The Corner: A Short Story With 2 Endings

What would you do when facing fears? And what is it that you fear most?

You, the reader, can choose what happens to the protagonist of this short story, as I offer two alternative endings. I’m not the first author to do this – back when I was much younger I enjoyed Fighting Fantasy books, in which you picked which path a hero took in exploring a dungeon, escaping from a maze, or making their way through an enchanted wood full of monster. In literary fiction, The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles, famously offers three different ways in which the novel could end. The story below offers a simple choice of what to do when facing fears.

The Corner

Always walk with purpose, she’d been told. It keeps you safe. So she did, or pretended she did, along dark streets where lights were only on in shop windows. Walk as though you are going somewhere; as though you know where you’re going. That’s a good tip. Not the only thing, though. Be aware of your environment. That too. What woman isn’t? Hyper-aware of every little sound and shadow and scent: a cat prowling on low wall, the distant rumble of a lone car, an advertising flyer blown down the street in a gust of wind, something rustling in a heap of junk dumped by the roadside, the pungent smell of stale piss from an alley where she was definitely not going.

So she walked quickly, but not too quickly, not as though she was scared. She could feel hard pavement beneath the thin soles of her shoes – not really made for walking. That hadn’t been her plan even half an hour before.

But she had. She’d walked out. She’d done it. What now though, and where? She felt in her pocket, then in the bag she’d grabbed from the hall table before storming out, slamming the door behind her. With growing panic, she realised she’d not got her phone. She stopped, considered the options. No, she wasn’t going back for it, although she thought about it for a moment. That was behind her. Sighing, she told herself it didn’t matter, there was no one she’d call at this late hour. With a smile she realised it also meant she wouldn’t be bombarded with pings of texts, messages, rings, that could have tugged at her resolve. There was a sense of freedom to wander where she wanted and not be traced easily.

She walked on beyond the row of shops into the maze of narrower, darker, sleeping streets lined with blank-windowed houses where other people slept. Time passed in a way that was hard to measure except by the lengths of her steps, the soft sound of her tread, hard concrete beneath her soles. Apart from her walking, for a while, all was still and silent. Until it wasn’t.

Losing track of where she had walked, or where she was, she became aware not all was completely still or cast in night-time gloom. From around a corner, up ahead, she glimpsed flickering lights. It was a corner between high-walled houses, another alley really, the kind she would have walked past had those flickering lights not made her wary.

She considered turning back, reluctant to navigate that un-dark space; more disturbing and less natural seeming, than that stinking alley between shops. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to go on, not back. If she had been followed she didn’t want to be thought of as possibly returning home.

Not home, not now. She’d walked out, decisively, not wanting to be argued with any more, or persuaded to change her mind.

So she cautiously crept close to the corner, keeping in the shadow of the wall at the edge. Cautiously still, she peered around it, to see what was causing the flickering lights.

The alley wasn’t a tarmac road, or even paved, and it didn’t smell of rubbish and stale piss. It was gravelly, unmade, and smelled of woodsmoke. High walls loomed at the sides, and it stretched some distance, but at the very end, many metres away, a bonfire flickered. Orange and red flames rose from the top of what was probably a drum, sparks flying high, and the tang of smoke billowing. Around it, silhouetted as they passed in front of it, dark figures moved. They didn’t seem normal. They wildly differed in height and shape. Some were tall with long, spindly legs and moved with an uneven, jerky gait. Others were short, but with bobbing heads that were too large for their squat bodies, some were so round in the middle they were like balloons on feet.

She had only stuck her head around the corner, but she quickly ducked back. Maybe not quickly enough, she realised. Perhaps they’d seen her. Yet she realised she had to have another look, to check if they’d noticed her; if they were now coming her way. She braved another glance. All looked as before. She’d intended it to be a quick glance, but it wasn’t. She couldn’t help but be fascinated by what she saw. It was as though the figures were from some fairy tale, or horror story, which now sought to enthral and capture her attention.

Growing curiosity made her watch longer, trying to make out who or what she was witnessing. Was the jerkiness of the movements of the tall figures, and the peculiar shapes of their forms, just a trick of the firelight? Or had she really stumbled on something supernatural?

Then the fire blazed suddenly higher and at the same time a hot wind gusted outwards, towards her. The figures moved away from the burning drum, and stopped their movements around it. She didn’t react fast enough. She felt the blast of heat on her face as the same time the figures turned. And saw her.

Perhaps she should have been more cautious, kept more of that awareness she’d had when she set out, however purposefully. She should have turned away, she realised, perhaps too late.

She stepped back then though, ducked around the corner into the dark quietness of the ordinary night-time road, away from the strange fiery scene she’d stumbled upon. Her heart pounded, thumping in her chest, but she still dithered, weighing up whether to stay and face what came, or turn and run all the way back to her old home.

Time to Choose

Now you must choose what happens next. Should she turn and run back the way she’d come and hope to escape whatever is approaching from around the corner? If so, go to Ending 1. Alternatively, should she stay at the corner and see what happens then? If so, go to Ending 2.

Ending 1: Run Back The Way She’d Come

Horror stories, nightmare visions of monsters rushed into mind. At the very last moment, or so it felt, she turned and fled. The sound of her shoes pounding on the pavement echoed off the walls around her as she ran, back through nocturnal streets of houses, where still people slept in blissful ignorance, retracing her outward journey, now in fear of what had lurked in the alley outweighing her fear of what she had originally left.

But perhaps she hadn’t turned and run fast enough. Behind her she could hear other noises, indistinct cries, footsteps that struck the ground with hard thuds unlike those of shoes on pavement. Her chest began to burn with exertion and she struggled to gasp in enough air to fill her lungs, but fear kept her running, running, all the way until she reached the lit windows in the street of shops.

Then she stopped. A quick glance behind her told her she had not been followed, at least not this far, by whatever she had seen from that corner, whatever had been moving around the fire in the alley. The burning pain in her chest slowly lessened and her breathing returned to normal. She glanced up the street, towards the way home, and saw him standing there, illuminated by the harsh lights from a shop window. Her heart sunk and her shoulders sagged, but better the devil you know, she told herself, as she slowly, and defeatedly, walked towards him.

Ending 2: Stay at the Corner

She’d left it too late to escape. A face suddenly appeared in front of her. It was a skull.

She screamed, stepped backwards, pressing herself into the cold bricks of the high wall. The skull loomed close. It was on a bony neck above a skeletal body clad in the rags and tatters of a once-formal black tailcoat. Faded fragile lace ringed the neck of a once-white dress shirt. On top of the skull perched a tattered top hat.

She opened her mouth to scream again.

“Hey,” said the skull in a voice that was entirely human, “I didn’t mean to scare you.” The figure raised a gloved hand, tipped the top hat into it, then with the other hand peeled away its face.

No… a mask. A young man smiled at her, screwing the muscles on the perfectly natural skin of his cheeks, and blinking his eyes.

“That’s better. Gets hot inside that. Sorry though. I must have looked pretty spooky, right?”

Around the young man holding his skull mask were other figures. The tall, gangly ones were on stilts. The round ones wore hooped clownlike costumes. The squat ones were also costumed, with giant headdresses shaped like goblins and other fantastical things. One wore fake fur and now carried under his arm the fancy-dress snout of a comical bear.

“Didn’t mean to scare you,” the young man continued.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Performers.” One of the figures handed her a flyer. She’d seen it’s like on the high street, fluttering in the wind.

“We were practising,” the young man said. “Want to join us for a while? Watch our show?”

She grinned. “Yes please,” she said, and with renewed purpose followed the troupe down the alley, to dance around the fire.

Which Ending did you Pick?

I’d be really interested to learn which ending readers chose, and also what you thought of the story. Please leave a comment.