Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The city was old—so old that even its foundations whispered. Beneath the cathedral bells, past the gaslit alleys and rusted gates, stretched a forgotten road called Whisper Way, where the cobblestones never stayed the same.

They shifted, subtly, each night.

Not in shape—but in pattern. Symbols etched into the stone by hands no longer living. Some resembled runes, others resembled eyes. And some looked like screams carved in stone.

Lenna Morell, a university scribe and part-time grave sketcher, had heard the rumors while cataloguing city maps. There was no record of Whisper Way, yet every map—ancient or modern—had a blank space where it should've been.

That blank space called to her.

She found the street at dusk, nestled between a row of abandoned manors, where ivy strangled brick and shutters flapped like loose tongues. Her lantern flickered red as she stepped onto the cobblestones.

The first step was cold.

The second pulsed.

By the third, she heard them.

Not voices—confessions. Murmurs of crimes never reported, of betrayals whispered at windows, of hearts broken and buried. The street spoke in secrets. And the stones—listened.

As she walked, the stones lit faintly beneath her feet, forming a path of blood-orange glow. Her breath fogged. Her mind tugged backward—memories flooding.

Her sister's drowning.

A secret kept.

The lie she told to the constable.

She staggered to a stop. The air around her had thickened, viscous with memory. The stones ahead of her now arranged themselves into a spiral, forming a corridor that sloped downward.

The city above grew distant.

Lantern in hand, Lenna descended.

The spiral led to a vault beneath the street. It was round and vast, its ceiling lost to darkness. At its center stood a dais surrounded by concentric rings of glowing cobblestones—each etched with names and moments and phrases:

"He never knew it was poison."

"I wanted her gone."

"It was me. I pushed him."

Lenna stepped forward, compelled.

As she reached the center, a voice rose—not her own.

"Speak your secret," it said. "And the stone will remember for you."

She trembled.

"If I do," she asked, "what do I get?"

Silence. Then—

"Forgetfulness. Peace. An empty burden."

Lenna stared at the stone beneath her feet. Slowly, she knelt and pressed her palm to the center.

"I let her drown," she whispered. "I watched and did nothing."

The stone flared white-hot.

Pain lanced through her body, and then—nothing. Her memories burned clean, seared away.

She stood up.

Light faded. Her lantern had extinguished.

And her name was gone.

Lenna stumbled from Whisper Way that night, eyes vacant, shoulders light.

She no longer remembered why she had come.

But beneath the city, the cobblestones shifted again.

A new secret added.

And the stones waited for the next confession.

Streets remember.

Streets forgive.

Streets lie.