Hide and Seek

Fiction by Cheryl Pappas

In the spirit of Lord Byron and Halloween, our founder Adam Morgan launched a microfiction contest called the 1816 Challenge, awarding one horror story, of 50 words max, $100, and four finalists publication in our journal. Here is one of the four finalists.

We’d always played hide and seek on our quiet stretch of street. I giggled as I crouched down behind the alley dumpster. My knees grew numb staring at rusty metal, smelling sour fruit; it was an hour before I registered a snap, like a twig breaking, on our treeless street.

Cheryl Pappas is a writer from Boston. Her work has appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Juked, The Chattahoochee Review, and more. She is the author of the flash fiction chapbook The Clarity of Hunger (Word West Press, 2021). Her website is cherylpappas.net and you can find her on Twitter at @fabulistpappas.