Category: Fiction

James A. Reeves: “The Diver,” a Haunted Passages flash fiction

My mother believed life should be graceful and clean, much like the way she entered the water when she was young. She had been a diver and, for a time, the most famous woman in town. Especially once she began killing people. She was an all-city legend, a state champion and regional medalist with a…
Haunted Passages: “Maxwell House’s Demon,” a short story by J. Thomas Murphy

She woke up to the rain and a vague sense of unease. The unease she attributed to the melancholy weather. The rain was nothing new. She started as usual: eating quickly, dressing slowly, letting the morning contain its own patterns and rhythms that she knew the rest of the day could not conform to. On…
Haunted Passages: “Derek, Ricky, Umar, Gael,” a short story by Jackie Sizemore

The first ghost law was supposed to get everybody on better terms with their resident ghosts, but whoever wrote that didn’t know my newest roommate, Amber. Amber is a four-and-a-half foot tall teenage ghost that blew into my apartment two months ago. The whole apocalypse thing was a while back, but everybody knows there are…
“When the Chicken Slowly Cooks You Back,” a short story for Flavor Town USA by Harrison Cook

When my grandpa was on the farm, she snapped around one thousand chicken necks and in one day killed, boiled, and dressed over one hundred chickens by herself. Word travels fast in small town Iowa; hops county to county and before long my grandma, or more so the image of the frenzied farm wife snapping…
“The Storytellers,” a Haunted Passages flash fiction by Kaj Tanaka

The disembodied hands were still a long way off. I mean, we could hear them down the hallway, kind of shambling their way toward us, but it was a long hallway and they were very bad at shambling. Like at one point, we heard them come up against a wall and then shuffle quietly in…
Bad Survivalist: “Beaver Dams and the Final Beaver Dam,” a flash fiction by Kaj Tanaka

We went down to the river yesterday to watch our beaver do his business. We have a beaver of our own, we said in wonder, here on our own land, just a little walk from our own house. We used to want things, I distinctly remembered we used to want things, but I could hardly remember…
Short Story: “Bombing from Above” by Alex Kudera

In Xi’an, China, I had the runs. It had gone on for two days, and I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t stop going. In the middle of the night, I’d dash to our apartment’s American-style toilet bowl where it would pour out like a Biblical flood. On a stifling bus—one sardine among many—the urge would…
“Last Call,” a Haunted Passages short story by Cassandra Clarke

“The Restaurant of Obscure Sorrows isn’t the best place to work,” I told Alice, “but at least there’s no surprise disappointments … except, when it’s the special.” “Surprise disappointment,” Alice said, one finger raised in the air like she was a game-show contestant, “is sprinkled with sage, the sweat of the hopeful, and sauteed in…
Haunted Passages: “The Faces Inside of Everyday Objects,” a short story by Dan Stintzi

After college, Michelle had difficulty sleeping. The problem started when she was a freshman sharing a room with a girl from the coast named Miranda. One night, at a party, Michelle drank several cups of a fruity drink served out of a bucket placed in a bathtub. There were chunks of mushed, pulpy fruit floating…