Ghosts

by Selene Ibarra Rubio

Rain pattered on the train’s roof as it glided through the hills surrounded by crumbling mountains. I observed the other souls on the train- a pale little girl with a hospital gown, an elderly man with a missing arm, and a female with numerous slashes. And I- my tattered suit, bloody violin case, and bloody thighs with dangling skin and exposed bone- couldn’t remember how. I’d asked the charred man ahead. He said that was common for new souls. He told me I’d remember eventually as we voyage on the never-ending train ride; but I still felt I’d forgotten something.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Selene Ibarra Rubio is an eighteen-year-old woman. She is currently attending San Jose State University for a degree in mechanical engineering. She also has an upcoming story publication with Collective Tales Publishing in their new anthology "Darkness 102: Lessons Were Learned."

 

The Moment on Wednesday

by Zary Fekete

Travis dropped his pen on the desk and pushed himself up from his chair with enough force to rattle his monitor. “Come on, not again.” He yanked open the printer and dislodged the crumpled sheet.

He sat back down and clicked the print icon three more times, jabbing at it like it might learn a lesson. Finally, the printer whirred. He glanced at the time and sighed. He was due on the third floor for the quarterly performance review. He couldn’t be late again. Not this quarter. He grabbed his phone and the earnings sheet and stood up, banging his knee on the corner of his desk. He winced and half-hopped toward the door. Great. The elevator was still in the basement. No time to wait.

He pulled open the stairwell door and started up by twos…but then stopped.

There was a faint crackling sound from the landing below.

He glanced at his watch. Ninety seconds. Maybe less. He took another step upward, paused, then felt something behind his ribs. Not pain exactly. Pressure. Like someone tapping gently from the inside.

The crackling grew louder. The air vibrated faintly. Warm.

He closed his eyes for a beat, deciding. He’d been waiting for a sign, though he’d never have admitted it aloud. Then he turned and descended to the lower landing.

It was a burning bush.

Flames leapt red and blue, dancing up through branches that didn’t blacken or smoke. The green leaves shimmered, untouched. A soft, pulsing glow reflected off the concrete walls.

Travis stood still. The stairwell was silent but for the hum of flame.

He felt something…not a voice in his ears, exactly, but in his chest. A recognition. A knowing. Like someone saying his name without sound. His breath caught. He could feel the calendar of his life rearranging itself.

He looked down at his shoes. A moment passed.

Then he bent, slowly, and removed them.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary. He has a debut novella (Words on the Page) out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection (To Accept the Things I Cannot Change: Writing My Way Out of Addiction) out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social

 

Knock-knock

by Ron Wetherington

The knock on the cabin door is faint as Cynthia pours her cup of tea in the kitchen. Startled, she raises her head, pausing to listen more attentively. There it is again, knock-knock, cautious, hesitant. She stands motionless. It’s raining out, windy, just past dusk.

Who could it be? Not a neighbor, she’s certain. The nearest cabin is halfway down the mountain. No one knows where she is except Joan, who offered to let her stay here for the weekend to recover from her breakup with Corey. She needs to get away from him, his anger, his threats. He’s even stalking her!

Knock! Knock! A bit less hesitant, now. Cynthia senses a note of urgency in it. A traveler in distress? A lost soul on a chilly evening? She leaves her tea and moves towards the front room. The heavy pine door has no peephole, no sidelights. She switches on the porch light, leaving the room itself dark except for the flicker from the fireplace.

“Who’s there?” she calls out. No answer. The wind? Could anything be rattling against the porch?

“Hello?” Her voice is raised now. “Who is it?”

A window is set in the wall five feet away to the right. Cynthia quickly moves to it, holding the heavy drape aside as she peers out. The light barely illuminates the porch. She stares at the emptiness, the sweeping rain. The deep gray of late evening spreads beyond. The yard is almost invisible, the distant road in total darkness. She stretches to look back to her left. There is no one standing at the door! Cynthia’s skin prickles. She quickly draws the drapes together and moves to double-check the door. She locks and chains it, exhaling in relief, startled that she had left it unlocked.

Breathing rapidly now, she hugs herself against a sudden chill, her self-control threatening to unravel. The telephone on the kitchen wall suddenly rings. She hurries down the hallway.

“Hello?” The line crackles with static.

“Hello?”

More static, then a dial tone. Staring at the receiver, Cynthia slowly replaces it, struggling to make sense of everything.

Knock! Knock! It comes again from the front door, not visible from the kitchen. Frozen in fear, Cynthia clutches her mouth to still a scream. Breathing deeply now, desperate to regain her composure, she moves quietly to the kitchen drawer, opens it, and takes out a large chef’s knife. She turns off the kitchen light, pausing at the hallway entrance while her eyes adjust. She cautiously moves down the dark hall, her palms sweaty, grasping the knife more tightly.

The fire’s glow illuminates the front door. It’s now unchained! In terror, she suddenly realizes why the porch had been empty. The knocking had come from inside! Frantic, exposed in the hallway and shaking, she looks in disbelief as a dark figure approaches. Thick with panic, her knife-thrust is as forceful as it is frantic. The figure screams, crumpling to the floor.

Her heart racing, Cynthia flicks on the hall light, staring down into Corey’s fading anger, her knife in his chest, his own remaining clutched in his hand.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology living in Dallas, Texas. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction pieces in this second career. He also enjoys writing creative non-fiction. Read some of his pubs HERE.

 

A Griffin’s Ransom

by Catherine Brown

I crouch, hidden in the dragon’s garbage pile. It reeks of fresh blood and ancient decay. Her snores reverberate off the stalactites and the phosphorescent walls of the cavern.

I mustn’t fail. Her gold is my cherished griffin’s ransom. I creep past the hollow ribcage and snaking spine of an elephant.

Cramming gold in my pack, I take only what I can lift.

Silence. My knees tremble. Her left eye opens, revealing my distorted reflection in her inky pupil. It wasn’t a snore. It was a purr. She’s not purring now.

I grab my pack and unsheathe my sword.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Catherine Brown’s flash and short fiction has been published in Havok Magazine, The Offbeat, The Veggie Wagon Journal, and a 2 Elizabeth’s anthology. Her short fiction has been a finalist or placed in multiple writing contests, including the grand prize in the Chanticleer Book Awards SHORTS Contest. Website: https://www.chbrownauthor.com/

 

The Murder

by Jenny Morelli

There’s a hawk in the overfull parking lot when I pull in, and it’s glaring, at me, as if daring me to approach one of the few available spots.

I try to give it a wide berth as I roll toward it; try to give it a chance to flee, but it stands its ground.

So I let him win and reverse quietly away, drive farther into the lot and right into a murder of crows, sprawled into a lake-sized splotch on the asphalt at the dead-end of the strip mall. I stop and park, straddling a speed bump and just not caring because there’s no way I’m driving anywhere near that.

And then I wait, shifting my gaze from them to the sky, almost expecting it to collapse around me.

Soon, a car pulls up next to me, the wrong way on this small strip of driveable space. He rolls down his window and says something I don’t quite hear because I’m distracted by what’s dangling by strings taped to the ceiling of his rundown sedan.

Bug spray bottles. Too many to count.

They’re still swaying from his hard stop, some banging into his sweat-soaked mop of hair.

He’s utterly unfazed by this as he yells to me. ‘Excuse me.’

And then I study him. He’s also wearing bug spray, and I don’t mean that he’s sprayed it onto his skin, but that they’re strung around him in a long necklace. Over ten of them that I can see, just draped around his neck, all sizes Off and Deet and Ben’s and Repel.

‘Excuse me,’ he repeats when I can’t find a proper response. ‘I noticed you don’t have the proper protection against them.’

Huh?

His sunshaded face and half-smile intermittently appear among the dangling swaying bottled chemicals.

‘What…what?’ I ask.

It’s the only word I can squeeze past my confusion.

He cocks his head as if confused by my confusion. ‘You can’t get through them without something,’ he explains, pointing toward the bird-infested parking lot. ‘And they don’t make bird repellent, so…’

The hawk is perched on a streetlight above them, as if lording over them, or maybe… controlling them?

‘Heads up!’

Huh? Oompf. I’m struck by something hard. A small bottle of bug spray, of course.

‘Um, thanks?’ I say.

He nods. Smiles wider. ‘Your porch is the only safe place, Miss.’

‘My… porch?’

‘You better hurry,’ he continues without explanation. ‘Sun’s almost gone.’

Okay. I slowly reverse over the speed hump, now more unsettled by the strange boy with sunshades and bug sprays than I am by the crows who seemed to have inched closer to our cars as we talked, like a giant growing, flowing ink spot.

Once clear of the car next to me, I turn around and tear out of this parking lot, out of this story, and head the hell home…

…silently followed by that single hawk and its murder of crows.

━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━
Jenny Morelli is a NJ high school English teacher who lives with her husband, cat, and myriad yard pets. She seeks inspiration in everything, including her nightmares. She’s published in several literary magazines including Spillwords, Red Rose Thorns, Scars tv, Bottlecap Press and Bookleaf Press for four poetry chapbooks. Website: JennyMorelliWrites.com