The road across the field
Fifteen minutes across the field instead of forty on the road. Someone to the left keeps exactly your pace.
- YouCutting across the field
- ThemIt is late. You should take the road
- YouThe road is forty minutes, this is fifteen
- ThemGo on then
- YouListen, somebody is walking parallel to me
- pause 1.5 s
- ThemPeople walk there, it is a public field
- YouHe keeps exactly my pace
- I stop and he stops
- ThemSpeed up
- YouI did. So did he
- pause 1.2 s
- ThemHow far away
- YouForty metres. On my left
- ThemPut your torch on him
- YouI did. Nobody there
- pause 1.8 s
- ThemThen you imagined it
- YouI can hear steps in the stubble
- And the dog did not imagine it
- ThemWhat dog
- YouThe neighbour’s followed me from the gate
- She is growling to the left and will not go on
- pause 1.5 s
- ThemGo back to the road
- YouThe road is twenty minutes behind me
- ThemThen run forward
- pause 1.2 s
- YouRunning
- He is running
- ThemHow much further
- YouI can see the village lights
- pause 1.8 s
- Listen, why does he only run when I run
- ThemDo not think about it. Just run
- pause 1.5 s
- YouI have been standing still for a minute
- The steps have not stopped
How it works
Fifteen minutes instead of forty: the character chose the short way himself. The dog is there so the reader believes that more than one of them imagined it.
How to make it yours
The distances work as a map: forty minutes by road, fifteen across the field, forty metres to the left, twenty minutes back. Keep that precision when you change the setting, it is what makes people believe. The field can become a beach at night, a forest path or the shoulder of a highway. The dog is a second witness who cannot make things up; a cat or a horse will do, a person will not. The ending is a broken rule: it only ran when he ran, and now the steps do not stop.
Every story here is fiction. Any resemblance to real people or events is coincidental.
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