Tag: Fiction

Short Story: “Bombing from Above” by Alex Kudera

In Xi’an, China, I had the runs. It had gone on for two days, and I couldn’t control it. I couldn’t stop going. In the middle of the night, I’d dash to our apartment’s American-style toilet bowl where it would pour out like a Biblical flood. On a stifling bus—one sardine among many—the urge would…
“Last Call,” a Haunted Passages short story by Cassandra Clarke

“The Restaurant of Obscure Sorrows isn’t the best place to work,” I told Alice, “but at least there’s no surprise disappointments … except, when it’s the special.” “Surprise disappointment,” Alice said, one finger raised in the air like she was a game-show contestant, “is sprinkled with sage, the sweat of the hopeful, and sauteed in…
Louis Zieja: Three Ekphrastic Monster Movie Noises for Haunted Passages

Them Ants (’54)“The sounds the giant ants emit in the film were the calls of bird-voiced tree frogs mixed in with the calls of a wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker.” —Them! (1954 Film) Wikipedia It’s a sound reminiscent of rot, of decay, of hunger,the realization that we are just caloriesfor an unknowable colony.…
Three Poems: Lee Hodge for Haunted Passages

HostageAfter Katie Peterson On the night I ended it the police had cordoned off every street surrounding the block to investigate a threat that had been called in on the house across the street from yours. Can’t turn down that road the neighbors had told me before I turned down the road. They pointed at…
Haunted Passages: “The Faces Inside of Everyday Objects,” a short story by Dan Stintzi

After college, Michelle had difficulty sleeping. The problem started when she was a freshman sharing a room with a girl from the coast named Miranda. One night, at a party, Michelle drank several cups of a fruity drink served out of a bucket placed in a bathtub. There were chunks of mushed, pulpy fruit floating…
Short Story: “the lies the silence tells” by Carolina Meurkens

These days your arms are covered in tiny red scratches. You can’t seem to get any work done without Jonah anchoring her claws into you. It hurts but you let her. Until it starts to feel good, that point right before she punctures your skin. You’re beginning to enjoy this pain of being needed. Which…
Haunted Passages: “Jolichanga’s Fury,” a short story by Miranda Forman

Father died s high that not even ravens could bury him. I don’t remember this. I wasn’t there. When, instead of Father, Uncle returned home at the end of the summer, Mother tightened her jaw and her lips and her soul. I was three years old when her smooth brown face weathered to leather. Her…
A Haunted Passages Short Story: “Moscow” by Mike Nees

1 You accept the charges, pull the latex cap over your scalp. You can already hear the ambient noise that will signal my arrival, like the startup sound your computer used to play. That soothing drone topped with a few stray piano chords. It doesn’t come out of a speaker, no—it’s just suddenly in your…
Haunted Passages: “The Dreamers of Revolution Never Left,” a short story by Mandira Pattnaik

It’s not that plenary meeting. Yet, little do you know, when you plod on through the rain, through the narrow, stony, cobbled steps towards the ugly backside of the mansion, where the worst possible history is engraved in, that the glossy sheen of natural fur will unnerve you. When you collect the keys of your…