her fingers towards him. Palm open up. We have to go,
she whispered, soft pleading. The phrase slid over his skin
like ice water. He realized she had said that before
we have to go. We have to go. Now. Behind her,
against the far wall, he saw boxes, plastic crates, faded labels,
medical seals. His breath caught supplies, his supplies, Some he
recognized from his prep days. The others newer, picked off, conboys, traded, scavenged.
Someone had been feeding this little hidden room for a
long time. Mara, did you take those? He asked. Her
head tilted to the side in that familiar way that
is used to mean I don't understand the question. So
now it went just a little too far, neck bending
at an angle that made his stomach twist. Her eyes
didn't leave his face. You left, she said instead, not accusing,
just naming it. He swallowed, I know, I know. The
house shuddered. The closet door behind him swung on its
hinges and slammed shut. The sound cracked through the space
like a gunshot, and the darkness seemed to press closer.
He twisted around on his knees. The door was solid, pale,
light leaking in only around the edges. His mouth went dry.
Cool Mar whispered behind him. He turned to face her.
She had shuffled closer without making a sound, her knees
still drawn up, but she was almost within reach. The
cold coming off her was stronger, like she carried winter
in her bones. His mind focused on the settlement, the
kid with the fever, Jenna's guarded face, the way everyone
had silently stepped aside when he walked past, as if
guilt might be contagious. If this was really Mara, if
somehow she survived trapped in here, changed by smoke and
cold and whatever else lived in this house. He couldn't
leave her again, But every instinct screamed at him that
whatever sat in the corner beckoning was not meant to
walk back out under open sky. He forced his voice
to work. I'm taking those supplies, he said, nodding towards
the grate. I can help people, I can make some
of this right. Her gaze flickered barely to the bar,
then back to him. Her pupils dilated further, swallowing the
last ring of color. Stay, she whispered, They don't need you.
He flinched, like she'd hit him. That was the knowledge
that kept him awake most nights, that the settlement had
learned to survive in spite of him, not because of him.
Her hand extended fully, fingers trembling, waiting for him to
take it. He thought of dying here, the house ceiling
up behind him, his bones slowly joining the rot in
the walls. Mara or what wore her face, never being
alone again. And he thought of the boy with the
lay of Jenna's son, sitting on the makeshift caught jaw clenched,
pretending not to WinCE. Cole's breath shook. I can't stay,
he said. Her expression barely changed, but the temperature in
the room dropped a few more degrees. The frost began
to creep along the floor where he sat, delicate white
veins reaching for his knees. Her voice layered, then a
second tone, sliding underneath the first, deeper hollow. Bold. You
left us, it said, you left, you left, you left.
He grabbed the nearest crate without taking his eyes off her.
His fingers went numb when they brushed the plastic, like
the cold had teeth. When he tried to drag it
towards the opening, she lunged, not like a person, like
a puppet, pulled forward with strings. Limbs jerked too fast,
too sharp. Her hands lambed into the crate, pinning it
to the floor. Her head snapped up for the first time,
her mouth pulled back from her teeth. Those were wrong, too. Stay.
She hissed, not loud, but close. Her breath was so
cold that it burned his cheeks. He yanked at the
crate towards him. Her grip was strong, inhumanly so, but
the plastic was slick with condensation. His hands slipped. He
changed his angle, using the hatchet his leverage, wedging the
blade under the edge, prying the crate scraped forward an inch.
She let out a sound then that was neither human
nor animal, somewhere between a sob and a snarl, like
grief and hunger, tangled, frost, climbed the walls. The beam
above him groaned, wood cracking, cold, gritted his teeth, dug
in his heels, and ripped a crate free. For one heartbeat,
they were both off balance, her reaching him, pulling. Then
he shoved backwards, dragging the k crape through the opening
and into the closet with him. Paull slammed onto his
back like a wave. Mara, I'm sorry, he choked, not
looking directly at her face. Now I'm so damn sorry.
He surged to his feet. On the other side of
the door. The wood moved reluctantly, it gave, and the
door flew open. Rotten lights spilled in from the hallway.
The warmth, such as it was, hit his skin like
a slap. Behind him in the hidden room, something thrashed forward,
fingers scraping along the wood beside his head. Black nails gouged,
deep furrows come back. The layered voice roared, the sound
blowing over him in a blast of freezing air. Staggering
into the with the crate clutched to his chest, The
door slammed shut so hard the frame cracked. Coal ran
down the hallway, boots pounding lungs, burning past Mar's door,
which rattled past his own room, where something knocked once
softly from inside, through the living room, where the handprint
on the wall seemed darker now, fingers stretched wider, reaching
frim The whole house groaned, its structure buckling and complaining,
but it didn't collapse. It held itself together just long
enough to watch him go. He burst through the front
door and nearly fell down the porch steps, catching himself
on the rail at the last second. The air outside
tasted thin and weak, but alive. Sound brushed back into
the world, the hum of wind through dry grass, the
distant caw of a crow. His breath came in ragged gulps,
the crate dug bruises into his arms, every muscle trembled.
It wasn't until he was halfway across the clearing that
he dared to look back. The house stood where it
had been, sagging and blackened, exactly as before, silent, rodding, empty.
If you didn't know better. From one of the broken
upstairs windows, the shadow leaned out just a fraction too far,
a suggestion of a head, maybe hair, maybe not, You
couldn't be sure. He turned away, By the time he
reached the road, his fingers were tingling, not from the
weight of the crate, but from the lingering cold that
seemed to seep from it. He was almost back to
the settlement when he decided to open the crate under
a cover of trees where the road curved. His hands
shook a little as he pried the lid up inside
neatley stacked for vials, pill bottles, gods, suture kits, more
than he dared hope, enough to buy them months, maybe
enough to earn him a second look, maybe a second chance.
A small glass bottle sat on top of everything else alone.
He picked it up. There was no label, just a
fogging of frost along the inside of the glass, like
it had spent most of its time out in the open,
not tucked safe in this crate. When he turned it,
something faint scraped the glass from within, like a fingernail
tracing the curve. A whisper trickled the inside of his skull,
as soft as breath against the back of his neck,
and the frost was written. He came back. He shut
his fist around the bottle before his hands could stick
to shake. For a long moment, he stood there on
the broken road, staring toward the distant edge of the settlement.
Smoke from their cooking fires rose and thin lines. Voices drifted,
faint and fragile. He slipped the bottle into his pocket.
Then he picked up the crate and walked home. The
wind at his back was cold, but not as cold
as the memory of the house, not as cold as
the knowledge that somewhere in that hidden room, something wearing
Mara's face was still waiting, waiting for him to come
back and stay. Thank you so much for listening. Let's
see what I'm writing next. It's going to be another
new story, and this one will be a romance. And
according to the new story generator, this romance story, the
location will be arrest up, the main character will be
someone in love. How convenient, and the story will center
on letting go of a version of themselves. So sounds fun.
Next week the story changes, See you there,