Author’s Note:

This story originated from The Author’s Only Collective prompt: An Unexpected Gift
The constraint being =<300 words

Story:

Chocolates, bouquets, and candlelit dinners with a picturesque view—I sell those all day, but I want none of them.

The calendar taunts me for days leading up to my birthday, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, and milestone events. No one dislikes receiving gifts more than me. I’m sure of it. Every ribbon feels like an emotional debt I never asked to owe.

Sometimes, I get the sense that I’m in a gift-receiving hell of sorts. As in, somewhere in the bureaucracy, down at the burning pits of brimstone, there is a mid-level demon manager who sends a recruit to me, bearing gifts as some rite of passage. “Congratulations, you’re a full-fledged demon now,” they celebrate.

These people have worked with me at the flower shop for over ten years, and I’m sure they mean well. All I can do is force myself to smile, nod with appreciation, and examine whatever it is with faux interest and an overflowing amount of gratitude—energy better served elsewhere.

This time, I’m not going to play my part in their feel-good ritual. I won’t be around when they come bearing gifts. I will be conveniently unavailable. No fake smile, no effusive gratitude, and no figuring out where to put another decorative indoor succulent. Today, I will give myself a day without gifts.

I grab my keys from my bag, flip the sign on the glass window to ‘Closed,’ and reach for the light switch.

Wait, what’s that on the counter? It’s got a bow and a card attached.

Yes, it’s for me, but it’s not true until I confirm it.

Nope, not going to do it.

Turn off the lights. Close the door behind you.

I’m going to hate myself, aren’t I?

Oh, gift-giving demons, why do you torment me?

The Story Behind the Story:

When I first saw the prompt, my immediate reaction was, “I hate gifting.” Not the generosity part—the performance part. Finding the “perfect” gift is subjective, and receiving one is even worse. If you love it, you have to prove it. If you don’t, you have to pretend you do. Either way, it’s emotional labor.

That was the seed: someone who dreads gifts.

From there, I built my usual baseline—someone, somewhere, doing something. A clerk, a gift shop, closing up for the day. Simple. Contained. A pressure cooker.

Then I asked the question that unlocked the story: what if the clerk is the one who hates receiving gifts? And what if it’s their birthday?

With only 300 words to work with, I couldn’t parade a dozen well‑meaning customers through the shop. So instead, I let the gifts appear on their own, as if the universe—or something darker—was taunting them. I call this the Rod Serling effect: take an ordinary moment and tilt it just enough to slip into the uncanny.

Gremlins would’ve been cute. Demons felt more honest. Especially in a small Bible Belt town where dread often comes with a moral explanation. I also implied that the bad place has a bureaucracy or fraternity, so they send a pledge level demon to wreak havoc.

That’s how this story came together: a simple annoyance, a small shop, a birthday no one asked for, and the creeping sense that the world is conspiring to give you exactly what you don’t want.

Thanks for reading.

—Daniel

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Metadata:

Length: 293 words
Tone: MOOD
Content Note: SFW
Series: The Author’s Only Collective

Author’s Note: Welcome to the first entry of my Substack. This piece, “Lonely No More,” explores the quiet, often heavy space between the lives our parents built for us and the ones we struggle to inhabit ourselves. I’m glad you’re here.

Carlos Jimenez stood at the edge of his wooden patio. To his left in the far corner of the yard was an old toolshed that had been recently repainted, long after his father Hector passed away. Carlos had watched his father put it together when he wasn’t old enough to help, but young enough to fetch tools, lemonade, and some tortas.

The chairs along the fence line were still there, covered in the shade of the large apple tree that was only a year older than Carlos. It was there that his father told him stories about his life. Hector had a story for every song on the soundtrack of his life.

Carlos sat in the chair, allowing his spine to rest along the back until he could feel his skin fill in the initials he had carved as a boy. As the years passed, Carlos finished college, and both his parents succumbed to illness and old age, one year apart from each other. The house was quiet now. Everything, from the portraits on the walls to the pots and pans in the cupboards, was left as is.

His routine—work, eat, sleep—was a cage he had built himself. Carlos looked across the grass and saw the shadow of a windmill attached to a weathervane. It was a machine entirely at the mercy of the breeze, twisting blindly. He traced its spinning shadow, feeling the hollow echo of his own directionless routine.

“This isn’t living,” he told himself.

He stood up and walked out of the gate. He followed the sun, against the breeze, moving on his terms. He passed the park where his mother used to push him on the swing. But as he continued to walk, the sheer scale of the unpredictable world terrified him more than the quiet of his backyard. Fear twisted his stomach.

He reached the center of town as the sky turned a dark purple. The cross traffic was fast. The burst of air from passing trucks pushed against him, a physical reminder of the world’s relentless momentum.

Carlos wasn’t afraid of death. Death was certain. It was life he feared most. Life was full of the unknown, the uncontrollable, the unexpected. By stepping into the dark, he had finally forced the wind to stop. He was no longer a weathervane controlled by the breeze, waiting to see how he’d be spun next.

The Story Behind the Story

This entry came from the Sac State Alumni writing group I occasionally attend. I should go more often, but that’s besides the point.

On this day, we all gathered at a friend’s house in Mid-town Sacramento, and they had this cozy backyard with a patio, large tree, an old toolshed, and some wooden chairs. It reminded me a bit like my childhood home.

The setting and the nostalgia of home made me think of the loss of my parents and the last time I visited their home to remove their personal belongings and some memories.

I created Carlos as a guy that I thought could have been similar to me. He had parents that were different from mine, but the interactions were the same and even though we share the same count of close friends, my kindergarten buddies are doing fine.

Carlos, like me, sometimes gets caught up on the daily grind and occasionally has an existential crisis. In my worst times, I shared a similar thought pattern with Carolos—-I was afraid of living.

The ending is ambiguous, but I’m here, so I like to think Carlos is out there too in his fictional world.

I’ll find the picture of the backyard that inspired this.

The craft I used here is minimalist, slice-of-life, observation of the mundane details we often overlook in our daily lives. The emotional beats that I wanted to hit are all there from careful contemplation, nostalgia, loss, grief, pain, and a few others.

The story started like any story that I explain to my students and fellow writers: Someone, somewhere, doing something. Once you have that, you can go anywhere and do anything with that character—-this is where people add their genre tropes like the heroes’ journey, murder mystery, sci-fi, romance, etc.

Well, that’s it for my first Substack entry. I’ve got roughly 80 more of these sitting in an archive. Who knows, maybe they’ll end up here.

Thanks for reading.

-Daniel