Todd Beller

“The Last Letter” by Todd Beller

Sarah traced her fingers over the faded ink, reading the words for what must have been the hundredth time. Her grandmother's final letter, written just days before she passed, contained a cryptic message about a family heirloom hidden somewhere in the sprawling Victorian house Sarah had inherited. "My dearest granddaughter," the letter began, "there's something I need you to find. It's more than just a trinket – it's our family's story, our legacy. Follow the path where light meets shadow, where time stands still but memories flow." The hous...

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“The Mirror Room ” by Todd Beller

Sarah always thought her worst nightmare would be spiders, or heights, or maybe even public speaking. She was wrong. Her worst nightmare turned out to be herself – or rather, the version of herself she saw in the mirror that night. It started with a text message from an unknown number: "Look in the mirror at midnight. See who you really are." She'd dismissed it as spam, deleted it without a second thought. But as midnight approached, she found herself drawn to the full-length mirror in her bedroom, the one she'd inherited from her grandmothe...

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“The Last Frequency” by Todd Beller

Submitted to Contest #279

For the three hundred and seventh morning in a row, Sarah Chen broadcast her message to the world. "This is Sarah Chen, broadcasting from Seattle. If anyone can hear this, I'm at the Space Needle. I broadcast every day at sunrise. Please respond on any frequency." She waited, counting to one hundred as she always did, the familiar static crackling through her handheld radio. The morning fog pressed against the observation deck windows, obscuring her view of the city below. Not that there was much to see anymore – just empty streets gradually...

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“The Last Hunger” by Todd Beller

Submitted to Contest #279

I remember the moment my hunger changed. When the gnawing in my gut transformed from a desire for sustenance into something darker, more primitive. The doctors called it the Harbinger Virus. I called it liberation. I find myself drinking in the memories The first hours were the worst. My nerve endings fired like live wires, sending waves of agony through my body as the infection rewrote my genetic code. I watched my skin turn a mottled gray, felt my muscles tear and reform. But the pain wasn't what broke me. It was the hunger. Oh god, the hu...

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“The Long Way Home” by Todd Beller

Sarah hadn't meant to get lost. Nobody ever does, really. But as the dense fog rolled through the mountain pass, obscuring the trail markers she'd been following for the past four hours, she realized with growing unease that she had no idea where she was. The hiking app on her phone had stopped working two hours ago – something about lost satellite connection. She'd forged ahead anyway, confident in her ability to follow the well-marked trail back to the ranger station. Now, as the afternoon light began to fade and the temperature dropped, t...

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“The Locksmith” by Todd Beller

I didn't mean to spend my first date with Sarah breaking into houses, but that's exactly what happened. It started normally enough – coffee at a small café in San Francisco's Hayes Valley. She was a locksmith, she told me over her cappuccino. I thought she meant she worked at a hardware store making keys. Keys have always fascinated me, it's as if that piece of metal unlocks worlds that didn't exist before. "Not exactly," she said, studying me with sharp green eyes. "I'm more of a security consultant. I help people understand how vulnerable...

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“Running away From Myself” by Todd Beller

My high school yearbook quote reads: "I only run when chased." It was meant to be funny, but it was also absolutely true. For the first 32 years of my life, I was proudly, defiantly sedentary. The mere sight of joggers would trigger eye rolls and sarcastic comments about their "obvious mental illness." After all, who in their right mind would run if nothing was pursuing them? If you had told that version of me that I would one day become a dedicated marathon runner, I would have laughed until I needed my inhaler – which I frequently did, bec...

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“Heavy Metal Grandma” by Todd Beller

I never meant to keep Eleanor a secret. It just seemed easier than explaining to my hipster friends why I, a 28-year-old craft beer enthusiast with a carefully curated vinyl collection and an artisanal coffee habit, was spending my Saturday afternoons with an 82-year-old woman who loved Metallica and wore motorcycle boots. Our first meeting was pure chance. I was working late at the library, cataloging new arrivals in the music section, when I heard it – someone quietly but unmistakably humming "Enter Sandman." Following the sound, I found a...

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“The Prison Choir” by Todd Beller

I gripped my conductor's baton tightly as I walked through the first of five security checkpoints at San Quentin State Prison. The year was 2009, and I was there under protest. My university's outreach program had "volunteered" me – the newest member of the music faculty – to lead a twelve-week choral workshop with inmates. I had tried every excuse to get out of it, but my department chair was adamant. Community service was part of our mandate, and this was my assignment. The guard at the first checkpoint examined my credentials with exagger...

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“Man On The Mountain” by Todd Beller

Submitted to Contest #276

The first thing I noticed about Karma wasn't his maroon robes or weather-beaten face, but his laugh. It erupted from somewhere deep in his belly and echoed off the Himalayan peaks, causing a few snow-dusted ravens to take flight from a nearby prayer flag pole. I was hunched over my backpack outside a teahouse in Tengboche, Nepal, altitude 12,687 feet, trying to decide if my altitude sickness medication was making things better or worse. My path to this moment had begun six months earlier when, reeling from a messy divorce and the collapse of...

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“The Time Merchant” by Todd Beller

Submitted to Contest #275

Dr. Eleanor Chen had exactly forty-three hours, twelve minutes, and seven seconds left to live. She knew this with scientific precision because she'd paid good money to find out. The Time Merchant's shop occupied a sliver of space between a laundromat and a defunct video rental store. Its window display consisted of a single antique hourglass, the sand frozen halfway through its journey. Eleanor had passed it a thousand times without really seeing it, until her diagnosis made time suddenly, painfully relevant. "Welcome," the Merchant had sai...

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“The Things We Leave Behind” by Todd Beller

My sister's laughter started haunting me three days after I cleaned out her apartment. Not her ghost – I'm fairly certain Katie isn't dead. She's just gone, somewhere in Southeast Asia according to her last Instagram post, "finding herself" or whatever people call it when they abandon their lives without warning. The laughter comes at odd moments: when I'm washing dishes, riding the elevator, trying to sleep. It's not malevolent or mocking – it's her real laugh, the one that used to bubble up from deep in her chest when she found something g...

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“The Last Train Home” by Todd Beller

"Better late than never," my grandmother used to say, usually when I'd show up hours after I'd promised to visit, bearing apologetic takeout and excuses about traffic. She'd welcome me with the same warm smile regardless of time, as if my presence alone made up for any tardiness. I never thought those words would end up saving my life. The digital display at Carlyle Station read 11:57 PM as I sprinted down the stairs, messenger bag slapping against my hip. The last train home left at midnight – it always had, ever since the line opened in 19...

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“The Art of Being Dead” by Todd Beller

Submitted to Contest #275

Being dead isn't nearly as boring as you might think.  I discovered this on my third day of non-existence, when I finally stopped trying to open doors and learned to simply pass through them instead. The trick, I found, is to forget you were ever solid to begin with. Forget the weight of bones and blood, the constant pull of gravity, the way air once caught in your lungs. Remember instead that you are now made of the same stuff as moonlight and memory. My name was – is? – Thomas Webb, and I've been dead for approximately eight months, t...

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“ The Cat's Labyrinth” by Todd Beller

Claire Chen hadn't believed in omens until the morning she found the black cat sitting on her welcome mat. It was Tuesday, exactly three years since her grandmother's funeral, and the cat's yellow eyes held an unsettling intelligence that made her coffee-deprived brain stutter to full alertness. "Shoo," she said halfheartedly, knowing even as she spoke that the cat wouldn't move. It didn't. Instead, it studied her with the kind of patience that suggested she was the one being unreasonable. The cat was sleek and well-groomed, definitely not a...

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