Greetings, Talebones Readers!
I have a quick little ditty for you: a creepy flash fiction. I chose to keep this very casual and lightweight with little to no revision or overthinking compared to my usual, for a bit of exercise. I hope you enjoy!
NOTE: I want to thank
and his Flash Fiction Friday prompts for some much-needed inspiration to get this story started! If you’re ever in need of some weekly storytelling seedlings, get yourself over there posthaste. (And subscribe to Gibberish to get the next ones right in your inbox!)If you like this little story, and you want to see more like it, please let me know with a like, comment, share, or restack!
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Allison Roe clutched the steering wheel with tight fingers, leaning forward as if to will the silver Mercedes faster along the northbound interstate. The sun had disappeared behind the trees an hour earlier and the black forest-lined ribbon of freeway was illuminated only by occasional patches of amber streetlight and the dancing pools of her own headlights. Despite keeping her A/C on, the air inside the car felt stuffy, hot from the summer asphalt tumbling by underneath her.
She glanced into the rearview mirror again, as she had so many times already. The nearest car was nowhere close. Allison knew that it would make no sense for her to be followed, but she felt eyes on the back of her neck anyway.
She had to pee. She had needed to pee ever since passing through Everett on her way up from Seattle, but she had resolutely ignored it. It had evolved into a throbbing necessity and she couldn’t hold it anymore.
As if on cue, a bright blue Rest Area sign bloomed in the dark and she followed it, leaving the interstate and pulling into the small stop. It was otherwise empty; no truckers dozing in their vehicles, no other cars parked around the small brick building at its heart. The sign on the side of the kiosk read CUSTER REST AREA.
Allison parked her Mercedes as close as she could get to the Women’s Restroom door and grabbed her vintage Dooney & Bourke purse off the passenger seat. She threaded her keys into her fingers as a precaution, locked her car and triple-checked it, and then walked carefully—head on a swivel—into the restroom. It was empty. She peed fast, washed her hands, checked her hair and her lipstick in the mirror.
Someone had scrawled COW on the glass in permanent marker, with an arrow pointing to the middle of the mirror where her face hovered. Allison smirked and left the restroom.
In her pocket, her phone buzzed. She got into her car and locked the doors before answering.
“Z,” she said. “I’m on my way. I’m somewhere near Ferndale, I think.”
“I hate all this secrecy, Ally dear,” Zachariah said, his voice smooth as ever. There was music on in the background of his apartment; Satie, maybe? “Will you not tell me what you’ve got up your sleeve?”
“Not yet. It’s too important, Z. I can’t risk it.”
“Your lack of trust is hurtful. Give us a hint, pet.”
Allison stared at the Women’s Restroom sign, the headlights passing on the freeway. She couldn’t help herself. She wanted him to feel it with her.
“It’s Fermina,” she said.
The silence on the other end of the line was delicious. Allison sat in it, soaked in it, letting the pause drag. But when Zachariah spoke again, his voice sounded a little strained.
“I don’t…know what you mean. What do you mean it’s Fermina?”
“It’s new. It’s exclusive. No one has ever seen it before. A whole roll of her undeveloped film from 1978, and a note written in her handwriting.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Never mind that.” In truth, Allison didn’t have a good answer to that question. It had been left in her mailbox in an unmarked manila envelope only a week earlier. When she had opened it, she nearly fainted from the shock.
“If it’s undeveloped, how are you so sure it’s really hers?”
Allison had already said more than she intended to. But this was Z; she was going to have to come clean eventually. “I snipped and processed the final exposure. It’s definitely Fermina’s work. There is no doubt in my mind. Once it’s fully processed, just think of how many potential masterpieces are on that roll. It could be a whole gallery showing on its own.”
She could see it in her mind’s eye: Z’s exclusive little gallery in Surrey, alive with Fermina’s forgotten and rediscovered work lining the walls. Allison as his silent partner, collectors salivating into their champagne flutes and canapes as they reached for their wallets.
She could see it. She could feel it.
There was another silence on the other end of the phone. This one was thicker with meaning, icy with caution.
“Is that…wise, Ally? To be associating her name with yours so soon?”
Allison’s hand tightened on the phone. She frowned. “I’m starting over, Z. We agreed to that. We’re not talking about the past. You told me that.”
Zachariah exhaled like a gust of wind. “You’re right, pet. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You told me you would give me a fresh start,” Allison said. “And that’s what this is. No one has to know I’m even involved. New work from Fermina, discovered after fifty years and debuted for the very first time? Especially now that she’s dead? It will mean everything. It will cover over all the bullshit. Get ready, Z. You’re not prepared for how incredible this is.”
He laughed, an uncertain sound. But she could tell he was already doing some multi-digit calculation in his head.
“Just get here safely,” he said. “I’m so looking forward to working with you.”
“Likewise. See you soon.”
Allison hung up. A quiet filled the car. She rubbed her eyes and thought about the final hour or so left until she reached Surrey. It was so close and yet so far.
Caffeine, she thought. If there was ever a time for shitty rest stop coffee or soda from the vending machine, it was now.
She left the safety of her car once more—locked and triple-checked—and headed around the corner to the vending machines. The coffee station was broken but she managed to get a bottle of Coke from the machine, then headed back toward her car.
As she approached the Mercedes, she froze.
There was a piece of paper on the windshield, held in place with one wiper-blade, fluttering against its constraint.
She looked around. The parking lot was still empty. There was no other noise except the sound of cars whispering by on the freeway, the rustle of a restless breeze in the landscaped trees, the hum of nearby powerlines.
Allison carefully removed the paper from the wipers. Even before she got a good look at it she knew what it was.
The paper was decades old, delicate. The message was handwritten: these are mirrors. It was signed with a spidery “F” and dated Summer 1978.
But this note was supposed to be safe at the bottom of her suitcase, in the nondescript manila envelope, beside the undeveloped film roll and single developed photo.
Allison’s blood chilled in her veins. She checked her car doors: all locked, just as she had left them. Then she unlatched her trunk and threw it open. She zipped open her suitcase, moved aside her clothes and underwear, and fished out the manila envelope. She opened it and peered in.
The undeveloped Kodak Tri-X 400 roll was still there, along with the one developed photo she had snipped away, something she could hardly bring herself to look at a second time. The note was the only thing missing.
But the note was in her hand. The note had been on her windshield.
How…?
She put everything back in the envelope and tucked it safely into her suitcase again, replacing all of the clothes on top to hide it. Then she closed the trunk.
Right as the trunk slammed shut, a quick flash of light. So fast that Allison wasn’t even sure at first that she had seen it.
She turned to look over her shoulder. There was nothing there past the lit parking lot, just a sea of darkness beyond a low fence.
Spooked, Allison quickly ducked into the driver’s seat and locked the doors behind her once more. But as she did so, her phone rang again. It was Zachariah’s number.
“Z? I’m about to get going again, what’s up?”
There was an eerie, buzzing silence on the other end, until Z said, “Why did you lie to her?”
Allison narrowed her eyes. “Lie to who?”
“To the old woman. To Fermina. Why did you do that?”
A sudden, surprised rage made Allison’s fingers go rigid. “What the hell are you asking me that for? Why now?”
“You took advantage of her,” Z said. “She was ill and confused, and you took her money.”
Even in her memory, Allison could smell her. Fermina, in those final days. Dementia had wracked the once-genius photographer’s mind, turned her into a shell of herself. But she had no family, no kids, so Allison figured someone should be making money from the old woman’s art. Why not Allison? Why not Roe Gallery, Seattle’s brightest?
The old bat’s work was exquisite. She had been an icon in her heyday, a witch behind the camera. Oracular. She was a pareidolist, presenting abstracts and textures in such a way so that the onlooker could find faces in them. No two viewers ever seemed to see her photos the same way. The photos were mirrors, just like Fermina’s note said. The photos reflected back what the viewer wanted to see.
When it all came crumbling down—the exposé of Roe Gallery, the local-interest blog posts and news stories, the TikTok cancellation mayhem, the court cases—Fermina was the one artist Allison felt she owed nothing to, out of all the ones whose work she had inflated to make a little extra on the side. The old woman didn’t need that money anyway. She had died a year later.
“Z,” Allison said, slowly, “I need your support, okay? We can make a lot of money together with this, but you have to trust me.”
“Trust you?” A rasp. A groan. “Trust you? Trust you? Trust you?”
The voice wasn’t Z’s anymore. The voice was—
The call dropped with a sound like a shutter-click. Allison lowered her phone. She sat stunned for a moment, just staring at her own dim, hollow-eyed face in the black screen.
Then, with shaking fingers, she re-dialed Zachariah’s number. It rang four times before he finally picked up, sounding breathless and a little concerned.
“Are you okay, pet? I just stepped out for a smoke.”
Allison blinked. “You…you called me just now…”
“No? No, I didn’t. Are you alright? Are you on your way?”
Allison didn’t know what to say. “Yeah. I’m…I’m coming. Leaving now.”
“Good, good. I’ll see you soon. Drive safely.”
Allison hung up, mind racing. What’s wrong with me?
She looked in her rearview mirror. She couldn’t see anything through her rear windshield. Only then did she realize that her trunk was wide open.
Puzzled, Allison got out of the Mercedes again and stood staring. The trunk was yawning open and her suitcase had vomited its contents onto the pavement, her clothes and underwear and toiletries and designer shoes leaving a long trail across the parking lot and into the void of empty darkness beyond the fence.
The envelope. Where is the envelope?
Panic seized her. Allison followed the trail of her clothes, lifting them out of the way, scrambling to find the envelope with Fermina’s final film roll and note inside of it.
It was nowhere. A whimpering sound escaped her throat as desperation seized her.
I need this, she said, her heart pounding. I deserve this, you old bitch!
Halfway to the fence, a glimmer of hope: she found the one developed photo lying facedown on the pavement beside an old crumpled Gatorade bottle. She didn’t want to look at it, but she had to see if it had been damaged.
She picked it up and turned it over. It was perfectly fine. It was exactly the same as it had looked when she developed it in her darkroom. Exactly the way it had looked when she had realized what a goldmine she had discovered, the delicious horror of it licking at her mind like a flame.
It was one of Fermina’s classic textures, grainy with its vintage softness, so soft and strange that Allison couldn’t tell what she had taken a photo of to get the effect. But as with all of Fermina’s work, Allison could make out the dim outline of a face in the abstract crosshatching and shadows.
It was her own face. It had always been her own face. Decades before Allison was born, Fermina had captured her in surreal portraiture. Immortalized her. That’s when she knew she had to do this. That’s what she had hoped to see.
Another flash filled the summer night air, but only for a moment.
The sound of a shutter click echoed out from the darkness beyond the fence.
Allison whirled around, holding the photo in her hand. The freeway beyond the rest area was impossibly empty. The lights around the kiosk guttered and went out.
“Fermina?” Allison called into the dark, feeling insane. “Fermina, please? Let me have this one last thing. Give me this one last thing. I need it. I deserve it.”
There were faces in the gloom around the rest stop. Rippling faces in the textures of the fence, the gloomy grass, the close and cloud-riddled summer night. Everywhere she looked, a face. Staring at her. Knowing everything.
“Fermina?” Allison’s voice sounded hollow in her ears. She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight, illuminating the developed photo in her hand once more.
It was her own face. But now it was screaming.
She lowered the phone to reveal the rest of her trail of clothes. It stretched past the fence and into the blank void beyond. Somehow she knew that’s where the roll of film would be, along with the note in the distinct handwriting of a young genius in her prime. these are mirrors.
She knew that’s where Fermina would be waiting.
Allison looked back only once at the safety of her car, the dark rest stop, the empty freeway. She swayed a little, tempted.
“I deserve this,” she murmured.
Then she turned and followed the trail of herself into the black.
A shutter clicked, like the snap of delicate bone.
END
Thank you for reading!
Want more Talebones fiction? Check out my new serial, Smoke-Mouth:
The Fool
Smoke-Mouth is a dystopian supernatural novella, serialized in twelve projected parts. This is Episode One.
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Now that is solid gold horror! Check the doors and windows scarry!! And for some reason, her last description of that image of herself conjured the painting by Edvard Munch "The Scream"...a visceral depiction of terror if there ever was one.
I made a good choice not to read this last night when I found it in my inbox 🙀 I was sufficiently spooked! Thanks for the read!