Aug 1, 2025
Loyalty
Obat wished it hadn’t been his brother who’d betrayed everyone. He wished his brother hadn’t been so fucking wilfully blind… but that didn’t matter. His brother had chosen to believe the slick and selfish lies of someone who wanted power and didn’t care who was hurt to get it.
Chifadi was the only one who’d stayed with him, and Obat would never be able to repay his loyalty. Chifadi’s entire family was destroyed, he was alone, but when Obat left to hunt his brother down, Chifadi was waiting at the town gates.
Obat would never let Chifadi be alone again.
***
Aug 2, 2025
Confession
William stood at the door as Rafael tucked a blanket around Toby. When Rafael looked up, William knew his expression had given him away from the way Rafael’s face changed.
Out in the living room, Rafael started to speak, but William interjected, “I’ll make us tea.” and fled to the kitchen. He pressed his fingers into his eyes while the water heated.
The sound of Rafael’s feet on the tile floor made William snap around.
“It’s not important.” He turned away.
Rafael’s voice was so soft. “I think it is.” He stepped closer. “It might be the most important thing.”
***
Aug 3, 2025
Music
Sweat dribbled into her eyes; her hands were too mucky to wipe it away, so she blinked hard, winced at the salt sting, and kept going. This plant bed wouldn’t weed itself, and if she wanted to have dry beans for the winter, she had to clear it now.
The moans of the dead outside her electric fence kept her company as she worked. Music made them more active, so she’d stopped playing it.
When she heard the Hallelujah Chorus from beyond the fence, she thought her heart would stop. She looked and saw a face left behind years before.
***
Aug 4, 2025
Distracted
It’s so easy to forget what he’s supposed to be doing. He needs to look up when the thrift store opens, and an hour later, he surfaces from a cute set of linked threads telling the story of adopting a pair of kittens. And he still doesn’t know the store hours.
He tries to keep focused; he really does. But it keeps happening. Half an hour reading book reviews, two hours on recipe variations, five hours lost to ‘productivity hacks’, an irony which does make him stay offline for nearly a week.
It never lasts, though. He can’t stop himself.
***
Aug 5, 2025
Alone
Dien chafed his fingers together, then cupped them over the last of the embers in the brazier. He was the only one awake this early; he cherished the time to himself. The others were kind enough to ignore the fact that he didn’t belong in this hell-pit of a mine. It had taken a month before he could pronounce enough of the strange foreign language to tell them more than just his name.
He still couldn’t tell them that he’d chosen this, that his exile here was one he’d undertaken willingly. He didn’t think he’d ever tell anyone that secret.
***
Aug 6, 2025
Who Are You?
The box was shoved in the back corner of my grandparents’ attic, tucked under a pile of mildewed clothes. I’d nearly missed it when I was clearing the house.
A month after I’d finally finished slogging through the misery of probate, I finally opened it to find old videotapes. Lots of them, labeled with dates and names. I found myself tearing up at recordings of events I barely remembered.
Then something caught my attention. There I was, seven years old, but who was the identical girl holding my hand? The label said “Janet and Junie, twins”.
I’m an only child.
***
Aug 7, 2025
Red as Roses
Her blood was the wrong color, that was the first thing he noticed. Well, the second thing; he did notice that she started bleeding as soon as he pulled her through the safety barrier. He’d expected things to calm down once they were both inside the green zone, but she’d struggled as soon as she’d seen where he was going. He hadn’t understood her words, but his translator was glitchy on this planet.
He pressed his hand against the wound and yelled for help. He’d figure out why her blood was red later, when she wasn’t dying in his arms.
***
Aug 8, 2025
Bitter
He was giving up on wishing or hoping. Wishing solved nothing, there was no benefit in it. The only thing he should do was plan, act on the plan, and ignore everything that wasn’t directly connected to his future.
He couldn’t control his dreams, though. They kept torturing showing him the things he’d wanted before everything crashed to the ground. All those hopes, all the possibilities, all the love he hadn’t really had, no matter what he’d thought.
He’d been expecting to share this, and now he was just alone.
Seeing his old lover with a new baby didn’t help.
***