Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The Market of Witherstone was a place that only appeared when the fog clung too tightly to the cobblestones, and the bells of the dead rang in reverse. No map led to it. No one remembered walking in. But once inside, the stalls whispered, and the wares watched you back.

Clara Veil had wandered through many forgotten alleys in her time—drawn to places others couldn't see. Her blood ran with something not quite human, and it stirred tonight as she stepped into the market's shifting lanes.

The stalls were arranged like crooked teeth. Smoke coiled above canvas tents dyed in shades of mourning. Lanterns flickered not with flame, but with captured sighs. No coin changed hands here—only secrets, promises, and pieces of the self.

And everywhere she turned, there were masks.

Dozens. Hundreds. Hanging from strings, nailed to stall posts, resting on velvet cloth. Bone masks. Plague masks. Ones made of bark, wax, flesh. All unlabeled. All staring.

She passed a vendor with no face, just a gleaming silver plate in place of features. He gestured wordlessly to his display: a set of delicate porcelain masks, each with mouths mid-scream.

"No," Clara whispered.

But her feet kept moving.

She was looking for someone. A girl named Elira—lost two weeks ago after vanishing into a side street behind Madame Grin's tavern. Clara followed the whispers. She always did. They led her to a corner stall covered in shadows, attended by a man with fingers too long and a grin too wide.

He wore no mask.

"You seek what was worn," he said, voice like cracked glass. "She bought a mask of forgetting. Now she remembers nothing. Not her name. Not her face. Not you."

Clara's heart thudded.

"Can I trade for her?"

The vendor nodded. "Only if you give something equal. Something worn."

He extended a hand, offering a mask so plain it was almost unnoticeable—white, with soft gray edges and empty holes for eyes.

"This is your truth," he hissed. "Put it on, and you will know yourself completely. But you may not survive the knowing."

Clara took it. Cold. Light as sorrow. She hesitated, then pressed it to her face.

The world cracked.

She saw herself—not just Clara the performer, the wanderer, the seeker of lost. She saw her reflection in a darkened mirror. Eyes glowing faintly. Voice echoing with inhuman tones. Half-spirit. Born from a pact never spoken aloud. A secret even she had hidden from herself.

And below that… a memory of Elira, not a stranger, but her sister. Taken in infancy. Hidden to protect her from what Clara was becoming.

The mask fell from her hands. She gasped.

"She's mine," Clara said. "Give her back."

The vendor only smiled.

A small girl stepped from behind the stall. Her face blank. But when she saw Clara, something flickered behind her eyes.

Recognition.

The two left together, the market vanishing behind them like smoke.

But Clara never forgot the masks.

And some nights, when she looks into mirrors…

She swears she still wears one.