THE TOPIC OF THIS CONTEST WAS:
There wouldn’t be a garden this year. There was no longer any water, and the only source of light now was from candles. The animals had all been set free to fend for themselves. She was sitting on the bench with her forehead on the rickety table when she heard footsteps on the porch…
(Stories need only touch on this topic in some way to qualify.)
She sat on the bench, forehead pressed to the splintered wood, listening to the quiet. It had weight now. It filled the corners of the room, stretched across the ceiling, settling into her chest like something alive.
Before, there had always been noise.
A kind that followed her everywhere. Not loud, not quiet, but constant. A constant stream of something…voices, laughter, music, faces she knew and faces she didn’t. She used to fall asleep to it, wake up to it, carry it with her like a second heartbeat.
Now there was just this.
The candle nearest her flickered, wax spilling down its side too fast to keep up.
She lifted her head slowly. Her reflection stared back at her from the dark window. Pale, unfamiliar, older. Or maybe just undone.
A creak sounded from the porch. She froze.
Footsteps.
Not imagined. Not remembered. Real.
For a moment, she didn’t move. Her mind reached for something that wasn’t there. No quick way to check, no alert, no message lighting up the dark to tell her who it might be. Just the sound again. Slow, careful.
Someone was out there.
Her chest tightened, not fear exactly, but something more foreign. Uncertainty. She didn’t know the rules anymore. Didn’t know what people did when they found each other like this.
Before, you could look someone up. See their face, their life, their opinions. Decide what they were worth before ever standing in front of them.
Another step. Now there was just a door between them.
She stood, her legs stiff from sitting too long and wiped her palms against her jeans. They were damp. She hadn’t noticed she was sweating.
And then, a hesitant knock.
At least it wasn’t just her.
She moved closer, each step slow, deliberate, like she was learning how to walk again. Candlelight stretched her shadow long and unsteady across the floor.
“Hello?”
A pause. And then, “Hi.”
A real voice. Not filtered, not sent through wires or screens. It wavered slightly, like it belonged to someone just as out of practice.
A memory flickered, crowded rooms, everyone looking down. Faces lit blue, fingers moving, scrolling, tapping. Conversations happening everywhere except out loud. She had been there too. Smiling at things that weren’t in front of her. Measuring herself in numbers that changed by the second. Waiting to be seen while ignoring everything real enough to touch.
She swallowed.
“Are you…okay?” the voice asked.
Such a simple question. She almost laughed. It felt too big now.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly.
Another pause.
“Me neither.”
Something in her chest loosened. Not fixed. Not healed. Just…shifted.
She turned the handle, the door opening slowly, hinges groaning like they weren’t used to being needed anymore.
A person stood there, dirt on their hands. Eyes tired, but alert. Real in a way that felt almost overwhelming.
For a second, they just looked at each other. No profiles, no history, no numbers. Just two people who had forgotten how to be people.
“Do you…” she trailed off. She didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
He shook his head slightly, like he understood anyway.
“We’ll figure it out,” he said.
She nodded, though she wasn’t sure what it was anymore. How to talk. How to trust. How to be.
She stepped aside, letting him in. The door shut behind them with a dull, final sound. For awhile neither of them spoke. The candles flickered between them, their light small but stubborn against the dark. He moved toward the table, running his fingers along its rough edge like he hadn’t touched something real in a long time.
“I used to be good at this,” he said finally.
“At what?”
He hesitated. “People.”
She smiled. “I think we all thought we were.”
Silence settled again, but this time, it wasn’t as heavy.
He reached into his pocket, hesitating before pulling something out. Small. Rectangular. Dead.
He turned it over in his hands like it might come back to life if he waited long enough.
She felt something tighten in her chest.
“I kept thinking it would come back,” he admitted. “That this was temporary.”
She walked closer, the candlelight catching the object just enough to make it recognizable.
She had one too. Everyone did. Had.
“What did you use it for?” she asked.
The question seemed to catch him off guard. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. His brow furrowed like he was searching for something that should have been easy.
“I don’t know,” he said finally.
And that was when it landed.
Not the silence. Not the darkness. Not even the loneliness. But the absence of something they had once believed they couldn’t live without, now reduced to a useless object.
She looked at it, then him. Two people, standing in a quiet room, holding the corpse of a world they couldn’t explain anymore.
And in the quiet, she realized maybe nothing important had been lost, only the distractions that kept them from truly living.
