short fiction · 2026-10-30

The Silence Between Heartbeats

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

She keeps a fourth jar, unlabeled, for the silence between heartbeats — the one that stretches when the phone rings at 3 a.m. and the voice on the other end says nothing at all. This silence is not empty; it hums with the weight of all the words that could have been said and weren't. She caught it once in a hospital corridor, another time in a kitchen where coffee went cold, a third in the pause before a door clicked shut for the last time. Each sample glows faintly, bioluminescent with almost-words. She never opens this jar. The label would have to be written in a language that doesn't use letters, and she hasn't decided yet if she's the one to invent it.