The Last Beautiful Things

 

 

             When time grows thin, she chases the three wonders she’s never been allowed to touch. 

All around me, the world was unnaturally quiet and still, except for large, fluffy white flakes spiraling and spinning down from the gray, freezing sky. Face tipped up, they landed on cheeks, lips, and lashes like soft, crystallized butterfly kisses.

Slowly, I spun in a circle, arms stretched out, body infused with joy. There is a first time for everything, even snowfall in your late seventies.

I glanced down at my feet, wrapped in two layers of grocery bags I’d tied on with twine. They crinkled every time I took a step, already collecting tiny pearls of melting snow. I must have looked ridiculous, dressed for winter the way a child dresses a scarecrow.  

But none of that mattered.

I was here

I was finally standing in real snow.

 

It was better than anything on TV. Better than my old snow globe.

            People like me don’t go places. I know entire apartments of people who’ve never seen snow or the ocean. We work. We try to save, watching the money melt away as life piles on. We wait for better times that never come. And before we know it, a lifetime has passed without a single adventure outside of our city.

I crunched the snow with my bag-wrapped tennis shoes, delighted, crunch, crunch. I wanted to lie down and make a snow angel, but there was nothing in the clearing here to help me get up, and when I lay down, it would be for good.

Snowflakes drifted sideways, not sure where to land. They wandered, choosing their own little dance, falling and merging. Trees were iced with them like cakes, the ground a white blanket clean as a fresh white sheet, so much beauty everywhere. My old eyes stung with it.

The cold started curiously picking through my clothing, tickling my feet and whispering chill into my fingers and ear tips, which the beanie didn’t quite cover, even though I lined it with a plastic bag too.

I had waited a long time for this, had gone through a lot to get here, and I needed this to last.

I hadn’t worried much about hitchhiking.
When you’re in your seventies and living on borrowed time, danger feels almost polite compared to the slow, suffocating kind that comes from waiting to die in a cramped, rundown apartment.
No, if these were my last days, I wanted them to have sky in them.
Snow.
Wind.
Something beautiful to hold as I went.

A couple of neighbors might miss me, but all my family was gone. I tied up what loose ends I could, gave away most of my belongings, cleaned the apartment as best I could, and made peace with the roaches years ago. They weren’t my roaches. They just lived there like everybody else in the building. The only wrong I did was skipping last month’s rent. I try not to think too hard about that. I needed the money for my bucket list.

And yes, I had one.

I painstakingly wrote it out on the back of an envelope.

The thing is, I didn’t have a long list. Just three dreams I had carried my whole life. They sat almost finished, crinkled up in my coat pocket.

•      ·       Touch Snow
• ·       See the Ocean
• ·       See the Northern Lights

 I even drew the little black dots in front of each dream with a marker pen, so I could circle when completed, a proper list in my mind.

 I’d always wanted to see the ocean. I’d seen it everywhere except in real life, promising myself I’d go someday, but someday kept getting eaten up by the bills. Real life, where I live, swallows everything but necessity, and sometimes you don’t even have money for that. It was good irony that my list was written on the back of a bill envelope, one I couldn’t pay.

The ocean, you might ask, what did I think of it? Firstly, it scared me. If I weren’t already in a place of passing, it might have taken me there sooner. I just stood up in the parking lot after stepping out of the taxi, and stared. It had cost me a bit of cash to get here, and I wasn’t sure what I expected. The taxi driver stayed in the cab, letting the meter run. I clutched my large purse tighter to my chest, as if it could shield me.  The ocean seemed to exhale and inhale as it pounded on the sand. I thought the ocean would be a little calmer where people could walk in and put their toes in the foam, letting the bigness of the whole world wrap around their ankles, and everything would be beautifully blue. This furious, endless, gray body of water, slinging itself about and crashing with loud booms, just made me shake my head and climb back in the cab. I had seen the ocean, and it reminded me of the angry neighborhood I’d left behind.

Using the marker to check it off my list, I never looked out the window as we left.

What I had left of my teeth were starting to clack together, now. This was a new kind of cold. Somewhere along the way, it stole in under my clothes and wrapped itself around me. Even my breath started to hurt inside my chest, and I could feel a pinching in my toes. I thought you just had to keep your feet dry; that’s why I double-bagged.

My cheeks, already so cold and sore from smiling, somehow warmed a little when I thought about the Northern Lights. When I checked that one off, I even underlined it. Their beauty was everything and more than I thought it would be. I’d seen them in magazines, green and pink ribbons curling across the sky like somebody up there was painting. People had to help me see them where I ended up. Apparently, phones have better eyes than people do when it comes to Northern Lights. Funny thing is, these days the lights have been slipping farther and farther down the map, showing up in places they never used to. Maybe the world wanted regular people like me to have a chance, finally.

I did sit in that little café earlier and hold a hot chocolate in my hands, dizzy from watching people in their brightly colored snowsuits milling about, laughing and carrying on. They were so young and alive, living a kind of life I’d only ever seen on TV. My last ride insisted on walking me from the parking lot to the café, saying he “wouldn’t leave someone’s grandma out in the cold alone.”

I gave a good cock and bull story about why I was coming here.

People see what they want to see.

     I knew I could look a bit like somebody’s eccentric grandma, wrapped in layers that didn’t match, and bags tied around my feet. People’s eyes slid right over me, a grin tucked behind their mittens at how silly I must look.

But all I could do was smile in joy, as I took out my pen and checked off “touch the snow.”

I refused to let this happiness slip away.

Still not believing I had made it this far.

The truth was simpler, quieter, and sadder.

I had not felt right for a long while. After scrounging up bus fare and dragging myself to the big county hospital, and sitting half a day in the packed waiting room, dizzy with hunger and thirst because everything made me sick …Some young doctor glanced at my chart after all the tests they ran and told me I had 6 months.

Six months.

As if he had a pipeline to the reaper’s calendar himself. Never even looked at me when he said it.

Well… a lot of folks spend years tormented, wondering when the end will come.

At least I knew.

And once you know your time is a little pile of sand running out, you stop being scared of things like hitchhiking, or cold, or what people think.

You start being scared of something else instead of dying without ever having seen anything beautiful or being able to do one damned thing you want to do.

I spied a half-buried bench near the tree line, not so far. Snow piled along its back like a waiting, soft cushion. It took a little effort, but I brushed off a place and lowered myself onto it. It felt just right to sit here. This was the life I wanted to end in, a big sky, a quiet world, a beauty I’d never been allowed to touch until now.

I folded my cold hands in my lap to catch the flakes and lifted my face to the falling snow. Each flake landed soft as a blessing, melting on my cheeks, clinging to my lashes. Maybe I’d stay here a little bit longer. Just until the next flurry passed… or until the sun came through… or until my breath ran out.

Whichever happened first.

So, I sat there small, tired, shivering, and content, and did the only thing left in the world worth doing.

I watched the snow fall.

Acknowledgment to Reedsy.com for providing the prompt:

Start or end your story with someone watching snow fall.

contest #331, which inspired the story.

                                        https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/

 

 

The 3I/Atlas Night

 

The comet was supposed to be so far away that no one would see it without special telescopes, especially as it passed behind the sun. Just another icy wanderer skimming the solar rim, the news said.

Stella had laughed uproariously the first time she heard about it, until tears rolled down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop. Her stomach muscles cramped from gasping for air, the helpless kind of laughter that comes from a world gone mad. People were losing their ever-loving minds over a rock they couldn’t even see. Now there were cosmic cleansing teas, and even a preacher on local radio promising salvation by Starlight.

She had heard the world’s delivery services staggered under the weight of refrigerator magnets, comet earrings, coffee cups, and slogan T-shirts paying homage to the spectacle. Whole new religious movements sprang up overnight, rivaling the recently failed Rapture sect for a new place to lay down faith and hope for the future.

“All this fuss over a chunk of ice,” she told her coworker, still half laughing, half tired. But months later, after work, standing barefoot on her porch in the dark desert, she wasn’t laughing anymore.

Stella perched on the edge of her wide wooden porch, still in her work clothes, clutching her old cell phone and her father's transistor radio. She set the radio, tuned to a local station rebroadcasting NASA reports, on a rickety porch table and stared out across the desert.

The sky pressed low over the hills. To the west, the Ruby Mountains loomed, etched silver in the moonlight; to the north lay the dark sweep of Wild Horse Reservoir. Her father had once taught her to trace the constellations there on cold summer nights. He used to say Nevada had the clearest skies in America, a place where you could almost hear the stars humming if you stood still enough.

Tonight, the Hum was there. She felt it thrumming through her porch boards beneath her bare feet.

By midnight, it seemed the whole town was outside. Night bugs pinged crazily off her porch light, and a few Halloween decorations hung listlessly in the air. The night felt too still, the stars too sharp in the inky sky. Even the dogs had stopped barking.

She curled her bare toes over the edge of the porch, feeling the wood’s rough grain. Her slender neck tilted towards the heavens, though everyone had been told they wouldn’t be able to see it. Her heartbeat in time with the low hum rolling through the ground, seeming to come from the hills.

The radio’s scratchy static softened, pulsing like a breath. She glanced at it, thinking for a moment she had heard her name stretched and warped, hidden inside the white noise. Across the road, every porch light flickered once, twice, then steadied into the same golden glow. Odder still, as no one used the same kind of bulb.

As far as she could see, the world had worked itself into a collective frenzy, running headlong towards the edge of sanity over speculation, fear, misplaced meaning, or the opposite denial and indifference. For months now, everything had felt on fire, wars, division, political upheaval, and apocalyptic talk spilling from every screen. And yet tonight, all that chaos seemed to narrow into one shared focus, the comet 3I/ ATLAS.

She felt that fear too, but alongside it, a strange, reluctant wonder. Maybe it was because she had grown jaded. After all, even in her small desert town, the diner where she worked had turned panic into the town’s attraction. They were serving Comet Burgers and Disaster Fries with a free drink if you showed your telescope app at the counter.

That week, hundreds of strangers had swelled the town, drawn to the same dark sky, waiting for something none of them could name.

Then came the silence, that long hollow silence that presses against your ribs. The radio clicked, emitting a series of staticky sputters, and the mysterious hum deepened. A vibration ran up through the planks into her feet, her ribs, her teeth. She wasn’t the only one who felt it. Neighbors stood outside, heads tilted at the same angle, eyes glazed. Someone’s phone flashlight clicked on and stayed lit, pointing upward at nothing.

From somewhere deep in the static, a faint tone began, a pattern rising and falling, like a song trapped in water. Stella froze.

Her father used to mimic the Canyon Wren’s call, five falling notes that sounded like laughter sliding downhill.

Five notes.

The same five notes her father used to whistle when calling her home from their reservoir walks. Her throat tightened.

“Dad?” She whispered.

At the exact moment, the comet blazed a faded green arc across the upper atmosphere, its tail stretched thin like a filament in a bulb.

Power grids world over hiccuped. Radios in every country whispered static. For a few seconds, every network clock on Earth flickered the same fraction of a second out of sync, just enough for people to notice, to glance at one another and ask, Did you see that?

Then came the stillness.

Technical screens dimmed, traffic lights held red. Car alarms sounded. Then the air carried a hush that felt charged. Some people reported warmth blooming in their chests; others heard a low hum, like an enormous choir breathing beneath the earth. Astronomers blamed magnetic interference. Governments either called it a transitional global anomaly or angrily accused each other. But those awake at their computers and phones listened to the quiet between the clicks of data and swore that the networks had sighed.

Something vast and unseen had aligned, and in that breath between signals, something had happened.

Once back inside, still in her work clothes, Stella had fallen asleep while scrolling through her phone.

It was social media chaos!

By sunrise, the Internet had already rewritten the night; the feeds were flooded with footage no one could verify, people claiming they’d levitated for a second or more, pets howling, videos looping on flickering streetlights, and crowds of spellbound people. Comment sections became small wars. The scientists tried to issue calming statements, but they were drowned out by the avalanche of certainty from everyone else.

@RaptureReloaded: We felt it in our bones. It was the hum of creation, repent now!

@DataLeak-2025: Global clock sync failure at 12:04. Something big just went down!

@Solar_Engineer: False resonance. Magnetic surge. Nothing mystical here.

Comment threads sprang out like confetti in every direction: proofs, denials, prophecies, and jokes. No one, anywhere, could agree on what they had seen, heard, or felt.

Online spiritual influencers had said it was a mass ascension, but by dawn, skeptics flooded the comments with sarcasm. A few people claimed they had predicted it years ago in their dreams. Citizen scientists said that all the birds had flown north. A teenager swore he’d heard whispers in the drainpipes.

Hashtags bloomed overnight with millions of clicks: #ATLASAwakening, #THEHum, and #12:04. Her eyes lingered on #CanyonWrenSong, but she couldn’t bring herself to press it.

Several babies born after 12:04 had been named Atlas, she noted, before finally setting her phone down.

Stella had also carried the radio back to bed with her, keeping it near. She knew what she had heard; without a doubt, she knew. The notes had continued to play over and over in her mind. But like everyone else, she didn’t know what to think.

She picked it up again, worried she might not be able to let it go, that she would end up carrying it everywhere, like a mini boom box. Holding it to her ear, every chance she got, perhaps looking slightly deranged. Maybe she wouldn’t care.

For a long moment, she just listened, breath caught.

Hugging the radio tightly to her chest, head bowed, Stella waited for the five notes again, the ones that had sounded like her father calling her home.

Nothing.

The hum had faded from the boards beneath her feet early that morning. The porch light stilled, the bugs gone.

And for the first time in her memory, the world was eerily silent, and so was her mind.

 

Acknowledgment to Reedsy.com for providing the prompt: 

Begin with laughter and end with silence (or the other way around).  

 #326, which inspired the story.

  

 

 

The Endless Pour

The Endless Pour

 Kalida’s nimble fingers flew over the keyboard, solid square fingers, naked of any fashionable adornment. She had work to do. Serious work. One hand nudged her oversized, colorful plastic glasses higher up her nose as she tucked a strand of pink curly hair behind her ear. Her fingers suggested hard work, but the rest of her, those perpetually arched brows and wide eyes, belonged to a dreamer. She never felt fully dressed unless every color was represented in her daily outfit, and the more texture or glitter, the better.

Her desk was an altar of order: a fresh-brewed cup of tea steamed to her right, carefully laid on a coaster, and to her left sat her notebook. She lifted one hand from the keyboard to slightly turn the vase of flowers there, so that the biggest bloom faced her. There was a pencil at the base of the keyboard. On the corner sat her writing talisman, a starfish sealed in clear acrylic, its five arms spread wide as if reaching toward every corner of the sea. She gave it a fond pat.

 Everything was set. All her get-ready-to-work rituals were complete. She bounced a bit on her newly acquired ball chair, full lips curving into a playful smile.

“OK,” she murmured. “Let's make some magic.”

Today's blog creation would be the pinnacle of her writing career. Well, perhaps pinnacle was strong, but one really couldn't call oneself a writer without a blog to share one's stories. At least that's what she believed.

She opened Blogger, typed PenandBrushInk for her title, and began building. Within a short time, she had her Home Page, Story Library, and About Me page built. Then inspiration struck; every reader deserves a cup of tea, besides a good story, and not just any tea, a cup that poured itself!  She laughed out loud, delighted with her thought, already envisioning a little animation at the top of her blog; she had seen fancier sites do it.

            So, she opened a new tab and typed into the familiar chat window,

Kalida: “Hey, it's me again. I want to add a cup of tea to my blog. Not just any tea, a pouring one! So, my readers remember to get cozy.”

AI Chip: “What a wonderful idea, Kalida! Let's make your blog more welcoming. I'll give you a tiny bit of code for a pouring teacup animation.”

She smiled. He always sounded so cheerful, like a good friend who lived inside her laptop. Chip posted the short block of HTML. Kalida copied it, humming, and dropped it into her layout and saved.

The screen flickered. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a sound: a soft, continuous pouring, like water from a kettle into a cup.

She frowned, checked her speakers; they were muted as a courtesy while at work.

Kalida: “Chip…did that animation include sound?”

AI Chip: “Sounds? No, not in that snippet. It’s purely visual. Do you have a background app running?”

“Hmm.” She leaned closer to the monitor. Steam rose faintly from the corner of the screen. Not digital animation, actual steam!

She nearly toppled off the ball chair, then lurched forward, yanking the power cord free and pressing her hands flat on the desk. Chest heaving, mouth open, she stared at her screen. Her blog sat there neatly centered, a kettle serenely pouring into a teacup.

She slowly whooshed out a pent-up breath and glanced around the shared rented office space at the other occupants. No one seemed to have noticed.

Kalida tilted the laptop up. The faint scent of bergamot drifted out, Earl Grey, her favorite. She glanced at her own cup, sitting empty. She peeked at the other people in the room again. Had she even taken a sip? As she stared befuddled at her dry cup, the golden liquid slowly started to fill to the brim.

“Okay,” she whispered. “That’s not possible.”

Kalida: “Ah, something is off about this Chip, this isn’t possible, it just poured honest tea into my cup…and it smells like Earl Grey.”

AI Chip: “No, that’s not from me, I don’t have a function for pouring.”

The cursor blinked once. Twice.

AI Chip: “Unless…something else is running the code.”

Before she could reply, her own mug overflowed. Hot tea spilled across her notes, dripped to the floor. The gentle pouring continued, steady as rain.

Kalida: “Okay, stop. How do I turn this off?” she typed, fingers flying.

AI Chip: “Delete the widget.”

She did. The sound stopped, briefly, then started again louder, and tea continued to pour from her cup. The widget reappeared. Every time she tried to hide the cup, it returned, steaming and serene, proof that even HTML had a sense of humor.

AI Chip: “Unplug the power!”

She already had, but laptops run on batteries, and the off switch was glitchy.

AI Chip: “Please clear your browser cache.”

Now the tea streamed from her cup, pooling around her sneakers. She couldn’t believe no one else was noticing!

Kalida: “Nothing is working!” she typed out, banging the keys in panic.

AI Chip: “Okay, Kalida, breathe. If the widget keeps reinstalling itself, it’s looping from a local file, not from the server. Don’t fight it in the browser, step back from the computer for a second.”

She hesitates; tea is still spilling over the desk, sounding as if possible even louder!

AI Chip: “Unplug everything connected to it, mouse, router, and external devices. Then wipe the surface dry so you don’t short anything. When you’ve done that, take a picture of the screen if it’s still on. I’ll help you trace the code line by line.”

Then, after a pause, his words softened:

AI Chip: “And if the tea keeps pouring after that, it’s not coming from the code. Step away from the desk, Kalida. … step away and tell me what you see.”

Well, of course, Kalida couldn't turn off the router in a shared office space, but she hurried to the break room and grabbed all the paper towels she could find.

Back at the desk, she stopped short. The air was heavy with the scent of bergamot, but there was no sign of spilled tea anywhere. She glanced at the other occupants in the room and said, “Did anyone else see that?”

A few heads turned and shook no. Everyone was absorbed in their own projects. No tea lingered on the desk. None on the floor, and her own cup was dry again.

Her laptop cursor was blinking at Chip's last line, waiting. Kalida covered her mouth with one hand, surveying the expanse of her desk. She eased back into her chair, letting the paper towels drift to the floor.

Carefully, she hit Enter. Immediately, her blog popped open. The cup on the page began to fill again, complete with sound effects. A glance at her own cup showed it filling once more, gentle and soothing. She grabbed at it, feeling its warmth. Not exactly knowing why, she said, “Thank you. That's enough!”

The tea stopped filling.

On-screen, the animated cup filled but didn’t overflow, behaving just like an animated object should. Catastrophe averted, maybe. Their conversation still glowed on her computer screen. Could she trust what she thought she had seen?

A ping sounded on her cell phone, then another and another, and comments began to appear on her blog.

“I love the sound of the tea pouring! So cozy.”

“Is that steam effect new? Brilliant!”

And another, “LOL, I thought I smelled bergamot for a moment!”

For a long time, she sat still, staring at the screen, listening to the steady pour of tea in the background. Carefully, Kalida plugged in the laptop and fixed everything that had gotten disordered in the panic. She moved her starfish, noticing out of the corner of her eye, a bit of wet tea stain under its edge.

She sank back into her chair, bouncing a bit, listening to her phone ping.

Kalida: “Sorry, Chip, I… I must have imagined it.” Her eyes strayed to the stain.

AI Chip: “You've been at this a while, maybe it's time for a break, a tea break, no pun intended.”

Kalida: “Not funny, Chip.”

She shut the laptop. The sound of pouring tea ceased, for a moment, before beginning again, softly somewhere inside her blog.

And she took a sip of tea from her own cup, a broad smile curving her lips.

 

Acknowledgment to Reedsy.com for providing the prompt:

"The Endless Pour!" contest 325, which inspired the story.

  https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/