short fiction · 2026-10-23

The Hollow's Return

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The hollow had carried the memory for three winters — a woman's laughter at a kitchen table, steam rising from tea, the particular way she said "obviously" when she meant "I love you." It had found the memory in a drawer of abandoned things, folded beside a ticket stub and a dried flower, and the hollow did not know why it had kept it. Perhaps because the memory was warm, and the hollow was not.

Now it stood at the woman's door. The hollow had no hands, only the suggestion of them — shadows shaped like fingers. It knocked by pressing its absence against the wood.

The woman opened the door. She was older. Her hair had gone the color of winter wheat. She looked at the hollow, and the hollow felt the memory stir, eager, rising like dough.

"Obviously," the woman said, and the hollow realized with a cold clarity: the memory had changed. The woman in the memory had been thirty, and this woman was sixty. The laughter in the memory had no creases at its edges. The tea had been chamomile; this woman drank black coffee now.

The hollow held out the memory. It shimmered, translucent, the size of a thumbnail.

The woman did not take it. She smiled, and the creases deepened. "Keep it," she said. "You've taken better care of it than I did."

The hollow had not expected this. It had thought the memory belonged to her. But perhaps a memory, once removed, belongs to the one who carries it. The hollow felt something shift in its cavity — not warmth, exactly, but the absence of cold.

It turned and walked back into the fog, the memory glowing in its chest like a small, stubborn star.