The Ghost In The Corridor

There is a little ghost haunting the corridor of my parent's house. It's always been there, as far as I can remember. It's funny now, but it scared me when I first saw it. It wears a sheet, but there is definitely a ghost underneath. It has no feet, but there are partial legs sticking out. 

My parents are Catholic, and so I was I, in the beginning, and my mom said the house had been blessed by a priest so I figured if the blessing wasn't stopping the ghost, then it probably wasn't evil. Probably. 

I'd wake up at night and need to use the bathroom. I was afraid of the dark. I'd climb down from the bunk bed and pad down the corridor. The ghost didn't block my way. The bathroom was halfway down, and the ghost usually hovered at the end, before it opened up into the living room and kitchen. 

Oh yeah, it changes sheets. It takes whatever's clean. When we were all little, this meant it was often in a sheet with cartoon animals, or superheroes, and stars and galaxies. 

In the morning, the sheet would be folded up neatly and placed back in the linen closet. 

I don't understand it all. 

If it wasn't there to scare us, or hurt us, or to help us in some way, why was it there?

Catholicism didn't really have any answers because the teachings on ghosts gets surprisingly muddy. 

And none of the teachings mentioned actual bedsheets. 

I'm not religious anymore, and I don't hold any beliefs about gods and devils fighting for the souls of humans, but if I were pressed, I'd have to admit I believe in at least one little ghost, wearing in a bedsheet, floating in a corridor of my mom and dad's house. 

THE END

Static Underneath

He saw the static below everything. Black and white pixels flashing underneath the world. Old cathode ray tube televisions, when tuned to a channel with no signal, would show a screen of black and white "snow." A two-toned kaleidoscope. He saw this, when he closed his eyes, and when his eyes were open. 

His vision was fine; his yearly visits to the optometrist confirmed that yes, he was a little nearsighted but otherwise fine. 

He worried that everything he was seeing wasn't real; that the static was the real world and all the bright and beautiful colors and shapes he saw were being projected onto the static, an overlay. If it was a projection, what was projecting it? And if it wasn't real, what was it?

His health insurance only covered doctors, not philosophers. 

And yet, otherwise, his life was normal. Boring, even. He felt he should let it go. Stop thinking about it entirely. Pretend it wasn't there.

One night, he found himself holding a paring knife to his eye and wondering what would he would see without them. 

He had put the knife down. If he did remove his eyes, he might see what was really there, behind the world. Or the static might be the only thing left, and his world would remain only those black and white pixels, a backdrop forever. 

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Did I never publish this one? I guess not. Says I wrote it on November 24th. I must have left it in the drafts because it doesn't go anywhere. Sure, there's a lot more leeway in short stories because if you don't waste too much of a reader's time they don't get too upset, generally. Maybe it was too depressing? The danger of what I'm doing mixing fiction in with a journal of my day-to-day life is that there's the risk that people might conflate the two. 

Which is why I'm hesitant to mention that I do see static. It's not bright static, and it doesn't interfere with my vision. I think everyone sees it, right? What do you see when you close your eyes? 

Pawed

Too many mutts on too small a bed

We don't seek solutions to this problem

It's the kind we like

Resolve one; another takes its place

A paw on my face

Cheeky hounds

Line up North to South

Furry fat electromagnets

Living compasses

Pointing to you

Resting Phase

Warm toes, cold nose

There is no human experience that does not exist without its opposite, Melville said

Programmed in Emotional Binary

It's not the only coding language

Access granted to your inputs

Firewalls; defragmentation 

The cold reminds me of you because I miss the heat of your body against mine

Heartbeat like a cursor, ready 

Couched

Couch these words in thoughts on a couch

Poetry seeks the middle place

Where what we think and what we feel 

Mistake one for the other

I call it the middle place but it was the first

The wishbone split came somewhere after

When four legs became sometimes two

And then only two

Poetry is not for unfinished thoughts

But thoughts that can't be finished

Perhaps. I'm not sure. I like the sounds of it

The shape of your mouth when you say the words

The shape of your mind when you think the thoughts

Beckon, beckon, skittish connection

Our hands entwining 

Skin scraped by electric thickets 

A robot could have wrote this

I tell ourselves

But I thought of it first this time

And I sleep envious of the water coursing down your body

That would only rust me, maybe

We chain our dreams to logic

As if that safely keeps them

To exist in the same room as you

Is as small and as big as I can dream tonight

Rivers push against their banks

And make new curves and bends and breaks

Pebbles tumble sand and silt

As they carve out that middle place

The Turkey Of Terror

Turkeys used to be very different from how they are today. Long ago, turkeys grew to the size of a house, their feathers were sleek and black, and their massive beaks were cruel, curved, hooked, perfect for skinning their prey. Their horrendous, thundering cry of "Gobble-gobble" would send the early humans scrambling back to their caves, cowering and shivering in terror. The humans would not come out until they were certain the turkey hunt was over. 

The humans began to leave out offerings for the terror turkeys, grains and berries and seeds and nuts. The titan turkeys would gather and nibble the food reluctantly, clucking amongst themselves, imagining that instead of cracking the shells of nuts, they were cracking open the skulls of humans and scooping out the gooey grey stuff inside. It was their favorite. 

The little things we do every day add up, over time. After a millennia or two, the monstrous avians that had ruled the land with an iron wattle, had diminished to a much more manageable four feet in height, and their steely muscles had given way to plump, tender flesh. 

The humans noticed, eventually, and the tables were quickly turned. 

Now, once a year, many cultures gather to give thanks that they are now the hunters, instead of the hunted. But the turkey has one final cruelty for the feasters: they are so big that to fully cook them, when whole, that the white meat, the lean muscular meat that long ago was used to hunt and rend the flesh of the very humans that eat them now, will become dry and tasteless. 

And they hope you choke on it. 

And if you do, while you're turning blue, thrashing about, mouth gaping for air that won't come, you will hear the sound of massive wings, and a final thundering "gobble gobble." 

THE END

The Night Watchman

What night, from dusk until dawn, he guarded the empty, rotting grain silo on Baseline road. Years before, when he had been hired, there were fields of grain, and of cotton, of orange groves, and miles and miles of flowers. 

All that was gone now, replaced by tract housing, apartment complexes, gated communities, and a few cows and pigs. 

Everything had changed all around him. Except the grain silo that still stood in the middle of a couple acres of dirt behind a crooked, wooden fence.

His work has given him enough to live, to build a life during the day, at least when he wasn't asleep. He had breakfast for dinner with his family, and then once his wife went to work and his kids went to school, he slept. His real morning was the middle of the afternoon, when he would awaken and pick up the children from school. He would make dinner (his breakfast) and help them with their homework. As the sun began to set, he was off again. 

He didn't know why the silo still needed a guard. Every night. He wasn't allowed to read, or talk on the phone, or write. He would pace the perimeter, shine his flashlight now and then, and think about all the things he'd rather be doing. As far as he could tell, no one watched him. He could have slept, or used his phone, or read all those books he meant to read, or write down his life story. 

But he was a man of his word. So every night, he watched. He was free to think, and that was enough. He watched, and waited for the sun to rise and send him home. 

THE END

The Honor Guard

A long time ago, it was tradition to sacrifice a black dog and bury it in the graveyard before interring the first human. The first one buried in a graveyard would have the duty of protecting it for all eternity, and be denied a peaceful afterlife. Burying the dog prevented this fate from befalling any human souls.

One day, long ago, there was a great, black dog named Duff, and he was on the hunt. He was what's known as a lurcher, which was a cross between a sight hound and a working breed. They were known for their intelligence, independence, speed, and hardiness. 

Duff's master had a herd of sheep, and a baby lamb had been killed the night before. The master had found only the torn-off leg, and immediately suspected the great white wolf that roamed the woods nearby. The master grabbed his rifle and went out with Duff to track the wolf.

Duff found the white wolf lying in a clearing, gnawing on the carcass of a large hare. The wolf saw Duff, and ignored him.

"My master's lamb wasn't enough to fill your belly?" Duff asked indignantly. (Wolves and dogs were not quite so distantly-related yet, as they are today, and could still make themselves understood to the other.) 

The wolf still didn't look up. "You are mistaken, whelp. Go to the one who lives in the cabin a furlong away from your master; in the home with no garden. You will find the lamb cooking in his pot."

"We found its leg, torn from its body!" Duff bristled. "The work of a wolf!"

The wolf looked at him, finally, with his great yellow eyes, his muzzle still red with blood. "Do you know many wolves that would waste a good leg of lamb? The thief left it there for you to find, no doubt, and cast suspicion away from himself."

"You're lying."

"Oh?" The wolf stuff stood up, and at his full height, looked down at the dog. "And what wolf respects the opinion of a dog enough to bother to lie to it?"

Duff growled, but knew it was true. He could hear his master approaching the edge of the clearing. He was a keen shot, and would certainly kill the wolf as soon as he sighted it.

Duff snarled, and ran into the woods again, baying as if he'd sighted their quarry. His master turned away from the clearing and followed.

The next night, Duff waited by the herd of sheep,  and he did indeed see the neighbor creep into the field in search of another lamb. Duff gave him a single savage chomp on the rear, and after that night, the neighbor lost his taste for lamb and finally took up gardening. 

Duff did not see the white wolf again for a long time, until the village decided they needed a new graveyard.

Duff was the only black dog in the area and everyone knew it, so it was decided that he would be sacrificed and buried first. His master wept, but Duff was stoic. His grave had been dug, and he would go to it, as was his duty, because he was a good dog. 

When Duff's master fell asleep, he stole out of the cabin and went down to the graveyard. He curled up next to open grave and fell asleep. 

In his sleep, Duff smelled blood, and he awoke. The great white wolf was limping towards him. In the moonlight, Duff could see a dark stain spreading out across the wolf's flank. 

"Good evening, dog."

"Wolf."

"I understand they're going to kill you in the morning. Put you in that hole, will they?"

"Yes. They will."

"Is that really what you want? You will not run away and save yourself?"

"No," Duff admitted. "I would like to be with my master, to protect him. But this will protect him too, I think. So I will allow it."

"You have a good quality, for a house pet," said the wolf. "I was shot by a hunter, and I will soon be dead myself. Long ago, you led your master away when you could have let him kill me. Perhaps I can help you this time." And the wolf jumped down into the little open grave. He rolled in the graveyard mud until he was completely black. He panted from the effort and lay down to rest. "There were are," the wolf said. "Now we could be brothers."

Duff looked down at the wolf in his grave. "Yes. We could be. My name is Duff."

"My name is Grim," said the wolf.

"I will stay with you, Grim."

The wolf grinned. "What wolves do you know that would care to die next to a dog?"

"Just one, I think," said Duff. And he curled up next to the grave, to be near to his friend.

In the morning, the gravedigger came to find a large black dog, or what looked like one, in the grave, dead. He shrugged and began to shovel dirt over it. At the edge of the graveyard, a big white dog watched. When the work was done, the white dog ran home to his master.

His master was astonished. If Duff could have spoken to him, he would not have had any explanation either. When Duff had awoken at dawn, his fur had become as ivory-white as the wolf's. 

Duff lived many years after that, and when he felt the age in his bones and knew it was time, he once again slipped out into the night, to the graveyard. 

His master found him there the next morning, curled up on that very first grave. He was quite dead, and his master buried Duff on that same spot. It was, after all, his grave. 

This was all a very long time ago. But if you ever find that graveyard, and wait until dark, you just might see a large white dog and a great black wolf darting to and fro, weaving through the headstones, playing for eternity. 

THE END

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Ouch. There is a very different version of this in the drafts that I was almost through at 11 pm, and I was thinking I would get to bed on time tonight, but I just didn't like it. So I scrapped it and started over, which I never do (if that hasn't been obvious with some of these) but I'm glad I did. I hope I'm still glad when I'm dredging myself out of bed for work tomorrow.

Goodnight! 

The Hidden Constellations

The stars will move for you, if you can convince them. They like little gestures, and consistency. They've had their fill of heroes and odysseys; it is so easy for humans to set some noble goal and think of nothing but attaining it. It's charming, in a way, but it no longer moves them. 

A constellation is a name we give them based on our own perspective. They are not their true names, although some come surprisingly close. 

What does move them now are acts of kindness, over time. The heroes of old proclaimed to all what they hoped to do, and the stars had believed them, millenia ago. 

Today, tonight, every day, every night, they watch us still and look for other signs. Gentle words, kind acts, sparks of warmth between the creatures that spend half their lives in the dark. 

Only sparks, not fires. Fire consumes; what the stars do is fusion. They look for that; consistency, connections.  

Keep doing that, and they will move for you too. 

THE END

The Most Dangerous Meal Of The Day

Breakfast is the most dangerous meal of the day. Too often we sit to eat our scrambled eggs, hash browns, or banana pancakes, and we don't realize that the inhabitants of our dreams are still lurking behind us, having crossed the misty grey borderland between sleep and wake. Our minds are not solid things; they are gillnets with frayed edges that dreams and nightmares can wriggle through. 

As you sit to eat and begin to chew, if you are not careful, your teeth could begin to fall out, one by one by one, falling painlessly like ivory rain drops and clattering onto the plate and table and floor. Fall out and fall out, until you are swimming in molars, bicuspids, incisors, more teeth than could fit in a thousand gums mouths, as you gasp for air with a mouth of empty gums.

Or you notice a smell of burning toast, and the walls around you are in crackling flames, and billowing smoke surrounds you and all is orange and black and burning and then you hear sizzling like an egg being cracked into a pan of bubbling grease and smell your own blistering flesh as it runs off your body and puddles on the floor. 

Perhaps you were dreaming of being hunted by a pack of starving, long-legged beasts, with slavering jaws of jagged teeth and lolling crimson tongues. You're sitting at the table and jump as that deep baying bursts forth into the waking world, and guttural growls and snarls encircle you and you become the meal. 

There may be ways to prevent these types of oneiric seepage, and sleep scientists and occultists have formed and uneasy alliance to find them. 

Until then, they suggest skipping breakfast. 

THE END