The Negotiation
Until the young girl appeared, at the other end of the stone bridge. She was standing still, glaring at me, as if willing me to comply with something.
Happy New Year or en Guete Rutsch, as they say in my native Schwyzerduutsch. And thank you for reading, commenting and sharing my writing!
I’m delighted to kickstart 2026 with more publication news: my short story The Negotiation will be published in speculative fiction magazine MyThaxis sometime in Spring/Summer 2026. Here’s a teaser.
This is what I did as a child, when they left me alone in our railroad apartment on the third floor. Instead of switching on the lights, so I could see, I would leave all the lights off, so he could not see me. I would cower, wrapped in a woolen blanket, under the kitchen table, sweating with the effort of not moving, not screaming. And when my mother and grandmother and my uncle returned, and called out my name, Rebecca, like a kiss breaking a spell, I would throw off the blanket, flip on the kitchen light, scramble onto a chair, and pretend I had been there, drawing at the kitchen table, all along. But they always greeted me with a knowing smile, my mother murmuring words of comfort, my grandmother gently wiping my face dry.
“Nonsense,” Frank said. “He is just afraid of the dark. All children are.”
I had walked through the park far longer than intended, always toward what I had assumed was the other side of town, wading in deeper instead. This section had something reclusive to it, the green bitter, the light ashen. I walked to a stone bridge over a brook and paused to orient myself, but I had no map and there was no one in sight.
Until the young girl appeared, at the other end of the stone bridge. She was standing still, glaring at me, as if willing me to comply with something. I spoke to her.
“Hello?”
The girl didn’t move. I looked around for an adult in charge, but the paths were empty, the meadow far behind me. I looked back at the girl. She lowered her head and charged. In a second she was on me, kicking my shin. I was too stunned to react. Her dainty leather shoe hit my leg, once, twice, before the pain registered and I shouted at her Stop! Stop! I grabbed her arms, but she kept kicking with her skinny legs, panting like a small dog. Kick back, urged a voice in my head, and I raised my foot to take aim. The girl let out a growl, tore free from my grip and ran off.
The park slipped back into silence. I stumbled on. With every step the silence grew vaster, more lifeless. I turned a bend and emerged on a broad promenade, lined by towering, interlocking Elms. Like tentacles, I thought, looking at their twisting branches. Frank had once compared the branches of a similar tree to dendrites twisting from a cell body. I paused, peering into the tunnel of trees. A shape hovered at the far end, a mere blot in the distance. But now the figure made a sound that seemed to emanate from right next to me, it was clearing its throat, and then I could hear it speak.
“You have to want rightly.” The words floated like heads without bodies. “There’s nothing difficult in simply wanting. But to want rightly is a gift. Do you know what you want?”