Midnight Writings
Welcome to The Raven Writers collection of short stories. Here, you'll find short stories written at midnight, edged with mystery, and inspired by my favorite books, tv shows, and movies. Enter new worlds of fantasy, mystery, love and betrayal.
Red
By The Raven Writer
Red stains on his shirt, his hair disheveled, his jacket ripped. Coming home, he hoped his wife wasn’t there, afraid of what she’d say when she found out he broke his promise. And yet, he didn’t regret a single thing he’d done.
He launders his clothes, getting those all too familiar red marks out of his once crisp white collar. He sprayed his cologne on his shirt to mask the potent smell. He quickly stitched the shoulder seams of his grey suit jacket, making it look brand new.
Jumping into the shower, he washed the red marks and smell from his skin, leaving no evidence behind. Cleaned and smelling good, he traipsed downstairs to make dinner for his wife like he’d done for 20 years. While he held the pan’s handle, he stared down at the silver wedding ring, reminiscing.
He’d loved her since childhood; done everything she’d asked of him. But where had it all gone wrong? Was it the lack of passion? The children? Or was it the other thing side of him he’d been hiding? She’d asked him to stop before and he did. For 7 years he was content with his life with his beautiful wife and children. However, all good things come to an end.
Once the children were in school, he yearned for that familiar thrill. Rock climbing, sky diving, cliff diving and so much more…but it never came close to filling the hole that red did. But his heart would always look for that red that gave him such a thrill. The way it felt to do something so wrong for just a short blip of time and yet get away with it. He loved it. He loved his wife, he really did, but that red was something he couldn’t live without.
He looked for it in everything, every day. He asked his wife to wear the same shade of lipstick, but it didn’t satisfy him. He painted his office the same dark red and nothing. He always wanted to see that color red on his skin; face, neck, hands covered in red marks. Like lovely little splatters of passion. Red lights, dresses, pens, lipstick, simply the mention of red made him flustered and he wished he could see that red smeared on their faces again. The same red he smeared all over the lips of the ones he took. Red was his favorite color.
He took so many in different ways and places, some in his own home, good thing he was good at cleaning up. “Such a clean freak,” his wife always said when she’d come home to a house smelling like it had been just cleaned, but she’d never know he was so neat because he had to keep his second life hidden. She begged him to stop when she first got pregnant because the baby would need a normal father but he couldn’t do without the color red. Like a smoker he quit and went back after the craving became too hard to push away. He went needed that ecstasy.
He stared at the red in the meat he was cooking and his craving came back. He wanted to smear that red on someone’s face and feel that rush of adrenaline in his blood. His body hadn’t been satisfied enough this afternoon and he wanted another with that same red on.
“Just wait till they’re asleep,” he told himself as he cooked for his family. “My family,” he whispered as if reminding himself that he had one. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” “What was that hun?” He turned around spatula in hand to see his wife in her skirt suit while his two children sipped on boxes of apple juice. “Nothing…Just thinking,” he muttered embarrassedly as he kissed his wife softly. With her there was no red. He kissed both his kids and smiled as his daughter, the light of his life, happily told him about her day. Still in her little uniform, she played with the juice box straw, swaying as he cooked. That’s when he noticed it. A small dab of red marker on her white shirt. His eyes darted away and back to the meat in the pan, which was oozing the same color red. He tried to focus on cooking but he could only picture the red that brought him such bliss.
After dinner baths were given to the children. In their footy pajamas, they fell asleep to a story about red shoes. Once again his craving was eating at him; begging to be satisfied. “So, what were you think about earlier?” “It was nothing just a quick thought.” “You haven’t done it again, have you?,” his wife asked skeptically. “No, never again,” he lied through his teeth. Lying had become a part of his daily routine. She nodded, believing him, before kissing his cheek and going to take a shower.
His craving was screaming at him to be fulfilled. “You know you want to.” “I can’t she’s home. If I leave now she’ll know.” “Such a fool. She doesn’t give you what she used to and you still stay by her side like a puppy. Ha fool.” “Shut up,” he said going into his office to pack a bag. The toys he loved to play with filled the gym bag. An extra pair of clothes were laid on top, since he knew his wife would be home this time. A bottle of cologne to mask the smell and wipes to clean off that red he fell in love with.
“Such a liar.” He turned around with the last thing he needed to put in the bag. There his wife stood in only a towel, a sight that made his knees buckle. “How long?” “4 years”. Her eyes widened before going back to their angrily wrinkled ways. “I need this…I love you…but I need this…it won’t stop,” he says with a whimper in his voice, tears welling up in his green eyes. He knelt down on the floor, the object in his hand hitting the dark wood.
She knelt down and picked up the object, “how many have you used this on?” “32”, he answered shamefully. A gasp left the beautiful lips he loved so much. She stepped back a bit, anger in her eyes, not from the actions but from the lies. “I’m sorry,” he cried as he stared up at her.
“Sorry? Sorry? sorry! SORRYS NOT GONNA CUT IT THIS TIME!,” she said with a crazed look in her eyes as she lifted the gun to his head. “This has taken the lives of 32 people …shall we make it 33?”, she asked with a crazy smile and wide eyes, the same eyes she had when they used to share the same bloodlust. She cocked the gun and pressed it between his eyes. “Do it…I’m ready. If anyone’s going to kill me…I’m just glad it’s you,” he sighed. His eyes slowly fell closed, content that the love of his life was going to be the one to kill him. His wife took in a deep breath, closing her eyes tight. “I love you, Evangeline.”
Dead but Never Gone
By The Raven Writer
At just 9-years-old, I watched him deteriorate. And now I stood at his coffin, not understanding that he was truly gone. His face was cold as I gave him a kiss but he still looked like he was breathing. He looked pale and he was freezing cold but he was right there, how could he be dead?
Cancer took him at 43, taking a part of me and my mother with him. Mom tells me I wrote him a letter and put it in his suit pocket at the funeral, but I don’t remember. I lost a bit more than a year of memory after he died. From May 15th 2016 to September 1st 2017 everything is blank. From the funeral till the start of middle school, I don’t remember a thing. The only thing I do remember in that blocked out span of time, was a dream.
The dream that told me he was ok. The dream that told me he wasn’t in pain and he was doing better.
…
Standing in my earth toned living room, in the purple satin and black velvet dress I wore the day he died, I looked around. His urn and photo were gone from the mantel where they sat at the time. The hospital bed was gone from the corner of the room and the IV pole and monitor was gone as well. Everything was back to how it was before he moved back home for his final days.
I stared around the room before I heard the creaky glass door opening. I ran and threw open the vestibule door and watched as my mother walked in through the front door with a smile on her face. Her red painted lips were turned upwards in a smile I hadn’t seen in a long while. I called out to her but she stepped to the left, where the glass and wooden door met at the doorframe, and disappeared. I stared at where she faded for a moment before another stepped forward.
He stood in a beige polo shirt, with dark blue jeans, and his signature navy blue flat cap. His thin rimmed glasses sat on his nose, touching the tops of his chubby cheeks. His smile was just how I remembered; warm and loving.
He stood there with more life than he’d ever had. He wasn’t slim like he’d been before he died. His eyes weren’t sunken in. There were no tubes, poles, or machines hooked up to him. He stood there as the man I once knew. The man I hadn’t seen in so long. My father.
“Daddy?,” I called out to him as I took a step forward into the vestibule instead of standing in the doorway. I stopped mid-way in, feeling as though I couldn’t get closer. Like I stood at the vail of life and death. His smile never faded even as he muttered the two words that I cling to 9 years later.
“I’m ok.”
I stared at him for a moment, not knowing what to do, wanting only to hug him tight just one last time.
But I woke up. Alone. Sobbing in my bed for my father, who’d been dead for almost a year.
But, with this dream, I started to heal, knowing that he was no longer in pain.
Now, sitting here reading this to you on the day he died, my heart still hurts, but this dream reminds me he’s in a better place. A place with no pain.
The Fated Lovers Last Meeting
By The Raven Writer
“Your eyes bore holes into my soul, leaving nothing but adoration and love. Your hands touch me like I'm a porcelain doll, leaving little patches of heat for me to remember you love me. Your heart calls my name and mine calls yours because our souls are intertwined, destined to reunite in every lifetime no matter how far we are. You know me better than I know myself. You see the small things that not even I notice about myself.
You are my one and only. No matter how many lifetimes we live. No matter how long I have to wait for you to find me again, you always do. You're the first and last thing I think of before I fall asleep. You occupy every inch of my heart and my mind. You're the reason I don't give up hope. You're the reason I wake everyday and the reason I do everything. Because I'd do anything for you.
"Je t'aime mon amour.”
She stood there sobbing her heart out in front of me. Her words sparked something in me, remembrance, like pieces of a life forgotten sliding back into my mind.
It was like a film reel. I could see her beautiful brown eyes covered in a sheer veil with small black balls dotting the tips of her lashes like a silent film star in the 1920s. Then it changed to something farther back in time. I could see her laying on a red velvet Méridienne chair. She was beautifully naked with a soft belly, beautiful milky round thighs and the face of a cherub. Her hair was an auburn mess of curls running down her back as I painted her. I was an artist?
My mind cycled through my lives with her until I reached what I assumed was our first life together. Her black braided shoulder length wig jingled as she walked; the golden hair beads clinking together with each movement. The wide golden collar adorned with lapis lazuli and turquoise sat perfectly on her chest, just above her small breasts. Her kalasiris was tied in a way that gave her a boxy rectangular shape, ideal for what I assumed was ancient Egypt. The sash holding her kalasiris together had her name written in hieroglyphics; Nefret meaning “beautiful”. How I knew the meaning of a language I did not know, I had no clue.
“H-How many lives have we lived together?”, I asked in a stunned voice.
“2,704 lives,” she said in a small voice. It was only then that I realized she was still crying. I felt like I was in my head for hours going through thousands of lifetimes, when it was really only a few moments.
“How do you always find me?”, I asked her as I handed her a tissue not wanting to be inconsiderate.
“You always find me,” she said, wiping her face clean. “There’ve been times when I’ve lived across continents and you have found me. Once you were a merchant on the Silk Road and you found me in China weaving silk. Another time you found me in Italy where I was a slave working for the Emperor. You brought me, freed me, and made me yours,” she explained as she poured herself some water.
“How do I always…find myself loving you, my belladonna beauty?”, I asked as I cupped her cheeks, swiping my thumb under her eye, wiping away a smudge of her mascara.
“I’ve never forced you and yet you always remember me. Always fall back in love with me. Maybe it’s your curse. I know my curse. My curse is having you for a human lifetime, then spending the next five decades alone waiting for you to find me again,” she whispered. “I don’t want you to be forced to love me. I want it to be your choice and if you choose to walk away from me…that’s your choice. I will not take your choice from me, my angel,” she said, reaching up to hold my wrists while my thumbs caressed her cheeks.
“I will always choose you, my cherub,” I said, pulling her into me, wrapping her in my warm embrace.
I felt her relax in my arms; stress from years of waiting for me lifting off her back. “You always change and yet you somehow always look the same,” I said, studying her face. “It’s like you’ve grown paler through the millennia's,” I whispered, touching her skin. “Your skin was once dark like the night, then olive, then caramel, then alabaster. Your hair was black, then brown, then auburn, then golden…now it’s graying. You’ve become almost.. see through.”
“I’m fading,” she whispered, body becoming ridged again. “I am growing old. I always thought I was immortal, I’ve come to find out that was not true. My body takes years to grow as a normal human. I’ve lived many lives with you, but I think this will be my last life with you, unless the gods have other plans for me. Maybe we’ll both die together this time,” she said with a bittersweet smile.
She wanted this. She was ready. I could understand that. However, I could tell she was apprehensive. She wanted to live with me eternally but her body couldn’t do it anymore.
“Then we’ll be together even in death. You’ll be a true angel, my love. I will always find my way to you. You will never have to live without me. For I cannot live without you, even if it may take time to remember who you are and our lives together, I always come back to you. If you die, I die. We will live between worlds together. Live where time can no longer take us from each other. We will live where not even the gods can strip you from my arms. I am yours and you are mine, no matter what comes our way. You and I will fight the gods if we have to. I won’t let you go,” I vowed to her.
My hands squished her precious cherub cheeks as I pulled her into a deep longing kiss. Both of us are now crying as we face the possibility that this was our last life together and we were perilous to stop it.
What Do You Mean?
Two years ago, in the summer of 2019, I moved into an apartment with my best friend. It’d been so long since we’d met, I couldn’t remember how.
When the pandemic hit in 2020, we got locked down together. Stuck in this little apartment together for, what felt like, forever. But he’s all I need to keep me company. We’d play video games, watch movies, talk for hours on end, cook dinner, and listen to music while smoking.
TODAY
“Yo! Wanna play GTA?”, he asked me while I sat at the dining room table working.
“I can’t, sorry. I gotta finish this thing for work and then the landlord is coming up to fix the AC unit and after that I have a meeting. I probably won’t be done till late,” I said while steadily typing on my laptop not even bothering to look up.
He huffed, grunted and walked away mumbling something about me being a workaholic asshole.
He was oddly agitated today, constantly grunting and mumbling aggressively while doing small meaningless tasks. He spilled some coffee earlier and threw his cup in the sink, breaking it in the process and proceeding to punch a hole in the wall after the cup broke. I stayed out of his way for fear of directing his anger towards me but when I’d look up from my laptop he was staring at me. His eyes were dark and eerie which gave me an uneasy feeling. I figured he was just having an off day and decided to just stay out of his way.
About an hour later, the landlord came up to fix the AC unit in my room. I let him in, led him to my room, and he began fixing it. In the other room I could hear my roommate on his Xbox yelling at someone over the mic.
“Sorry about him, he's having a bad day,” I apologized to the landlord, embarrassed at my roommate's behavior.
“…Huh?”, the landlord mumbled with an arched brow as he fiddled with his tool bag.
“Never mind,” I mumbled, not understanding how he didn’t notice the yelling from the room over. “When you’re done, my roommate punched a hole in the wall and I was wondering if you could maybe come back another day to fix it?”, I asked.
The landlord stared at me in confusion as he grabbed his tool bag.
“What roommate?”, he asked with all the confusion in the world.
“Chris? He’s lived with me for the last two years, we signed the lease papers together and he was dating your daughter for a time,” I said not understanding how he couldn’t remember him.
“Tom, you dated my daughter. And no one signed a lease with you. It’s always been just you in this apartment,” he assured me while giving me a look of concern. “Did you hit your head, kid?”, he asked me.
“What do you mean? He’s literally in the next room
yelling at someone on his game,” I exclaimed as I pointed at Chris’s bedroom door.
“Tom, are you ok? No one’s here,” the landlord said, opening Chris’s bedroom door.
Just then the loud yelling quieted. I peeked into the room and the once gross, messy room covered in unwashed clothes and empty energy drink cans, was completely clean with not even a bedframe.
“But…,” I said standing there dumbfounded and confused. “…he just asked me to play GTA with him an hour ago…he was just yelling five seconds ago,” I said looking around the room.
“Tom?”, the landlord asked quietly.
I looked back at him.
“Have you been taking your medication?”, he asked me while holding my shoulder.
“Meds?”I asked, looking at him with wide, confused eyes. My whole reality had been shattered simply by opening that door.
“Tom, I’m gonna call your mom,” he muttered with a worried expression as he guided me to sit on my couch.
I looked over at the tv stand and there was only one controller instead of two. I looked to where the hole in the wall was from when Chris punched it and it was completely fine. I went into the kitchen and looked down at the third tile from the fridge and found no burn mark from where he dropped a tray of lasagna.
There was no trace of Chris in this apartment.
“He…he never existed?”, I asked aloud as I stared around the room with wide uneasy eyes.
The Dance of the Celestial Bodies
Star dust formed into a beautifully complex being over billions of years. And since her creation, she danced around the beautiful sparkling orb at the center of our dance floor.
And I follow in her beautiful wake. She pulls me along with her as she dances around the warm light.
The way I push and pull her changes the directions of her flowing skirt. The blue rippling gown moves in towards her body and out towards me in a beautiful silken wave.
Heavy strands of brown, flourishing green and gray streaks cover her beautiful freckled body, flowing from her head down her back.
Her skin was a gorgeous warm brown like the bark of an ancient oak tree, with all the swirls and patterns that come with it. Her freckles were all shades of skin; brown, black, cinnamon, pale peach.
She moved to the beat of her own heart, like a drum which guided her life. The sound grew stronger within her chest when her body thrived but lately it’d been beating slower.
She’d still been spinning around the brightly lit orb at the center of the dance floor but she’d grown tired, her color dulled, her heart beating slow. The multicolored hair that I’d loved had grown grey and pale. Her freckly skin, which I’d admired from a distance as we danced, began to lack color, growing lifeless.
And still she danced.
Her eyes, that bright emerald green I’d admired for all these years, gone. Reduced to grey with slivers of a sickly green. Nothing like I’d used to love.
4.5 billion years since we started our dance and now, the Mother Earth I’d followed with each spin and tilt, was slowly dying and all I could do was watch.
The small cells in her body were overtaking her, building structures which were stripping her of color, turning her into an object that spun with no trace of the life.
She was dying and all I could do was watch her spin her, supporting her with gentle pushes and pulls as I stood a ways away.
Day by day, year by year, her skin turned from warm browns with flecks of cool green undertones, to grey with minuscule amounts of brown. Her skin and hair had grown hard like the statues and buildings they’d built on her surface.
“Now we match, Mr. Moon”, she whispered after the last bit of color left her beautiful being. Her skin matched mine; grey, bland, damaged, lifeless.
The sun in the center of our intergalactic dance floor didn’t shine on her skin like it used to.
The beautiful Mother Earth was gone. Her skin had turned rough from the concrete and buildings they’d covered her surface in. Her dress was stained with oil slick and covered in trash. Her hair was almost gone, only the greys and some brown streaks left in her thick rocky hair.
The human cells living in her body had used her sources to their advantage and left her barely breathing. And all I could do was watch my beautiful girl die from halfway across the room.
I’d pictured myself dancing with her for so long that I’d forgotten, I was nowhere near her in the first place. I stood twenty-five feet away from where she spun on the galactic dance floor, watching her face light up in joy.
Now she spins around the sun, lonely and polluted with no one to love her but me, even as I follow her from twenty-five feet away.
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