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Hobbs Lane: short story
Sometimes it’s not the monsters or aliens that get under your skin — it’s the silence. Hobbs Lane began as a university assignment, a simple prompt about lawn ornaments, but it grew into something darker. A foggy street, a dying engine, and the uneasy feeling that you’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere familiar.
This story isn’t about jump scares or gore; it’s about the tension that creeps in when the world stops feeling safe. A place where headlights flicker, shadows linger too long, and the only thing breaking the stillness is your own heartbeat.
It’s a different kind of Almost a Cult Classic — one that trades VHS static for quiet dread. A short trip down a suburban road that may never end.
Interrogation of a Time Traveller
When it came time to decide which of the two I would expand into a larger piece, the choice was unexpectedly difficult. Writing about my friend would have been meaningful, but the limitation of just 1,000 words felt like a disservice. Her life deserves more than a word count cap. Out of respect, I chose instead to expand on Wells’s character and write a fanfiction piece featuring the Time Traveller.
That gave me freedom: a freedom to invent, to experiment, and to engage with Wells’s world without worrying about compressing or oversimplifying a real person’s experiences.
The challenge then became stylistic. I had to keep close to Wells’s 19th-century voice while making it accessible to a modern reader. That tension shaped how I wrote dialogue, how I described scenes, and even how I played with etymology.