It is a land of ancient city-states, morto e sepolto… the dead and gone. Remnants of forgotten and abandoned houses and estates sprinkle the countryside. Once thriving and vital, now no one lives in them, and the keening of the winds through the ruins is their only sound. Even in towns and cities that live, in almost all, there is a legend sometimes distorted far from its origin of a casa stregata… a haunted house. Some are deathly still, lonely cenotaphs, mere empty markers of a tragic past. Others contain souls that sleep awhile and awake… hungry.
What if you could give someone you love one more hour of life? The passion of love bursting into flame is more powerful than death, stronger than the grave.
The Querency—beginning at midnight 24 October—is when Witches and Cats seek to bond with each other. It lasts until sundown on Hallowe’en, when the Choosing—the selection period—begins and lasts until midnight [11:59:59pm].
~ Ordinatio pro Felis Silvestris Catus [Regulations for Woodland Cats]
One of our eShort stories for Halloween. A 1,151-word hybrid story (nonfiction with a fiction piece embedded). A father’s story to his daughters about a strange new girl he had met in high school: “When your eyes met hers, she was looking deeper into you than you could ever see into her.”
My daughters asked me, “Dad, do you believe in ghosts and demons?” So, I told them this story. A real moment blended with some storytelling.
I had a note in my story-idea book for some time about a revenge killing at the height of a hurricane. It seemed a perfect way to cover up a crime. One hurricane-season morning, while enjoying my coffee and watching hurricane news (I live in Florida), I toyed with the thread of a few lines for that story as the caffeine kicked in. As I scanned my images folder, I came across one (a text image) that gave me the title and the core of the story’s protagonist. It fleshed out my premise… you can push a person too far, and then the 6th commandment (or other laws) may not keep them from doing what they must to survive. And what better time to do something so drastic than when you stand a good chance of getting away with it.
For the past month, Samantha’s grandfather had sat on the front porch each day as the summer deepened into a…
The dead woman’s head rested on sheet music and a keyboard. Someone had arranged her long hair and swept it back from her face. The flower over her left ear… maybe was already there. The open eyes were sea green. When she was alive, they had depth and probably changed shade with shifting sunlight. Now, they were shallows, as still as shoal water over coastal muck. Her face… smooth, unlined. Not a hint of a life lived badly… but one that seemed hardly lived at all. “She wanted to sin, but she was too shy.”
he stories are tales of what once was—what is now—and what might become ‘Good or Evil.’ The future is in flux and depends on people shaped by their past and the decisions they make in the present. Will Good triumph over Evil?
I have written a lot of nonfiction and fiction since 2008. As of January 1, 2019, over two million words published (includes 30 books ghostwritten for clients: 12 nonfiction, 9 memoirs, and 9 fiction).