Old Time Around: A Free Flash Fiction (Horror, Mystery)
Welcome to Lore Publication, a place to find free short stories and free flash fictions for all your reading needs! We publish horror, science fiction, fantasy, thriller and mystery themed stories and invite you to join us and support our writers. We pride ourselves on bringing you thought provoking fiction at no cost at all; free reading for the avid bookworm.We realize that not everybody can afford new ebooks and free ebooks are a way of combating this problem. Our free stories are no different! Today we are publishing Old Time Around, an eerie horror mystery for your minds to delve into! The short flash fiction was first published over on Lore's medium page back in April 2018. With the launch of Lore Publication on blogger, it is now free to read here!💓
Enjoy!
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| Image credit: pixabay.com |
Olly glared out the dusty window. The cracked glass was covered with scratches and dirt. She could see her own reflection in the glass, beyond, the expanse of the Australian outback loomed. She could feel how heavy the air was, with the particles of sand and warm eastern breeze sweeping across the plains. She walked out of the open door of the shack onto its front porch to see a figure in the distance of the blazing mid-afternoon heat.
The
figure was too distant to make out just yet, but it seemed to be
walking towards her. Most definitely a person of some shape, form or
description. The scorching Australian heat waves rose from the orange
dust of the plateau, as she turned to head back inside the shack. She
slammed the flimsy wooden door shut, sliding a rusted lock into place to
secure it. She hurried back over to the cracked, dusty window to glance
back out at the figure again. She found that it was still moving
towards her, slowly but surely. Olly grabbed both pieces of ragged, torn
cloth that once used to be curtains and pulled them across the old
window. She planted her back against the wooden walls of the shack and
could feel her heart beginning to thump inside her chest cavity. She
could feel her breath being stolen away from her as she began what
seemed to be a panic.
She
trampled across the wooden floor boards of the shack, causing them to
creak and wain in complaint. She scrabbled at her various drawers that
completed a storage stand. The stand itself was home to mould and
ancient dust, that was thrown into the air by her commotion. She ripped
the top drawer from the storage stand, throwing it onto the floor of the
shack. The drawer broke and its contents spayed across the room. She
let her eyes quickly scan over the contents, before she kicked a
splintered fragment of wood at the shack door. She turned back to the
storage stand to rip another drawer from it. Before she could turn round
and inspect the contents of the drawer she ripped out, she quickly
scanned the final and bottom drawer of the stand. Whipping herself into a
heightened state of panic, she spun round to examine the contents of
the second drawer. With a sigh of exasperation she clawed both hands
through her hair. She held her head for a moment, scanning the shack to
no avail. She clambered back across the shack to the window, edging the
curtains apart to peek through them. The figure was a stone’s throw away
now. It was a man.
She
found herself panicked into a frenzy. She ducked to the side of the
window out of sight and sat, hunched behind the door for a moment. She
frantically swivelled her head from side to side, but she simply could
not find it. She quickly ran over to a partition inside the shack; that
separated the main living space from where she prepared her food. Olly
peered inside her kitchen area to find nothing but rotten wooden
counters and old, worn appliances. She stepped into her kitchen and
flung open all the musky, stale cabinet doors. Their hinges creaked in
complaint as she worked her way across the kitchen worktops. She came to
the final cabinet, pulling the door only for it to fall off its hinges.
She discarded the rotting cabinet door to one side to finally find what
she had been looking for. As her fingers clasped around the plastic
handle of the withering steel blade, she turned and made for the shack
door.
Olly
bolted out her kitchen area, diving round her rotting oak table to
reach her window. She held her knife in hand as, again, she peeked out
from behind the torn curtains of her window. She did not glance long
enough to get any detail but she could see the figure of the man
approaching the shack door. She quietly crept to the other side of the
door and pulled the knife in close to her chest. She could hear the
footsteps of the man crunch in the dirt as he approached. Olly could not
control her breathing. She was petrified. Her heart felt like it could
burst at any given minute and the sweat began to roll off the tip of her
nose. The footsteps crunched closer until she heard the heel of a boot
against the wooden porch. This initial footstep, the crossing of
boundaries, was followed by another agonizing footstep on the dusty
porch. The man took a few more loud, torturing steps before stopping at
the front door. Olly did not make a sound. Then, without warning, the
letterbox was gently poked open.
Olly
glanced down, her fear replaced with confusion. She let the knife drop
down a little as she examined the man’s finger holding the letterbox
open. Olly then saw the pristine white shade of an envelope grace the
letterbox. The man gave the letter a light shove and it flopped to the
ground. With this, the man retracted his finger and left the front
porch. Olly was still so focused on the letter, she did not see an
elderly man emerge from the only other room in the shack.
“Olly?”
Olly glanced up to see a man standing in the doorway to her bedroom.
She glanced around to see the couch and laminated floor sprawled with
the contents of a neat white storage stand, “Olly, are you okay?” Olly was frozen on the spot,
“I uh-”
“Hey,
it’s okay. It’s me. Bill. Your husband.” Olly glanced down to see her
wrinkled hand clasped round a kitchen knife. Bill walked over towards
her slowly, gently taking the knife from her hand. “Come on darling,
take a seat. I won’t hurt you.”
“Bill?” she heard her old, feeble voice blurt.
“Yes
darling, it’s me,” Olly could see a strange expression on the man’s
face. One of a deep pain she had never known but also one of love. “It
was just the postman.”
“Oh…” Bill took her by the hand and sat her down on the couch.
“Just you wait there my love, i’ll call the Doctor.”
Writer Information - Before You Go!
Stewart Storrar is a young Scottish writer that currently lives in Dublin, Ireland. Child's Play is a dystopian science fiction story he wrote to highlight his concerns with VR headets and virtual reality merging with the real world.
Thank you for reading Old Time Around, I hope you enjoyed this horror mystery! This flash fiction was written by the site's owner, Stewart, and you can find my Twitter account here, if you feel like following my work. Be sure to follow Lore here on Blogger and over on Twitter to stay up to date with Lore's new releases when they come out. Until then, have a wonderful day!
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