by submission | Dec 25, 2025 | Story |
Author: Daniel Miltz
They live remote, because living remote they remember everything. The neighborhood leans inward like old men listening, and the people hold faces that don’t blink. During the day, the ghosts come out wearing the habits they died in: a man still counting coins that lost their value in another country, a woman gripping grocery bags filled with nothing but regret. They don’t float. They linger. They’ve learned the city’s most important rule, don’t take up space unless you have to.
In the neighborhood, the ghosts blend in better. They sit on stoops and smoke air. They argue in languages that were supposed to be left behind, arguing about land that no longer belongs to them, about who suffered more, who survived, about how things used to be better when everyone knew their place. They haunt the house windows, staring down at kids who don’t say hello anymore. The ghosts call it disrespect. The kids call it survival.
The children are alive, but only technically. Rotten behavior grows well with some of them, like weeds through cracked concrete. They shove each other for no reason, laugh too loud at pain, talk about everything except their own emptiness. Their attitudes are armor, thick, loud, sharp-edged. They learned early that kindness gets stolen, that softness gets you laughed at, that selfishness is the only thing nobody can take from you. The ghosts watch them with tired eyes, recognizing the pattern. This is how haunting starts.
In the parks, the ghosts spread out. Parks are supposed to be for breathing, but the city forgot that. During the warm months, old men play games against opponents who died years ago, slamming their fists down like they can still win something. Mothers push invisible strollers, humming songs from the words worn smooth from repetition. The grass is thin here, trampled by memories that never learned how to recognize them.
Some ghosts don’t know they’re ghosts. They still punch clocks, still complain about prices, still shove past strangers without looking. They don’t move on because moving on costs energy, and the city already took most of that. They carry old rules into new streets and get angry when the streets don’t obey. They say, “I earned this,” even when nobody knows what this is anymore.
The city itself is the worst ghost of all. It remembers every promise it broke. It taught people to hurry, to hoard, to harden. It rewards selfishness with survival and calls it success. It doesn’t ask you to be good, only efficient.
Sometimes, late at night, a living person pauses in the neighborhood. They feel the weight of all that staying. They breathe, really breathe, and for a moment the ghosts quiet down. One or two fade, just slightly, unsure. Moving on is contagious, but so is staying.
By morning, the city will be loud again. The ghosts will return to their homes. The kids will keep acting tough. And somewhere between the park bench and their domains, a new ghost will begin, still alive, already stuck.
by submission | Dec 24, 2025 | Story |
Author: Keisha Hartley
Amara’s head knocked against the cold car window, jolting her awake. Her fingers were numb from clutching the long black case on her lap. The Uber driver sped down the winding path unbothered by the rain. Ahead, the dark spires of her grandmother’s home jutted above the crest of the driveway hill the Corolla struggled to climb, tires sliding on the slick gravel.
Jorge, she reminded herself as she checked the app, grunted.
“I don’t know what business you have here, Miss, but do it quick. If you’re thinking of asking me to wait, the answer’s no. I don’t mess with that freaky shit.”
“I won’t.” Her voice cracked. She hadn’t spoken in days.
Jorge pulled to a sharp stop in the circular drive. She managed a weak “Thank you,” but he was already gone. She stood alone in front of the massive house, rain dripping into every uncomfortable seam of her clothes.
“Hey, Grandma,” she whispered toward the empty windows as she dragged her suitcases up the steep wooden steps. She fumbled through her wool coat for the heavy set of keys mailed to her with her grandmother’s will. Dust clouds rose as she shoved the door open and pulled her things inside.
She had always done what she was told. Her parents demanded it: classes, sports, instruments, clothes, friends—every decision theirs, never hers. Now they were gone. Everyone she loved was gone. And still she obeyed. Her grandmother’s will had been clear: if her parents were dead and she herself had passed, Amara was to inherit and live in her summer home.
She remembered it fondly. Running through gardens, gathering flowers her grandmother pointed out. Never caring what the neighbors whispered about shadows moving where they shouldn’t. Here, she had felt free. But now, she felt numb. Her muffled sobs echoed in the hollow rooms. She needed to find a place to sleep. Cleaning could wait.
A sharp clang paralyzed her. From the kitchen.
Heart hammering, she crept in. The room looked unchanged; the same weathered wood table where she and her grandmother spent hours cooking, pots bubbling, laughter rising with the steam, scent of dried flowers and medicinal herbs all around.
On the stove, a pot simmered. Heavy soup spoon on the floor. She edged closer. The warm, savory scent of pumpkin soup washed over her. Exactly as she remembered. But how?
A thin shiver rippled up her neck as a soft humming filled the room. A familiar tune—the first song she had ever played live on the flute. Martinu Sonata. The humming cut off right before her favorite part.
“No, no, no…” Panic rising, she ran back to the door, shoving her suitcases, looking for her black case. She snapped it open. Inside lay the one thing her parents had left her. A vintage flute.
She pressed it to her lips and picked up where the humming faded.
The sound returned, now weaving with hers.
Tears of joy streamed down her cheeks.
She wasn’t alone.
by submission | Dec 23, 2025 | Story |
Author: Majoki
Well into the neopandemic I noticed the countdown. Inside my left eyelid.
A faint image, like a digital timer flickering. I couldn’t make out distinct digits in the rolling blur of numbers so there was no real way of knowing if it was counting up or down.
But my gut knew. Immediately. Things were headed down.
It was impossible to say at what number the countdown had started. No way of knowing when it would end. But the numbers kept spinning. Floating somewhere in my left eye.
A ghost in the machine. In my mind.
That’s not something you tell anyone. Especially when folks are so uptight already. Besides, everyone was counting the days, hours, minutes, seconds until life as we knew it could resume.
Which is bogus. Life as we knew it. That’s gone. You can’t unknow a pandemic. Can’t unknow how fast everything changes.
Maybe that’s what I’m experiencing when I close my left eye. Maybe my internal clock has gone haywire. Or maybe I’m beginning to see what was always out there: the time left.
To me. To us. To the notion of humanity. To the notion of time.
When the neopandemic shut us in our homes again, when its covidian rhythms disrupted our circadian ones, the thought of going off-clock, off calendar, messed with me. Totally disoriented my days.
Then it didn’t. I reoriented. That’s when I confronted the construct we’d lived with long before the virus and all its variants made us vulnerable to our very primitive concept of being.
Past. Present. Future. These are merely conventions humans adopted long, long ago to dodge a dire truth. We’re time bound. Shackled by yesterday, today, tomorrow. Our temporal framework is not an existential cornerstone, it is a cage.
We’ve become perilously time bound.
And we’re all counting down.
I don’t think that’s a startling or brave realization. We’re all on the clock. That’s not a surprise. What spooked me was when the numbers on my left eyelid became sharper, and I could plainly see the countdown clock was actually counting up.
So when does counting up equal counting down?
Think zero. Zero us.
The count under my left eyelid was in sync with the number of worldwide neopandemic deaths. And the daily numbers were spinning faster and faster, ripping upwards.
Zero us.
It made me blink.
by Julian Miles | Dec 22, 2025 | Story |
Author: Julian Miles, Staff Writer
Jingle bells my ass. Actually, if I’d had one, the ex-wife probably would have. Covered it’s harness in fairy lights, too. She loved sparkly tat. Guess that’s why she hooked up with the bright-eyed pretty boy I used to be. Then she got pregnant and we both got ugly.
I raise a dirty glass.
“Cheers, Madeline, wherever the fuck you are.”
Finishing that one off, I top up again.
Actually, what we made was two separate lives joined at the kids. They noticed, we didn’t. Kept on living a lie that hurt us all. Changed us, too. I’d like to say I got stronger. What I actually got was meaner and drunker.
Timing. Another one down.
Refill!
Right. Maudlin reflections on Christmas week: repeats, of course. Isn’t that what maudlin is all about? Circling a drain you never quite go down, but can’t pull away from.
Where was I? Oh yes. Kids: Alison, Rebecca, Jason, and Kyle. Would have been more, but we finally realised fucking wasn’t a solution to the problem that outside of sex, we didn’t like each other.
Four new lives. Kyle was the first. Grew into a teenage charmer with no morals. Nothing slowed him down. Not me, not Madeline, not his siblings or even his girl. Who was she? Lilly. That’s her. Gentle. Sweet. Haven’t seen her since his funeral. Pretty sure it was her family that did him for stealing twenty kilos of marching powder, but past is past and she seemed to really care.
Jason. The boy. Gay and changed my mind about all of that. Duncan, his fella, is a bouncer. I haven’t seen either of them since her funeral…
Her. Rebecca. Happily studying for grade seven music while cancer ate her guts. Everybody found out too late. Saddest funeral I’ve ever been to. Nobody was ready. Fucking awful.
Alison. Well, now. Back to yesterday evening. Just let me down this…
And top up.
She’s in hospital. A drunk put here there: me. I spun the motor off a country lane. She was in the back, her fella next to me. When I saw the state of her, I lost it. Put him in the driver’s seat, set it up proper, then got the fuck out of there. Couldn’t get locked up, she’d need me.
Coppers woke me this morning to say she’d been in an accident.
“Why do I try, yet always do so bad?”
Truth?
“Because it’s always about me.”
And that’s usually… Wrong.
“What a fucking time to realise. Too fucking late, again.”
“That’s my cue, if ever I heard one.”
Why is it bright in here?
“Did you know you’ve got wings on your back, miss?”
“That’s because I’m an angel, you sad case.”
“Oh, that’s alright, then. Come to smite me, have you?”
“She doesn’t smite people at this time of year. Tries to lead by example. That’s why I’m here.”
“I’m drunk, shiny miss. You’ll have to explain it slow.”
“Think of me as a gift for Alison. She survives. You own up, then get yourself straight. She eventually gets a real father – or as close as you can get.”
Harsh… Truth.
“What if I fail?”
“Smite.”
Oh.
“This is a one-time deal, Mark. Fuck it up and she’ll smite you flat like any other petty, selfish, irredeemable drunkard.”
I hear that.
“Should you be swearing?”
“I speak all tongues. Fuck translates well. Rarely gets misinterpreted.”
True enough.
“Okay. Please save my kid.”
“Shall do. Merry Christmas, Mark.”
I’m sober.
She’s gone.
I get up slowly, then empty glass and bottle into the sink.
“Fuck.”
by Alastair Millar | Dec 21, 2025 | Story |
Author: Alastair Millar
Grandpa Jack had a generous ‘meritorious service’ pension from his time in the Terran Space Force, but he never talked about his time in uniform, or shared war stories. “I’d rather not,” he’d say diffidently, or, if pressed, “Just not much to tell, really”. Everyone around him quietly assumed that his off-world deployments has been in logistics or some other non-combat role, and that he was just shy about admitting it; eventually, they stopped asking. Still, the money had been useful, and shrewdly invested over the years, so every winter he’d take some of the profits and put them towards a Yuletide excursion to Anchorpoint Station, the O’Neill habitat at L4. “A bit of spacefaring for old times’ sake,” he’d say.
The year things changed, he and Nana Martha had been joined by their second son, his wife, and their youngling, Jimmy, who like most four-year olds was a whirlwind of chaos and occasional destruction. He exhausted and infuriated his parents and grandmother in equal measure, but seemed to hold Jack in awe – with the result that Grandpa usually ended up with babysitting duty. That Tuesday was no different: the others having gone off to enjoy some low-gravity skiing, the oldest and youngest members of the family were supposedly looking for last-minute Christmas presents, but were actually just wandering through Central Mall in Cylinder One. Male bonding was in progress.
That was when it happened. As they rounded a corner onto the main atrium, Jimmy screamed “space elves!”, and the old reflexes took over; Jack dropped, dragging the boy to the ground. How had those damned pointy-eared humanoids reached Sol? They’d been whipped proper at Barnard’s Star: the Habitats should all be safe! His hand went to his waistband for his blaster, and he realised it wasn’t there. Godsdammit! He needed backup! He reached for his commbox, and that wasn’t there either! But before he could panic, he realised something wasn’t right… and came back to himself. Around them, people were staring and whispering. A couple of security guards were pushing through the gathering crowd. Of course, the war had ended decades ago. He got up slowly and sheepishly; Jimmy wriggled away, and rushed over to the bright lights of Solar Santa’s Galactic Grotto…
Later, there were questions, of course. Habitat Social Services had wanted a long chat, a local journalist thought he could find a human interest angle, and the rest of the family had been rounded up and brought in “to make sure the child was safe”. Bit by bit, the story came out. About how Jack had been a major in the Stellar Rangers, and fought in the Ophiuchus Campaign – a protracted, bloody struggle infamous for massacres and war crimes on both sides.
“What was left of us, they brought back after the Enaiposha Incident.” he said, then sighed when the others looked blank. “The Offies poisoned the planet’s atmosphere; tens of thousands of us started spilling our guts. We were easy prey for their assault teams.” It had taken three brutal weeks for relief forces to arrive; twenty one days of running battles, desperate gambles, heroic last stands, and blood, blood and death, everywhere. “When we came home, the press ignored us. I thought if I kept quiet, buried it deep, I could forget, and the nightmares would stop. Eventually they did.” Then came the parts they knew: he’d met a girl, got married, picked up the pieces and carried on… built a life, and a mostly happy one at that. But some things, it seemed, even time and the holidays couldn’t erase.
by submission | Dec 20, 2025 | Story |
Author: Matthew Luscher
It began to pour as the bus pulled in. The driver shot me a puzzled look as I stepped off and made a gesture clearly hinting for me to get back onboard.
I ignored him.
It had been half a mornings journey down bumpy country roads, following the recommendation of a tattered old guide book I had bought a few days ago at a second hand shop.
I had flicked through the pages and landed on a village called Ullaloch in the Scottish highlands. It wasn’t its Jacobean hotel or twice a day buses that interested me, but a small note in strange handwriting next to the cheery description:
It is a great place for a short rest.
I had to have a look.
As the bus slid away I started down a narrow country lane towards the village. Not long after I spotted an old and large red brick building flanked by turrets, that must be the hotel. I quickened my pace and as I rounded the corner the rest of the village came into view.
Or what should have been the village.
Instead beyond the edge of the hotel the road ended right at the foot of a massive fortified concrete wall. There was no entrance.
The place seemed desolate, I couldn’t see a single person. I stared at my travel guide and looked again, no, this was it.
Intrigued, I went up to the hotel. The wallpaper was moulded and most of the windows were smashed. A worn noticeboard in the corner had a few leaflets pinned to it. Most were too faded to be legible but one said “Save our Ullaloch from Experiment No. 235824” and another “Community Giveaway: Travel Books!”.
As I was reading the board I felt a sudden cold draft on my neck. I thought it was the wind from the broken windows.
Then the coldness began to spread to my shoulders and back.
That was weird.
Suddenly I started to stumble, my vision swimming, I tried to grasp a nearby chair but my arms were frozen.
I was falling.
But I didn’t get as far as the floor.
Instead I felt hands around my shoulders. A silhouette appeared in front of me.
“Another tourist?”
“Looks like it, he’s got that book, same one as they all have”.
“Who are you?” I tried to ask, but it was no good, I was slipping away.
“Take him… main road… book…”
Thoughts are blurring… are those… ruins of cottages… Ullaloch…? Is that a huge pile… of… of travel guides?!
…
Honk.
Honk.
What is that sound? I want to sleep…
Honk.
HONK.
No, it won’t stop. Fine, fine.
I open my eyes.
The light is blinding. I see… a shape of a bus? An impatient looking driver was blasting the horn for all it was worth.
“Wake up! I won’t be driving back around here till morning”.
I stumble onboard, struggling with my pockets before I find my wallet and pay for a ticket.
The bus doors shut with a hiss and then with a rumble we began to move off.
How did I get here? It’s already evening. I can’t understand what happened. Did I fall asleep when waiting for the bus?
I do feel rested.
Wait a minute. Where is my guide book? It’s not in my pocket, I must have dropped it when rushing to get onboard.
Oh well.
It wasn’t that useful anyway.
