Past is Never Past - By Jessica Young

Written By: Jessica Young

Category: Short story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Jessica Young presents "Past is Never Past," a compelling short story entry in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. This intriguing narrative takes readers on an immersive journey through time and memory, weaving a tapestry of mystery and adventure. Set against the backdrop of an enigmatic farmhouse and otherworldly forest, Young's story captivates with its haunting exploration of past and present. As part of this prestigious global competition, Young's work stands as a testament to the power of storytelling and creative expression.

About the Work

"Past is Never Past" by Jessica Young is a masterful exploration of memory and identity. The story unfolds with a mysterious and surreal journey through a landscape that blurs the lines between reality and imagination. Rich with vivid imagery and an enigmatic atmosphere, Young's narrative captures the reader's senses, pulling them into a world where past and present merge. The haunting tone and introspective dialogue invite readers to ponder the nature of memory and its impact on identity.

Past is never past

Original Submission by Jessica Young

Past is never past

One late afternoon, you decide to take a stroll down the country lanes, out in the vineyard and forested areas surrounding your uncle’s old farmhouse. After all he did invite you here, even though your family told you not to go, you were dead set on having an incredible adventure. You set out down the side path, through the gate of the manor, walking with a pep in your step down through the rolling hills of garden and through the forest gate. These forests smelt of dates and pine needles had the breeze from the South tickling the leaves, and provided excellent shade for a temperate afternoon. You walked on the path, scanning the forest foot work for animals, critters and varmints, yet it seemed the deeper you walked the further the noises got. The soft rustle of forest critters that once sounded so close began fading, you walk on through the forest, as the sun slowly retreats to behind you, casting a beautiful golden colour through the rusted autumn leaves. Through thicketed forest you see a beautiful clearing, shady, soft luscious green grass, you could even swear you can smell the picnic basket waiting for you just on the other side, if only you could see through this brush! You don’t take no for an answer and fight through the thick trees to reach your own personal escape, the grass as green and soft as imagined, the shade refreshing and the sun just perfectly lowering to create a perfect spot for some shut eye.

When you awaken, rather than a soft summers breeze, the wind has become a nasty, foul tongued beast lapping at your bare toes, suddenly you notice you have much less clothes on than previously. You search around frantic for the ne’er-do-wells that committed this crime, only to find the hazy outline of an unfamiliar building to be in your sights, you try to remember which way you walked from the manor, but alas the only thing your brain comes up with is advice you heard once many moons ago… “follow the stars and you’ll never be lost”.

There is a star shining brighter than the rest, just slightly left of your eyeline, when you turn it turns with you. Nearby you see an old, rusted, barely readable signboard, it says “Welcome to Woodworthy inn, please stay a while, and don’t disturb our guests. Since 1369”. Inside the star shines through the window, it couldn’t be, your mind thinks, no don’t be silly there can’t be someone standing up there, you try to reassure yourself. You waltz up to the front door, just before you can touch the doorhandle, it shifts and moves with a grating sound, slowly it extends to shake your hand… do you shake it?

You shake the metallic motionful hand, it groans and screeches from the movement. From its wrist the arm spits out a small red key. The door clinks open.

The room smells of cobwebs, bleach, mildew and moths yet as you stand there, you can tell you’ve stood there countless times before… There are people, shadows of people

floating around the room. They are looking at you in the most unsavoury manner. You walk through the nearest door.

This room feels ambient, full of life, colour, brightness… yet it is all in black and white? How is it possible to feel the colours flowing through you? The star stands, staring back at you, avoiding your direct eyeline. You scurry through the room, leading to another door.

This room feels sticky, as if the air is coated in grief, looming sadness and decay. There’s a strong smell of potpourri and you once again can’t place why it feels so familiar. The walls seem to scream cry and shout at you for every second you spend in this room. The groaning, scratching, screaming cries burn your eardrums as you search for the next door.

This corridor feels scaly, unused, institutional and off-putting. The stairs leading down seem to lay a sense of dread in your stomach, while the stairs leading up seem to cast hope into your empty memory void mind. Against the wall, the filing cabinet calls your name. You pull papers out until you find a name with some vague familiarity “George

Lighthouse”, you seem to remember bits and pieces of a violently traumatic memory, people dressed in white clothing grabbing a male and forcing him into a cage. Your thoughts drift as another name catches your eye “Riley Kennedy”, hmm wonder why that got caught in the brain web. Let’s see, Riley Kennedy or George Lighthouse your hands search. Riley Kennedy stares straight back at you, written in big bold letters on a newspaper as you lift a stack of papers off the pile. You frantically grab it, dust it off and try to read it, you can only make out a couple of words... “Unstable, untrustworthy, to be condemned, no memories”. You shine the path, leaving the paper strewn and following the dark stairs down and down, three flights, six flights even as many as twelve flights before you stand before the mildew infested basement.

The door swings open much faster than you pushed it, almost as if it was being pulled at the same time, you feel a cold breeze run over yourself as you’re met by a shadow. The shadow seems to mimic your movements. Right arm up, left arm up, right arm, left arm, jump up, jump up. Right arm again, yet the shadow raises his left arm. You jump back, the shadow vibrates uncontrollably, bright white glowing eyes illuminate the room as the edges become spiky and the shadow evaporates. Leaving the feint white star just out of reach in your left eye line.

You wonder down into the room and find yourself trapped in an enclave. The stench of dead animals burns your nostrils, as your eyes scan around to determine the source. You find a small box on the table, it seems it’s been sealed shut with nuts and bolts… I wonder why someone would go through all that effort to seal up a small box. You steadily unscrew the nut stuck on top of the small box, when its weight begins rapidly increasing, more and more, and more, until you can’t bear it anymore, you let go of it on

the table and watch in shock as the box sprouts two little duck legs, seems to look about and then wonder off the table into the darkness. Awaiting on the table near the wall sits a skull and stares, you’re welcome to put your hands through there but I won’t. Placing your hands slowly into the mouth of the skull you find a pin with incredibly faded writing on it, you’re sure you can make out “I am” but nothing else. You approach the dark, damp, decrepit corner, you feel the darkness sucking your body, soul, mind and emotions deeper into the corner. The further you step the closer the end of the darkness feels, you step and step until…

Until you fall and fall until you can’t anymore, seeing a recurring dream of sharp strong lines hazily moving across your vision, you can almost see a figure in it… “George!” you yell as you drift off deeper to sleep.

You awake suddenly, feeling the floor back at your feet you stand sturdy and open your eyes to see a bright blinding light pouring into all of your senses. Rendering you unable to make out any stable images around you. You remain standing, waiting. The light slowly floods out the window, and the dimly lit room greets you with a warm welcome. It places a feeling of security, safety, smoothness within you. You hear from the right, a drip, drip, drip. Yet all you can make out is a large square. When you approach the cupboard, your vision blurriness fades. There’s a faucet in the cupboard, drip, drip dripping away. You try to turn the tap closed, yet it flows larger. It runs, it pours liquid the colour of silver jewellery out of the tap, it pours all over the cupboard, all over your hands and starts to slowly eat away at everything its touched, including your hands. You look down to see a gaping hole through the middle of your left hand. You close the faucet for later use.

You return from the metal infested water fixtures, walking nose first into a dark and gloomy corridor. This corridor feels unnecessarily eerie, suspicious and uncomfortable. You hastily, clumsily race through the corridor into a room.

This room feels, familiar, warm, comforting, it feels like happy memories were made in this room. You can’t quite place why this room almost makes you feel like you’re receiving a warm hug from that special someone. Staring back at you in the dressing table you see a reflection, if that’s what you can call it, your face shows no features, you are nothing but a silhouette standing in front of the blank canvas. You can see tiny random flicks of red all around your head when you shake it about. Your attention is drawn to the papers. Next to the dressing table, taller than the bed, there’s piles and piles of papers stacked, they are virtually about to topple. You slowly take the top paper off the precarious pile and start reading… “George Lighthouse … 16/01/1880”… you struggle to make sense of the words; they seem to be written in a different language? Or maybe a font you can’t read? But can you read?

You leave the clues, wander back into the unnecessarily haunted corridor and select a different path. As you walk into this room, there’s an air of dignity, elitism, power, strength and education that overpowers your senses, it overpowers your simple thoughts so strongly you have to take a second to adjust. Strewn on the chair and table there’s countless notes and papers, each with scribbles and scribbles, there seems to be numbers on all of them, not sure if they’re related at all, but here you go – you pick up a small piece of paper with four digits printed neatly in what you hope, is red ink. The fireplace in the corner reminds you, it’s one degree Celsius. Yet you haven’t felt cold since you woke up. The star still haunts your vision. You struggle to light the wet wood, it cracks and breaks under your weak hands, you fight and fight using random scraps of paper, burning them shoving them into the fireplace. You don’t remember it being this difficult to light a fire, fight, light the paper, light the wood make the fire. FINALLY. It takes; a small flame holds itself constant... Just as it seems it’s going to die again. WOOF, the fire takes and ignites the whole room in light and warmth… only one small issue… why are you suddenly cold?

There’s a painting on the wall, it looks like a stuffy old painting of one of those professors who practiced psychology in an inhumane manner, not much to look at I guess. You stare for a while longer, the oil, the paints, it seems to be melting? Can you see how the cheeks of that poor professor are now leaking out the seams of the painting, how his eyes look, almost demonic the way they still stare at your soul… wait but if the paint is melting… why are his eyes remaining where they were… you watch in horror as all the flesh skin coloured parts of the professor melt steadily off the frame, he’s left with the eyes, some facial muscles and his skull… just before you can get a closer look he disappears. The unwavering star shines brighter; words attack your brain. “The past is not gone, it’s not even past.”

Your brain stalls. Whatever could that mean?

You turn to notice a small wooden panel on the wall. Something small and cylindrical is missing from its spot. You pick up the lipstick from the floor and precisely slip it into the wood. The wall swallows it without a moment’s notice, twists, yelps, shouts and screams as the bricks turn into sand, revealing a new room. This room withholds a presence, you are met with the feeling you are under surveillance, could it be from another human life? You scan the vicinity. You spot another “guest”, as translucent as plastic, he stands in a corner. His head, missing, a body, legs and a neck, yet no head. He squawks at you, chirping as you hear a bellowing voice. “I will need to remind you, do not disturb our guests.”

You step into the left corridor, feeling an all-familiar feeling of death washes over you, the coldness in your toes, the emptiness in your soul, the memoryless void in your brain all suddenly seem much more real. Upon spotting you, the painting begins screaming at an ear curdling, heart churning frequency and shows no sign of stopping. You launch

backwards, grabbing a coat off the rack, you place it over your head. The screaming stops.

“Good day, Riley, we have excellent menu options for today, could I interest you in some tuna sandwiches, burgers or cobwebs? We really have a great selection, it’s almost as if you can’t tell that the food has been finished for 700 years.” Exclaims the painting.

You watch in horror as its mouth moves along with the words. After completing the performance, the painting opens in a flap stye to reveal a tunnel, heading upwards, you’re sure if you push hard enough you can climb up the tunnel, but it looks dark, eerie, covered in cobwebs and who knows what’s on the other side?

You climb through, pushing your weight up against one wall and scratching your arms on the rough texture as you push further. The star in your eyeline seems to be getting closer. The jacket helps shield your face form the powder yet cannot block the bright light penetrating your left iris. You emerge from the tunnel. Clambering to your feet you see a brightly lit room, a window in the middle of the far wall, a chair, a carpet and some cobwebs in every corner. This chair seems, normal? See if sitting on it does anything!

You slowly sit on the slithery, slippery chair – a loud booming voice suddenly fills your head “WHATS THE PASSWORD?”

“The past is never gone; the past is not even past” you robotically reply.

The booming voice continues, “AHH RILEY HOW KIND OF YOU TO VISIT ME AGAIN, I THOUGHT I WOULD NEVER SEE YOU AFTER THE LAST TIME… BUT I DIGRESS SIT, SIT, TELL ME YOUR THOUGHTS, TELL ME ALL ABOUT YOU, RILEY.”

“Well, I don’t have any memories, voice.” You peep.

“OH WELL RILEY THAT SURE IS A SHAME, YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO PEOPLE IN THIS PLACE WHEN THEY LOSE THEIR MEMORIES DON’T YOU? OH, YOU DON’T? WELL… ITLL BE FUN TO FIND OUT WOULDN’T IT, HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH” The bellowing voice cackles as flickers of bright light and stars fade your vision.

You find yourself standing at the entrance of the room, the chair overturned and an unsettling feeling back in your stomach. You search the room, searching for a hint a clue an idea as to who Riley is, whether it’s yourself or someone who looks the same... The telephone reels you in. Ring, ring, it incessantly echoes through the house. You pick up the receiver, it’s dead silent, you wait a few moments… Wait a while longer… And wait a while longer ... As you go to put the phone down, a tone sounds and the phone says,

“Hi. You’ve reached my voicemail, uhm, leave a message I guess? Will we get our messages when we’re there Riley? Oh uhm, okay BYE”

That voice? Who was that? Who could it have been? Someone that knows me from before? Why did that voice bring me peace and calmness? What is going on here? Your

brain spirals itself into a tiff as your attention finds another stack of paperwork as tall as your waist. You find photos, piles and piles of photos, the faces are blank, no eyes, no nose, no mouth, yet in your soul you can feel the warmth presence and familiarity of a smile staring back at you. You plough through the photos tearing through the pile, searching, yearning to find one with a face for some sort of memory to bring you back to reality, but it is to no avail. Finding solace in absolutely nothing brought a wave of calm, a short-lived one. You turn to your right to come face-to-face with a dark metallic door. You open the door, only to see two eyes staring back at you, you can’t help but get a fright, only to realise it is a sheet in the cupboard. You catch your breath and step back, observing the layout of the room. The white star in your left line of vision demands attention be given to the bedside lamp. You approach; the lamp seems to get further away the more you try to approach it. You turn around, puzzled, yet when your eyeline meets the lamp again, it was missing. In place of it stood a figure, a black humanlike figure, with bright white shining eyes. You stared helplessly at the figure, reaching your hand out slowly. As you make contact the figure sprouts spikey edges and vibrates erratically. A bright flash of light floods the room; the figure is gone.

“STOP, you are disturbing our guests. We are sending security to escort you out.” The outdated announcement system announced.

In a rush to find a hiding place, you find a cupboard with just enough room atop the papers for you to squeeze into. Squeeeeeeze. You’re in. You hear crowds, footsteps, yet they appear to be coming at you from all directions. You turn your head to see the danger, only to realise your white star is shining a slight purple tinge. You watch in distress as characters parade into the room. One has no head, one is just a black figure with white eyes, another seems translucent in sunlight. They stand in a line along the wall, staring daggers through the wood and into the cupboard, straight onto your skin.

“I promise not to disturb any guests!” You cry through the slots.

The crowd withers away as quickly as it had formed, leaving a slight stench of betrayal behind. You open the doors and climb onto stable ground. In the pile of papers, you were on, there’s countless newspapers. You try to read the headlines but can’t make anything out. The only text clear to you is the date…

“March 2nd, 1422”

“August 3rd ,1603”

The papers appear to be in pristine condition, lying meticulously placed in their protective plastic packaging. On the inside of the plastic, you can see some ink and printing left behind from laying on the newspaper. On the floor slightly behind the foot of the cupboard, lays a doll. As you get closer to the doll, you can swear it’s breathing, slightly the chest raises up and down, up and down, you can almost hear the smallest

breaths as it lays face down on the floor. You reach to pick the doll up. The doll begins violently shaking, you can hear the soft delicate porcelain tap, tap, tap, against the wooden floor, the doll from the floor stands up and returns to her place on the shelves. You watch in awe as the bookshelf slowly opens to reveal a step ladder leading to what seems to be just pitch-black darkness.

Climbing the ladder is the only way.

You climb up the shaky ladder, you’re not sure if it is your legs shaking or the flimsy wood, with each step the darkness engulfs your vision, destroys your senses, all you can hear is a faint far off hum and your stumbling steps on the ladder, will it ever end?

“Your chair, Riley, awaits you” a distant voice informs... The house rumbles, fights and tussles in between the whisps of winds blowing all around you. The wind seems to be growing stronger with every step you take closer to the chair. The chair seems to call you, beckon you, call your soul and your spirit closer and closer with every second. As you get closer and closer the winds raise in speed, going faster and faster you can hear as wood panels are being torn off the sides of the house, the wind is rushing at such a speed all you hear is the faintest slight scream as the wind rounds the corners of the house. As you reach the sunlight, you feel the slightest touch on what you assume to be skin, as you slowly but surely start to unravel, it begins down at your toes, you watch in horror as like a ribbon your supposed skin trails off and lands in a neat pile.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar celebrates the art of writing in its various forms, welcoming participants from all over the world. This esteemed competition provides a platform for poets and writers to showcase their creativity and engage with a global audience. With a focus on originality and emotional depth, the competition highlights the transformative power of words and storytelling.

Thank you, Jessica Young, for your captivating entry, "Past is Never Past," in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your narrative invites readers on a profound journey through memory and identity, leaving a lasting impression. We appreciate your contribution to this international celebration of creative expression and storytelling.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.