Locke Halden
11 stories published
Stories by Locke Halden
Streetlight Pact
Streetlights agree to guide one late walker home. As she turns corners, bulbs blink on ahead and dim behind, making a breadcrumb trail of light. Cars slow, confused by the choreography. She wonders wh...
Paper Airplane Diplomacy
Two apartment towers face each other, their residents feuding over late-night noise. A kid folds a note into a plane: "Can we have quiet after ten?" It glides across, landing in a potted plant. A repl...
Wishful Recycling
The city installs a second recycling bin labeled "Wishes." Residents toss in pennies, eyelash wishes, and birthday candle smoke. Sanitation workers collect the dreams, rerouting them to those who need...
Invisible Umbrella
Sold in a late-night infomercial, the invisible umbrella promises protection from bad moods. Skeptics scoff until they step beneath it and feel lighter. Arguments slide off the canopy. Cynicism drips...
Memory Foreclosure
Lena works at Solvent Bank's most controversial division: Memory Recovery and Repossession. Clients who default on dream-backed loans sign away their most valuable memories. Lena's job is to retrieve them using a headset that lets her walk through so...
The Courier of Last Words
Jem works for a service that delivers last words from the dying to the living. Clients record messages, set conditions, pay fees. Jem travels with a battered satchel of envelopes and encrypted drives. She prefers handwritten notes; they feel honest....
The Tide Accountant
Every evening, the tide accountant sits on the pier with a ledger, recording grains of sand taken by the sea and returned. A ritual inherited from her mother, and her mother before. People think it quaint. One night, the ledger numbers do not balance...
The Cart Return Pact
Marcus started at the grocery store because it was close to home and paid just enough. His title was “Cart Associate,” but he preferred “Shepherd.” He chased stray carts, nudged them into lines, and kept the parking lot from becoming an obstacle course. He suspected most shoppers thought carts found...
The Proxy Wedding
In a seaside town bound by old laws, marriages required two witnesses, a blessing from the tide, and, bizarrely, consent from the ancestral registry. The registry was a ledger kept by a council of elders who believed lineage mattered more than love. When Aiko and Rafi eloped without approval, the re...
The Lifeguard of Drowned Dreams
Jules worked at the pool at dawn, before the swim team and the retirees. He was a lifeguard for bodies and, unofficially, for dreams that sank. The pool was old, tiled in fading blue mosaics. Swimmers whispered that the deep end held echoes. Jules heard them when he closed his eyes: muffled cries of...
The Statue that Listened
In the town square stood a bronze statue of a woman holding a book. Legend said if you whispered a wish into her ear, she might grant it once. Most treated it as folklore. One winter, a child named Eli whispered, “I wish my brother would talk again.” The next day, his brother spoke his first words i...