Category: Haunted Passages

An ominous wind circles you in the middle of an isolated woods. Your friends wander into an empty factory, under the cover of dusk, never to be seen again. These are “Haunted Passages,” new features of unearthly delights.

From Vol. 9: “Creature and the Once-a-Year-House,” a poem by Michael Sikkema

9 shotgun barrels are wrapped around a beech tree, hunting party nowhere in site, one truck engine still running, almost out of gas 7 deer walk backwards out of pines as their seams split to mist Creature figures tiny wolves inside their head leak black milk, sniffs out blood on a salt lick Coming home…
From Vol. 9: “A Miniature Tale of Motherhood,” a short story by Oliver Zarandi

My children are cruel and look like goblins. Every day they take something away from me and I don’t ask for anything in return. I asked them this morning, “What do you want for lunch?” “Your breasts,” they said. So they had them. They suckled my teats, one apiece, and sucked them dry. No more…
Haunted Passages Fiction: “A Haunted House” by Mark Lamoureux

I.The Master Bedroom Not the heart of the House, but its crimson mouth. The undone belt droops like a skein of slobber over the bloodred cilia of the shag carpet, the cracked-open geode of a bad lung. Faerie lights gestate in the Negroni-colored teardrops of sick lamps. Spread across a dark wood dresser are pen knives &…
Three Poems for Haunted Passages by Eli Dunham

DIDYOUKNOW i watch my body lie down on the floor next to me.i amnowhereat thedinner table yet you speak to me ami themovie? i amupside down driving my car, the world claustrop hobic &glimmer ing.who is the time today? i was born in yesterday.is myhead wrapped in cotton? did you knowi didn’tExist?you think it’sa badthing, through a glass wall…
“Widower,” a Haunted Passages Short Story by X. Luma

One spring afternoon, while Widower was gathering lettuce from the garden, his daughter Lew called out from her siblings nearby. “Dad, I’m tired of playing in the grass.” “Well?” “Couldn’t I play in the woods?” Widower eyed the woods. “You may. But take this head of lettuce.” “Lettuce?” “Lay the leaves as you go to…
Four Poems for Haunted Passages: Violet Mitchell

You Buried Me Right Where I Belong baby i watch you watch me destroy myself baby i am staticending gray starting gray i watch you watch me sleep w eyes closed we sleep in dead leaves | i decay along w my precision there are tangles in my armpit hair sweaty coupling w my bluish…
Flash Fiction for Haunted Passages: “Preserved From Decay and Endued with Immortality” by Andy Spain

We buried Uncle Charles way out back, beyond the orchard, a good two acres from the property line. We picked his bones clean and criss-crossed them end over end in a log cabin of sorts, like building a campfire. The leftover scraps of flesh and sinewy bits we burned in the center, praying that his…
Anton Pooles: Three Poems for Haunted Passages

He Did Not Listen Now his bones are neatly displayedon a table like a museum piece. “They shine like hard boiled eggs,”his Mother says proudly. Then her tone darkens,“put them back where you found them— let them be a warning to alldisobedient children.” The Creature Beneath the Porch Knock on wood. It followsas I pace…
Haunted Passages: “Swamp Thing Explains How Time Passes in the Middle of Dueling Crises,” a poem by Jack B. Bedell

It’s never a matter of value. When I’m standing at the edge of the cypress grove looking over the coastline, I can tell it’s receding, inching back into the swamp. No doubt the water’s rising. It’ll drown us all. Eventually. It’ll lick away every piece of swamp I stand on. But it’ll do it with…