Tag: spirits

All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Hell’s Half Acre by Danyl A Doyle

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In the morning, the sun had long since risen above the horizon, casting stark, foreboding shadows over the Yampa River. We stood at the edge of the water, my wooden boat bobbing gently on the surface. The wind whispered secrets through the cottonwoods and I felt the weight of my history bearing down upon us. We had married, and this handsome kind man had promised to spend the rest of his life with me, knowing I was doomed to run this river every two weeks for all time.

We pushed off from the shore.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Are Ghosts Real? By Katelynn Humbles

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It’s not the kind of question you ask at breakfast. It waits. Lurks. Slinking into the places you’d rather not be: in the mildew-laced corners of motel rooms, the backseats of rental cars with traces of stale breath and strangers, the forgotten pews of ruined chapels where the wind mumbles louder than God.

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All Stories, Fantasy, General Fiction

Is There Anybody There? By Michael Smith

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Acacia knew her calling from the age of ten. Noticing all her clothes were labeled ‘MEDIUM’ and, being a highly impressionable girl, she naturally assumed the universe, or possibly a parallel one, was offering a clear hint as to her correct career path.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Orville Baumgardner and the Morning Glories byJames Hanna

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Author’s Note

Orville Baumgardner is the chattiest of men. He grew up in an Indiana farm town, graduated from a small rural college with gentlemen’s Cs, and used his gift of gab to get elected to the Indiana House of Representatives. Orville prides himself on having read over two hundred books, including most of the classics, yet sustained a career as a populist politician by promoting deep state conspiracy theories to his constituents. After twenty years, Orville gave up politics because he had a crisis of conscience. He has since lectured on numerous topics, including abortion, book banning, and corporate corruption, and his spiels have appeared in many literary journals. Although he has recently left this world, he continues to lecture in the afterlife.

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All Stories, General Fiction

Breathing Underwater by Katrina Irene Gould

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On Saturday, Mark ate breakfast with me before heading to work, even lingering in deference to the weekend. A month earlier, I’d fled our apartment for two nights to call attention to my despair, but exactly nothing had changed. I wondered if our small life could be enough.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

In the Right Spirit? by Nidhi Srivastava Asthana

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It was a very steep slope. Even the hunters felt unsure of their steps. The thick creepers and grasses made every tread a threat since there was no way of knowing what the escapees were disturbing on the untrodden path. The deerstalkers amongst them could have been expected to feel less unsettled, but it felt strange for them to be carrying babies or half-carrying the elderly. Noi insisted on clinging to Sai. In the Asia of so long ago, much before any contact with Westerners or Christianity, ‘till death do us part’ was her own inborn resolve. Sai had no choice.

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All Stories, Fantasy

The Cormorant and the Misophonyx: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical by Leila Allison

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Prelude 

There are three music Spirits. First you have the Tintintinabulator. Tins were classically trained pianists in life who haunt specific keyboards (pianos, organs, harpsichords, etc.) in death. Tins are generally friendly, but being artists they are hypersensitive to criticism and require reassurance full time. Next we have the Chimespeak. Best described as self-taught travelling minstrels/buskers in life, Chimes are nomadic Spirits who wander from here to there and affect anything from the grandest church bells on down to kazoos fashioned from handkerchiefs and combs. Tastes aside, these two Spirits classes are equally talented even though the Tins tend to look down on the “prolish” Chimes, who in turn wonder how a Tin can look down on anything with “its” head so firmly tucked up its own buttocks.

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General Fiction, Short Fiction

The Karma Chameleon and the Diplomaniac: A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical (Season Two Opener) by Leila Allison

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A gecko named Keeler escaped her enclosure about twenty minutes after Renfield had brought her home from the pet shop. Keeler didn’t care for the transparency of her new digs and decided that her happiness lay in a blended existence with the walls, furniture and such in the haunted Stoker-Belle household. You see, Keeler didn’t think of herself as a gecko; she self identified as a Karma Chameleon.

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All Stories, Fantasy

Zippy and the Zephyrling:

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A Feeble Fable of the Fantasmagorical by Miss Renfield Stoker-Belle, Noted Supernaturalist   Featuring an Appearance by Judge Jasper P. Montague, Quillemender And a Futile Forward  by Leila Allison

Futile Foreword

It’s a fallow and disconsolate world in which we live. Even here at this side of reality populated mainly by Pen Names, Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters, you’ll find more Juggalos per square inch than persons with sustainable IQs contributing to the gene pool. The pain of it all becomes clear on the day you look in the mirror and correctly suspect that the best years have gone by. You gaze into the reflection of your suddenly cautious, peering avatar and wonder what happened to the footloose, laughing face who had been looking back at you every day up through yesterday. It seems impossible that this paradoxically “new” used you has ever had an interesting thought in her life; or that she had even at one time tolerated the Juggalos–as long as they stayed upwind of her location. Continue reading “Zippy and the Zephyrling:” →