With my desire to focus on my psychological thriller, I almost forgot about my micro-fiction. However, when I woke up this morning and checked out my writing schedule, I realized the story was due. So I went to my journal and checked what I’d lined up for May’s first micro-tale. Up first, I needed to write a brief narrative revolving around my monster hunter, Solomon. Yet I needed something to ground the story. As a result, I hurried over to ChatGPT and asked for it to provide me a story limited to 250 words that features a ‘brief fight with something that bumps in the middle of the night.’ I took that initial concept and shaped it into a story that I wanted to tell.
When the world forgets what lives in the dark, someone has to go looking.
Not all stories start with a scream. Some begin in silence, thick, heavy, and looming. This tale opens in a decaying forest drenched in dying light, where the branches claw at the sky and the ground swallows sound and intruders. Yet something recently. Whispers among the locals speak of clawed tracks and plundered pens, and other things beyond their ability to control. They bolt their doors at dusk and hope the sun rises clean.
But hope has limits. And that’s when someone like Solomon steps into the trees. This story is a slow-burn descent into unease. It doesn’t rely on blood to unsettle you. It uses stillness and observation. It features a man who’s seen too much and is walking into an area where even nature holds its breath. The kind of story where you know something is coming, but you don’t know what it is.
Come, sit down and allow me to give you a mini-escape and kindle your imagination.
Sunlight slipped through skeletal branches as Solomon crept through the damp foliage. The ground sucked at his boots, but moss and rot muffled every footfall. Locals had whispered of vanishing livestock and clawed tracks carved through brick and mud.
Few had paid him, but he’d traced tracks from a dozen homes. Once he confirmed they all led to a central trail, he pressed on. With the sun kissing the western horizon, he paused near a cave cutting into the mountainside.
A twig snapped.
Solomon spun, searching for the source.
.
.
.
To continue reading the story, click here to head over to Wattpad.