Day 107 Writing Short Stories

Fellwood Cross

There are places in the world you go, and there are places in the world where you end up. Fellwood Cross is one of those places you never go willingly. The town is small, surrounded by thick pine forest and rugged mountains. On paper, it’s a perfect place for anyone who wants to live a simpler life in nature. In reality, it’s none of that.

Josh had tried for the past year to get out of Fellwood Cross, but once you ended up there, once you were born there, and once the forest reclaimed your bones, there was no getting out. Josh groaned as he woke up yet again in his own bed. He remembered pushing past the trees into the darkness, where the whispers and shadows grew long, and terror seized him and pinned him down. Josh had fought the urge to flee, to stop pushing past the mother tree, as he called it, yet here he was, back in his bed. He was to wake up, open the city diner, and keep smiling like nothing was wrong with his life.

Josh shut his eyes. He should never have replied to the ad looking for someone to run a diner in the middle of nowhere. Back then he had thought it was a good break from everything. A new life, where he didn’t have to face his failed relationships with his estranged brother and parents, or his fiancée, who had decided he wasn’t worth all the trouble.

He groaned and turned onto his side. The clock showed 5:15 a.m. The bastards even made sure he would be on time to open the diner. He contemplated retaliating, but what was the point? He was just a minor cog, and if he didn’t play his part, they could remove him, as they had done with his predecessor.

Josh took a deep breath in and got up. He cleaned up and dressed in the customary flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots. He looked like any other man here, who would soon pour into the diner for coffee and morning gossip. That was the thing: the town lived on everyone’s business. By now, they knew he had tried to escape.

The diner sat smack in the middle of the single road that ran through the town center, with the general store, little flower boutique, only cloth shop in town, and the Fish And Bait store next to the police station—not that there was any crime, yet there had to be a sheriff. Josh had come to think of the town as a model city, and someone or something had staged a play here.

The diner was a picture-perfect copy of any cozy town diner. Small, intimate, clean, homey, and full of pies, fries, and hearty meals. The menu was always the same. He had tried to change it, but every time the original menu came back.

Whoever ran the show didn’t like change.

The first people came in right after he had gotten his pot hot and steamy, drawn in by the smell of dark coffee.

Everyone was solemn today, and he soon found out what had happened. His escape attempt wasn’t the biggest news in the town. Margaret had died in her sleep. Okay, she was a pretty old gal, and had been here the longest, so it was only natural, but still, people rarely died. She was the town, as far as many considered. Margaret was always chipper despite everything. She thought of the town as something positive. More than once she reminded everyone what it was like to live out there in the real world where quotas had to be met and bills had to be paid. Here, nothing ever ran out. Okay, they all had little tasks to do to fill their days, but nothing close to what it meant to survive past the forest.

Josh kept pouring coffee and filling orders as his cook, Grace, prepared the food.

Everyone went silent. They watched as a new car rolled down the street. Margaret had been replaced.

—

Ooh, ooh, ooh. This one has potential. I have always wanted to write about a spooky town in the middle of nowhere. Not sure if with aliens or the occult. I had fun trying to figure out the scene and what was going on. I have an idea of what it could be. It has to do with the staged play.

What I got today was a comic horror quest written in the objective third person. I’m not sure I would take this all the way to comic, but I would write in a looser style.

Thank you for reading! Have a horrifically fantastic day and see you tomorrow ❤