UPDATE: Going to leave this season of horror unfinished for the time being, so this is the last one for 2022.
and just a quick note that this short story is a bit more horror-y than the normal Sunday Short Stories vibe. Always remember to make some time for yourself. 👍
Cheers,
—
There was a dead moth in my coffee cup.
A morning of weak-eyed exhaustion again looms over dawn as another sleepless night leads me closer to the cutting scythe of the vortex, that coiling black tendril. It waits. It is a weary ache that rolls across me as a tide, a distinct dark hollow so vacant and undefined that no matter how I search the quiet respite of sleep evades me; the failure of my confinement within dreamless day a weight upon my shoulders.
The moth looked old, two drowned wings that lay sodden and lifeless, wings slowly broken into their individual fragments. Had it always been there? Unwittingly, had I taken from this cup without noticing the touch of death upon my lips? Shifting the cup sideways I moved to see if any life remained but the moth was still within the swaying water. It appeared as a tiny ship abandoned in a cruel sea, lost, but not yet fallen below the waves, a wreck tarnished by the greed of salt and rotting decay.
I placed the cup down and began to feel sick, a lump of disgust rising from my stomach as repulsion almost drew me to vomit. It was not through hatred for the moth, such a small beast could hardly be blamed, it was a disgust of my own action, I had poured water into this mug, I had killed this creature.
I am to blame for everything.
I breathed. The haze had begun to affect my vision.
A gas-like apparition of ill-omen, this sickly miasma that lays within the corner of my retina, it conceals itself beyond the view of normal life, it appears when I am at my weakest. It is the vortex.
I once thought it was my eyesight fading, tired eyes from over-focus causing strain and leasing towards what is horrible, unmistakable. But from that day a strand had become taught, the thread of time was stressed beyond its capacity.
The moth had existed within a diminutive grasp of life’s fragility. Lacking any variation of colour, the plainness of the moth was voiceless. Darkened by the coffee, the original pattern of its wings was lost. A stained blemish of twisted spirals coiled and moved as if embers still dancing around a bonfire. The creature turned to its side as the buoyancy of its wing faltered, tipping below the surface, any flame that remained within the creature surely had now extinguished.
The haze had returned.
Had I seen the moth at all? Small particles that dwell on the surface, possibly a short delirium brought on by my weariness. For one moment I may have dreamt, a break of consciousness so blanketed by dark nightmare.
The hand of the clock slowed as I heard its note ringing through the static. With a sudden resumption of clarity I noticed the burner of my stove still ignited. How long had it burned? Unsure of the walls, unsure if this barren room was a thing of my own, I struggled to care.
The vortex had begun as the smallest of irritations, it was a sliver of sand caught behind the corner of my eye. From the itch grew a blur that would spread each time I attempted sleep, through unfocused sight I would watch this fetid haze begin to grow from the world around me; unable to withdraw my disgust as it would hang over the entire city as if a cloud: translucent but impermeable to the truth that it obscured.
Only coffee in my cup, only the road ahead of me.
Things were hidden, pushed out of my sight, only a facsimile of the normal was left in its place. I could see that things were wrong; The itch, the haze, the vortex that coils ever darker. But beyond the miasma, beyond these thoughts within my skull, what was real was too hard to be known. Small flashes of the lifted veil appeared as a glimpse and then would fade as the phantoms returning into smoke. Faces with the same features all smile as one, their eyes impossible voids of blue and white. They look so scared behind those smiles.
I see a thin black retina looking through me in perfect clarity and I know that is that should not contain eyes. They know what I have done, and still they do nothing. Why! Why do they choose to do nothing?
Memory makes a mockery of us all and without it to trust can you sleep? I worry that I can no longer discern dream from waking, that this ground could be a ledge. As true as there is only coffee within this cup I know to my core that a dead moth lays at its bottom.
I breathe and I let my head drop.
The itch of sand once again becomes agitated, and the haze begins to leak from my eyelids.
I see a lantern. A ghost stands within its light. They are calling for me.
Lowering my head onto the desk I allow myself sleep for the first fleeting moments that I can remember. And as my soul descends into the darkness of that slumber, I become the moth. I allow myself to sink below the ocean and I become the sand, the waves. I become all that is silence and all that lies hidden within this kingdom, and it is I that shall know no fear. Death shall no longer be my retainer and within this sanctum I shall walk amongst illusion.
J. McCray
2022
Sunday Short Stories 