WINTER 2026, SHORT STORY, 1000 WORDS
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Every time I died, I received another coin to place in the skull of Francisco Xalbec. The skull was ornate, layered in gold with silver rimming the eye sockets, in which sat multifaceted black gems. Whenever I dropped another coin in the skull, it reflected a thousandfold in those dark eyes, as did the face that I knew was mine yet couldn’t recognize. The seam down the center of the skull, which should have been fused, had a small opening, a slit just wide enough to take the coins. I’d dropped hundreds, maybe thousands, of coins into the skull of Francisco Xalbec, and I still wasn’t sure how full it was, but I knew with profound certainty that I had to fill it.
To fill it I had to die, for each death brought me a coin to place in the skull of Francisco Xalbec. Despite what you might think, it is not always easy to die. From time to time I would try to bash my brains out on the stone walls of the room in which the skull of Francisco Xalbec sat, but instead of an eternal blackness and a new coin coldly resting in my palm, I would merely wake minutes or hours later, in pain and hair matted with blood. So I must venture out of my room and into the labyrinth, a maze of stone corridors and stairwells and doorways, always hunting a death. Sometimes finding a death was simple, a yawning chasm of darkness in which I could plunge, to die and awaken with a new coin. Sometimes a death was hard, a long flight of rough stairs that I had to work up the courage to throw myself down, headfirst, hoping for a death and not mere agony.
Sometimes in the labyrinth I would find another person, claiming that they were looking for a death so they could get a coin, but not a coin to place in the skull of Francisco Xalbec. They claimed their skulls had other names—Marsha Drake, or Pieter van Dorn, or Ayisha Alwan—and they all lied. There was only the skull of Francisco Xalbec. I would try to goad them into killing me, while they tried to goad me into killing them, until finally we would fight, two people trying to kill themselves at the hands of the other.
Sometimes a death found me, a raven-haired woman who hunted me, smashed in my skull with a rock, shot me with an arrow, or slit my throat with an obsidian blade, and I would die and awaken again with a cold coin to place in the skull of Francisco Xalbec. I feared her.
I think I loved her.
This time, I found some rope and strangled myself, rough fiber cutting blood from my neck. Awakening on the ground with a cold coin in my hand. The coin, like all the coins, was forged from fragments, the wing of an eagle, part of a face, a zero. My fingers knew these fragments, I had callouses from them, I remembered piecing them together into coins for the skull of Francisco Xalbec. Had I once shorn them against my ruins, or was I remembering someone else’s words? It didn’t matter, what was in my past was past. What mattered is that I placed the coin in the skull of Francisco Xalbec and, as I had done every time before, I tried to pick it up. Every time the skull had not moved, but this time it did, and I lifted the skull of Francisco Xalbec and it was heavy with coins. I shifted it from side to side, but it was so full of my death coins that nothing rattled. I hefted it before me and the skull of Francisco Xalbec, in a voice made of shifting coins, told me where to go, how to navigate the labyrinth, and I obeyed.
I do not know how long we walked, the skull of Francisco Xalbec and I, through the labyrinth, past its many twists and turns, past its pits and stairs, past the other seekers of death who looked on me with awe, for I, and I alone, was walking with my skull. We came to a wooden door which swung open for us.
My killer sat on the edge of a well in a round room. “Finally, you’re back,” she said. “Perhaps this is the one.”
“You killed me,” I replied, more weary than fearful, and she nodded.
“You were taking too long,” she said with a smile.
“I know. I’m sorry. Where do you want the skull of Francisco Xalbec?” She motioned to the well. I looked in and it was nearly full of golden skulls with silver-rimmed eye sockets filled with dark multi-faceted gems. I placed the skull of Francisco Xalbec on the top of the pile of what I realized were skulls of Francisco Xalbec. She moved close to the edge, and anticipation radiated from her.
With a grinding noise, the skulls began to drain away. The room filled with the thunder of skulls rolling against each other as they fell, the shifting of an eternity of coins ringing like bells. She leapt with joy. “Oh, Francisco, that was the last one,” she shouted. She hugged me and kissed me on the lips. “I have to go.” She climbed into the well and began to sink as the skulls rattled away into the dark. “Good luck,” she called. “May your time go faster!”
And she was gone. I looked over the rim of the well and saw nothing but deep darkness. Silence fell over the room. I looked into the darkness as if it might grant enlightenment, and started when the door opened. A man was standing there, holding a golden skull with silver-rimmed eye sockets filled with dark multi-faceted gems. “Hello,” he said hesitantly, “where do you want the skull of Magnus Carboni?” I memorized his face, so I would know it when I went hunting, and motioned toward the well. He tossed the skull of Magnus Carboni into its dark depths, and I heard the coins within it shifting as it fell.
Alan M. Fisher is an attorney living in Washington, D.C. He’s published two novellas, Servant of the Muses and A Pearl for Her Eyes, under the name Brad White. He has had stories in City in the Ice, Starship Sofa, Dark Divinations. His favorite authors include John le Carré, William Gibson, Raymond Chandler, and Neal Stephenson. When not writing, he enjoys playing board games with his wife and sons and running role-playing games for his friends.