Katie’s Secret

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Little Katie Morgan has a secret and she’s not telling. Not her father, not her mother, not her brothers or her sisters. There are many things Katie’s not good at, but keeping secrets isn’t one of them.

How would the world react if it learned the truth that was revealed to her? She imagines the rioting in the streets, the talking heads on the news, and sometimes, when she’s afraid, she hums the tune of the song the witch across the street taught her when she was four years old.

“An ancient song,” the witch said while Katie lounged in her garden, basking in the sun and watching the woman pick a handful of long-stemmed roses.

Katie didn’t know what ancient meant, but judging by the witch’s expression, it must have been important.

“You remember those words,” the woman said, and Katie, eager to please her elderly friend, repeated words whose meaning she would never understand until the witch was confident she wouldn’t forget.

“That song will save you,” said the witch, “when the time for the world to change comes again.”

Katie asked what she meant, and the witch, after making her promise not to reveal her secret, recounted the story of a great cataclysm yet to unfold.

There are nights when Katie dreams of what she was told, nights when visions of the dark and the macabre process before her sleeping eyes like float’s in Hell’s parade.

Sometimes she screams, and sometimes her mother checks to see if she’s all right. Katie just nods her head, white as a ghost, and her mother, frightened by what she sees in her daughter’s too large eyes, pads off to bed and entertains nightmares of her own.

The world is changing, so says the witch. But that’s a secret and Katie’s not telling.

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Happily Ever After

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This post was originally published through Patreon on December 18, 2018.

Happily ever after.

The cliché mocked Samuel in the moldering darkness of his one-bedroom apartment. A fairy tale ending, saccharin sweet, and so unlike the reality of human life.

Happily ever after.

It was a lie told to little children to shield them from the dark, sinister truths of the world, and perhaps also a lie told to adults too weak to face their problems head-on. In either case, it was a con man’s ruse, as plastic and artificial as a G.I. Joe action figure.

Happily ever after.

Once upon a time, Samuel had tried his own luck at “Happily ever after.” And what had it gotten him? A low paying job and a lonely, miserable life. No family, no friends, no wife or children.

But that was about to change.

Happily ever after.

The accursed phrase had been the object of Samuel’s obsession for almost thirty years. Every day, as he fought rush hour traffic, as he toiled at a job he couldn’t care less about, as he stopped at the groceries to buy his microwave dinners, he mulled over those perverse words, a slow, acid churn that never stopped until he turned out the light and allowed his bitterness to assault him in his dreams.

That was when the demon had visited and made Sammuel an offer he couldn’t refuse.

Happily ever after.

That was the wicked creature’s proposal, and Samuel hadn’t paid a moment’s notice to the price.

“A wish granted,” the demon snarled, “in exchange for a kind thought turned sour. A harmless enough cost, I should think, and a chance to live—”

Happily ever after.

And Samuel had wished, and Samuel had watched each one of his desires spring to life.

What an extraordinary power, he thought, and in the heat of his excitement, he didn’t see the change that took place inside of him.

A harmless enough cost, the demon had said, and it had seemed at the time that he was right. In Samuel’s elation, how was he to notice his desires turning dark, his wishes turning vindictive, his own definition of “Happily ever after” turning more and more twisted by the day?

Now, Samuel had conceived of the ultimate wish, and all he had to do was summon the demon one last time.

Just one more wish, and in the ashes of a smoldering post-apocalyptic world, Samuel could, at last, live—

Happily ever after.

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