Ghost Parachute

The river has come into my house, again, misty rooms of water trickling from the ceiling. The swollen hand-painted wallpaper blisters in mold, courting shadow people as they dance across the water-damaged grand ballroom.  Black and red mold grows a vibrant personality as shadow people boogie with me in the water.  Together, we twirl, skip, […]

“Our new neighbor is a demon.” Beebee spoke as if she were spitting out revelations to hungry ears, her words attempting a normal occurrence rather than confirming our newest local import was a spawn of hell. We both knew she meant the young white guy who moved into Old Widow Maldonado’s spare room two weeks […]

My father has never believed in ghosts, at least in the houses of others. “But here in our house, we do have a legitimate ghost,” he concedes, shaking his head like there’s something lodged inside his ear canals. “Ssssss,” Ghost Mom says. “Now, Martha, let it go…” “Ffffff…” Mom says. These days, my stepmother is […]

Jack buried both cats under the laurel oak in the back yard of his yellow ranch house in DeLand. He bought their tiny caskets from a company called Pet Eternal that he found online. He never told anyone how much he paid for the kitty coffins, but it was more than he could afford – […]

I wake up with a raw throat, an imaginary rosary strapped to my tongue, looking for an excuse not to go. It’s like praying to a vacuum, caught up in loss aversion, same way I’ve been since I was a boy. Sis meets me in the lobby, her eyes wrung with equal parts anguish and […]

“Monsters?” said the square-jawed and barrel-chested General MacLauglin, as he bit deeper into his soggy, unlit, and stubby cigar. He never actually smoked, but preferred to gnaw it down into a paste, letting it fill the cavities between his teeth and gums. At any given time, a medically dangerous amount of nicotine was rolling through […]