On Monday mornings, I send out a story via email: ultra-brief tales of 1,000 words or more, usually in genres including horror, science fiction, and the supernatural. Those stories collectively are called Once Upon A Time. I’ve also published several ebooks and compendium volumes of those stories so far.

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Here's story 205, of 240 so far.

Simple As That

Anderson had loved her so much. That was the problem, really, when you got right down to it. He still did. And he knew that he always would.

He was functional, at least.

Some of his friends even thought that he was doing quite well, all things considered, though some of them knew better. The people at work had stopped asking, and instead they now gave him what they probably thought was a respectful amount of space and privacy. The actual effect was just a kind of isolation, but he didn’t blame them. Anderson knew very well that the challenge in acknowledging bereavement wasn’t the social awkwardness, or even the fear of causing further pain; it was that talking about it made it real, and thus promoted death from a concept to a genuine possibility for themselves and their own loved ones.

The counsellor he’d been seeing weekly seemed rather at a loss. Anderson had made some progress, certainly, but since he and his wife had never had children, he really had been left all alone when she suddenly died after a brief and stupid illness. One in a hundred thousand chance, the specialists had said, and Anderson thought that they were stupid too.

Any profession that used the term idiopathic to mask their lack of understanding or explanation wasn’t worthy of his respect. He’d even told the counsellor that, and she had nodded sympathetically while her face tightened in the way it had been doing more and more often lately.

His friends told him to get out more, and do more, and rediscover all the things he loved in the world, but the thing he loved most was a person, and she wasn’t in the world anymore, so he didn’t want to get out anywhere or do anything. He’d done everything he’d ever wanted to; he just didn’t realise it at the time. And he would give anything for just a few minutes more with her, even sitting in silence, watching her do whatever she wanted to do.

It would never happen, and he knew that, but he couldn’t help but want it anyway. Every day, he looked at the one photo of her he allowed himself to keep, tucked into his wallet, and he tried so hard to pretend that he would see her again.

Months had passed — nearer to a year now — and when he went to his latest session with the counsellor, she didn’t even ask how he’d been doing that week, because she could read the answer straight from his face. Then she closed her notebook and set it aside, which was new, and she looked at him for almost a minute in silence. It would have been uncomfortable for most people, but Anderson no longer cared about such things, so he sat there and just waited. At length, she began to speak.

There was another possible avenue of treatment, she said, for difficult cases. Anderson could hear the reluctance in her voice, and that was new too, so he began paying more attention.

It was a sort of alternative therapy, in a way, she continued, and she could refer him if he wanted her to. There were no guarantees, and it was something he should think carefully about, but she felt that it could work for him.

Anderson asked her if this other therapy was something she often recommended, and the counsellor shook her head. She had only referred one other person, but the effects had been profound. She wasn’t able to go into detail, because it was a type of treatment that was tailored to the individual, but she could at least give him an address to go to. It was entirely up to him.

It occurred to him that his wife would have been delighted at the air of intrigue, and then the sadness and loss washed over him at the thought of her, and so he shrugged and asked for the information. The counsellor looked at him again, and finally she opened her notebook to the very back, and drew out a card from the flap there, handing it to him. It bore nothing but a street address. Anderson thanked her, and he was surprised when she stood up, because he still had almost forty minutes of the session left to go.

It would be better if he went immediately, she said, and then she gestured to the door, and Anderson couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he just thanked her once more and left.

It took only a moderately brief taxi ride to reach his destination, and he wasn’t particularly surprised to see that the street was old, and quiet, without many people around. The building he wanted was a little farther up, and had a drab and faded sort of charm to it, as older people and places sometimes did, carrying the echo of what they once were.

Anderson reached the place, and went in through the open doorway. The space inside was spartan to the extreme, with no furniture and bare wooden floors. A man stood there, at the far end, looking at him without any particular expression on his face. After a moment, the man approached, and held out his right hand, so Anderson made to shake it. The man kept his grip, though, bringing their joined hands to a stop.

“Your sadness is gone now,” the man said, and Anderson huffed.

“That’s all?” he replied. “Simple as that?”

The man nodded, released his hand, and Anderson found to his amazement that it was true. There was no more of the pain and the darkness within him. It was just gone. In his confusion, he turned without saying another word and walked back out into the street, unsure of what to do.

He knew that he should go home, and it was some distance from here, so he flagged down a passing cab. As he walked towards the vehicle, he reached into his pocket to check he had enough money for the fare, and the photo slipped from his wallet. He stopped to peer at it, lying there on the ground, and he smiled.

She was pretty, he thought, whoever she was.

JINX

KESTREL face a new and terrifying enemy: an all-seeing mastermind who already knows exactly who they are, and many of their deepest secrets. Nothing stays hidden forever, and the line between privacy and liberty is razor-thin…

Book 3 in the KESTREL action-thriller series.

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