Autumn

They say Autumn appeared overnight. Just a porcelain doll, propped neatly against the wrought-iron gates of the old cemetery. Her dress was the color of faded harvest wheat, her glass eyes a shade too alive. No note. No claim. Just waiting.

At first, children whispered about her as they passed on their way to school. “She moved,” they’d say, half-giggling, half-serious. One morning she faced the graves, another the street. Once, a milkman swore she was staring straight up at the moon, lips parted in a silent gasp. By then, most people avoided that road after dusk.

It wasn’t until a daring teenager named Elise scooped her up and carried her home that the stories grew teeth. Elise’s friends called her brave, but by the next morning her bed was covered in dead leaves. She brushed them away, muttering about pranks, but each night the piles returned—crisp, brittle, smelling faintly of earth and rot.

On the third night, Elise woke coughing, her throat raw with the taste of smoke and frost, though no windows were open. On the fourth, she clawed at her chest, wheezing like lungs drowned in brittle autumn air. Her parents rushed her to the hospital, but the doctors found no infection, no cause—just a chill in her body that refused to leave.

Back at the cemetery, Autumn returned. Someone spotted her at the gates again, head tilted, watching. Waiting.

Now the legend is clear: she doesn’t walk in spring, nor summer, nor the pale quiet of winter. She waits for her season, and when the air crisps and the leaves begin to fall, she wakes. Autumn does not come alone—she brings decay, and she always finds her way home.