Tag: Fiction

“Inked,” a Haunted Passages short story by Kara Oakleaf

My first tattoo appears the morning after Ian’s funeral. I wake up and press my hands into my eyes to keep out the reality of another day, and immediately, I recognize his work, his clean lines tracing a mountain range in the center of my palm. The skin surrounding the image is raised and red,…
“We Followed the Goldfinches”: A Bad Survivalist Short Story by George L. Hickman

The year that Jack and I rejected everything man-made, we drove into the mountains. Our 2010 Corolla was man-made, but we didn’t mind that. Its low hum encased us, carrying us through rolling hills. How strange to plunge into our new life in the outdoors from behind the walls of a sturdy metal tube. How…
Ben Segal: “Hungry Ghosts,” a Haunted Passages flash fiction

Ghosts eat ghost hamburgers from ghost cows. You can’t kill a ghost though, so the ghost cows are eaten piece by piece, fog slabs sliced off their lowing bodies. Such practices of piecemeal slaughter flourished in the time before refrigeration and were banned as cruel by Kosher law. Ghosts are in this way heretical, or…
“.LAST WORDS.”: Confidant novel excerpt & audio by Pablo D’Stair

… I think I remember the parking lot, the weather, where I was standing with my best friend Goodloe Byron, first describing what would become my second novel, CONFIDANT. I described the project to him as ‘a real shilling shocker, like a 70s era Dario Argento giallo if one was co-authored by Andre Gide’ ……
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…