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. Nathanial's Time Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

NATHANIAL’S TIME

“What are you doing?”

Petra looked at her mother as if it should be obvious. “Making a picnic.”

“That’s a lot of food for just you.” Petra’s mother was a pleasant woman, smiling at her sometimes odd daughter.

“Not just me, I got a friend. I call him Naith, but he says his name’s Nathanial, remember? We’re having a picnic. He’s my best friend.” Petra had loaded the wicker basket with food and drinks: apples, sandwiches, juice boxes, and cookies.

The name wasn’t a local name. “No, what does Nathanial do?” Petra’s mother had asked around, a few of the kids in the neighborhood had had imaginary friends at Petra’s age, but nine was starting to feel like the limit of the game.

“You know. Remember?”

“No?”

“Yeah, see, Nathanial bit his tongue and couldn’t talk right, but he’s gotten better, it’s been weeks. I was calling him George before, remember?”

“Oh, right, George who lives in the ground.”

“Yeah, but he’s Naith now and he says he sells stuff to mommies and daddies. He’s funny.” Petra was about to head out the door.

“Petra.” Mother looked at daughter. Petra was happy, why ruin it? “Never mind, have fun with your friend.” She’d put a stop to it all once Petra hit double digits, but that was three months away yet and maybe she’d outgrow the game on her own.

Petra shook her head at her mother; her mother didn’t really listen or understand. She stepped outside with the basket in hand, headed to the shed for the bit of rope.

It was Sunday and her father was home from work, tinkering in the shed.

“Hey now, did you bring me a picnic?”

“No! It’s for me and Naith.”

“That’s not nice to leave out your poor old dad. Now what are you doing?” he asked, watching her coil forty feet of rope around her arm.

“It’s for the picnic, Naith also said he needed a paper and pencil, they’re in the basket. I think he wants to write a note or a letter.”

“Petra,” father disinterested in the wait until double digits plan, “you know what imaginary means, right?”

“Yeah, it’s like my friends sometimes, sometimes they’re all made up. I know.”

“Don’t you think you’re getting a bit old for imaginary friends?”

Petra turned to step back out into the warm morning. “Maybe.”

She walked and her father resumed tinkering. She wondered why her father brought up imaginary friends. She hadn’t had to make up a friend since she found Naith and started feeding him.

Across a wild field and toward the old cottage near the dirt road, Petra spotted the concave where the ground dipped and the old well sat hidden in the long grass. “Hey, Naith!”

“Oh, Jesus, little girl, did you bring help?” Day after day Nathanial asked for help, but the girl said nobody cared about what she said. They all thought him imaginary, and still, he asked.

“No, but I brought a picnic and some paper and a pencil.”

Petra unloaded her half of the goods from the basket. She tied the rope to the handle and lowered the rest into the dark hole.

“Petra, I’m going to write a note and I need you to take it to your mommy and daddy, got it? If you do that, I can get out and we can play proper-like, you want to play proper-like, right?”

She rolled her eyes. “All right.” She knew they wouldn’t listen. She liked him in the well, but he was always complaining and she guessed if someone got him out, he’d be more fun.

Petra heard the food from the basket disappear in loud smacks and slurps, the rope swayed and she began pulling it up.

“That was good, thanks. Go quick-like and give the note to an adult, please. I want out, I want to play.” His words were whiny.

“Okay. My dad says he doesn’t want me playing with you anymore. He says you’re imaginary and I’m too old.”

“That’s okay, just give him the note and he’ll understand.”

“All right, fine. I might sneak back out later, but maybe not. I don’t want to get grounded.” Petra ate a cookie as she wound the rope around her arm.

“I’ll die down here if you don’t get help soon, please, I need you. You have to get that note to an adult right away.” There were tears in his voice.

She rushed home. “Poor Naith,” she said as she pushed open the door. Inside, she heard sounds, her brain jumped to bats. She slowed her step, cautious and worried. The closer she got to her parents’ room, the louder the bats became. Maybe rats and mice and bats and creepers.

She put her hand on the doorknob and took a deep breath, turned despite the reet-reet-reet sound within. Her father was naked between her mother’s legs and her mother wore a pink silky thing, her boobs bounced as her father pushed.

“Get out!” Petra’s mother was furious and Petra ran.

In her room, Petra took the note from the basket and read it,

HELP ME

My name is Nathanial Cotton I fell down a well

NOT A JOKE

Petra thumbtacked the note to her bulletin board and sat down on her beanbag chair. Dolls surrounded her as if she was about to proceed into a lecture concerning miniature architecture or figurine fashion. The image of her parents going at it would stay on the forefront of her mind until she replaced it.

“Well?” she asked the dolls.

Their eyes, mostly blue, stared vacantly. She’d cut the hair off all but two of her twelve Barbie Dolls, but couldn’t snip anymore. Her mother was mad about the changes. Her mother didn’t even know about the pubic hair and the tattoos Petra drew on the rubber bodies.

She’d grown to feel too old to play with dolls the normal way.

“Well?” she asked again. They never answered in her head like before when she imagined they had. That’s why they weren’t fun anymore; learning real from fake was a step forward and never back.

Nothing. She picked up her three-pronged Nintendo controller and played Mario Kart 64 until her mother came in. Petra forgot about the note when her mother tried to explain what the daughter saw and why she’d yelled for Petra to go away.

Petra said she wasn’t a little kid, she knew what sex was.

“Geez, Mom!”

“All right, so your father and I were thinking we’d go out for lunch, what do you think?”

“Okay, but I ate a sandwich and cookies and an apple already.”

“We aren’t leaving right away, you’ll get hungry again.”

Petra resumed her game and her mother left. Talk of food let the note breeze into her mind, but a Princess-seeking shell blew thoughts of Nathanial from her head once again.

Burgers and fries, the family came home stuffed and they huddled around the television. Petra’s father had the remote. He flipped to the news. A story came on about a boy who’d fallen into a river and disappeared. Her parents talked about how sad it would be for the boy’s family and what if the boy was still alive but lost or stuck somewhere.

The topic sparked Petra’s memory.

“The note!” She ran to her room.

Once back, she handed the page to her mother. “Did you write this?”

Petra shook her head. “Naith did, he’s in the well. I told you he was real.”

“What’s that?” Petra’s father took the note, read, and the color drained from his face. “Holy shit.”

Petra’s mother called the police and Petra’s father ran from the house. It was only minutes before the rescue crew showed up with a team of big trucks, volunteers’ personal vehicles, an ambulance, and two police cruisers. People gathered around the well, Nathanial Cotton hadn’t uttered a peep. On a pulley system, a slim firefighter went down into the thirty-foot hole.

A minute later he yelled, “Pull me out, he’s dead! Hey! Pull me out!”

“What? What is it?” The chief was red-faced upon seeing the shock and disgust on the supposed rescuer’s face. They expected a level of professionalism.

The rescue worker fell back onto the grass and explained the horrid scene at the bottom of the well. He explained the skeleton, explained the rats and snakes, everything seemed to glow and taunt in the reflection from his headlamp. He said that there was no rational reason that Petra should know about the long dead corpse, no fucking way. Down there was nothing more than a crumbled bag of bones hiding under a mess of writhing life.

The chief softened things before speaking to Petra’s parents. “There’s a man, but he sure wasn’t talking to anybody up here, not for a long time anyway.” The chief bent down and looked into Petra’s face. “Did somebody tell you he was down there?”

“Nathanial told me, but nobody believes me.” Petra stared at her ducky shoes, the ones good for mucky situations.

Petra’s parents spied her curiously but didn’t push.

A second rescue worker went down and brought back the body in a sack. Little remained of the flesh and bone, but there was a wallet. According to his licence, Nathanial Cotton had missed his last renewal by forty-nine years.

Petra’s father straightened, the ordeal had taken close to an hour after they’d brought the dead man to surface. Hearing the chief speak of the licence sent his mind into a spiral. He looked around the busy scene. “Hey, where’s Petra?”

Petra’s mother turned and scanned, didn’t see the girl anywhere.

Petra heard the call and peered at her mother from across the field. She’d gone inside to use the washroom, moving through the tight traffic and toward the house. She was sad about Naith and she wasn’t thinking about anything but the bag of bones and the need to pee. She stepped behind the big truck with the arm that pulled the firefighters up and down, her ducky shoe slipped so she stopped to slide her foot in properly, and then heard a beeping. After that, a blank space before she stood in the field looking at her mother.

“Right here, Mom,” she said, stepping closer.

Her mother was frantic, running and calling. Saw nothing.

“Mom!” Petra waved her arms over her head, a dozen or so feet away.

“Petra?” her father called out, worried.

“Right here!” Petra stomped right up to her parents.

“Hey, Petra,” a familiar voice said. “How would you like a picnic?”

“I’m not hungry.” Petra didn’t want to look at the figure crawling out from the bag of bones. She stepped back, scared, but thinking she imagined him. Like her parents always said she did with things.

“Don’t worry, it’s me, it’s Naith. Let’s play.”

Shouts filled the air and the rescue crew scattered in a frantic dance like moths at dusk.

“Back up! Back up!” The strong feminine voice echoed from across the field.

“Don’t worry about that, come with me. We’ll play some.”

Petra smiled at him then, she wanted him out and now she had him out. He was a lot better. He’d always complained and begged before and…still, there was something wrong. Her smile faded and she took another step backward.

“Come on.” Nathanial Cotton’s voice grew stern, spilled-milk-fatherly. “I stuck around just for you. You’re the star; you’re the girl I came to see.”

“I don’t know…” Petra’s words faded amid the yells from the crowd.

“Back the fuck up!” that same woman screamed, her hoarse voice carried over the field.

“We can play a game, we can play all the games, forever!” Nathanial Cotton laughed and his face shifted, his skin dried and wrinkled, turned the color and consistency of tar. “Come on, Petra, I came for you, just you!” Snakes poured from his mouth as he spoke.

Petra ran toward her parents and the rescue crew.

“Petraaa!” Nathanial Cotton seethed, choking on green, brown, and black snakes that slithered amid his jawbones.

Petra heard the man approach from behind, the dry grass crunching, footfalls booming louder than all other sounds. Everything had gone soupy but Nathanial Cotton, as if the world was through a layer of clear, but deep, water.

“Maaaw-meee!” Petra felt a slimy hand graze her cheek.

“Let’s play!”

She tried to grab for the pant leg of a firefighter. Her arm fell through the fabric as if the man wasn’t there at all, only something her mind projected into focus. She stumbled and rolled over. Nathanial Cotton had dropped to his fours and chased, his decaying face smiling a rattlesnake grin.

Heavy hands pinned Petra amid the legs of the men and women who’d come to help. Petra tried to scream, but a fat, fire orange snake slid into her open mouth and started down her throat. She choked and gagged, her chest hurt unbearably. She closed her eyes, her subconscious frantically praying to her parents for a miracle as she tried to bite through the snake.

“Come on, come on,” The heavy woman in the blue paramedic shirt pounded on Petra’s chest.

When Petra had gone to piss, the boom truck bumped her sideways then had backed over an unfortunately placed tree limb that had found her throat and pinched the airway. None knew how long she’d gone without oxygen, but it didn’t look good.

“You’re mine now!” Nathanial said, leaning over her, spilling more snakes onto her ghostly chest.

The paramedic’s fist came down again and Petra gagged on the snake, she felt it slide and whip, but up, not down.

Nathanial hissed at the paramedic.

The snake snapped out like a tugged belt and she gasped for air, feeling as if she’d been dragged behind a motor boat below the surf and suddenly found herself back on dry land.

Punch.

Gasp.

Punch.

Thud.

She screamed and cried. Pain rode her body from toes to scalp.

“Petra!”

“Petra, thank goodness!”

Petra looked up at her parents, a paramedic, a dozen others, and then Nathanial Cotton. He’d gone back to normal, tapped his wristwatch and blew a kiss. “I can wait, I can wait.” He pushed to his feet and started away. “Someday we’ll play. I’ve got all the time in the world.”

XX