Tag: Fiction

Aaron Teel: “The Quality of Mercy,” a short story for Haunted Passages

When I was boy no older than you, but taller of course, and squarer of jaw, I came by moonlight on a fortune teller’s wagon parked alongside a smallish river or creek, stopped short of ascending the three wooden steps that led to the wagon’s candlelit window, and eyed its proprietor where she sat weaving…
“Into the Pool of Magma”: An Interview with Directory Author Christopher Linforth by Tyler Dempsey

Has a book made you mad? It’s so good, you realize drugs exist—without your knowing—that send authors to parallel planes? Me neither. Well … one time. I read Christopher Linforth’s new collection, Directory. I threw it across the room. Like brain-bugs cats give us, the book had me doing things—sniffing, salivating, yelping. I read it…
“Our Mutual Friend”: A Short Story for Haunted Passages by Stephen Langlois

My daughter Arabelle, she was the first to hear them. They woke her Thursday night before last, tapping on her window. Maybe not tapping so much as clinking. I heard the same sound since. Right here in the kitchen and elsewhere, too. A quick, sharp, hollow sorta sound. The sound of digits what ain’t designed…
“The Shapes in the Carpet”: A Short Story for Bad Survivalist by Stephen Piccarella

Both of my parents are dead. I live with Zeke, my older half-brother, and we take care of each other. We grew up together in the house we live in now, a one room unit like a truck with no wheels, out in the middle of the woods. The house is flat on every side…
Haunted Passages: “Business Travelers,” a short story by Bernard Reed

Foster was in town again. We took a cab together and had a late lunch in an empty little restaurant, after meeting in the lobby of the La— Hotel when my shift there was over. It was his second visit that month. He was staying in a hotel called the Gw—, a swanky new one…
Bad Survivalist Short Story: “Along the South Shoreline” by Josie Tolin

Lorna scanned her reflection in a full-length mirror, sucking in her stomach as she forced the button through the hole. The skirt hadn’t always fit this way. When she exhaled, her belly spilled over the waistband, and Lorna smacked her hands against her abdomen and watched the skin quiver like Jell-O. Her mom called it…
Haunted Passages: “Dear Becca,” a short story by Kate St. Germain

Dear Becca, I’ve wanted to write you for a long time. But on the last episode, GO FOR IT, you told us to go for what we want. So that’s what I’ll do. My grandma died almost 2 months ago. I had been taking care of her, actually I never moved out of our house.…
Meagan Masterman: “The River Runs Red in Spring,” a Haunted Passages short story

The red in the river wasn’t blood, at first. It was iron. Just sediment eroded from mountain rocks that oxidized in the river long before its waters washed down to us. We lived in a small town that existed because of the river. Our forebears had floated logs down it to be hacked into boards…
Haunted Passages: “Black Magic,” a short story by Karen Petersen

A runaway hippo, typhoid fever, and a charge of theft had not figured in my plans for a tranquil seed collecting expedition in East Africa. I had flown to Nairobi to do some work for a botanical garden and write up a story about it for a national publication. While there, I was going to…