story
House For Sale
Quiet Neighbors | NOT HAUNTED
“Paula, are you fucking kidding with that sign?” I slam the car door. This listing’s been a bitch and now Paula’s got jokes.
She gestures to the graveyard across the street. “People’ll think it’s funny and wanna see the place!”
“People will think it’s fucking haunted.” Which it is.
But not for long.
I head over to the cemetery, stilettos click-clicking on the asphalt. Take the broken stone steps two at a time, Paula following like a stumbling puppy.
“OI! GHOSTS!” My voice echoes across the gravestones.
No response.
Paula scrunches her face. “What’re you doing?”
“It’s broad daylight, why’re you whispering?” At her shrug, I continue. “Come out, come out wherever you are, Ghosties! Got a proposition for you!”
Dead silence.
“I know you’re here, assholes.”
The temperature drops ten degrees; I smirk. Misty apparitions surround us.
“Assholes?” The gravelly voice reverberates through my bones.
“Given the circumstances, ‘assholes’ seems light.” Arms crossed, I stare down the de facto leader: an expired school principal. He blinks first. Or an approximation of blinking. Straightening my shoulders, I switch to negotiation mode. “Look, you’re making it impossible for me to sell that house.”
“And?”
“If I don’t sell, I’ll have to fire Paula. I know you like her and the little trinkets she leaves you.” Paula’s gaze hits the dirt. “I wanna make a deal.”
“I’m listening.”
“Great! So… what do I need to do to get you into a new haunt today?”
I remember being small and ambulatory, as I was finding my way in the world. But that was before. Then came a time when I felt ready for change and I discovered a safe place, a warm and soft haven, a refuge where I could rest undisturbed. I slept and changed, grew and metamorphosed into my new, wonderful shape. Now I am almost ready to face the world again. Soon, it will be my time and I’ll venture forth once more, renewed and reborn into warm sunlight. I’ll emerge into the world in triumph, bursting through my human host’s abdomen.
They whisper about it now, but we used to have magic. That state of newness that only water can provide, that was real, honest magic. Magic came from water. We ruined it. Magic doesn’t exist anymore. End of story. It should have been the end. But there are whispers.
Large bodies of water go through a process called turnover, I explain to a lecture hall full of overwhelmed freshmen. It makes the water different temperatures, rising and falling within the lake.
The middle zone is thermocline, I valiantly impart on them, the middle zone is change incarnate.
Fresh snow crunches under my feet as I trudge towards West Lake Okoboji. It’s beautiful in winter, frozen solid with ice fishermen spotting the surface. It’s also, just barely, deep enough to test my hypothesis.
The thing about turnover is that it only goes so deep. Under the thermocline is the hypolimnion, the under-lake. The water doesn’t shift, doesn’t cycle up to the surface, and doesn’t change like the water of the epilimnion does.
I pay an ice fisherman $25 to let me use his shack for an hour. He makes me promise to call him if he gets any bites. I wait for him to disappear before I attach the amulet to the fishing line and drop it into the water. It hisses as it disappears into the depths.
The fishing line goes taut right before the ice fractures and the earth begins to quake. Some things never change.
I hope you
find yourself at the bottom of a bottle of red wine
look in the mirror and do not hate what you see
swatch purple on your eyes without regard for others
are haunted by morning memories of me
try the spicy foods that used to scare you
lick your stubborn glass plate clean
bury your wounds in an unmarked grave
confine yourself to only burning cities
kiss the sky and then the ground again
clean the gravel from your scraped up knees
lighten the load that lives on your shoulders
know you are always the devil to me
Savannah S. Miller
“Baal Hammon demands five lives to quell his anger.” The priest’s gaze sweeps over us. I dare not meet his eyes. I know it is necessary; our crops lie dead in the field, the river dried to a trickle, the sun scorches skin and earth alike. But I’m weak. I shudder to pay the price.
Hanno rises without a hint of hesitation. Two more, with less eagerness. Another. Then nothing. One more death, to bring new life to our people.
With a heavy heart, I stand.
The priest nods. “Very well. Deliver your lastborn daughters to the temple by nightfall.”
Sascha Reinhard
Francis adjusted his VR goggles and loaded the boss fight of “Brain+Crash” in hard mode. The reviews had piqued his interest, calling it the most extreme game of the year.
“The sudden death feature makes this game stand out!”
“Unforgettable!”
“A once in a lifetime experience!”
He wasn’t a proficient gamer, but he really wanted to try it. The game started and he found himself in the combat area. Before he could react, the final boss crushed him to death.
Flexible steel filaments shot from the VR goggles, punched through his skull’s orbital fissure and into his brain.
Sudden death!
Florian writes stories, likes cheese, and is a friend to dogs and pandas everywhere. @ndbag.bsky.social
It wasn’t the worst breakup.
But I still wanted my mum. She didn’t say a lot—just listened and repeated “it’ll be okay” while I broke down.
My friends took me out drinking. I don’t remember much, except that I threw up after. I cried as my stomach heaved. I had no one to hold my hair out of the way.
The doorbell rang shrilly through my hangover. It was a man with a bag of tools and a large box. He showed me an email from my landlord authorising essential works. I let him in and crawled back to bed.
He was gone when I awoke. A red light blinked at me from a cobweb-encrusted corner of my bedroom. I walked around my flat. The sick sloshing in my stomach cooled instantly—watchful red lights blinked from every corner.
The TV was on, screen glowing:
Welcome to Home Safe. Your privacy settings have been adjusted to Care Mode.
My head thumped, and I reached for some painkillers.
A dialling tone sounded, and the screen flashed:
Risk threshold exceeded. Emergency contact notified: Calling…
Calling…
I fumbled for the remote, too slow.
Connected.
My mother’s voice, laced with panic, filled the room.
“Are you okay, darling?”
Imrak Eriksson is a former rocket scientist turned patent lawyer who spins daydreams into fiction.
The DJ announced the next song would be the last of the night, a final slow number to share with that special someone.
My legs were killing me. I’d only just slid down the wall to rest on our high school gymnasium’s floor. But this was it. Now or never.
I pushed myself up with help from the wall.
Don’t already be dancing with someone, I prayed.
She wasn’t. She sat by herself at a round table, sipping a soda.
Just don’t say no, I prayed as I walked up to her, as I asked her to dance. Just don’t say no.
She turned her pool-blue eyes on me. She smiled slowly, then she started laughing. She laughed and laughed and laughed so hard that I began to worry she might hurt herself. Then she got up and walked over to where a group of her friends were standing around, and struggled to stop laughing long enough to tell them what had happened. Her friends looked at where I was standing, frozen in place. They all broke out into laughter too.
I sat down with my back to them, so she wouldn’t see the smile on my face. She’d laughed at me, sure. But she’d never said no.
Karl El-Koura lives with his family in Ottawa, Canada's capital city, and works a regular job by day while writing fiction at night. To find out more about Karl, visit his website at ootersplace.com.