Eight o’clock and the tubes were on strike again. Graham started at the bus stop closest to his bedsit but after two 19s sailed past, both packed to the gills, he began to walk down Blackstock Road. He passed three more stops, all besieged, before reaching the tube station at Finsbury Park, the first place the 19 took on passengers. People were standing three-deep in the road, shifting for position, waiting for a bus to come and carry them off to work.
Everyone has played watching games. I’d taken it a step further. I played dead games. I visited cemeteries and I gave five of the dead my thoughts on their life.
I don’t know when my game changed. I wasn’t making up the stories anymore. I’m not exactly sure when the visions changed from imagination.
…They had no input from me.
A Learned Introduction
Spirits can’t lie. Still, as it goes in both life and the afterlife, honesty does not mean accuracy. That’s the trouble with telling the truth. In the living world, a great deal of truth telling is dedicated to giving air to erroneous beliefs, mindlessly echoing hidden agendas and giving credence to hallucinations in general. The same holds true at the Otherside. For instance, if you tell a Spirit that the Earth is flat, she might believe otherwise and will tell you so. In this regard, a Spirit is even more stubborn than a mortal when it comes to shedding ignorance. The dumb shit they believe in stays believed in, no matter how much compelling evidence you may present to the contrary.
Well now – Look at that. Lovely Leila has chosen an old thing of mine for a Rerun. thank you. This is what she said.:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Beach House by Diane M Dickson”
Well here we are at Week 287.
I had a look at the historical events of this week.
I see that Major Boaby Ross set fire to Washington. That wasn’t very nice and was a bit hypercritical. The British are still burning effigies of Mr Fawkes for trying to do the same sort of thing just over two hundred years earlier.
My older sister Nancy and I love funerals. We go at random every weekend, ingratiating ourselves into the crowds, the friends, the family. We pretend to weep with the mourners, while we absorb things with the coldness of detectives, me in an oversized suit, borrowed from Dad. Nancy in one of Mother’s nice black gowns. We love the darkness, the garb, the somberness. The people gathered together, mothers and children, cousins, nephews, people with connections we cannot fathom. Being so close to darkness, a kind of whirl, excitement. We don’t know dead people, the wildness of loss. Mother and Dad are divorced, but that’s different. They wear fedoras and lavender and false civility. Even our grandparents still live, regaling us with tales of meeting Teddy Roosevelt and other trivialities.
Continue reading “Funeral Crashers by Mir-Yashar Seyedbagheri”
Versatur Circa Quid!
Once again my four generations removed granddaughter, Miss Leila Allison, has thoughtfully left open a file for me to brilliantly emend. Before I get to today’s subject, however, I believe that I should once again introduce myself to the readership due to what I observe to be a great diminishment in the overall intelligence of the modern day public. It is I, the splendiferous Judge Jasper P. Montague, Quillemender. I died in 1912, but shortly thereafter I returned as a Quillemender Spirit. I am housed in a ceremonial gold gilt gavel presented to me upon my retirement from the bench. I’m allowed to travel ten paces from the gavel, which is plenty close enough to where my ancestor (and current holder of my heirloom gavel), Leila, keeps her Chromebook. Succinctly, we Quillemenders alter text written by the living. In a way my noble kind are the precursor of that mindless autocorrect function that gets so many of you in trouble.
Continue reading “Why We Haunt by Judge Jasper P. Montague, Quillemender (Leila Allison)”
Sometimes while driving alone through the empty mountain roads, the weight of the world sits heavy in my chest and it hurts to breathe. Naked trees shiver in the wind. Leaves unlatch and write in silent cursive across my windshield. Their tongue is the sacred, hidden language of the earth.
Continue reading “Sacred, Hidden by W Tyler Paterson”
Laying the Groundwork for a Hit
Composing a Hit
wikiHow, “How to Write a Hit Song”
Barry sat on the bed as he read the letter.
“Well that’s old Jim away.”
“Your granddad?”
“Yep.”
She sat down and put her arm around him.
“Are you okay?”
“I suppose so.”
Continue reading “The Odd Legend And Fuck All Else by Hugh Cron – Warning Adult Content”
literally stories 