Storytime: Questions From A Vaporous Mind (And Introducing Friday's Guest!)

It's about time I had some fiction up here! For your reading pleasure, here is a little bit of a ghost story. Let the Halloween spirit be with you!

Questions from a Vaporous Mind

"Do you believe in humans?" May asked. She sat on a moss-covered pile of what might once have been furniture in an ancient stone house. Moonlight passed unobstructed through her form. A locket laying on the ground by her knee vibrated, and May tilted her head.

"Prudence says she believes in humans. She says a human wore her once, long ago."

"Prudence isn't even a ghost. She's just a silly curse. And I don't think that you can really understand what she's saying. I think you're just making it up."

The cursed necklace hopped, jumped, and glowed a bright, angry red. It landed on Eustace and fell right through him without leaving a mark. Prudence the necklace rolled into a corner, as if to sulk.

"Fine then. What do you think?"

"Humans, humans," Eustace said, shaking his head. "I think they're just legends. All the stories make them out to be so strange. They have one fixed size and shape. They're free to move about wherever they wish. They can't move through walls, and apparently if you squish them with a big rock they go away and don't come back."

"I believe in humans!"

This came from Helene, who had just materialized outside the gaping window-hole of the crumbling house. Helene was a residual haunting, and appeared around this time every night at the window before running off into the surrounding forest.

"You'll believe in anything," Eustace said, rolling his ghostly eyes.

"I've seen one once! I think it saw me, too, because it ran away awful quick. They say in the human stories that they're afraid of us."

"Yeah, and they also say that some humans go around 'banishing' us to some 'alternate dimension.' What a load of junk."

The sound of footfalls interrupted Eustace. The ghosts perked up and looked around.

"Eep! I bet that's a human now!"

May dispersed.

"You're such a wimp. I bet it's just a dumb old fox."

Eustace floated past a couple of walls until he came in view of the space where the front door had once stood. There, an odd creature stopped in its tracks and stared straight at him.

"Hello?" the creature asked in a trembling voice.

"Um, boo?" Eustace responded.

The thing let out a blood-curdling shriek, and raced out of the ruined house and away through the forest. Eustace returned to his seat as May reappeared.

"I told you humans were real! That was a human! I knew it!"

"Yeah, yeah," Eustace said in a mournful voice. "I should have squished it with a rock. You know what they say about humans. One of them catches a glimpse of you, next thing you know the whole place is swarming and you can't get rid of them."

Don't forget to stop by this Friday, October 31, for a Community Fridays interview with a truly spooky lady, Chris Verstraete. There's a scavenger hunt! And prizes!