The Woman in the Red Dress

She had gray skin pulled over her frame like stockings over legs. Her hands looked like the leaves of an elm in autumn—cracked and dry. She wore no shoes on her feet, but they still scraped across the floor, all the same. And when she sighed, her lips would open just a sliver. A sigh which sounded like the house settling, branches dragging across a window, and the steady drip of cold water in the sink. Sometimes, she would be in the mirror of the bathroom, the pink tile surrounding her. She would dance underneath the basement staircase. But the dress would always be billowing in the wind, even when the air was still.

A ghost is everything and nothing at the same time. The sound of old wood creaking. A face reflected in the glass. A rattling boiler would hold her bones, while a clock’s subtle ticking became the hollow tapping of her fingernails.

We moved out of the house when I was in 5th grade. I never said goodbye, but then again, neither did she.

The Harvestmen

“The harvestmen fell with the autumn leaves. It was said that as the nights grew longer, so did their legs. Before, they could’ve been mistaken as stars. There would be a series of cracking sounds after they fell, but to the townspeople below, the bones snapping and realigning was only a rustling of leaves. The moon sent them down to take the summer. On the coldest nights, just before winter comes and the harvestmen have no more summer to take, they’ll collect the children.”

“Why do they do it?”

“The moon needs enough summer to bring them home. No one wants to be abandoned.”

His Garden

He grew roses in the woods before he left. The thorns turned yellow like maggots, with their fleshy petals peeling away. Bits and pieces all rotting unceremoniously. The pinks turn back to the earth, soaking up the greens, blues, and blacks of the soils. The forest creatures are feeding, swarming. And the roses miss him, but they live on. Their flowers are white as bones.

2-Sentence Horror Story

I walked into math class at 8:04 AM with dark bags under my bags under my eyes. After I sat down, my friend leaned over and asked a question that triggered my fight-or-flight response: “Are you ready for the test?”