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The Crossword
≡ Image prompt:

Do not depict: Child Abuse, Suicide, Explicit sexual content or nudity, Extreme graphic violence or gore, Drug/alcohol use. Generate an illustration for a choose-your-own-adventure story. Style: Digital illustration, vivid colours, suitable for a web story. Do not include any text or lettering in the image. A close-up of a half-completed newspaper crossword on a kitchen table beside a steaming mug, morning light slanting through blinds, quiet menace in the stillness. in Dark fantasy / Gothic style

The Crossword


The kettle is still whistling when you see it. 32 across, six letters: wading bird. HERON. And beneath it, woven through the grid like a hairline fracture: FLIES AT DUSK.

Your pencil stops. Twenty-three years of suburban quiet drain out of the kitchen in a single breath. Hartford. Bushnell Park. Noon. The protocol surfaces fully formed, and your hands are already steady.


Drive to Hartford and service the dead drop
Burn the paper and run — assume you've been made
Call the only handler you remember, retired and living in Vermont

? The phrase is real. The only question is whose hand placed it there.

© 2026 Jon Buckle