We're thrilled to present one of the winning stories in the 2026 Freewrite 500 flash fiction competition: "When a Place Remembers" by Courtney Megan.
Light spills from unsteady hands, and it brings to life the shadows cast by the parts of me that wait and remember.
This isn’t the daylight that bleeds through my boarded windows. Daylight is flavored like the days before the boards. I remember a time drenched in sun.
This light is a diluted beam interrupting the dark. It sweeps across the sagging cabinet doors that protect the birds that sometimes come to nest within me. I remember when it wasn’t birds these cabinets held, but pastel-blue plates and plastic cups made to look like glass. I remember my kitchen’s cream-colored walls in permanent bloom with painted flowers, too; they’re yellowed now, blistered and peeling where the outside crept in.
A sneaker squeaks against linoleum, and the debris scattered on my floor stirs like hairs standing on end. Someone has come to visit! They make their way from my kitchen to the living room, and the damp shame of my disrepair creeps up my drywall. I remember the words Pardon the mess. Lady-of-the-House’s voice would jingle from the foyer, and she’d wave a hand toward the most welcoming, tidied part of me.
The light jiggles as it follows that same path. That part hasn’t been tidied in some time. It’s seasoned with my shed skin and puffs and plastic things. Pardon the mess.
My staircase-spine leads to my second level, and as the stranger’s blade of light slices a path upward, I … remember the sound a person makes as they tumble down my steps, like fingers strumming across a piano without strings. The stranger’s hand grasps at my banister as if to reassure me.
Light splashes against dusty frames of photos I’ve held tight to my hallway wall. The light briefly settles against a doorframe repeatedly tattooed in pencil with a name, number, and dashed line:
Emory, 9, —
Emory, 8, —
Emory, 7, —
I remember Emory. She and her radio would sing together, and I would hum along with the wires in my walls. For a moment, I’m afraid the stranger will go into this part of me and take the radio away, as other strangers have done with other parts of me that remember.
But I want to share what I remember. Maybe I’ve waited long enough?
Maybe, if she opens me, I’ll —
A noise interrupts us, and she fumbles with something in her hand before lifting it to her ear and speaking. “Y-yeah, I’m almost done.” The light swings, then bounces downstairs. She doesn’t grasp my banister this time. “Well … I mean, a little haunted, I guess?”
Haunted. That’s the word humans use for when a place remembers.
Her voice veers toward the kitchen. Her light sweeps through me again, answering a question I can’t hear. “Good bones, for sure.”
I can’t stop her from leaving through my side door. It’s swollen and can’t close properly. She steps beyond my reach and —
And I remember. I remember people leave.
If I wait long enough, they come home.
