Free story time again!
This is one of the events that gets me writing even when I think I can’t, so I am grateful to be part of it. It’s a way to give back to my readers, even though I sometimes think it benefits me more than you… Don’t forget to scroll down for more free stories from authors around the world.
A Ghost’s Life
It was a dark and stormy night – don’t laugh at the cliché, dammit. It was! The kind that smells of rain and oil on tar, when the streetlights are out for blocks, and maybe there’s damp marijuana leaves leaning up against every other cinderblock fence even though the feds say it’s still illegal. I keep to myself, though, and expect the same courtesy, so everything else that happened was my own fault. In a way.
Even though I’d walked through this neighborhood by myself for years, something in the air or the clouds or the side-eyes I was getting through broken blinds changed my mind. I tried to go back into the antique store, but the long-haired, long-skirted owner had already flipped the sign to closed and locked the door. An all-night gas station loomed on the corner, so I ran for it. I darted in the front door, threw back my wet hood, and—
Bam. Everything went white. And then dark. Real dark.
***
When the lights came back on, the coroner zipped the body bag up over my face.
“NO!” I screamed, jerking right out of my own body into the cool night air. Only it no longer felt cool. Or damp. Or much like anything. Nobody noticed me… well, new me. No-body me. They didn’t even spare much of a look for old me once it was in the bag.
“Was one of them Yazzie boys, same as last week,” the clerk told the cops. “They’re in here stealing beer all the damned time. That oldest boy, he ain’t killed no one before. Girl came busting in the front door and he got spooked and he shot her. Then he grabbed his beer and took off.”
Black spots filled my vision despite being recently dead. I sat down on a box of beer and put my head between my knees, hands tunneling into my hair. My dad was going to be pissed. I hyperventilated for a minute, then gave it up when I couldn’t feel the air in my lungs. So far, being dead sucked.
Concentrating really hard, I swiped my hand at the display of chocolate candy.
Nothing.
So I jumped into the cop’s body. Slid right through and ended up ass-over-teakettle on the peeling laminate floor. Damn Hollywood didn’t get anything right.
And still no one looked.
***
When the cop handed over a business card and stomped out the front door, I followed. Why not? Maybe he was on his way to confront my killer. He climbed into the front seat of his police interceptor and rubbed his whiskered face while his partner plopped into the front passenger seat with a sigh. I slid through the back door into the prisoner seat, my second time in a cop car. Why didn’t I fall through the seat to the road? Why did the movies make ghosting look so easy? And where was my bright light, or spirit guide, or higher power or whatever to answer all these questions?
We pulled up to a shitty World War II-era home—red brick and small windows with “Yazzie” in those peel-and-stick letters on the mailbox next to the numbers, and dead grass with live weeds decorated by broken beer bottles glinting in the bare bulb of the front porch light. One cop went to the fence on the side of the house and peeked through the gaps while the other pounded on the cracked wood of the doorframe.
I slid right on through.
Behind the door was a bare living room with more beer bottles, a broken-down couch, a massive TV, and still-cool stolen beer half-drunk on the floor.
And a heroin-skinny guy with prison tats, his bony hand wrapped around a huge black gun.
I never moved so fast in my life, then I realized he wasn't pointing the gun at me, but at the door, and the cop behind it.
"Oh, hell no!" He already killed me, I wasn't going to let him kill anyone else.
Dude flinched.
He could hear me?
I waved my hand.
"I killed you," he whispered, side-eyeing me but shakily keeping the gun trained on the front door. "I can't see you cause I killed you."
Hah! He could see me. Sliding between him and the unsuspecting cop on the other side, I started talking a mile a minute. "Did you kill me? Huh? Then what am I doing here? Oh, and thanks for that, by the way. Like I didn't have a life for plans or--" I swallowed quick. No time to think of that now. He wasn't going to kill a cop. Not if I could stop him.
“You can’t talk to me. You’re dead.” Now that gun was really shaking, wavering all over the place.
"Leland Yazzie!" the cop yelled. "I know you're in there. I can hear you. Open the door!"
"Leland, huh?" I got right up in his face and he backed up a step, the gun dipping down to my knees. "You ruined my life, Leland. You think I can ruin yours?"
"Stop talking!"
Sounded like an invitation to me, so I kept at him, backing him up step by step and watching his eyes get wider and wilder until--
Bam.
Everything went white, but this time it was me, spinning in the path of that bullet, spinning to steal its power, spinning to keep it from hitting the cop who was turning the doorknob.
I dunno how, but it worked.
The bullet curved and hit the hinges side of the door, then stuck instead of going right through. The cop pointed his own gun at Leland instead of getting shot. And Leland Yazzie dropped to the floor, dropped the gun, and wailed his guts out, begging for forgiveness and babbling about ghosts.
I smiled.
Guess I had something to do after all.
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