FREAKY FLASH FRIDAY: The Occupant by David Hanlon

The bead chain rattles sharply as Marcia tugs it, raising the slatted blind in Oliver’s bedroom. Sunlight spills across the cartoon wallpaper. Normally, he grumbles, pulls the covers, mumbling softly. Today, he screams: “Nooooo! Traitor!”

Marcia freezes. The word—steeped in suspicion, threaded with years of rage—is not a child’s. It cuts through the room like a raven’s cry. Where has he learned this? Her chest tightens, panic searing through her. Shadows twitch in the corners.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” she whispers, voice rattling, hand clutching the chain.

“The wight,” he murmurs, sweet, childlike. Then sharper: “Are you trying to blind me, traitor?” Precise, impossible from five-year-old lips.

Her stomach twists. The slurred speech she knows erupts razor-sharp, implacable. That word—traitor—strikes again, a knife she cannot pull free.

Oliver throws the quilt aside, body and gaze frozen as marble. Floorboards groan under unseen weight.

Marcia edges out, knees quaking like storm-ravaged trees, closing the door, exhaling, counting breaths she cannot trust.

Oliver scuttles to his desk, crayons clutched in small fists. He draws her: triangle dress, stick arms, hollow white eyes. Then, crumbling the red crayon, he presses it into her eyes—wax hissing, scent sharp and acrid, frantic red spreading, blinding her through the paper, wielded by hands tiny, yet sharp as a blade.

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David Hanlon is a poet based in Cardiff, Wales. His latest collection, Dawn's Incision, was published by Icefloe Press. You can follow him on X @davidhanlon13 and Instagram @hanlon6944.

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