Writer's Friday, Week 3

Welcome back!

2026 is set to be the year creative writing claims its seat on the throne of priority for this small author.

Let's begin with the 3rd week of Writer's Friday, and with a prompt from the 6th House Literary (@the6thhouse_literary) and their October writing challenge.

Next week's prompt comes from Candlelit Chronicles (@candlelitchroniclesmag), a dark academia literary magazine!

Next Week's Prompt: If you wrote a story about academic rivals turned lovers, what would the last line be?

Now, let's write!

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To live is to be haunted by what could have been

"I told you not to come."

Her words are distant, cold, like the stone floor under my bare feet.

"How can I not? You refuse to leave the attic."

We have been over this before, this stale conversation. It replaced the unnecessary pleasantries some time ago, but I still debate whether it is better than the tasteless 'hello, how was your day?' or, in some ways, worse.

I walk to my chair, its worn-out velvet cushion covered with a thin layer of dust. I had liked the deep blue it'd once been, but now it only brings back memories of what could be no more. Memories of midnight balls and champagne, of holding hands and whispering in each other's ears. Memories of her skin caressing mine.

I look at her now and marvel. She stands by the window, leaning against its frame, her hair down in loose, charcoal waves and her shoulders bare, but for the thin, pearly shawl she's wrapped herself in. It is a shade lighter than her nightgown, the silk sculpting every curve on her body. A marvel right before my eye, yet my arms are cursed not to be able to touch it.

"Did you sleep well?"

That question is unexpected, straying from the path of our usual conversation. I try to catch her eye, but her gaze remains fixed on a point on the horizon. I answer fast, fearful she will regret it.

"Not really. Nightmares plagued my dreams."

She turns slightly towards me, allowing me to see her. Perfectly pursed lips, still the colour of a rose, and eyes in an almond's shape, heavy with the burden of the world.

"I figured as much. The day is almost upon us."

The clouds scatter in the sky, sunlight now coming in plenty through the three windows of the small attic. The rays go right through her, as if she were but a fading memory.

"Will you join us for dinner?"

"What for?" she smiles. "I cannot even hold the fork."

I rise and stand beside her, searching for what has caught her attention. Then I notice the headstones, grey and ominous, just a couple of yards away from our house's fence. There used to be trees obscuring the view, but my father insisted on cutting them down, spearing the rest of our garden the plague they had caught. In my efforts to preserve her garden, I forgot about the cemetery.

"Which one is mine?" she asks, more curious than frightened.

"You cannot spot it from here. It's at the far back, where the new graves are."

She stands on her tiptoes, trying to see beyond the third row, but her eyes will never travel beyond the fifth.

"It's odd."

"What is?"

"Knowing I'm half here and half there."

A blur of motion catches my eye, and I lower my gaze to the garden below. My sister-in-law runs barefoot on the grass, chasing a giggling little boy, barely four of age. 

“Oh, how I miss them,” she says.

When the little one came into the world, she was right there, by her sister's side. She was the one to hand the mother her newborn, and later on, in the privacy of our own chambers, she told me she would protect her nephew with her life if it came to it.

Her eyes had burned with a fierce determination, a certainty born from a force withing I found impossible to understand. Yet I’d believed her every word.

“Do you think we could have had one of our own?”

I hadn't thought she held such a lethal weapon until her words cut right through me, sharper than any blade that had ever pierced my skin.

“I thought you never wanted children.”

“I never wanted to risk my life in childbirth. For my bones to snap and break, my lungs to move places, for my parts to stretch and then suffer the healing. But this,” she turns to the child, lowering her voice and lacing it with honey, “ there are so many ways we could have had this.”

My mind begins to race, expanding to the possibilities, if only that fateful night had come to pass in as a breeze instead of a relentless storm.

“Boy or girl?” I find myself asking, and regret it the moment she closes the distance between us.

Soft, delicate hands are placed flat on my torso, ghostly fingers playing an invisible game on the undisturbed fabric.

“A boy would have an easier life for sure. But I think... I think we were always meant to have a girl.”

I see the longing in her eyes, a mirror of my own.

“You are definitely a girl's dad, you know that?”

And she smiles then, and I feel the tears well up in my eyes, powerless to keep them at bay.

“Don't torment me like this. Please…”

“You can still have the family you desire, my love. It is never too late.”

“Not without you.”

She draws back, clasping her hands to her chest.

“That will never be. But you can still find your happy ending.”

She still speaks of that nonsense, as if the past two years have not been proof enough of my promise to her. I said it on my wedding vows, and from then on, every single day I woke up by her side.

Till death do us part.

Death had indeed come to claim her, but left with only one half.

“If only I had…”

Insisted on taking her to the city, despite her protest. If only I had brought more doctors to see her, had given her better medicine.

If only-

“I can't leave with this torment anymore.”

I slide to the floor, and she returns to her spot by the window.

“So many things that could have turned differently, if only I hadn't bowed my head to despair. If only I had gone when you told me to stay.”

I bury my face in my hands and weep, like I did the day of her passing. I weep for her and the future she could have had, for my future that slipped right through my hands. For our future, now buried six feet under in the twelfth row of the cemetery.

“Had you gone that day, you'd have returned to a cold corpse with a single tear left in its eyes, for the woman it once was died alone and afraid in a cold, empty bed."

I don't understand the smile in her voice nor her now cheerful tone, as she embraces a revelation I have yet to glean, as I am still breathing.

"Oh, my darling. To be alive is to be haunted by the things that could have been. Our very nature demands it, to want more, to regret. You will come to see. We always regret…”

The clock strikes five, the sun now asleep behind the mountain tops to the east. I didn't even notice how dark the attic had become.

“Time moves differently here,” she says as a response to my unspoken question. “You will lose yourself if you stay too long.”

She walks to the bed and sits, bringing her feet under her and staring at the door. It is time to go.

“Join us for dinner,” I try again.

“Go and be with the living. I will be here when you need to mourn the dead.”

She always says that in the end. Her words become visible as they leave her mouth, then the letters elongate to a line, a silver thread connecting our wedding bands.

I fear the day I will step into the room and her silhouette will no longer linger by the window.

It is the aching in my heart that promises that day will not yet come.