Between the Lines: A Fifty Word Story

Emma’s eyes kept returning to the heavy leather volume on the shelf. She handled the cracked binding carefully. The Guide to Færie.

The charity shop got its 50 pence.

Days later, Emma’s mother fainted beside the empty bed. A creepy old book lay open to one side. Emma was missing.


This is my fifty word story in response to @Jayna’s prompt for the week–book. I missed last week’s because I wrote 359 words of story and still wasn’t finished. So that prompt set off a larger piece I’m still working on.

Between the Lines is a somewhat experimental story for me.  So instead of telling you a lot about my writing process, beyond the fact that it involved my usual peer review with the folks on @ink-ubator’s Discord server, I’d like you to tell me how the story impacted you and what you got out of it. Then I can perhaps figure out if the experiment worked as intended.

My extra thanks to Anike Kirsten and Andrew J. Savage for titling help. I really had trouble finding something that worked for me this week. Titles are a weakness of mine. I often struggle to find something I think is effective and matches the story.

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