The Boy Who’d Rather Be

It was the sap, glittering and amber, that lured him in, or so the story goes. An oozing slippery elm caught the eye of a boy on his way to Elsewhere. Coaxed him into going Nowhere.

Someone carved a name into the trunk—or he thought someone, or he thought a name—the lines less a message than the space between. Carved from the inside-out, raised edges stood against ridges of bark, collecting sap in puddles like memories stuck in the grooves of a brain.

He remembers only the noticing, the touch. “My next life? A tree,” he said once, joking.

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Originally Written for Round One of NYC Midnight’s 100-Word Microfiction Challenge in April 2022
Placed First in Group

100 Word Limit, Written in 24hrs
Parameters Given —
Genre: Ghost Story
Must-Use Action: Carving a Name Into a Tree
Must-Use Word: “Lure”