Nowhere on Any Map

A book of matches. Small, white, with the diner’s name on the cover in small red letters.
OLDEN.
He stared at it. He hadn’t taken it. He was certain he hadn’t taken it.
He thought about throwing it out the window. He thought about putting it back in his pocket. He thought about showing it to Fen and decided, before he could examine why, that he wouldn’t.
He put it on the dashboard.
They drove. The sun moved west. The mountains shrank behind them in the rearview, and then disappeared, and the land opened up flat and wide and completely ordinary in every direction.
Neither of them mentioned Marwan again. Neither of them mentioned the woman at the line, or the man with the broom, or the coffee that Fen had almost finished.
The matchbook sat on the dashboard the whole way home.
Neither of them touched it again.
But when they finally pulled into Fen’s driveway — nine hours later, a different state, the kitchen light on and everything familiar and unchanged — she looked at the dashboard.
The matchbook was gone.
In its place, just the faint rectangular ghost of it in the dust.
She looked at Callum. He was looking at it too.
Neither of them said anything.
They went inside.

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About the Author

Rowan Vale — a student of occult symbolism, for whom every abandoned church is hiding something. Never leaves house without Daisy … his little doll.

— Rowan Vale

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August 4, 2026

10min-stories