Flash Fiction: Creeper

/ Claire Fuller

closet

At first, the changes were subtle: a framed photograph moved to a different shelf, a favourite pair of socks missing, the coffee finished when we thought we had another packet. It was always when we were sleeping, and we slept deeply.

One morning the cat was hiding under the sofa, the orange juice was gone, and the cupboard door was ajar when we were sure we’d closed it. It was a mess in there, but eventually we found the loose board behind the top shelf. We stared into the dark tunnel beyond; neither of us prepared to go first.

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This is a 100-word story inspired by the photograph above, this week supplied by Rochelle Wisoff-Fields who also looks after all of us Friday Fictioneers. Click here to join in or here to read stories by other writers.

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If you’re thinking about Christmas, I have an offer you might be interested in: Buy a copy of either Our Endless Numbered Days or Swimming Lessons for someone (or yourself) and I’ll post you a personalised card for free. Click here for more information.

46 thoughts on “Flash Fiction: Creeper”

  2. ahhhhh! This sounds like a beginning of a horrible good book. The fear to go in the big adventure of life. Sleeping deeply and fantasy becoming alive, dreams come true…go on first and write this book, otherwise someone else will write it!

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  10. It’s a good spooky tale, and the tunnel is an excellent hook for a longer story. Something makes me feel it’s more than that, though. It’s trivial things that are missing, and they go missing when husband and wife are unconscious. Then they find the tunnel and neither of them wishes to be the first to investigate.
    The story could represent the gradual loss, one by one, of the reasons they have for staying together. Nicely written, Claire.

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  14. Oh you do know how to weave a story! I have to agree with Sandra – thank God it was the orange juice and not the wine! (priorities, you know) but now… who/what the hell is stealing from them?

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    • hmm everything very confusing! Who steals what? an upside-down Narnia story? They come from the imagination and want to reality? Thank you, Penny, “represent the gradual loss, one by one, of the reasons they have for staying together” your comments are always so good!
      Maybe it is just the way for one person? As reality and fantasy belongs together I can not really decide which one is on the other side. But everybody have to know how to make his ideal mixture of fantasy and “so called” reality….well everybody? There might be a problem for the ones who never lived in the “so called” reality to enter there. There is no doubt that this story is very confusing!

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        • Oh I´m happy that you liked it. Dreams want to come true….yes!
          In the end, imagination, which in my opinion certainly has a claim to reality, always remains a crucial question. Can this fantasy exist in the real world and do we want it to exist there? And as a result, the next questions arise. If the answers are both yes, the question of “how” do we integrate the fantasy, how do we live our dreams. If one of the questions has been answered with “no”, the question is: do we divert our imagination to something else, or do we cling to this fantasy and accept that it will never be integrated into reality? This is certainly not advisable for big dreams!

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  20. Such a great story about what could be lurking. The initial confusion and later trepidation are really clear. Maybe they don’t need to enter, just nail it firmly shut.

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  23. I was a hide my face with a cushion kind of child and I love how the missing things are so ordinary and things you could be wrong about … until..

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