I’m excited to share some fantastic news: my story “The Echo Room” will be published on freeflashfiction.com shortly!
This story emerged from a simple but unsettling question: what if the perfect acoustics in your new apartment were a little too perfect? What if you could hear not just the conversations happening now, but fragments of voices from the past… and more disturbingly, from the future?
“The Echo Room” follows a man who discovers his newly rented apartment has unusual acoustic properties. At first, he’s merely curious about the voices he’s hearing: snippets of previous tenants’ mundane conversations, echoes of lives once lived in these rooms. But as the phenomenon escalates, he begins to hear something far more unnerving: his own terrified voice describing events that haven’t happened yet.
The story explores that particular brand of contemporary horror I’m drawn to; the kind that takes something completely ordinary (good room acoustics) and reveals the potential for dread lurking just beneath the surface. It’s about inevitability, about hearing your own future terror and knowing there’s nothing you can do to prevent it.
Here’s a brief excerpt from the opening:
The first time I heard it, I was unpacking books. A child’s laughter—bright and sudden—followed by a woman’s voice: “Dinner in five, Jamie.” My hand stilled mid-air, the weight of an unplaced hardback suspended between box and shelf. The apartment remained silent, as though waiting for my reaction.
I’ll be sure to share the link once it’s live, possibly in September. In the meantime, I’m working on more pieces that explore the uncanny spaces where our comfortable reality begins to crack.
Sometimes the most frightening stories are the ones that could be happening in the room next door.
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