Short Stories 🖋

The Unknown

Once, a young girl had a family, a town, and she believed everything they said.

Once, that same girl drank up their lies like the sweetest of teas, easily bought, gullible.

Once, the girl was told that past her town's smoky, protective barrier, there were monsters that would swallow her whole. Chomp on her bones. Delight in the taste of her morrow.

Once upon a time.

Anala Stone stood in front of a decrepit old cottage, balanced on the rotting wood of the front step. Wind whistled by her, pulling at her red hair and tugging it every which way. Goosebumps erupted on her skin, more by the minute, and Anala held her arms closer to her chest.

What if she was wrong?

No. She couldn't be wrong. She just couldn't. If she was, then her sister Mara really was gone and she was about to walk into a death trap.

Being wrong was not an option.

Staring up at the misty barrier from a safe distance away, Anala contemplated going back. It would be easy, really. Simple. Incredibly, beautifully simple.

And she'd be safe, in what she knew, in what had protected her for fifteen years.

She'd be safe.

If she left, she'd be entering the unknown. And possibly dying. That was still a possibility.

Mara.

Mara, being shoved out. Mara, somewhere out there.

She could not get out of this now.

Taking a deep breath, Anala stepped off the porch, into the dew-coated grass. And began to run.

Into the nothingness ahead.