#88. Finish Your Short Story! Plus New Dark Fantasy Fiction: "The Shadow Harvest"

Hello imaginative people. I’m Anna Tizard and this is episode 88 of Brainstoryum.
​
Well, last time I talked a bit about the problem of trying to squeeze too many ideas into a short story, or how a short piece will flow better and be more satisfying to the reader if you streamline it. If you are working with some quite distinctive ideas, find a way to ensure they’re interconnected, and feed into one overarching theme or journey. I prefer the word ‘journey’ in this context, it feels more practical and rooted in… both character and action.

But it is of course possible to not put enough into a story to satisfy the reader, as I recently discovered while reading quite a prestigious, traditionally published anthology of short stories. In this otherwise very promising collection, I read a story about a woman who finds her house being broken into, repeatedly, by a mysterious intruder. Nothing is broken, nothing is taken, but they leave strange notes. It’s quite eerie, and you just get to the point where the protagonist is figuring out that this may in fact be some kind of spirit or imp—something not quite human—and she hears a sound coming from the attic upstairs.

That’s where the story ends. I mean, come on. This is not good practice, people! Did the author just… chicken out? There might be an element of this. Maybe when she was writing it, she was thinking, oh, I want to leave the reader with this lingering feeling of anticipation and mystery. Keep that as the last thing they feel. Er, no. Just no. A mystery is meant to be solved. Do not use the excuse of a short writing space to leave your main thread dangling.

It felt quite rude! When we read a book or story, we invest time and mental energy into it, it’s not just a case of purchasing something, we use our energy. It felt like waiting ages for a bus that gets cancelled (only something more exciting than that.) And of course, when I think back on the story, I cannot ‘see’ the creature in my head because as readers—while it’s true that we fill in gaps, we’re not told every single tiny detail, that would be exhausting and off-putting to read in any case—but as readers we are guided by what we are given in the story. We only know what we are told, or at least implied, through the writing. We’re not meant to—we shouldn’t be expected to—just go away and dream up the rest of the story on our own. If this author only described the creature’s nose and shoes, it would’ve been something that I could imagine, and fill the gaps around, but ultimately, more than anything, I needed to experience the ending. The tie-off. To know what happens next. But instead, there is a creature in the attic who has made the ceiling creak, and I will never know what it looks like, or what it does to the character in that story. (I don’t have an attic, and I don’t believe the creature actually exists, but this is how stories work! They get into our heads, they happen in the world of our imagination.)

I’m not naming names (it feels mean. But if you’re curious and you really want to know, drop me a line and I’ll tell you.)

Anyway, I’ll stop bitching about unfinished stories turning up in published, presumably completed anthologies, and move on to my listeners’ ideas and stories based on a prompt from the last show.

Pencil by congerdesign on Pixabay

The prompt I prompted you on last time was ‘the ancient desert’. Not quite as wacky a word combination as I usually suggest, because Exquisite Corpse with its randomisation of word entries tends to create some ‘unusual’ combinations, so I was curious whether this one might inspire less wildly imaginative ideas than I normally get coming in.

How wrong I was.
 
Alessandro and Nicholas Bozzo sent me a father-son collaboration and wrote:

"The Ancient Desert. Some say it's older than time itself. A place where time stands still, the Ancient Desert has become a refuge for time travelers and portal jumpers from other dimensions. A safe haven where they can rest, restock, and refuel their contraptions before setting off on their next adventure."
 
This is some great worldbuilding, I can just see this in my mind’s eye, setting the scene for who-knows-what characters arriving and leaving on different adventures. Thank you, Alessandro and Nico!
 
Eric Montgomery wrote:
 
The Ancient Desert is an encrypted archive that has everything online since 1969. Deleted packets, expired blogs, broken links, and that questionable picture you sent someone. All preserved.

No one agrees on how deep it goes. No one ever reaches the bottom.
 
Ooh, this sent my head whirring. Fascinating idea, to use the ancient desert as a title for something, like a digital no-go area.
 
Cranking up the amusement dial, Nick Vracar wrote:

Tim wrapped up his story of the ancient pharaoh’s treasure, “And that’s where the ancient idol was last seen, lost in the ancient desert.”

Cathy raised the idol in her hand. “You mean this one?”

“Yes. Where did you get that?”

“I guess someone found it between ancient and now.”
 
Great stuff. Thank you, Nick!
 
Now, it was lurking in the back my mind, the possibility… would anyone take the really wacky road and reinterpret this as the ‘ancient dessert’, bunging in an extra ‘s’? Well, I was not disappointed.
 
Dale Tudge, who is Dale Tudge Humor on Bluesky (for good reason) wrote:

"This year, it was the roast goose. Last year, Grandma. No one remembers what was meant to be there—only that now, it’s pudding.

An ancient dessert, dense and moist, smelling of lost things and too much allspice. No one had made it. No one had spoken of it. And yet, there it was—watching, steaming faintly, humming in a key just off from carol pitch. Like a mosquito trying to sing Silent Night.

Every year, a different family. Every year, one chair emptier by New Year’s."
 
Then he added:
 
"The ancient dessert—a dense orb of ceremonial fruit—very old, and quite aware. It waits until spirits are high before revealing itself. At the height of the feast, it manifests.

No, it’s not Nan’s recipe. Hers was the one with the rum sauce."
 
Thank you so much, Dale Tudge. That is wickedly funny and monstrously clever, with a touch of the surreal. Absolutely love it.
 
Right. Well, I think it’s time to hunt down some new story ideas. But before we dive in, I’m sorry to say you might have to adjust your volume for this next part.

The recording I made of the Exquisite Corpse game results, of me pulling out listeners’ words, is, I think, a little quieter than usual, not such good sound quality, so apologies for that. In general, I have to be quite ninja in recording these shows because of my delightfully noisy neighbours, and on this occasion I had to use a different room for this upcoming part, which I record before any of the other sections of the show, so that I’ve got my writing prompts ready. So you may need to increase the volume ever so slightly, just for the next brainstorming part.

But not before you have heard the ever-loud, ever-triumphant organ jingle that heralds the approach of… the socks of destiny... Dun dun duuun!
 
*SOCKS OF DESTINY ORGAN JINGLE*

This part of the show is un-transpose-able! There's much giggling and rustling as I pull words at random from the Socks of Destiny to create the following three sentences:

1. The barking traitor won a duel for the impromptu tarantula.
2. The dreaming sea mist threatened the kaleidoscopic detective.
3. The sympathetic escutcheon (piece of protective metal around a keyhole) wrote a string quartet and entitled it the shadowy lamp.

I then use the "pause button" to draft a short story, using one of these as a writing prompt. Here goes:

Just to warn you before I begin: this story is quite dark.

Spook by mskathrynne on Pixabay

---

The locksmith and the shadow-stitcher came together for one reason only. The shadow harvest.

The locksmith’s smile was brittle, with a glint of things unsaid. He was a man who dealt in keeping things, storing secrets away from the light.

A man with large, clever hands, a sympathetic smile, and a coat so dark it might have been cut from the night sky; all this, the shadow-stitcher saw, and nodded.

She was a woman wrapped in so many layers of shawls, it was hard to get a precise sense of her shape. Only her wizened face showed, and her long, knobbly hands, one already dipping into the basket she held in the crook of her arm.

“And so here we are again.”

They stood at the edge of the forest, like they always did.

It was autumn—of course it was autumn—when the shadows were rich and sharp. Ripe for the picking. The low, golden shafts of sunlight were entwined with shadows with a longer reach than in any other season. In winter, shadows gathered in layered, clumsy pools, too soft-edged to be malleable. The early strains of spring light were too feeble: it took a long summer to deepen the lights, and for the sun to shift low enough in the sky to refract between the stripes of trees, just as their curled leaves tightened. Yes. October was the shadow-harvest, and the stitcher was ready to stitch.

But this time she hesitated, and threw a quizzical look at the locksmith.

“What you need is a permanent solution, so you don’t have to keep coming back to me each year. Am I right?”

“A permanent supply of shadows? How can this be?”

It was true, he did rely on her, though no-one would have known. His ordinary business of key-cutting was just a front: people sold him secrets, the things they longed to forget. He had a warehouse at the end of his garden that mysteriously repelled any snoopers that went near it. Inside it, he inverted spaces, created steel boxes that could be flipped inside out; boxes with false backs and sides, apparently empty. But the capture of a customer’s secret took more than his skills. The right kind of shadow was needed, to slip around the neck of a memory and gently guide it out. Guilt, regrets, sorrows heavy and bitter as over-steeped coffee, he could wrap them all up and bury them in a locker that had no key. Customers left with a skip in their step, their hearts and pockets lighter.

The woman knew all this, for she understood the shape of shadows. In the cup of her bony palm, she could twist and pinch the darkness to her design. All she asked for in return was a week of the man’s life. Memories, secrets, all: but only that which would live inside a week.

“I will create a lattice for you,” she explained, hooking her angular fingers around the idea. “A net, with which you may snare shadows for yourself. Or, even better, fold it into quarters and place it over any ordinary lamp. Slip it over the shade, and the lamp’s light will call to all the shadows in the room, and beyond. And they will come to you.”

The locksmith frowned. “How would that work? I need customers to visit me, to make payment…”

She narrowed her eyes wisely. “That they will do. With a little more compulsion and urgency than usual. Dragged by the desire to tell, and release. For darkness calls to darkness, and in the shadows it doth breed.”

A flicker of uncertainty at this oldy-worldy phrase quickly faded from the locksmith’s expression as he contemplated the ease and speed with which his customers might come hammering on his door, pockets full of cash.

“How much for this lattice?” he asked. The catch of urgency in his voice made the woman glance away, smuggling down a smirk.

“The same as usual. No offence, but…” The woman shrugged, with an apologetic downturn of her mouth. “I am trying to wean myself off this borrowed time thing. I am getting old, I do not relish the flavours of human life as much as I used to. I’m spending more time with the forest these days.”

She lifted her gaze to the canopy, dry leaves rattling against the trees’ skeletons. “My power begins to wane… I feel it is time for me to retire from the dark arts.” She huffed a little sigh, like a full stop after her last word. Perhaps it was enough to convince him.

Not waiting for an answer, she stepped forward with a carefully placed crunch on the forest floor. She waited for the woodland creatures, those invisible whiskered things, noses trembling as they sniffed the air she breathed, trying to assess what kind of creature she was—and failing—before they scattered under fallen leaves and crumbling bark.

Spreading her long-nailed fingers, she swept her hand over the ground under the dark shadow-puddle of a fat oak, a chuckle gathering in her throat.

The locksmith watched on in silence, keeping still, his hands behind his back.

She rolled and massaged the darkness in her palms, then pinched either end between finger and thumb and drew the thread out, and out. Out, until her arms were as wide apart as they could be. Still smiling her secret smile that told the locksmith he would never guess what she was capable of, she broke the thread in the middle, placed the two strings side by side and began stretching them again.
*
Back in the security of his warehouse, the locksmith surveyed the rows of containers pressed against the wall; one ready and open for his next customer’s secrets. An odd stab of guilt made him almost double up. He tutted, whispered under his breath, “You’ve helped these people. You’ve helped them live easier lives.”

But though they were nothing but memories, wrapped and tied in shadows, there was a weight to this room, to the things that were held in it, that had nothing to do with the steel and aluminium barriers that kept them inside.

He took out the shadow-lattice from his pocket. Such a delicate thing. Strands so thin they might have been hairs. As he carried it between careful fingers, over to his desk lamp, where he carried out these transactions—two chairs placed at a friendly but business-like angle to each other, a laptop folded and waiting on the small desk—another shock made him stumble. He slipped the shadow-lattice over the lampshade before he could drop the precious thing, and clasped his painful stomach. What was this? An image had flashed in his mind, of a woman’s hair held tightly in his fist. But that was a very long time ago. Damn these shadows: this lattice thing must be more sensitive than he realised.

And so cheap! She practically gave it to him for free! He let out a laugh, swallowing his doubt. How ridiculous, to get paranoid like that. Of course the lattice would have an almost magnetic effect on any dark memory, the sort of memory it was designed to pull from his customers.

Smirking to himself, he turned to open the door, then flicked on the lamp and sat down. All he had to do was wait, and the customers would come.

Minutes passed. The door creaked on its hinges at a breeze, making the locksmith’s eyes flutter open. Surprised that he’d fallen into a doze, he shifted in his chair, and that’s when he saw them.

Shadows, streaked across the opposite wall. Sidling together then apart, as if conspiring to make shapes, a silent theatre for an audience of one.

Silhouettes of two figures, locked in a dance. A choking embrace, a head tipped backwards, hand outstretched to grasp at nothing.
​
The locksmith stood slowly, as if the pressure of the air in the room were weighing him down.

Shadows danced and twisted. Shadows of murders not-quite committed. A hand raised with a knife ready to plunge. A fist gripping a woman’s hair as she wrestled to get away, mouth open.

All the secrets he’d stowed away, the worst of them, shivering free, splashed against his wall.

Some of them his.

The darkness dripped along the tiled floor to where he stood, puddled around his feet.

The lamp seemed to swing behind him and a little to the side, but that might have been a trick of the light, or his mind, as the room tipped forward then back.

With a gasp, he felt the tug at his heels. Toppling forward onto his knees, he grappled the smooth tiles for a fingerhold that wasn’t there.

Then a soft tremor in his ear, a cluck of disapproval: the voice shadow-stitcher, whatever she was. What was this magic? Had she wound a piece of herself into the lattice, left a trace of her thoughts inside it?

As the locksmith writhed on the floor, resisting the drag of the shadow-lattice, her voice traced itself along his spine like one of those long, cold fingernails.

“It was one of those memories you let slip, in the last week you gave me of your life. Your revolting, snatching little life. Do you think I would want another week of that? Last autumn I sickened of you. Shadows should be soft, malleable things, not these charred streaks leaving bloody trails behind them. Half-paralysed, I lay for a week in the forest, asking for her guidance. It came. The earth spoke, and told me what to do. And so all your shadows will be gathered and stored in a box of your own making.”

And with that, the fingers of shadow lengthened, as long as the thin branches that reached to the autumn sky, and grappled him into the open container.

The box snapped shut.

It was the last anyone saw of the locksmith.

 ***

That was quite dark, wasn’t it? I did not see that coming.

And so it was that "the sympathetic escutcheon…" No, I can’t claim that. I did not manage to write a story based on the entire Exquisite Corpse this time: it was based on just ‘the shadowy lamp’. But—having said that—there is no way it would have taken the direction it had unless I had also been thinking about escutcheons or keyholes. The concept of locking things away is fundamental to this story, so even though I couldn’t quite resolve “The sympathetic escutcheon wrote a string quartet and entitled it the shadowy lamp”, I would never have written the story in this particular way without having contemplated this unique, bizarre sentence, in fact, even though there was no string quartet, I was thinking about strings and shadows being strung out, made thin, threading through something or being sewn… It wasn’t just a keyhole or locksmith connection I drew from the Exquisite Corpse.

Now, I feel kind of spoilt for choice here when it comes to inviting your ideas on a short prompt: what about the dreaming sea mist? Or maybe I’d really like to know what you’d make of the shadowy lamp? I think I’ll have to leave it up to you.

You know what to do: go to annatizard.com and click the contact button on any page footer. Let me know your idea or paragraph (or poem) by the Friday after this show comes out to be sure I have time to include it in my recording at the weekend.

Until next time, go forth and be inspired!

​Please 'like' and share!