Not often did I pass through a region twice. But between wandering and also traveling the world, the unusual had to happen someday. In a land I had not visited in a long while, I stopped by a mail chain. A wall of lost letters posted for the receiver to perhaps one day find. I sometimes pulled the oldest, most abandoned looking letters for a little light reading. The ones with spattered rain stains and browning edges. The ones no one wanted.
But on this spring afternoon, the oldest letter I plucked happened to be addressed to me. I frowned as I opened it out in the sunlight, the breeze tugging at the letter’s crumbling edges. It read:
“Wanderer,
We’ve never met, but my grandfather talks about you a lot. He loves the stories you told him and he says he’s ready to tell you his now. Please come to…”
I skipped the last because another letter had been tucked behind the first, from the same writer. This dated a month after the first.
“Grandfather passed away, Wanderer. He said it’s alright that you didn’t show up, but he has the last laugh because you never did get those stories from him you wanted…”
Both of the letters were dated two years ago. A plague had wracked this country back then and I would never have made it, even if the letters had found me.
Blinking back a little mist in my eyes, I crushed the fragile letters between my palms. Upon the opening of my hand, the particles whisked away on the wind, disappearing into the bright sky.
Knowing just where to go, I turned my feet down a nearby dirt path. I was sorry I hadn’t made it in time, but I would go say one last goodbye.
A special thank-you to Jessica Moranty for your support on Patreon! You are the best. Friend to all creators. Thank you so much, again and again.
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Summer’s Latest
Beneath the Bluebonnets: Tales of Terror by Texas Women
Read my eco-horror short “Well Being” in this fabulous new anthology, in which a mother follows strange impulses from tainted water to find her daughter.
From Mary Shelley to Tananarive Due and Mariana Enríquez, women have long shaped horror—often without equal recognition. Living closest to the genre’s edge, women know these fears firsthand: lost autonomy, violence, childbirth, survival.
Set in Texas, a land of haunted histories and increasingly restrictive laws, Beneath the Bluebonnets emerges from the raw intersection of terror and endurance. Written by twelve Texas women writers: R. J. Joseph, Lauren Oertel, L.H. Phillips, Kathleen Kent, Madison Estes, Jess Hagemann, Emma E. Murray, Jae Mazer, Iphigenia Strangeworth, Jacklyn Baker, S.G. Baker and edited by Carmen Gray, this collection is urgent, unflinching, and deeply haunting—stories that refuse to look away.
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Word Nerd Scribbles 
It was very meaningful and so exciting yet peaceful. Thank you so much for posting your short stories! They are helping me get better as a novice writer. (I don’t like all those terms like “aspiring writer” or “future writer.”) I always check my reader to see if there is more from the Hopeful Wanderer, and when there is it always makes my day better.
PS- This kind of gave me a weird deja vu. Not sure why.
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This comment means so much to me. Thank you! I’m really glad to hear you’re getting even better as a writer, too. Even just that is great, but to know that my words help someone else with their words is incredible. Thank you so much again.
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