Flash Fiction Fridays - August 2025
The Stray
Happy Friday, folks. A few quick announcements before we launch into this month’s flash fiction.
First, for those who missed it, I had a byline in Jon T’s very ambitious Weather Reports collaboration. I’m still working my way through the stories, but there’s a lot of talent on display here, so check them out when you can.
Second, for anyone who’s interested in the physical copy of Company of Ghosts, you can now preorder one through bookshop.org or through your local bookstore. Bookshop.org is an alternative to Amazon that directs a portion of the profits toward a local bookstore of your choice, and is a good way to support smaller business in your area.
If you can stand to make the drive to a brick-and-mortar bookshop, they should also be able to order based on the ISBN (9798999460400). I’ll write more about this in the next newsletter, but local preorders are a godsend for independent authors like me because they show purchasers that an author can send readers their way. It’s hard to make headway as an indie author, so even a single preorder can be extremely valuable.
Okay, enough admin for now. On to the story!
The Stray
The dog came back again last night.
I’ve dealt with strays before, but this one is different. Normally, if you want a dog, all you have to do is set a bowl on your porch in the morning. It doesn’t have to be fancy: it can be plastic, or metal, or anything. You can fill it with dog food or kitchen scraps. You can fill it with tap water if you’re broke.
The reason this works is because the bowl isn’t actually for the dog. It’s for the dark thing in the woods, the faceless Spirit that remembers when dogs were wolves but forgives them for curling up next to our campfires. It sees the little bowl on your porch and knows that it can send a traveler your way, that you’ll take it in and give it a home.
If you don’t want a dog, that’s harder. Dogs love us more than they ought to. They’ll look for any reason to stay, which means you can’t give them one. No food, no water, no shade, no kindness. It means looking out your window at a miserable, half-starved creature that used to be someone’s friend and thinking, This dog should die in the woods behind my house. It should starve to death, even though I have food to share.
I’m not good at that kind of thing. But you probably remember that.
***
The first time the dog showed up, you’d been dead for a month. It whined and scratched at the back door to be let in, and it was so loud that I wondered if it might be a bear. The whole porch shook when it settled down to sleep. The boards don’t even creak when I walk over them.
Then I remembered the park ranger, and the delicate way he explained that there were no bears in these woods, that it was probably coyotes who found you first.
The dog came back a month later, around the time I started going back to work. It was only eight weeks after you disappeared, so I was still finding reminders of you around the house: a wrinkled shirt behind the hamper, a clump of your hair in the shower drain, a pillowcase that still smelled like you.
The dog walked a slow circuit of the house, snuffling at every window, pawing at every door. I’d been thinking about getting another dog—anything to keep the house from feeling so empty—so I took it as a sign. I set food and water bowls on the back porch and kept them filled for a week, but nothing ever came back. No strays, no coyotes, no raccoons: no scavengers of any kind.
I should have realized how weird that was. We might not have bears in these woods, but they’re not completely empty. But I was still running on Ambien and coffee at that point, so I didn’t think anything of it. I brought the bowls back into the house and tried to move on with my life.
The third time the dog came back, it sat outside my bedroom window and howled all night.
***
The next morning, as I stood by the window and looked out at the tree line, I thought about the day the park rangers called me.
You were only supposed to be gone for a week. You’d done solo through-hikes before, and you knew better than to take stupid risks. You wore bright colors to stay visible, and you packed more supplies than you needed. You never brought your phone—you said it ruined the point of a through-hike—but you planned stops along the way where you could call from a payphone and check in.
My phone rang when it was supposed to, but I didn’t recognize the voice on the other side. I had to ask him to repeat himself twice before the words caught up to me. They’d found evidence of an animal attack, the voice said, and my name was listed on the emergency contact card.
“Is he hurt?” I asked.
“We don’t know,” the ranger said. “Probably, yes.”
Your clothes had been torn to shreds, and half your supplies were missing. There was blood on everything, which the police apologized for. All the signs pointed to an animal attack, but they needed to maintain a clear chain of custody for any evidence related to a violent death, just in case. That was the first time someone said the word “death” since the phone call. I felt dizzy. Someone asked me if I needed to sit down and led me to a chair. I fell into it and stared at my knees until the world stopped spinning.
***
I know that bargaining is one of the stages of grief. I know that it stands in the way of acceptance, that the desperate search for meaning is a way of standing in one place instead of moving forward.
But I also know that a stray dog showed up on my back porch a month after you died, and it’s shown up every month since. I know that it’s too big to be a dog but too small to be a bear. I know that they found your blood and your clothes but never, ever found your body.
So I’m going to spend a little more time bargaining, if that’s all right with you. I’m going to set out dog food once a month. I’m going to keep a pair of clean clothes on the line in case you need them. I’m going to leave notes for you in the woods where I think you’ll find them.
Mostly, I’m going to stand at the kitchen window and look out at the trees until I see something staring back at me, that faceless Spirit that remembers the difference between a dog and a wolf, even if you don’t.
Then I’m going to close my eyes and pray for it to send you home.