Tag: Fiction

Haunted Passages Fiction: “On Sarpy, Nebraska, and the Places I Go During a Seizure” by Bella Koschalk

The yellow-bellied swallow has chosen me to facilitate her death. We are sitting on a concrete stoop under The Motel’s awning in the Midwest rain. I hold the bird in my hand and I do not think about bird-borne illnesses. She stirs, she is starting her final surrender. I am wearing my ex-stepbrother’s hand-me-down sneakers,…
Flash Fiction for Side A: “Anglers” by Dan Shields

Anglers We watch their suns drift like pulp to the bottom of the glass, these days between sleep and the gasp. We skim them like stones on a creek. These days we squat and moan—old tequila worms squirming in the bottle. A big yellow bus scrambles past the bones of a stop. Our stop. The…
“Please Consider an Upgrade,” original short fiction for Haunted Passages by Carrie Bindschadler

Dear Declan, Thank you for your recent purchase of our signature Home Seance Basic Package. This specially-curated package is our most affordable option. This package allows you to contact a single recently-deceased human being or beloved pet one time only. If you are interested in repeat spiritual visitations, you will need to upgrade to the…
Haunted Passages Short Story: “How Close Is It?” by Darlene Eliot

Night driving was easy. He knew what to do with a windy mountain pass, a straight shot through cornfields, a detour around streets too narrow for an eighteen-wheeler. He knew what to do when the moon disappeared behind checkpoints and his headlights were the only light on the road. He knew what to do when…
“To Not Get Crystallized into Habits and Things”: Jacob Smullyan in Conversation with Paolo Pergola

Paolo Pergola is the author of Passaggi—avventure di un autostoppista (Rides: The Adventures of a Hitchhiker) (Exorma, 2013) and Attraverso la finestra di Snell (Through Snell’s Window) (Italo Svevo Edizione, 2019). His work has appeared in several Italian literary magazines. He is a member of OPLEPO/Opificio di Letteratura Potenziale (Workshop of Potential Literature), Italy’s equivalent of France’s OULIPO. He…
“The Ritual,” a short story for Haunted Passages by Paul Rousseau

The sky was unflinching judgment, set ablaze. Holy shades of red and yellow in acrylic smears. Clouds scrambled to hide behind treetops where they could peek through branches and parted leaves. Night was close. The lights were about to dim. I was getting some final jumpers in at the elementary school playground just down the…
Bad Survivalist: “Under the Orange Tree,” a short story by Emily Unwin

Under the Orange Tree “Everyone in America has an agent,” Judy says. Mary Virginia has just picked up Judy from the Seville, Spain airport. Judy sits in the passenger seat. MV is trying to sell a Christian self-help book. Her knuckles are turning white. Her boyfriend’s mother, Judy, fiddles with the meditation beads around her…
Fiction: “My Dinner with a Thief” by David Luntz

My Dinner with a Thief I was looking for something for my wife I couldn’t afford. That’s when I first saw her. A younger-looking version of my wife. A customer had left a diamond brooch on the glass top and she pocketed it like a Three-card Monte pro. Her gray eyes clocked mine and said:…
Fiction for Side A: “Thirty-Nine Bye-Byes” by Martin Kleinman

Thirty-Nine Bye-Byes 39. “You should see him.” 2. The phone call came while I was stuck in traffic on the Central Park transverse, the Met’s Temple of Dendur off to my right. A nurse from my father’s hospital equivocated her way through the call. My dad had been in failing health. “Where are you now?” she…
Fiction from The Future: “The Freewheeling Bicycle Coast” by Perry Genovesi

The Freewheeling Bicycle Coast In which the people of the Coast realize that the new way of walking was so much like how a bicycle coasts, that when they even looked at the bicycle parts in their refuse bins, they wondered why it had taken them so long to discover. ᐧᐧᐧᐧ Before we met Delilah,…