Tag: Fiction

Haunted Passages: “Booger Hill,” a short story by Christy Crutchfield

Tess is Eve under her coat. She made the costume last year, three felt leaves sewn strategically onto a tan bodysuit. She’s just come home from the grocery store, but I nudge her back into the car. “Where are we going?” she says. I put a bottle of wine in one cup holder, a bag…
“Homestead”: A Flash Fiction for Bad Survivalist by Bryan Harvey

You could get to it by a shortcut through the swamp. Or you could take the bridge near the church and the cemetery as long as you left before dusk and held tight to your senses. But you could also take the mountain pass, which would still require little imagination and beating the sun in…
“Static Pressure,” a flash fiction for Haunted Passages by Cooper Shrivastava

I am 612 feet below the surface, and I am furious. Eric is connected to my dive belt by an 8-foot rope. When I look in that direction, I feel myself getting angry again and I purposefully let it go. At these depths, an increase in heart rate and breathing means increasing my risk of…
“Leap of Faith,” an ekphrastic short fiction for Haunted Passages by Mark Blickley

*Ed.’s Note: click image to view larger size. Leap of Faith I’m a dead frog and I don’t say this with any pity or understanding or shame, it’s just an observation that people seem to like us, like us a bit too much because they like to push hooks through our jaws and cast us…
“Cobweb Lake”: A Short Story for Haunted Passages by Hernán Ortiz

My friend and I were skipping stones near the bodies that floated on the surface. We imagined that if the ripples touched them a hundred times, the bodies would wake up. But if the stones touched them instead, they would stay asleep forever. Most were thin stones we collected among the undergrowth that surrounded the…
“.DECEMBER.”: October People novel excerpt & audio by Pablo D’Stair

…It was twenty-years ago today (as someone – I can’t think who – was known to say) at the ripe young age of nineteen, beguiled by my mis-reading of the rules to the Anvil Press 3-Day Novel Writing Contest, that I locked myself in the cheapest Econo Lodge money could buy for the purpose of…
Su Nadeau: “Juniper,” a short story for Haunted Passages

The twelve-thirteen train derailed on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It was the only one that passed through this way. This meant Lupon and Wren devoted their time to clearing the wreckage so each train had the opportunity to wreck on its own. A quarter after noon on Saturday the train was heard before it was…
Amanda Chiado: “A Pretty Girl’s Hair,” a short story for Haunted Passages

“Where’s mama?” Bobby asks. “She went to the moon,” Dad says. He sucks hard on a Marlboro. Most of the smoke escapes out the window. I think of Mom drifting in a silvery spacesuit toward the strange botched face of the white orb. We three stare out the windows. Journey is Believing on a half-static…
“A SLOW RADIOACTIVE DEATH (IN AN ENDLESS LOOP)”: A Short Story for Bad Survivalist by Joshua Rodriguez

<!DOCTYPE dog-shit><head><meta name=“robots” content=“noindex, nofollow, noarchive” /><meta name=“viewport” content=“width=device-width, initial-scale=1 /><meta name=“description” content=“Joschua Blau has all the leverage. Yours Truly doesn’t stand a chance, and what’s worst, Yours Truly is used to being subjugated, exploited, and discarded. We welcome abuse like a long-lost twin separated at birth—this is the story of Joschua Blau, the perennial…