The Cigarette Case on the Dresser

You Are Still Here

The first strange thing about the old mobile home was not the shadow.

It was the cigarettes.

Years later, when I think back on that night, I always return to that small detail. A cheap plastic cigarette case sitting on my mother’s dresser. A half-empty pack beside her perfume bottle. A simple thing that belonged to an ordinary life.

Nothing about it suggested fear.

Nothing about it suggested that a child walking ten steps through the dark would carry a memory for the rest of her life.

Back then, our neighborhood was the kind of place people forgot existed.

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This story runs 1 chapter — most readers finish in one sitting, and you can stop and return to any chapter using the contents list.

Who wrote it?

Nimra Khan — original fiction published on RapidTale.