Free Story Friday: The Man Who Sold Yesterday

 

Free Story Friday: The Man Who Sold Yesterday

A new original tale every week---twisted, terrifying, and inspired by the darkest legends you thought you knew.

---

Jesse Tate woke in the gray light and immediately reached over, his hand brushing across the cold side of the bed where Emily used to sleep. The gesture was automatic, unconscious---his body remembering what his mind tried to forget. Three years, and he still reached for her. Three years, and the other side of the mattress remained cold as stone.

He forced himself upright, feet hitting the hardwood floor with a hollow sound that echoed through the empty house. The coffee maker still had yesterday's grounds in it. The dishes in the sink had been there since Tuesday. Time moved differently when you were alone---hours stretched into days, days collapsed into moments, and somehow it was always 3 AM and you were always awake.

November 14th. The date burned in his mind like a brand. Three years ago today, Emily had kissed him goodbye on her way to work and never came home. A drunk driver running a red light. Gone in an instant, while Jesse was sitting in a meeting about quarterly projections.

The sympathy card arrived with the morning mail, forwarded from his old office. Someone who hadn't heard he'd quit, probably. Or maybe they had heard and sent it anyway, unsure what else to do. Jesse stared at the generic floral design, the cursive script that read

Thinking of you during this difficult time

.

He crumpled it and threw it toward the trash can. Missed. Left it on the floor.

"I'd give anything for one more day with her," he whispered to the empty kitchen. "Anything."

---

By noon, the silence of the house had become unbearable. Jesse drove to Martha's Diner on the edge of town, the kind of place with torn vinyl booths and coffee that tasted like it had been brewing since the Reagan administration. He slid into a corner booth and ordered without looking at the menu. Black coffee. Toast. Something to do with his hands.

Jesse stared at his coffee, watching the steam curl and disappear. The cup trembled slightly in his hands.

A man he'd never seen before slid into the booth across from him.

The stranger wore a clean suit that looked expensive, but his shoes were covered in dust, as if he'd walked a long way on dirt roads. His face was pleasant, forgettable---the kind of face you'd struggle to describe five minutes later. But his eyes were sharp, knowing.

"Hello, Jesse," the man said, voice calm and familiar. "I received your call this morning."

Jesse's throat went dry. "I didn't call anyone."

"Didn't you?" The stranger smiled, and there was something wrong about it---too wide, too knowing. "Not with your phone, perhaps. But you called nonetheless. Loudly."

"Who are you?"

"Someone who knows desperation when he sees it." The man pulled out a napkin and a pen, sketching quick lines. "Take Route 47 north until it dead-ends at the old Miller farm. There's an unmarked road to the left. Follow it exactly 2.3 miles. You'll know it when you see it."

He slid the napkin across the table. Jesse stared at the crude map, his heart hammering.

"What happens there?" he asked, but when he looked up, the stranger was already walking away. He paused at the door and looked back.

"If you're desperate enough, you'll know what to ask for."

---

Jesse told himself he wasn't going. He drove home, parked in the driveway, went inside. Threw the napkin in the trash.

At 11:47 PM, he was digging it out again.

The drive took forty minutes. Route 47 was empty at this hour, the road cutting through dark fields where corn stubble poked through early snow. The Miller farm appeared as a sagging silhouette against the sky, its windows long since broken, its barn collapsed into itself.

The unmarked road was exactly where the stranger had said it would be.

Jesse's headlights carved a narrow path through the darkness as he drove, counting on the odometer. 2.1 miles. 2.2. At exactly 2.3 miles, the road ended at a crossroads so old it probably hadn't appeared on a map in fifty years. Four dirt paths meeting in an X, surrounded by nothing but empty fields and skeletal trees.

The moment he stopped the car, the silence became absolute. No wind. No insects. Even his own breathing seemed muted, as if the air itself was holding its breath.

Jesse got out slowly. The cold bit at his face, but it felt distant, unimportant. He walked to the center of the crossroads, his shoes crunching on frozen dirt.

His voice shook when he finally spoke. "I want Emily back." The words tumbled out before he could think. He'd meant to say one more day with her, just one more chance to say goodbye, but grief had stripped away his careful planning. "I want her back."

Nothing happened. The darkness pressed in from all sides, patient and vast. Jesse felt like a fool. This was crazy. Grief had finally broken him, sent him out to an abandoned crossroads in the middle of the night to---

A man stepped out of the shadows between the trees.

He wore a different suit now---darker, sharper, like he'd changed for the occasion. But the dust on his shoes was the same. The smile was the same---too wide, too knowing. Jesse's brain stuttered, trying to reconcile what he was seeing.

It was the man from the diner.

And it wasn't.

The face was different---taller, more angular, handsome in an unsettling way like a sculpture that was almost human but not quite. But those eyes. Those sharp, knowing eyes were identical. When he smiled, his teeth were very white.

"Jesse Tate," he said, and his voice carried across the crossroads as if the silence was amplifying it. "You want Emily back. Not a memory. Not a moment. Back. How... generous of you to be so specific."

Jesse's mouth was too dry to speak. He managed a nod, though something in the demon's tone made his stomach drop.

The demon---because what else could he be---walked closer, each step measured and deliberate. "No contract. No signatures in blood. No soul for sale. Just a simple transaction. You asked for her back, and back she shall come. Again and again and again."

"Wait, I meant---"

"Words have power here, Jesse. You didn't ask for a day. You didn't ask for a moment. You asked for her back." The demon's smile was radiant, terrible. "And I always give people exactly what they ask for."

"Done," the demon said.

A rush of cold wind hit Jesse like a physical blow. The world tilted, spun, and went black.

---

Jesse woke to the smell of coffee.

Real coffee, fresh-brewed, the way Emily used to make it---three scoops instead of two because life was too short for weak coffee. He lay perfectly still, afraid that moving would shatter whatever dream this was.

Then he heard it: humming from the kitchen. Emily's voice, slightly off-key, working through an old Beatles song she'd loved.

Jesse threw off the covers and ran.

She stood at the stove in her blue robe, her hair pulled back in that messy bun she always wore before work. The morning light coming through the window turned her golden, perfect, alive.

"Morning, sleepyhead," she said, glancing over her shoulder with that crooked smile he'd loved since college. "You were tossing and turning all night. Bad dreams?"

Jesse couldn't speak. He crossed the kitchen in three strides and pulled her into his arms, burying his face in her hair. She smelled like her shampoo, that coconut one she bought in bulk. She felt warm and solid and real.

"Hey," Emily laughed, hugging him back. "What's gotten into you?"

"I just..." His voice cracked. "I just missed you."

"I've been right here, dummy." She pulled back to look at him, concern flickering across her face. "You okay?"

Jesse nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He spent the entire day following her around like a shadow, memorizing everything. The way she laughed at her own jokes. The way she tapped her pen against her teeth when she was thinking. The way she squeezed his hand three times---their secret code for 'I love you'---when she thought he wasn't paying attention.

That night, he held her close in bed, terrified that closing his eyes would make her disappear.

"Jesse?" she murmured in the dark. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," he lied. "Everything's perfect."

---

Jesse woke to the smell of coffee.

The same smell. The same humming from the kitchen. The same Beatles song.

He sat up slowly, heart pounding. Emily appeared in the doorway in her blue robe, hair in that messy bun.

"Morning, sleepyhead. You were tossing and turning all night. Bad dreams?"

The exact same words. The exact same inflection.

Jesse's throat went dry. "What day is it?"

"November 14th. Why?"

The day she died. The day he'd already lived through once.

He tested it carefully throughout the day. Asked her questions he already knew the answers to. Broke a glass at exactly 2:15 PM. Scratched the kitchen table with his keys at 6:30.

The next morning, the glass was whole. The table was unmarked. And Emily hummed the same Beatles song while making the same coffee.

But something was different. Small things, barely noticeable. Emily repeated a joke a beat too late, as if she'd forgotten her cue. The coffee mug she always used---the one that said 'World's Okayest Wife'---was suddenly blue instead of red.

"Emily," Jesse said carefully. "Do you remember buying that mug?"

She glanced at it, then shrugged. "Sure. You got it for me last Christmas."

But it had been two Christmases ago. And it had been red.

Jesse told himself he was imagining things. Grief playing tricks. Memory failing. But deep down, he knew: something was wrong with this day. Wrong with Emily.

Wrong with him.

---

The third time Jesse woke to the smell of coffee, he didn't go to the kitchen. Instead, he got dressed and drove straight back to the crossroads.

In the daylight, the place looked even more desolate---just four dirt roads meeting in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by dead fields and empty sky. Jesse stood in the center and shouted.

"I know you're here! Show yourself!"

The demon appeared instantly, as if he'd been waiting. In daylight, he looked even less human---edges too sharp, movements too fluid.

"Jesse," he said warmly, like greeting an old friend. "Back so soon?"

"Stop it. Stop the loop. Let her go."

"Let her go?" The demon's expression was genuinely puzzled. "But Jesse, you didn't ask for a day. You asked for her back. Over and over and over. Forever, if the memories hold. I'm giving you exactly what you asked for."

"That wasn't what I meant! I wanted one day---"

"But that's not what you said." The demon's voice was patient, almost kind. "Words have power here. You stood at the crossroads and begged for Emily back. Not a moment with her. Not a memory. Back. And so she comes back, every morning, until there's nothing left of you to remember her with."

"That's not Emily! She's... she's wrong. Glitching. Forgetting things she'd never forget."

"Oh, she's Emily. Or at least, she's your memory of Emily. But memories fade, don't they? Every time you replay them, they lose a little detail. A little accuracy." The demon circled him slowly. "That's the price you're paying, Jesse. Not your soul. Your memories."

Jesse's blood ran cold. "What?"

"You didn't buy time. You bought memory. The same day, replayed from your own recollection. But each loop erases a little more of you. Your thoughts. Your emotions. Your sense of self." The demon leaned close, eyes glittering. "Eventually, you'll be nothing but an empty vessel, living the same day forever, unable to remember why it matters. Unable to remember anything at all."

"You tricked me---"

"I gave you exactly what you asked for. You wanted her back. You're living it. The fact that it's consuming you is simply the nature of the gift." The demon paused, then added with something like amusement, "Though I suppose if you'd been more careful with your words, things might have gone differently. One day is so much cleaner than... this."

A spark ignited in Jesse's chest. His exact words. The demon kept emphasizing his exact words. You didn't ask for a day. You asked for her back.

If words had that much power, if the specific phrasing mattered so much...

The demon gestured, and suddenly Jesse could see it: a flash of something that couldn't be real but felt real. Emily in her car, pulled over on the side of the road. But in the demon's version of events, it wasn't an accident that killed her---it was Jesse. His own face behind the wheel of the oncoming car, eyes vacant and dead, hands steady as he aimed directly at her.

It wasn't the truth. Jesse knew that even as he watched it. But the demon wanted him to feel it, to believe it, to carry that guilt like a stone.

"This was never for her," the demon whispered. "It was for you. You're the one who needs to let go."

---

Jesse woke to the smell of coffee, but this time, parts of him felt missing. Foggy. He couldn't remember his mother's face. Couldn't remember his own address.

Emily stood at the stove, perfect and beautiful and wrong. Her movements were too smooth, too choreographed. When she smiled at him, it didn't reach her eyes.

"Morning, sleepyhead."

Jesse stared at her, trying to hold onto the real Emily. The one who snored when she slept on her back. The one who got irrationally angry about people who didn't use turn signals. The one who cried during dog food commercials. The real her, not this polished copy.

He cut his hand on a knife while making breakfast. Blood welled up, bright red. Emily should have rushed over, worried, already reaching for the first aid kit. The real Emily would have.

This Emily just watched with detached curiosity, head tilted like a bird examining an insect.

"You're almost ready," she said, and her voice slipped lower, resonating with harmonics that made Jesse's teeth ache. Not Emily's voice. Never Emily's voice.

The demon was wearing her face.

Jesse stumbled backward, his mind clearing with terrible clarity. The thing in his kitchen smiled with Emily's mouth, but the expression was all wrong---too wide, too hungry.

"You can't hold onto her anymore," the demon-Emily said. "I can see her fading in your mind. Soon, you won't remember what made her laugh. What made her cry. You won't remember loving her at all."

"No," Jesse whispered. But even as he said it, he felt more memories slipping away. Their first date. Their wedding. The way she looked in the morning light.

"If you won't let go," the demon said, taking a step closer, "I'll take what's left."

---

Jesse clenched his fists, feeling the cut on his palm throb. The pain anchored him, pulled him back from the edge of dissolution. He looked at the thing wearing Emily's face and made himself see it for what it was.

Not his wife. Not a gift. Just a trap, slowly closing.

"Emily died three years ago," he said, and the words felt like glass in his throat. "She died in a car accident, and I wasn't there. I didn't get to say goodbye. I didn't get to tell her..." His voice broke. "I didn't get to tell her that she was the best thing that ever happened to me."

The demon-Emily's smile faltered.

"But keeping her here, like this?" Jesse continued, tears streaming down his face. "This isn't love. This is just me being too weak to face tomorrow. Too selfish to let her rest."

He looked directly at the creature that had been feeding on his grief, and the realization crystallized into words. "I asked for Emily back. Past tense. You did that. She came back. Every morning, she came back. The deal's done."

The demon-Emily's expression shifted, something like wariness creeping in.

"I didn't ask to keep her," Jesse said, his voice growing stronger. "I didn't ask to hold her here forever. The deal was: bring her back. You brought her back. Now I'm ending it. I'm letting her go."

"You can't---" the demon started.

"Words have power here. You said so yourself. She came back. Past tense. Completed action. Now I release her. I release the deal. I let her go."

The demon's face contorted, Emily's features warping into something ancient and furious. "Clever," it hissed. "Clever boy. But did you win, Jesse? Or did you just choose a different ending?"

The kitchen began to collapse, walls darkening, Emily's image flickering like a broken film reel. The demon's true form showed through---something vast and terrible and hungry.

"Words have power," the demon whispered as it faded. "But so do consequences."

The world went black.

---

Jesse woke in his own bed, alone.

The room looked wrong. Different. The photos on the nightstand were gone. The wedding picture that had hung on the wall for five years---missing. He stumbled to the bathroom and stared at his reflection.

He looked older. Grayer. Lines around his eyes that hadn't been there before.

On the nightstand, half-hidden under a book: a sympathy card. But this one wasn't for Emily.

It was addressed to him.

In loving memory of Jesse Tate, it read. Beloved husband. Gone but never forgotten.

Jesse's hands started to shake. He grabbed his phone, but when he unlocked it, there were no contacts. No photos. No evidence that anyone had ever called or texted him.

He ran downstairs, but the house was different. Furniture he didn't recognize. Paint colors that weren't his choice. In the living room, there was a portrait on the mantle: Emily, smiling, her arm around a man who wasn't Jesse.

The price, he realized with growing horror. The demon had taken more than memories. It had taken his place. In this timeline, Jesse Tate had died instead of Emily. She'd grieved. She'd moved on. She'd found someone else.

And now Jesse was a ghost in his own life, watching from the outside.

He heard a car in the driveway. Keys in the lock. Emily's laugh---older now, but still hers---as she entered with someone else.

Jesse backed into the shadows as they passed, unseeing. Emily walked right through the space where he stood, and he felt nothing. No warmth. No connection. Just cold.

He tried to speak her name, but no sound came out.

The demon's voice whispered in his mind: You wanted yesterday. But yesterday is always gone, Jesse. Always. The harder you cling to it, the more of today you lose.

Jesse sank to the floor in a house that was no longer his, watching a life that was no longer his, trapped in a present he no longer belonged to.

He'd given anything for one more day with Emily.

And he'd gotten exactly what he'd asked for.

---

Have you ever wished you could go back? Next time you hear yourself say "I'd give anything," remember Jesse. Some debts cost more than you think.

---

© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved.

This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog.

Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission.

This tale may appear in a future special collection.

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Further Reading — Free Story Friday

If you enjoyed The Man Who Sold Yesterday, you might also like:

• Free Story Friday: The Road to Nowhere
• Free Story Friday: Autumn Harvest 
• Free Story Friday: The House That Skips Halloween 
• Free Story Friday: The Ones Who Watch 
• Free Story Friday: The Woman Who Knocks