Second Chance

Part 1: Poltergeist a serial ghost story by Erin Zarro It started with the radio. I’d been listening to a talk show, not ready for music yet, as I went through my parents’ closet. The house was huge: four bedrooms, a living room, a family room, two bathrooms, and a basement to go through. I was doing it in stages. I needed to sell the house as soon as possible but going through their possessions tore my heart out and burned it for good measure.                 The talk show was some mundane thing about the government. I wasn’t even sure what. My dad had followed that crap. He was a guitarist, and he loved music, which is why I couldn’t bear to listen to it. I couldn’t bear to do a lot of things. In the wake of the plane crash that had killed my family — my parents and my younger sister, Penny — there was so much I had yet to do. So much to remember — do this, do that, fill this out, get that form in, pay these bills, arrange this… It was overwhelming me.                 Yet here I was with the closet open in an empty, now-sterile house with only memories and furniture and clutter to keep me company.                 I caught sight of one of my mother’s old sundresses, one that I remembered her wearing when I was a kid. I took the material between two fingertips. It had little sunflowers on it and…

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First Soul

a short story in the Reaper Girl Universeby Erin Zarro                 I gazed down at the sleeping child in front of me. She lay in a bed surrounded by colorful pillows and covered by an equally colorful comforter that looked heavy and comfortable.                 She, however, looked anything but comfortable.                 She had one of those oxygen things poked up into her nostrils, an IV in one arm, and what looked like a catheter from the bag that hung down from the bedside.                 This child was sick.                 Her pale face and dull blond hair told me that she’d been in the hospital for a while.                 “She looks so peaceful, Ariana,” my mother, the infamous Grim Reaper and private investigator, Leliel Ashton, said softly.                 “But she’s dying,” I protested. “How can she be peaceful?”                 “There’s a kind of peace that comes with death. And with the reaping of the soul,” Mom said, glancing at me and holding my gaze. “This soul will need you when it’s time. You must be ready.”                 I frowned. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready, Mom.”                 She’d hammered this death stuff on me for fifteen years. It felt like the world’s biggest burden and not my life’s work.                 I loved to paint. Maybe giving life to new creation offset the fact that I was basically a death angel. The beauty in creating something from nothing felt more like my life’s work than anything.                 Mom’s jaw dropped. “You…

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The Spell and the Burn

a free sci-fi short story by Erin Zarro This was the place.                 The school had stood here once, many years ago. The imprint of my trauma still lingered; I felt it in the wind.                 The Book had said to find a place with resonance. A place where the path of my life had completely changed.                 I took a breath, let it out. I didn’t want to remember, but for this to work, I had to face the memories.                 Afterward, my life hadn’t been horrible. I’d gone to college and had become a nurse. I had had a job at a prestigious medical center.                 I’d retired from there. My co-workers had thrown a huge retirement party for me. I’d gone home. I’d felt amazing. I’d done good in this world. I’d never married, but that had never bothered me.                 Until I’d found the Book.                 If I hadn’t been traumatized, hospitalized, and shunned by my peers …maybe someone would have loved me. I’d always felt wrong in my skin, completely unlovable.                 And then…                 I’d found the Book, and my life was about to change once again.                 Yes, this is the place where I’d do the ritual.                 I set the bag I’d bought on the grass and rummaged through it for my supplies. Salt for the magical circle. A pentagram necklace. A ceremonial blade.  Candles.                 The sun was setting, and the sky became alive with multicolored hues and golden light. I…

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The Photograph

a free horror short story by Erin Zarro The strange picture hung in the hallway near my bedroom, cloaked in shadows. It was a picture of a woman who wore a black dress. A black veil covered her face completely, obscuring her facial features. I’d grown up in this house, and the picture had been there for as long as I could remember. Unfortunately, the only way to my bedroom was past that picture. Every time I passed by her, goosebumps raised on my arms, the hairs at the back of my neck stood up, and I’d get this painful twisting in my stomach. It lasted only seconds, but it was enough. My brother and I were walking home from school one day. The air was crisp with the feel of approaching autumn. Leaves had started to turn color. My heart was heavy, because at school I had friends. At home, not so much. “I’m gonna tell Mom and Dad that you broke Mom’s vase,” my little brother, Evan, said in a sing-song voice. “They’ll believe me. They always do.” It was freaking inevitable, so I didn’t bother arguing. “Whatever.” Evan stopped dead on the sidewalk, an expression of disbelief on his face. “Something’s wrong with you. You always argue with me. ‘Specially when I lie to Mom and Dad.” I shrugged. “I dunno. They’ll blame me anyway, so what’s the point?” Evan started walking again, and I followed. Yep, that was the ritual. Evan blamed me for something I…

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The House Robot

The House Robot A free short story by Siri Paulson     Priya’s house was the last one on their street in Jaipur to get one of Reenu Mehta’s house robots. By that time, everyone knew how many things house robots were good for. You could order them to do your laundry – cheaper in the long run than paying a washerwoman. You could teach them to cook basic curries and naan faster than you could do it yourself. Some of them would even diagnose female complaints and tell you what medicines you needed. Only a woman engineer could have thought of that, the aunties said approvingly. So Priya talked her mother into putting aside some of Priya’s teaching salary, little by little, until they could buy a second-hand house robot. It was just as useful as advertised, and, even better, her mother was able to boast to her friends about what a good deal they had gotten. During this time, Priya’s uncle drove in from the village once in a while to see how they were getting on after the death of her father. At first he had brought money, but that had stopped after Priya’s mother turned down his offer of marriage. It was only right, he said, that he should marry his brother’s widow and so look after her. But Priya had seen the way he looked at her, and she knew it was not her mother he wanted. Since then, he only came by to issue…

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Sun Touched

by Erin Zarro A free serial story in the Fey Touched universe Part 2 Get caught up: Part 1 Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 DAY ONE I was awakened by my cell door being unlocked. I blinked, trying to remember where I was and what was happening. Oh, right. I was being held prisoner by rogues who thought I could heal one – And speaking of him, I watched as he came into my cell. He then closed and locked the cell door. I blinked again. “What’re you doing here?” I shifted uncomfortably, my muscles sore. My back, where my wings would be if I unfurled them, hurt, too. Probably because I’d fallen asleep in a weird position. Ry gave me an assessing look. “We’re roommates.” “I don’t think so.” I tried to stand, but my equilibrium was all wrong. Ry came over and tried to steady me, but I pulled away quickly. “Do not touch me.” “Okay, if you’d rather fall…” He shrugged. “Just trying to help.” I eyed the swirling designs on his hands. “I just would rather you not touch me, all right?” “Because of these?” Ry held up his hands. “They say it’s not contagious.” “Only to rogues,” I said. “That’s what I heard.” Ry went to the opposite wall, sat down, and pulled his knees to his chest. “So whatever shall we do?” I went to the cot, because I was here first, damn it. And I wasn’t about to spend the…

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A Sneak Peek of Ever Touched

Hi, guys! Erin here. Here is a sneak peek of Ever Touched, book #3 in my Fey Touched series, which will be released on May 1st. This part is from early in the book. Enjoy, and keep your eyes peeled for an announcement of its release (that’s like, 30 days from now! Holy cow!). “What do you see? What do you see?” Charles was experimenting again, which meant more serum. More predictions. More abuse. The light was too dim and my eyes kept wanting to close. Charles had been slapping me to wake me up. I hadn’t slept in a while. In fact, it was quite possible I’d not slept for at least twenty-four hours. My sense of time was completely skewed. It felt like night, but I supposed it could be morning. Or something. I kept talking. Every so often I caught sight of a person in the shadows. He never came forward, never helped or hurt me. He just stood there, observing, making notes. He unnerved me. “Another injection. Up it by fifty,” Charles said, and I jolted with the pain of it. No one was ever gentle. “It’s not clear enough.” He glanced at me. “Hang on. The ride’s about to get really bumpy…” And bumpy it was. Images flashed in my mind’s eye like flashes of a camera: a man with black wings. A woman in armor and…wings made of…light? They were talking. She looked transparent underneath the armor. I relayed all of this to Charles, who…

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The Night Forest

The Night Forest by Kit Campbell   She looked through the window though there was nothing to see on the other side; the depths of night hid what lay within her view. She could sense him behind her, close enough to touch, but not. “What is it you see out there?” That weird tightness to his voice that had been present lately. “Nothing,” she said. “I see nothing.” “Then why do you look?” She shook her head and turned to look at him, this man who would one day be her husband, though now he drew subtly away from her. Why did she look, when she knew the small window and the black of night would show her nothing? “It is past midnight,” she said instead. “Why are you not abed?” “While you wander the halls, so shall I.” A light remark, one that could have been sweet, had she not seen the tension in his shoulders, had he not held himself so far away from her. He was watching her, like she might turn at any moment. Turn into what, she had not decided. ~*~*~*~*~ The first change had been her difficulty sleeping. She’d taken to wandering the halls at night, though all slept except the guards on the walls. Still, despite her nightly excursions, she was not tired, not drained. But then, when she did sleep, the dream had come. She was somewhere deep and dark, with trees towering overhead. She could hear and sense creatures moving around…

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Sun Touched

by Erin Zarro a free serial story in the Fey Touched universe Part 1 Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 I woke up in filth. A dirty, cold floor. Two mice chased each other along one equally dirty wall. It was stained with who-knew-what. Musty, sweat-filled air surrounded me. And, I could smell blood. I looked down. All I wore was a simple cotton shift that opened in the back. I had a bad feeling I knew what that was for. A pool of blood surrounded my leg, so I must have gotten injured somehow. I couldn’t remember what had happened. I was in a small prison cell. A filthy cot sat in one corner, no blankets. A bucket sat in the opposite corner, and apparently, someone had emptied it recently, because I did not smell the stink of human waste. Thank Artemis for that. My prison was in a dark, large room. All I remembered was fighting the rogues with my tribe. I’d spun around to stake one. Then, a punch to my gut, and nothing else. Where were the others? Had they been captured, too? I shivered, curling up into a little ball Freaking hell. Was anyone around? I licked my dry lips. “Hello? Anyone there?” “I see you’ve woken up,” a male voice said from the shadows. He stepped forward, and I saw that he was outside of my cell. And that he was one of the rogues. I uncurled and stood,…

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Operating Systems

A poem by Siri Paulson He was an apple boy she was an android girl living their lives side by side orbits and orbits, never intersect lost in the space ‘twixt the stars. He went for coffee here, white earbuds and logos on every table; played on the blue side of app-based games, drank his beer at the chosen locations, walked the streets with his tribe. She loved her artisan tea café, black tablets and laptops everywhere near; played with the reds, talked smack to the blues, drank her artisan ciders one gastropub over. They crossed paths outside and went their own ways. His school taught him iOS, hers taught her Linux; he learned to draw and she programmed on Windows. They never saw the same job ads; Google showed them half the world only. His search results, social media feeds, the ads that followed him through his day, pointed all to one reality. Living on the flip side, she saw black where he saw white, two views almost entirely unlike. One saw hope where the other saw fear. Change was coming too slow, or maybe too fast. Tilt the world like a kaleidoscope, and watch the facts fall into place; then tilt again and see them shift. The patterns are only what you see. The social networks where they hung out watched where they clicked, liked, touched; fed them more of the same, hid what didn’t match. Their cell usage, buying patterns, where the eye lingered, all reinforced, and…

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