<p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">This is Drabbletober, the podcast of tiny fiction.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Hello, and welcome to Drabbletober. This is an occasional bonus episode, for the first of December, 2025. I'm Elizabeth Guilt.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Your one-hundred word story for the day is: Last Resort</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">---</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Hayley knows it's there. She's known for years, ever since that stupid night when they drank too much vodka, lit loads of candles and slurred Latin incantations. She felt it crawl into her.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Anthony insisted the salt circle would keep them safe - perhaps it did. They woke up, after all.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Sometimes, she feels it stir. When her mother suggests diets. When her boss talks over her. </p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">She fights to keep it inside. She never drinks, now.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">But in the darkness, the footsteps have been getting closer. There's a hand on her shoulder, another grabs her throat.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">She lets it out.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">---</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Take care, everyone, and I'll see you again sometime.</p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"></p><p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;">https://www.elizabethguilt.com/drabbletober/s2-dec1-bonus</p>