Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. The Education of Little Sorrow Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

THE EDUCATION OF LITTLE SORROW

The book lay in the mud. The white edges of its dust jacket turned yellow by creeping fingers of puddle water. The red borders had gone pink. The image on the front—a ghastly man and a shocked woman—was faded by sunlight and time, though made no less fascinating by the fact. Of the words on the cover, only one did the boy vaguely recognize.

He rescued the thick, heavy book from the gutter and, forgetting himself, pointed to the recognizable set of letters to a passing woman in a navy dress with marigolds printed on the fabric, a matching hat, and fine brown leather boots. He said, “What’s this one?”

The woman sneered and hissed, looked as if the notion to spit on him was there at the forefront of her mind. She continued by, huffing and puffing, walking quickly on the rough cement sidewalk.

“Says sorrow,” said a young man in dusty trousers and rolled up sleeves as he tossed newspaper bundles from the back of a box truck.

The boy smiled a mouth full of fuzzy, filmy teeth. “That’s my name!” he said.

The young man frowned with his entire face and shook his head. “What kind of parents call their kids Sorrow?”

The boy, or as he’d been Christened, Sorrow, missed this, was entirely focused on the man and woman on the front of the discarded and moldering copy of The Gates of Sorrow by Marie C. Leighton. He turned and started across the street.

The driver of a Studebaker convertible shouted, “Out of the road!”

Little Sorrow jumped, tossing the book into the air. It came down in a hurry and he barely managed to cradle it to his chest. With the Studebaker now well out of his path, he ran the rest of the way back to the carriage wagon his daddy had driven into town.

Toodles the donkey gave a snort when Little Sorrow’s weight shifted the carriage. The boy stared at the book and one of two words his mama taught him. His daddy came out of the mercantile after another few minutes with a basket of items they couldn’t grow on the farm. They’d brought in four coyote hides for their bounty and six hundred cobs of corn for trade.

“What’s that you have?”

Sorrow looked at his daddy, Travis Payne, and pointed to that word again. “That’s my name.”

“Oh, is that right?” Travis said. He couldn’t read but a handful of words himself. “You going to read all the times it has your name?”

“I’m gonna learn all the other words, too.” Sorrow was all smiles and naivety.

“Who’s gonna teach ya?”

“Mama can read,” Sorrow said, coming back down to Earth.

“Your mama has better things to do than train you for something you’ll never need.”

Words were everywhere, on everything in town. “I need it.” Sorrow ran his fingers over the wet paper and the wet cotton board beneath.

“Need the pages in the privy maybe. Need them to start a fire maybe.” Travis swatted the reins down gently and Toodles started off.

The world around them was in a race to get places. Cars and trucks blew by the donkey and carriage. Lights lit windows, made signs dance and sizzle. The walking people did so in attire bought from stores: bright colors, fine textures, even a few zippers with teeth of convenience. By and by, they made distance from downtown and the modern world that had seemed ready to leave behind the Payne farmstead.

—

Luke and John were on Annamarie Payne’s skinny knees. Luke was breastfeeding while John was holding him in place as Annamarie worked at mixing the blackberries they’d picked as a family that morning with the sugar they’d purchased from the mercantile. Sorrow put the book on the table.

“Mama, I want to learn to read.”

Annamarie huffed. “What you want to do that for?”

“So I can read?”

“That’s no reason.”

Sorrow waited in silence.

Annamarie stopped stirring. On her lap, John switched knees with Luke so he could get his fill from the other tit. Annamarie ignored the motions and looked at her boy—fourth eldest still living—and pointed a stained purple wooden spoon at him. “And you think I should teach you to read?” She shifted her gaze to the book. “So you can read that? What is it, a mystery?”

“I found it.”

“Somebody threw it away because books are a waste a time, as is knowing to read. Look where it got me. I learned to read and do math and hardly none of it matters. You worry about useful things.”

“But I want to read the signs, not only the book.”

“Stop sassing and go find your brothers. Got enough sugar to do twice the jam. Means I’m gonna need more blackberries.”

Sorrow turned toward the rough cedar door with his head hung low. He slipped his hands into the skinny pockets his mother had attached to his trousers as an afterthought.

“Take that filthy book with you.”

—

Around the back of the house, Travis was chopping wood with a rusty axe, sticky swipes of sap rode thin waves up from the blade. He slammed the axe down and split a stove-length in two. As he bent to retrieve the fatter of the pieces, he side-eyed his son.

“Your mama teaching you to read?”

“No,” Sorrow said, head still hanging low, low, low.

“Thought not. Now go toss that useless thing over with the wood. Make it a useful thing.”

Sorrow pouted as he walked the book over to the piled wood. A fat crow watched him from the tin rooftop. He tossed the book as he was told and started away.

“Your mama got you doing something?”

“Yes,” Sorrow said.

“Picking?”

“Yes.”

—

Sorrow met up with his brothers at the edge of the forest path. They both had purple lips. Mark—the second eldest—carried a bushel of blackberries. Behind him, Simon—ten months younger than Mark—carried their father’s small rifle. They all knew not to shoot unless the target was close enough to kill, and that it was something worth eating or turning in for a bounty, because ammunition wasn’t cheap.

“Mama sent me to help,” Sorrow said.

“Too late,” David said. “You spent too much time doing nothing in town.”

“It was my turn,” Sorrow said.

“My turn,” Simon said in a nasally singsong.

“Okay,” Sorrow said and took a step in line behind his passing brothers.

“We didn’t find any puffballs,” David said.

“Mama wants some puffballs,” Simon said.

“Go find some puffballs,” David said.

Sorrow huffed. Nobody ever really wanted him around, they were always sending him away. Do this. Do that. Do it over there. He thought it was because his parents named him Sorrow instead of an apostle name—the year he was born, the family had lost five children to the Spanish Flu and assumed Sorrow coming out alive was an accident.

He scanned the perky grass sprouting on both sides of the tamped mud path. He had reached the blackberry bushes his brothers had harvested and stopped to pluck a few fat ones. He continued by, chewing the sweet berries, and really peeled his eyes for mushrooms. If his brothers had only gone as far as the blackberry bushes, then any time now he should spot a mushroom.

“If there are any,” Sorrow whispered.

The boy took two more steps before seeing a big white blob on the forest floor to the right of the path, not far ahead. He hurried then and bent, registering as he did that this was no mushroom. A sheet of paper, crumpled into a ball. Sorrow smoothed it out and pulled it tight, flattening it as best he could.

“Sorrow,” he said, plucking the word from the title page of the book he’d rescued from the gutter and then had to sacrifice to the woodpile. “How’d it—?” he said, looking around and spotting a crow on a branch directly above him. The bird took off.

His daddy said crows were bad omens sometimes, but lately he didn’t believe everything his daddy said. Other daddies, most daddies, from what Sorrow saw, thought reading was good and useful. They’d stand by their cars and trucks and read the newspaper. They’d sit in their houses with electric lights and flush toilets, whole walls of books—likely. They’d go to the movies and read all the names and words from the opening credits, and they’d simply know more by doing so.

Sorrow puffed out his bottom lip. Maybe if he stopped wanting to read, needing to be different, the others wouldn’t push him away, wouldn’t send him on errands alone. Maybe it wasn’t just his name that made him stand out.

Twenty feet ahead, falling like lazy snow, three balled sheets drifted to the forest floor from high in the trees. Sorrow raced after them. The first had the publication credits, the second was the dedication page, and the third was front and back words. He collected and smoothed them out against his palm.

From the corner of his eye, he saw movement. More balled book pages moseyed down from the trees. He detoured further from the path, chasing the pieces of a story he couldn’t decipher. The paper balls rained down faster and Sorrow ran by three puffball mushrooms along the way, his task all but forgotten. Above him, crows cawed as if cheering him on, or perhaps telling their brethren to let go of their offerings.

Sorrow pushed through crisscrossing branches, ducked beneath fat tree limbs, and skirted thorny brambles in his chase. He had several dozen sheets in his sweaty hands and needed all of them, every last one the friendly crows dropped. He did not notice that he was a long way from anything familiar, would not have cared if he had. Collecting these pages was all the world and the universe, Heaven and Hell; collecting these pages was everything. Sweat spilled over his eyebrows from his forehead in dirty yellow streaks. His vision became blurred and he had to stop, moaning in frustration.

He swiped at his eyes with the backs of his hands—they were just as sweaty as his face—and then used the shoulders of the browned shirt he’d taken as a hand-me-down from David. When he looked up, he saw a hut with greyed plank walls and a rusty steel roof. Along that roof, as well as on the two windowsills, crows stood watching him. The door of the hut was open a crack and enough light poured free that the boy came to acknowledge that he’d been out much later than he intended.

The path to the doorway was skinny and trodden enough to suggest use, but the idea that someone lived out here in the woods made Sorrow fearful enough to step back. All was silent but for the trickle along the creek and the wheel spinning in the water. The door of the hut opened a few inches further, creaking loud as a draw bridge as it did. Sorrow sucked in his breath as a short figure moved into the light, pushing the door so that it yawned out onto the grassy yard.

“Hello, there,” the figure said. He was a man, but small in every way but his eyes and mouth. He took a deep, deep breath through his nose.

Sorrow swallowed an invisible ball of anxiety and then said, “Hello.”

The figure came closer, though not too close. “Now, now, Little Sorrow, there’s no need to fear me.”

The boy gasped at hearing his name. The figure drew closer. His eyes were wet silver and the teeth behind his pink lips were white, white. He wore a pair of overalls, rolled up at the ankles. His feet were bare, as was his tattooed chest. From that distance, Sorrow couldn’t make out any discernable pattern.

“Little Sorrow wants to read. Am I drawing this correctly? For you have many pages in your hands, and from a book I dropped in town.”

“I…it had my name.”

“A piece of your name. Is that the only word you know?”

Sorrow hung his head. “I know the sign going into town says ‘Dumfries.’”

“Ah, but that’s a hair near to cheating, is it not?”

Sorrow lifted his face upon feeling the small figure’s hot breath ruffle his bangs, ready to leap backward. But they were still many feet apart. The boy sighed in relief. “No…maybe.”

“Why do you want to read? Your mama and daddy don’t think it’s very useful.”

Again, Sorrow lowered his face. “I want to know.”

“Why’s that, be honest, Little Sorrow or I’ll follow public myths about me and cut your little throat.”

Sorrow felt a knife press against his neck and his head instinctively jerked up. The figure hadn’t moved, was indeed still several feet away. The boy swallowed two more invisible balls. This time he’d keep his eyes planted, rooted on the figure.

“I wanna have things.”

The figure smiled, revealing seven square teeth centering his upper row. “Like a running toilet?”

“Yes.”

“Electricity?”

“Yes.”

“An automobile?”

“Yes.”

The figure shook his head, tis-tisking. “Have you asked God?”

Sorrow clenched his jaws. He asked God every night, had for more than a year now. “Yes.”

“And what does God say?”

“He doesn’t answer.” Sorrow lowered his head, feeling blasphemous.

“That’s because to seek knowledge is a sin. One must walk blindly. One must sacrifice without argument and sing praises while his family bleeds to death upon the church’s golden altar. One must put faith in the ways of God and not dare seek knowledge, enlightenment, freedom. For if one seeks knowledge, God will bring down His unforgiving fist and cast thee from Paradise. Ask Adam and Eve.”

“No…God is good. Jesus loves me…I…”

Hands squeezed Sorrows shoulders. “It is okay, lad. God can not punish you here, this is my forest.”

The boy looked at the spots where he felt the grasping hands. Nothing was touching him. He lifted his gaze. Again, the figure hadn’t moved.

“What if I told you one touch with this wee finger and you can read all the words you’ll ever need.” The little man wiggled his finger. “Would you like that?”

Sorrow stiffened. He would like nothing more in the world. Nothing.

“I know you would, but you must say it,” the figure said.

Sorrow licked his lips. “Yes.”

The boy didn’t blink—would ponder this, off and on in the coming days—but somehow the figure stood before him, nearly identical in height. The face was a sea of waving shadows, wrinkles so, so deep that the skin nearly flapped. Those teeth seemed bigger. The eyes seemed wetter. The wee finger was less than an inch from the boy’s forehead.

“You need only repeat after me. You ready?”

Sorrow swallowed the biggest invisible ball of all before nodding.

“Hail Satan.”

The boy gasped, “What?”

“Simply say, hail Satan.”

“I…I can’t.”

The finger wiggled. “You will be wise beyond your years. Wise beyond the years of civilization. It is a great gift. The greatest gift. Now, say it.”

Oh, to read! The notion of it made him weak in the knees. Had God ever listened? Would his parents ever help? Would he ever see better than the bottom where the universe had caste him?

“Hail Satan,” Sorrow mumbled.

The figure cupped an ear. “I didn’t hear you. What did you say?”

“Hail Satan,” Sorrow said.

“Loud enough for my friends.”

“Hail Satan!”

The figure touched Sorrow’s forehead. The boy blacked out on the tail of a blinding flash of light within his skull.

—

Little Sorrow awoke at the edge of the forest, twilight upon him. Next to him were five large puffball mushrooms with peck wounds marring the spongey white meat. Only a few feet away were ten crows perched on a dead birch tree his daddy had pulled from the woods earlier that week.

The boy pushed to his feet and gathered the mushrooms, using his shirt like a bag. He stepped through the backyard, passing the woodpile, and then backtracking. There, right where he’d tossed it, was the sodden copy of The Gates of Sorrow by Marie C. Leighton. Complete. He ran his finger across the title as he spoke, “The Gates of Sorrow.” He plucked the book up from the damp wood and continued on his way.

He knocked on the door with the toe of his boot as both hands were busy. His mama swung open the door, her expression remained hidden within the candlelit shadows, but her posture gave away her anger.

“Where have you been?” she said, misting spittle upon his face.

“Gathering mushrooms,” he said, cowering, though a little voice inside told him it wasn’t necessary.

“You—oh, look at them all.”

She stepped aside and let Sorrow enter. His footfalls were firm and strong. He stood with his back straight and his chin raised. He felt so utterly different, so whole.

“What you doing with that?” his daddy said, pointing to the book.

David, Simon, and John gathered in the kitchen as their mama plucked the mushrooms one at a time from the net of Sorrow’s shirt.

“I’m going to read it,” Sorrow said.

“Your mama ain’t wasting—”

His shirt had been emptied of its payload as Sorrow’s daddy spoke, and he used both hands to open the book to the beginning chapter. “It is a quarter-past seven and I, distraught and eager, have received a most painful letter,” he said, reading the words as if they were his own.

His parents were struck silent. John pointed an index finger up at Sorrow’s forehead. “What’s that?”

The boy touched his forehead—felt something akin to a mole—as the small figure from the woods had. He nearly spoke those wonderful, magical words aloud as the full memory came crashing to the forefront of his mind. But he didn’t.

—

On the first night of knowledge, Sorrow read through the book, all 300 pages. It was a mystery, a death upon the British moors. It had transported him like nothing had in his life. For those hours, he was no longer a peasant living off the land and suckling at the dry teat of ignorance.

On the second night after the others fell asleep, he slipped onto Toodles’ back and convinced the donkey to trot him into town. He broke a window into the library and scanned the dark shelves for a book on electricity. Within minutes he and the donkey were heading to the north end of town where a home had blazed three nights prior.

From the rubble he located the blade of a machete. The handle was gone. He stepped into the roofless skeleton and hacked at the two remaining walls. Not long before sunrise, he and Toodles were on their way back to the farm. After hitching the donkey, Sorrow hid the haul of wires and two light fixtures beneath his shared bed. He argued with his mama, his mother, when she roused him at nine o’clock. It had earned him a lashing that he would not forget; not because it was worse than any other lashing for a minor offense, but that she was an ignoramus and dared punish him for resting his superior mind.

On the third night, he took Toodles back to town and then beyond. At the dump, rummaging by lamplight, he found a discarded bicycle with no handlebars or front wheel, and a destroyed wind-up gramophone with a good many useful components hidden inside.

On the fourth night, he rigged the bicycle wheel to a wooden platform, affixed strategically placed magnets and a copper coil with glue, wired the rescued light fixtures, and finally attached the lines. The wheel danced back and forth in minute jerks at the magnets’ opposite draws. Sorrow swung the wheel and let the wheel follow the direction of the greater force, continuing the revolution endlessly while sending electricity to the smoky lightbulbs.

He stilled the motion and climbed into the bed he shared with two heavy-breathing, occasionally farting brothers.

His daddy, his father, woke him early the next morning and demanded an explanation.

“So we no longer need to live akin to troglodytes in a cave mouth,” Sorrow said and swung the wheel, lighting the bulbs.

His father watched without comment. Sorrow staggered back to bed while the lights glowed like the kiss of tomorrow’s sun today.

On the fifth night, Sorrow had awoken from a brief nap with plans. His subconscious had recalled much from the dump and all it would take to put a radio and an electric ice box into his parents’ home were parts, knowhow, and time; of which he assumed he had all three.

He was mounting Toodles when his father struck the back of his head with an axe handle.

—

“It’s no doubt the work of Satan,” Reverend Graham said. He was a young man, full of pep and Old Testament righteousness.

The Paynes had brought their disturbed son to the church inside a grain sack. “Please, I didn’t do anything wrong,” Sorrow said, his tone true to his name.

“What we gotta do?” Travis said.

“He is possessed!” Annamarie said.

Sorrow wailed within the sack. “Please, help me! Satan, help me!”

Reverend Graham stiffened at this. “Baptismal.”

Travis dragged the sack behind the reverend as they walked through the rear door of the church and toward the river. In his suit, the reverend waded into the water.

“Please! Help me, Satan!” Sorrow thrashed against his hemp prison. “God! Jesus! Satan!”

Annamarie gasped. “That demon is trying to fool us!”

The reverend snapped his fingers, holding out both hands. “Pass me the thing.” That final word leapt from his lips as if he were vomiting a mouthful of snakes.

“Let me go! Please! It’s only electricity—” The word electricity rose on bubbles as the river entered his mouth.

“You may have destroyed the boy’s flesh, but you will not destroy his family! In the name of God, I cast thee out! Out! Out!” Reverend Graham held the sack beneath the water for one, two, three, four, five, six minutes.

—

Buried on a hill, many yards from the next closest plot was Sorrow Payne’s body. They’d dug the hole the following morning and Travis dumped the boy’s creations down on top of the sodden corpse in its sack. The marker was a wooden cross painted white. SORROW PAYNE ran half as wide as the crossing piece. Beneath it, in small, were the words CHILD OF GOD AGAIN.

On the sixth night after his trip to the forest, Sorrow scratched and burrowed his way out of his grave to a chorus of crow cries. He shook his feathers and cawed once before taking flight.

The short figure stood outside his hut in overalls and bare feet, looking to the sky, silver tears playing down his cheeks. Sorrow landed on the ground before him. The figure sniffled and sighed.

“It breaks my heart that you’re back so soon.”

Sorrow popped into flight, landing on the figure’s shoulder. What had happened was inevitable, given that he hadn’t been wise enough to play dumb. To break the chains of servitude would always be dangerous, and though it cost him his life, Sorrow could now reach as high as he wanted.

“Hail Satan!” he said in a crow caw voice.

Around him, the other crows cried, “Hail Satan!”

The little figure, Lord of Freedom and Knowledge, wiped his tears, then held open his arms to embrace the children who dared to seek God’s forbidden fruits.

XX