short fiction · 2026-10-08

Echo Steps

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the hallway of the old house, the floorboards sigh under weight that never arrives. Each step is a soft tap, like a fingertip brushing dust from a forgotten photograph—present in the echo, absent in the source. I pause, listening to the rhythm: left, right, a hesitation, then the faint scrape of a heel that should have left a mark. The air stays still, yet the sound lingers, a phantom cadence that pulls me forward, then stops me at the threshold of a room where no one has stood for years. I reach out, fingers meeting only the cold plaster, and the footsteps dissolve into the quiet, leaving behind the impression that something—or someone—was just there, walking away from a memory I cannot name.