Note: This post is an excerpt from my book, Collected Short Stories: Volume One. Copyright © 2023 Alex Brown. All rights reserved.
This book is a collection of 52 short stories that I wrote from August 2021 to August 2022. The three below are some of my favorites. Enjoy!
A Story for a Heart
She told me that she had no heart as I sat next to her on a chilly, autumn evening. The last of the light was beginning to fade away, and darkness began to creep over the earth. We sat together on a lonely bench in the park, watching the shadows play across the field of dying grass.
Now, I don’t sit next to strangers, but when she shuffled over, picking her way across the uneven ground at a slow, dirge-like pace, and asked if I minded if she sat, I could hardly say no. I had been sitting all alone and there was more than enough room on the bench.
The first thing I noticed about her was her eyes. They were half-hidden behind thick glasses, and there was a tiredness to them, a kind of exhaustion not usually seen in strangers’ eyes. Usually, such things are hidden away from the world. We weep when no one watches, not for the world to see. But she didn’t seem to care enough to hide anymore.
She was dressed for the weather, wearing a large woolen sweater over a long dark dress. Her stockings were thick and her shoes faded leather. Her hand, spotted and wrinkled, shook as she held her cane. Her other hand clutched a small purse, tucked under her arm.
I slid over to allow her some more room on the small bench and closed my notebook around my pen as she sat. She noticed and asked what I did for a living. I told her that I was a writer and that I was still trying to make a living off of it.
She smiled faintly and then it faded, similar to how the sunlight had dimmed and the darkness grew. It must be difficult, she said. To work so hard and try to make something of yourself. What if no one ever reads the stories you write?
I told her that that was what separated writers from the rest. Being published isn’t what makes one a writer. No. What makes one a writer is having a story and a heart that yearns to tell it. Even if such a story is never seen by anyone else, it still matters.
She said nothing in response to that.
I shifted on the bench and pulled my coat closer around me. I asked her if she minded telling me her story. What had brought her here tonight, why had she decided to sit on a bench next to a total stranger?
She hesitated and her face crumpled with unexpected grief. She told me that she had no heart to tell it as we sat there on that chilly, autumn night. I told her that it was okay, she didn’t have to tell me anything.
Stories are meant to be shared, that may be true. But when those stories are shared, and how, that is entirely up to the one telling them.
We sat in silence for a while after that, as the shadows lengthened. I considered leaving, but something held me there. To this day I don’t know what. Perhaps I instinctively knew that I needed to stay, that she needed someone to sit next to on that lonely bench in the park. And I was that someone. Perhaps it was something else.
I’m not uncomfortable with silence. I don’t see the point of filling the void with empty and meaningless chatter. And she clearly was not inclined to talk about such trivial things as the weather.
Sometimes you don’t need someone to talk to, sometimes you just need someone to sit next to in silence, to know that you’re not alone. This seemed to be one of those times.
I was fine with that too.
But then, the old woman surprised me. She drew in a shallow, shaky breath and spoke in a soft, pain-filled voice. She told me that she had no heart because she had given it away, piece by piece over the years of her life. She had been young once, as all people are, with a heart full of life and full of love.
She remembered playing as a child, the joyous laughter that filled the air as she ran through the sun-kissed meadows. She remembered having a family—brothers and sisters and parents who loved her.
She had given a piece of her heart to each of them. It was theirs, freely given, with nothing expected of them, save that they hold it dear in their hands. She remembered others she gave pieces of her heart to. One she gave to her husband of thirty years, now gone twenty. One she gave to a child who had grown up and moved far away.
Some treated the pieces of her heart carefully and tenderly. Others were harsh and cruel, crushing the fragile, beating piece held in their hands until it faded away. One by one, though, the woman continued to give away the pieces of her heart.
She knew it would hurt her, but she didn’t know what else to do. It was all she could do. And now, after all those years of giving away pieces of her heart, she had none left to give.
What would happen to her now with no pieces of her heart left to give?
She’d seen people who lived without hearts in this world. Such an existence was cold and meaningless. Such people walked through life without truly living. Embittered and cold, they wasted away into nothingness.
She didn’t want that to happen to her, and she was terrified that it already had.
Her shoulders slumped and then shook as silent tears and grief wracked her fragile frame. I saw then how small and frail she really was.
I still sat next to her and reflected on her story, at a loss as to what I should say. Then I cleared my throat and put my arm around her shoulders hesitantly.
She tensed for a moment and tears fell from her face.
I told her that I didn’t rightly know what to say. Then I told her that I would be here, on this lonely park bench every night. I liked to watch the stars come out at night, hesitant at first as if they weren’t quite sure it was time for them to shine yet.
I told her that I often sat alone—she had been the first to ever sit next to me, in fact. I told her that I liked sitting next to her and that if she’d like, she could come and sit next to me again tomorrow night. Then I could tell her one of my stories since she had shared hers with me.
The tears stopped falling. She sniffled once and then smiled. I’d like that, she told me.
Since that chilly night late in autumn-time, all those long years ago, she and I still sit on that bench in the park, which isn’t quite as lonely anymore. We watch as the shadows lengthen and the stars become bold in the night sky. We talk and we tell stories. We laugh and sometimes we cry.
What I’ve learned is this—I gave a piece of my heart to an old, heartless woman, long ago. I didn’t have to give it to her, but I wanted to, and so I did.
She holds a piece of the heart that once was mine tenderly cupped in her hands. It isn’t really mine anymore. It’s become hers. And now, she no longer says that she has no heart.
A Mask of Villainy
“I am he who brings the night. I watched as the stars fell from the heavens, cascading down like fiery comets and flaming torrents of death and destruction upon the good green earth. And I laughed. I laughed because they were pulled down by my hand. I ripped the constellations out of the night sky. I’ve set fires to a thousand different worlds, and on those thousand different worlds, those same fires still burn to this day. They continue to burn, unquenched and unchecked, like my rage.
“I’ve awakened the monsters that slumbered in the Deep; caused them to rise from their watery prisons and wreak havoc upon unsuspecting towns and villages along the coastlines. I’ve created far more terrifying monsters with my own hand—all with the knowledge of dark and arcane secrets within my grasp—and sent them to roam the earth, to ravage and annihilate until their bloodlust was sated.
“I’ve toppled kingdoms and queendoms with but a glance and a word. I’ve conquered nations with armies and forces of darkness so vast and terrible that mortal man cannot look upon them without crying out in fear. I’ve crushed empires to dust and scattered their remains to the four winds, spreading them out so they can never again rise from the ashes of their own ruin.”
By the end, my words were in but a mere whisper. I leaned forward with a wicked gleam in my eye, a gleam which had caused many a brave heart to flee in terror.
“I am he who brings the night, the night from which no man, woman, or child will ever wake.”
“That’s nice,” said the little boy, unfazed by my confession. “Can you make me a balloon animal?”
I blinked. That wasn’t the normal response to my monologue. I’ve given such a soliloquy many times before—or something very similar to it—and never have I had such a blatantly insulting reaction.
This would never have happened if I hadn’t lost my cloak and my wand. Oh, and my hat, too. Don’t forget the hat.
Now, I suppose, you see the very depths of my shame. I don’t think there’s much lower I can go from here. Not literally, of course, seeing as I’ve descended into the depths of the Underworld on a dare—and delved even deeper, just to say that I did. This is all purely metaphorical. The situation I found myself currently in, though, was all too real.
I looked around the room brightly decorated with streamers and a large banner on the back wall which read something along the lines of “Happy Birthday”, or some rubbish like that. Children in plastic party hats with stretched-out elastic string under their chins all stared at me. And I stared back at them. Not one of them looked even remotely afraid of me. How utterly disappointing.
The young boy still stared at me expectantly. In the next room over, oblivious parents chatted amongst themselves, happy that someone else was supervising their children’s interaction. I sighed, wishing for all the worlds that I was somewhere else, anywhere else than where I was.
“Of course, child,” I said. “What kind of balloon animal would you like?”
The boy scratched his head and thought about it for a minute. “I’d like a T-Rex.”
I blinked again. A T-Rex? That was what he wanted? I asked him as much and he shrugged.
“I like the T-Rex. It’s pretty scary. You can do it, can’t you?”
Had the child not been listening to me? Not even a single word? I shook my head with a wearied resignation.
“Child,” I groaned softly. “I’ve worked magics you’d never believe, even if you saw them with your own eyes. Of course, I can make you something as simple as a T-Rex.”
Once you’ve held magic in your hands and have learned to reshape the very fabric of existence, forming a T-Rex out of stretchy rubber and air is mind-numbingly easy. I could have made an actual miniature T-Rex to give to the child, but no. He just wanted a balloon animal that would pop the moment he held on to it too tightly, or it would droop and sag as the air leaked from its rubber skin.
The children in the room all oohed and aahed, though, as I handed the T-Rex to the child. Sure, my impassioned speech about how I once had a name that would turn hearts to stone and men’s resolve to watery weakness, that did nothing, but I twist a balloon in a few places and suddenly I’m simply incredible.
Go figure.
Like I said, none of this would have happened if I still had my cloak—that awesome cloak of woven shadows, the one I stitched together with the very fabrics of reality and unreality. Or my wand, that unassuming yet deadly piece of whittled dragon rib-bone with which I worked strange and terrible magic. And don’t forget the hat, never forget that hat. Even I don’t know what purpose it served, other than that it looked really good whenever I wore it with my cloak.
But I don’t have any of those still. No cloak. No wand. No hat. And now I’m stuck performing basic, rudimentary magic and sleight-of-hand tricks at children’s birthday parties. I hate my life.
Other children come up to me with their infernal, incessant requests that bother me to no end. This one wants a puppy. That one wants a rhinoceros. The one with pigtails wants a cat. The one with curly hair wants a tiger. On and on and on it goes.
The smile on my face is only there because I am actively imagining the devastation I could work upon this room, this house, this neighborhood—indeed the whole world—provided I still had my cloak, wand, and hat.
I really do hate my life. That hate is what has always driven me. It keeps me on my feet, to keep going, to not give in and die—even in this, the most horrible of circumstances. And so, I grind my teeth together, force a smile upon my face, and make balloon animals.
It isn’t a bad gig, all things considered. Don’t get me wrong, I hate it with every fiber of my dark and blackened soul. But once I make the balloon animals, the little brats usually go off and play with each other, making insufferable sounds of joy and laughter—the sort of which should only be saved for triumphing over one’s foes. I’m left to sit in silence, glorious silence, until a parent notices and says something along the lines of, “We’re not paying you to sit, we’re paying you to entertain.”
I smile and nod, all the while plotting their eventual demise, and then the entertainment continues. I do a few basic magic tricks, the kids ooh and aah because they’ve no idea they shouldn’t be impressed by warm-up exercises for real magic, and then the show’s over, thank you for your time, here’s fifty bucks.
But today was different. There I sat on a plastic folding chair in a room full of screaming, laughing children playing with their balloon animals. Only, I wasn’t sitting alone. I didn’t notice the child at first. She was easy to miss, just sitting there as still as a statue, watching all the other children laugh and play.
So, there I sat, and there she sat, while everyone else in the room played, laughed, and screamed. I studied the child across from me. She didn’t notice me watching her. She was looking at the rest of the children playing together. It looked like part of her wanted to join in, only, she didn’t know how.
Her hands were folded in her lap with no balloon animal held in her child-like grip. A somber expression was upon her face, the sort of expression more aptly found on an adult’s face than a child’s. She struck me as odd, to say the least. What made it odder by far was the fact that I recognized the child. She was the birthday girl whose mother had hired me for this insufferable event. There she sat, surrounded by all her friends, and I’d never seen someone look so alone, so ignored.
Well, that’s not true. I have seen that before. A memory was dragged up, kicking and screaming from the black depths of my mind. A memory of a small boy in a dark forest, all alone, tears streaming down his face. It was not a pleasant memory. It was not sweet, but bitter. It soured my face and twisted my grin into a grimace.
They say it is empathy that moves humanity to put themselves in another’s shoes. Foolishness. It was not empathy that moved me to stand up and walk over to the child. It wasn’t. You have to have a heart beating in your chest to have empathy for someone else—and I cut that out long ago. It still beats somewhere in a wooden box, somewhere on the far-reaching fringes of time and space, somewhere not even I remember the exact location of anymore.
For without our hearts, we die. But if it does not remain within us, it cannot move us, and so I know. I know it was not empathy that made me sit next to the child. Call it whatever you will, give whatever reason you desire. I blame that bitter memory that forced itself back into my mind, unbidden, unwanted. If I could forever forget my past, I would.
We sat, the girl and I, in silence. I crossed one leg over the other and folded my arms across my chest—a casual pose that did not reflect how uncomfortable I truly felt. Wear a mask, as they say, so that the world may never know your true face. Hide it long enough, and you may forget it as well.
“That was a nice story,” the girl finally spoke up, breaking into my thoughts and shattering the silence between us. “Too bad not a word of it is true, huh?”
I blinked in surprise. I did not look at her. “Whyever would it not be true, child?” I asked. “I’ve been called many things in my life, but never a liar.”
The young girl twisted in her plastic chair to look at me. I saw her expression out of the corner of my eye. She was frowning, but there was curiosity in her gaze too.
“Well,” she began, “if you’re such a terrible person—a mass murderer by your own admonition, I might add—why would you be here, at my birthday party, making balloon animals and doing cheap magic tricks for children?”
I raised an eyebrow, my only response. She made a fair point, to be sure. But I had no intention of giving my reason for my shame away, especially not to a mere child.
I had no desire to tell her of the battle which had raged in the places between existence, the battle between me and my ancient foe. The battle that resulted in me being smitten, struck from the sky, and stranded upon this bleak and desolate patch of dirt with no way of ever leaving. It was my own fault, really. I was overconfident in my abilities. Then again, that was always my downfall. She thought I was dead, of course, and for the time being, I have no intention of giving any indication that I am otherwise still breathing and very much alive.
So, I obfuscated. Magicians are good at that, after all.
“That’s a big word for a child’s vocabulary,” I remarked. “Admonition.”
But the girl was already shaking her head. “No, it’s really not,” she said shortly. “You’re trying to distract me by complimenting my vocabulary. Stop dodging the question. Why are you at my birthday party if you’re this all-powerful wizard?”
I chuckled drily, despite my best intentions to remain distanced. The child’s determination intrigued me. “I never claimed to be all-powerful, child,” I told her. “Simply more powerful than most. But I’ll rise to your bait. This conversation certainly beats the monotonous doldrums of this insufferable gathering of fools.”
I gestured at the rest of the children dismissively, uncrossed my legs, left over right, and then recrossed them, right over left.
“I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine. Deal?”
I held out my hand for the girl to shake.
She hesitated and then took my hand in hers. “There’s a condition.” The girl spoke up, not letting go of my hand.
My eyes narrowed slightly, and somewhere in the far-reaching fringes of space and time, my heart skipped a beat. A condition? Had this child been playing me all along? Did she now hope to trick me into doing something for her?
“What’s the condition?” I asked, still hiding behind my mask of calm. But really, my thoughts churned and teemed, searching for the child’s true intent.
“You must promise me that you’ll tell the truth when you answer my question. No lies.”
I frowned. That was her condition? That I answer honestly? Why? How would she ever know whether or not I spoke true?
“Fine,” I agreed. “The conditions are set.”
The girl beamed happily at me and let go of my hand. It was the first I’d seen her smile. A radiant little thing, like a small sun, she was. Strange.
“Alright,” she said seriously. “You first. Ask away.”
I was still confused by her strange conditional request, and not entirely sure what was meant by it. But I had already shaken her hand. There was no backing out now. Forward, then.
“Very well.” I gestured at the room full of happy, laughing little fools. “This is your birthday party, is it not? And yet, here you sit, talking to me instead of playing with all your friends. Why is that?”
The remnants of the girl’s smile faded from her face. She looked at the rest of the children and that joy disappeared completely. “It’s true that this is my birthday party, but they’re not my friends. Not really,” she answered.
She was silent for a minute and then continued. “My mom invited my class from school. She thought it’d be a good way for me to make some new friends. We just moved here.” Her voice wavered. “I had friends back home before we moved. I miss them. I don’t want new friends. I want my old friends.”
She looked down at her hands folded on her lap and I thought I saw a tear glisten in her eye for a second. I looked away, uncomfortable with such a visible display of sappy, sentimental, useless emotion.
“Anyway,” the girl looked over at me with all traces of sadness gone, happy once more. “That’s me. Your turn.”
“A moment.” I hesitated, still bothered by her condition upon our agreement. “I promised to answer your question truthfully, and I will, but may I ask you why?”
“Certainly.” The girl smiled. “After you answer my first question. Then you may ask a second.”
I smiled faintly, despite my attempted annoyance. She was stubborn. I gave her that much, and a deep, forlorn sigh to go along with it.
“Very well,” I said. “You asked me why I am here at your birthday party—if I am an evil, mass-murdering, terrible, and altogether all-around nasty villain.”
I shifted on the plastic chair, annoyed with how uncomfortable it was, and then continued.
“I am here, making balloon animals and doing cheap magic tricks for insufferable children, whom I hate, because I lost possessions which were of great importance to me.”
“What did you lose?” the girl asked. I smiled at her. She frowned, and then it dawned on her. My question first.
“I wanted you to tell the truth because so many adults don’t,” she admitted. “They think you don’t notice it because you’re a kid, or that it doesn’t matter whether or not they’re being honest since they’re adults and they know best, even if that means lying to you. Have you ever noticed that?”
She shook her head and bit her lip hesitantly. “Mom does that sometimes. She told me we wouldn’t move, not ever, and then we did. She told me it would get better, living here, but it hasn’t. She told me the kids would be nice to me, but they haven’t.”
A tear rolled down her cheek and she brushed it away angrily, before glaring at me with a small fraction of that same anger. “That’s why I said no lies, okay?”
I sat there, quiet for a moment. I wanted to be annoyed. I wanted to be disgusted with her display of weakness. But as I sat there, in my mind, all I could think of was that small boy in a dark forest, all alone, tears streaming down his face.
A voice that hadn’t spoken in centuries, millennia, eons even, came back to me like it was uttered that same day. I’ll be back, boy. You wait here for me until I come and get you, when it’s safe. You hear?
The boy had nodded and waited. And waited. A part of me was still waiting, waiting for my father to come back and get me. I hadn’t thought of him in years. That was where it all started, though. That night made me the man I am today. And that part of me, weak and insignificant and foolish as it was, that part of me understood this girl. No lies.
“I lost three things,” I admitted to the girl. “No, that’s not entirely true. They were taken from me.”
“What were they?” the girl asked curiously.
I paused, considering making her answer a question in turn before I spoke again. I decided against it.
“A cloak I wove from shadows,” I answered the girl. “A wand I made from a dragon’s rib-bone. And a hat of no particular significance other than the fact that it was mine.”
“Who took them?”
“Someone better than me. Someone who saw what I was doing with them—the terrible atrocities I had committed—and decided that someone needed to stop me. And so, she did.”
I fell silent and then added, “Without them, I can’t leave your world. I’m stuck, unable to do magic of any real significance. Without them, I’m no longer who I once was.”
“And would that be such a bad thing?” the girl asked softly.
Her question surprised me. It gave me more pause than I thought it would. We had now completely abandoned our agreed upon form of questions and answers. I found that I didn’t care. We were just having a conversation now, she and I.
“Who would I be, if not who I once was?” I mused aloud.
The girl shrugged. “Whoever you want to be.”
I stared at her and then shook my head slowly. “That’s a profoundly deep thought, you know that?”
She smiled and shrugged again. “I’m not sure you ever got around to fully answering my first question,” she remarked.
“You’re here because you lost your cloak, your wand, and your hat. That still doesn’t explain why you’re making balloon animals and doing cheap magic tricks for kids. Why aren’t you out trying to get revenge against the person who put you here? Or, at the very least, why aren’t you out looking for your stuff?”
She didn’t give me a chance to answer her. Instead, she answered her own question. “You know what I think?”
“What?” I asked, intrigued and yet fearful that she would say that which I dared not speak, even to myself aloud. And yet, strangely, there was a part of me that wanted to hear the girl say it.
“I think you’ve had a hard life,” the girl said finally, studying me.
“You’ve done things you’re not proud of. I think deep down, you wanted to be stopped. You now have a chance to be someone else—someone who isn’t a monstrous villain—and that terrifies you. If you really wanted to be the person you were before you lost your cloak and your wand and your hat, you would be out looking for them. Nothing would be able to stop you from finding them again and taking your revenge. But you’re here. At my birthday party. I think that says a lot in answer, don’t you?”
I thought about what she said. I thought about it a lot. Finally, I nodded. “Yes. Yes, I think it does,” I answered truthfully.
The girl smiled at me but said nothing. We sat in silence for a long while. All around us, the children still screamed and laughed and played, oblivious to our conversation, and we to them.
“Give them a chance to be kind, will you?” I nodded toward the other children. “Going through life without friends is no way to live. Take it from me. They may not be your friends now, but they certainly won’t be if you never give them the chance to try.”
I held out my hand for the girl to shake. “Deal?”
She took my hand and then hesitated. “There’s a condition.”
“What is it?”
“Can you make me a balloon animal?”
I snorted with laughter and smiled. “Certainly.”
The girl ran off and joined the rest of the children, a red balloon animal in hand. She smiled nervously at them at first and then laughed with them as they welcomed her into their fun without hesitation.
And me? I sat, watching them play. I pondered the child’s advice and wondered if it were true. For the briefest of moments, I wondered if my ancient foe had planned this all along, that I’d be forced to ponder my own morality and existence and perhaps, perhaps change into someone different. Someone better. Had she? Could I be someone else? Was that even possible?
I thought about going out and looking, at long last, for my cloak of woven shadows, my wand of dragon rib-bone, and my hat of no particular significance. I thought about returning with a fiery vengeance and getting my revenge upon my most ancient of foes. I thought about my rage, that burning rage that fueled the dark desires of my heart, the heart locked away in a wooden box somewhere in the far-reaching fringes of time and space.
Then, I looked back at the young girl and saw that smile, that radiant look of joy, and thought something different. Maybe I’ll take off my mask of villainy for good, stay here, and do a magic trick or two instead.
The Wishing Well
I live in a quite beautiful place, really. I sit on the edge of a forest glade. A gravel-stone path ambles up to me, slow and winding like a river of rock. There is plenty of shade nearby, and I am quite cool, even in the heat of the day. I can see the stars at night. Birds chirp and call to one another in the trees, and wildflowers grow all around me. It’s a quiet place, far removed from the rest of the world. And yet, people still come to me.
They bring heavy burdens of worry and concern, hopeful desires and dreams, and they come and whisper secrets of their innermost thoughts—things they wouldn’t dare tell another living soul. And I listen. I listen to all of them.
I’ve never wondered why they come to me, or why I must listen to them. I know why I exist. It’s something I remember vividly—a memory I will hold onto forever. My very first memory, in fact.
Darkness and nothingness were all around me. I slumbered like all things waiting to be awoken. And suddenly, I heard it. A voice, whispering words of power and meaning, which pulled me from the darkness of sleep and into the light of day.
An old woman with a long black cloak and a walking stick of hardened ash sat beside me, and I knew. Her words had awoken me. She was the one who had given me life. She spoke more words to me and told me what I must do, for what purpose she had awoken me.
“They will know,” she whispered to me. There was a sad sort of satisfaction in her voice. “They will know what it brings. And maybe it will lead them to change. But maybe not.”
Then, she got up and walked away, down that path of gravel-stone. I never saw her again. I don’t know what happened to her.
Many days and nights passed. I was all alone.
Then, one day, early in the morning as the mist still clung to the forest floor, I heard the sound of slow, shuffling footsteps coming down the gravel path toward me. At first, I thought it was the old woman, coming back again.
But no, it was a middle-aged man who looked as though he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. His face was downcast and he sighed heavily as he sat down next to me. After a moment, he began to speak, so softly that I almost did not hear him.
“Thirty years I worked for him, thirty years I spent laboring in a windowless building. Did I complain? No. I told myself I was providing for my wife and children, so they would have a roof over their heads. Hot food to eat on the table. Warm beds to sleep in at night.” The man paused, and I could hear the bitterness and despair in his voice, the longing for more. “And now, he’s laid me off; left me without a means of income. What am I supposed to do now?”
Then the man said the word, the one that made all the difference in the world. “I wish he hadn’t fired me.”
I couldn’t tell you how exactly it happened, or how I knew that it had happened. But I knew. As soon as the man said that word, that magic word, his employer, in some far distant town miles and miles away, had a change of heart. When this poor fellow made his way back home, he’d find several voicemails waiting for him. One apologizing profusely for ever firing the man. Another begging him to come back to work, for a substantial raise as well. I knew all of that in a moment and I knew it had to do with the magic word and with me.
The middle-aged man got up after sitting next to me a little while longer, and then shuffled back down the gravel-stone path. He was the first to visit me. He certainly wasn’t the last.
I don’t know how they found out about me. Perhaps the middle-aged man told his friends after what happened, and they came out of curiosity to see if the strange magic would work for them as it did for him. Perhaps the old woman told them where I was as she wandered the world, pointing people to a place where everything they ever desired could come true. I honestly don’t know.
Over the years, I’ve had hundreds, thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people, all coming to sit beside me and whisper their hopes and dreams, and wishes to me.
I listened to the young woman, full of heartbreak and sorrow, who wished she would find love and happiness. I listened to the little boy who wished he could spend more time with his dad. The middle-aged man who wished he knew how to support his wife as she struggled with depression. The old woman who wished she could see her grandchildren more. The little girl who wished more than anything in the whole wide world to have a bunny rabbit. The man who wished his business was more successful, that the world would know his name.
There were other wishes as well. Dark wishes. I did not want to grant those wishes. The people who whispered them to me were filled with menace and rage. They spoke of things like revenge and greed and cruel ambitions and things I do not want to repeat. If their wishes were fulfilled, they would spell out disaster, destruction, and death. But the words were spoken, and I listened to them all the same.
The wishes were endless. Some started out small and seemingly insignificant. But every single person came back wanting more and more and more. They couldn’t seem to stop. They couldn’t help themselves once they knew. And I listened to all of them. That was my reason for existence, after all. I was fulfilling my purpose.
Then, all of a sudden, the people stopped coming. The wishes stopped. I don’t know what happened.
The years have gone by. I still sit on the edge of a forest glade, but the trees are all palsied and dead. The gravel-stone path still ambles up to me, but there’s more dirt than stone these days. Pollution and the orange-amber glow of radiation light up the sky, even at night. I don’t see the stars anymore. The birds don’t chirp, and the wildflowers have turned to overgrown weeds which cover me. No one has come to visit me in a long time now. Maybe they’re all out of wishes.
