Wraith Stories

The air was sweet, heavy with the scent of ripe, cloying fruit. The sound of buzzing near the pomegranates that swayed and hung low in the heat was distracting me enough that the woman’s pulse thudded against mine, the salt of her blood splashed its way down my throat like stolen refugees running for asylum in the new land of a foreigners body, was background noise to the glare of the sun. It felt like my pores were squin...

Crisp, brittle dune grass scratched against my jeans as I hiked up the slope. Molly followed behind on her leash, head down, her soft, floppy ears drooping even more than normal. I reached the top of the dune and scanned the horizon; nothing but more dunes as far as I could see in one direction. Pale, sickly sunlight filtered through the thickening clouds that had drifted in from the coast in the last half hour. It didn’t...