2025 PARANORMAL FLASH FICTION CHALLENGE WINNER

and the winner is…

Corrie Haldane

GIRL SEASON

Girl comes for the first time in the dark hour before cock-crow.

She comes, not like Farmer with his ground-shaking bulk, but like a seedpod, floating on the breeze. She nestles in amongst my suckling kittens. They pause, momentarily startled by the quivering, not-quite-there other that is Girl, but their hunger outweighs their curiosity and they resume feeding.

I sniff Girl.

Her scent: sundried patch of spilled milk, under-porch damp, and barbed wire fence. Lots of barbed wire fence. Girl is Farmer’s offspring. 

I shudder, recalling the angry heft of his boot, and sense she’s felt it too.

Her trembling intensifies. I don’t see this with my eyes, but with my whiskers. And my whiskers never lie.

Girl is small. A tiny, tight ball of fear, no bigger than my smallest kitten, the one that never took breath. I lick this newcomer. Once, twice. My tongue tingles, a strange but not unpleasant sensation. 

Purring, I curl my tail around kittens, Girl, self. Safe and warm, we drift together in the dark, surrounded by the soft breath of Cow and Horse, calf and colt.

When I awake, she is gone, though her scent clings to the hay beneath us.

Girl comes again the next night. As I groom the kittens, counting one-two-three-four, a sudden five materializes among them, unseen but smelled. Felt. I groom her too.

She radiates warm contentment, just like the kittens when their bellies are full. Her breath, barely heard beneath the mewing and the mooing and the wind whispering through the dark barn, steadies. Slows. The kittens squirm, stretch, settle. Girl does too. 

In the morning, it’s only one-two-three-four again.

I tell the weather by sniffing the air. Rain has a smell. Snow has a smell. Hot, dry earth has a smell.

So does Girl. And this is Girl season.

Night after night, she appears at my side, nestling into me, like a warm shadow.

My kittens are older now. In between feedings, they prowl the dark barn. They have grown bigger, stronger. Girl has not.

She is smaller now than they ever were, even right after their birth. I nudge her towards my teats but she does not feed like the others, so I give her what I can: the warmth of my body, the hum of my purr.

In time, the kittens return from their adventuring and we all curl up around each other. Around Girl. We sleep.

The first night Girl doesn’t come, a pulsing light from outside the barn slips in between the boards like blood, and a piercing cry in the distance sets my fur standing on end.

The kittens feel the shift too. They wrestle each other late into the night, biting too hard, spitting and hissing and bristling with rage. Eventually, I growl a warning and they reluctantly settle down in an uneasy truce. Even in sleep, their little bodies are restless. Tense.

I lie awake long after the light fades, but Girl never comes.

Girl doesn’t come the next night, or the next night, either.

The kittens sometimes still curl up with me, but often now, they find their own places to bed down. Even scattered through the dark barn, I still feel them. As the soft breath of Cow and Horse lull me to sleep, my whiskers twitch, and I count:

One-two-three-four.

Only four.

The hay beneath me still smells of spilled milk and barbed wire, but only faintly now, like the memory of something lost. Alone, I burrow into it for warmth, tuck my nose beneath my tail, and purr myself to sleep.

Girl Season is over.

Assigned Phenomenon: Astral Projection
This story was written as part of our recent paranormal-themed contest, in which each participant was assigned a different paranormal phenomenon.