Alfonso shivered. Stories of the dark arts always freaked him out. The boy seriously hoped the old man wasn’t familiar with the dark arts.

  Alfonso suddenly felt sick to his stomach. He didn’t want the chocolate anymore. Maybe he would sell it at school tomorrow. Besides, it was too late to go back, right? The chocolate was already seriously melted and he had eaten nearly half of it.

  Alfonso ignored the voices in his head and cut his way through his family’s small papaya field, through the vegetable garden, dodged some clucking chickens, and headed toward his small adobe and waddle home. As he absently kicked away an annoying rooster, Alfonso decided that the old man had only been muttering, because, well, that’s what old men do: they mutter!

  That made him feel good.

  He took another bite of chocolate.

  As usual, the door to his house was open. As he approached it, he could see his mother in the front room folding clothes. She was a big woman and worked harder than anyone Alfonso had ever known. Harder than even his dad. Harder than any two dads combined! He didn’t know how she did it. She had two jobs and was raising six kids and worked tirelessly around the home.

  Alfonso suddenly felt guilty. Very guilty. What if his mom found out about the chocolate? She would be very disappointed in him. But she wouldn’t yell at him. No, she never yelled at him. She always talked to him like a little adult, and Alfonso could already feel the heat of shame creep into his cheeks.

  He stepped up onto the front porch, which consisted of many planks of silk cottonwood bound together, grayish now with age. The porch sagged under his weight, creaking. His foot landed neatly between two planks of old wood, narrowly missing a seamless crack.

  Return the chocolate.

  It suddenly sounded like a damn good idea.

  But you’ve already eaten most of it.

  Doesn’t matter. Return it and apologize and save yourself from shame.

  Or from a curse.

  Through the door, he could see his mother deftly folding a huge sheet. She was humming to herself, unaware of him. He could see sweat on the back of her neck. Her calves were thick and strong. He loved his mother with all his heart.

  Return the chocolate.

  Okay.

  He turned to leave, turned to apologize to the muttering old man. And as he did so, his twisting left foot moved over the narrow crack that separated the third plank from the fourth plank.

  Crack!

  Something snapped loudly behind him. Very loudly. A sickening sound that turned his stomach. The sound of breaking bones and pain and...death.

  Alfonso gasped and spun around and saw his mother bent perfectly in half, like a jackknife.

  He screamed.

  His mother’s gleaming forehead, as if swaying in the wind, bounced gently against her kneecaps, her body somehow still standing, somehow still supported by those thick calves. And then slowly, very slowly, she toppled over, landing hard on her side, shaking the simple home down to its foundations.

  Alfonso, the son of poor Jamaican parents, was, of course, unfamiliar with the famous Western superstition.

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Two Ghosts

  She was a pretty young thing, despite the fact that I could see through her.

  Her name was Dawn and she had died a year ago from an accidental drug overdose. And, like me, she was still hanging around the same apartments. Unlike me, she didn’t say much, and so I did most of the talking.

  We were in her death apartment; that is, the place where she had died. Or, more precisely, the place where she had been found foaming at the mouth after a long night of partying. I had been there, too, minus the partying. I had sat in the far corner of the living room, secretly watching the living destroying their lives.

  What else was a ghost supposed to do on a lonely weekend night?

  Anyway, she and her friends had been partying hard. Too hard. Dawn had taken one too many snorts of something of this, and one too many syringes of something of that, and sometime in the middle of the night, she was spasming and vomiting violently.

  As her friends rushed to call 911, and others clumsily—and drunkenly—applied CPR, she expired. And from the corner of the room where I had been observing the party and her death, I watched as a very bright soul rose up confusedly from her dying body.

  I came back later that night after the paramedics and police had come and gone, and found her soul huddling in the far corner of the room—the same corner I had been watching the party from.

  “Hi,” I said.

  ***

  That was about a year ago—or maybe longer. Or shorter, for that matter. I can never remember dates these days.

  It’s hell being dead.

  It was late and we were alone in her death apartment. Her spirit was quite bright tonight, a veritable silver fireball. New spirits are always like that, so full of energy and life. Mine, not so much. The life is still there, granted, but the energy is mostly gone. And the longer I stick around the duller I get. Someday I suspect I will just be an amorphous, brain-colored mist with no form or identity, flitting about randomly. Why this happens, I’m not sure, but I think the memory of who we are helps define our spirit’s shape.

  Unfortunately, with each passing day, I’m losing my memory faster and faster, and thus losing my shape.

  A sick circle, for sure.

  So here she was tonight: this bright, pretty young thing, dead before her time and regretting every second of it. I knew she regretted every second of it because I often found her sobbing in the far corner of the room, which is how I found her tonight. As she sobbed into her ghostly hands, I had slipped through the apartment and gone over and sat on the couch.

  “I’m sorry you’re sad,” I finally said.

  She gasped, startled, and turned her tear-stained celestial face toward me. The tears cascading down her cheeks looked like twin streams of molten silver. She absently wiped the pseudo tears from her eyes and looked down at her fingertips, which now sparkled with silver drops of liquid moonlight.

  “Those aren’t real tears,” I said. “At least, not in the physical sense. The soul seems to remember what it was like to cry, and emulates it quite amazingly. Then again, who knows, maybe they are tears. What the hell do I know? I’m just a ghost.”

  I drifted up off the couch and moved cautiously toward her. As I did so, she huddled deeper in the dark corner. She usually shrank away from me in fear. I was, after all, a ghost. I sensed she had been an atheist in life and just couldn’t accept what had become of her in death. I also sensed she didn’t really believe she was dead. That she was living a nightmare. A nightmare from which she could not awaken.

  I paused in the center of the room. Actually, I paused in the center of the coffee table. I’ve been doing that a lot lately; that is, walking through furniture. In the old days, in the months following my murder, I had instinctively tried to avoid such things as chairs and couches and bar stools.

  That instinct is gone now. That instinct was now defunct. Why go around, when you can go through?

  Anyway, her soul was still quite a bit brighter than mine, although lately it had been dimming somewhat. As always, the dimming starts with the feet. In her case, the ghostly hint of her tennis shoes—which she had been wearing at the time of her death.

  I hated to see her dim. She was too pretty to dim.

  The apartment’s tenants were asleep, and so we had the living room to ourselves. I continued standing in the middle of the coffee table; she continued huddling in the far corner of the room.

  Just two lost souls, lost in every sense of the word.

  The moon shown down through the sliding glass windows, slipping through the Venetian blinds, splashing silver bars across the Pergo floor. Somewhere in the apartment building someone was playing music; it thumped up pleasantly through the floorboards. Some smooth R&B.

  I stepped out of the coffee table, and continued slowly toward her. Normally, I didn’t approach her. Tonight was different. Tonight it was time for her to come out of the corner. Why was tonight different? I didn’t know, exactly, but it felt different. Perhaps I didn’t like her fading away before my eyes. Perhaps it was time for her to quit living in fear of me.

  That is, living in death.

  So I moved as slowly as I could, drifting like a bed sheet caught in a small wind. A bed sheet with a very low thread count.

  As I approached, she huddled deeper into her corner, utterly terrified of me.

  But I continued coming.

  And she pressed deeper into the shadows, so deep her shoulder actually disappeared into the wall. When I reached the middle of the living room floor, somewhere between the TV and the couch, I finally stopped.

  And held out my hand.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I promise.”

  She stared at my outstretched hand for a long, long time. The faint music continued thumping up through the floor. Finally, she seemed to come to some sort of decision. Her shoulder which had disappeared into the wall, reappeared.

  I continued standing in the center of the floor, continued holding out my outstretched hand. Silver beams of moonlight came in at an angle through the Venetian blinds. The moonlight shined straight down through my phantasmagoric arm. I couldn’t help but notice I didn’t even leave a shadow on the faux wooden floor below. Like I wasn’t even there.

  Anyway, I said nothing to Dawn, and simply waited. I suspected that if I spoke, I would scare her away. Spook her, so to speak.

  I didn’t want to scare her away. Not tonight. Not ever.

  Even though she had never spoken a word to me, she was all I had. And I would take even that little bit, because without her I would be alone. Alone with the living.

  I continued standing there, continued holding out my hand to her. Waiting. An open invitation. To what, I didn’t know. But at least we had each other.

  She took a tentative step away from the corner, and with that first step, my heart leaped for joy.

  She took another, and then another, and soon she was standing in the center of the living room floor, just beyond my fingertips. She looked at me with the biggest, roundest eyes I had ever seen.

  Then she did something I thought she would never do.

  She reached out and took my hand.

  Her soft touch sent a ripple of pleasure through me, the first such pleasure I had felt in God knows how long.

  I closed my fingers around hers and drew her carefully toward me. She came willingly, even though fear still flickered in those round eyes. I kept drawing her to me until her face was pressed lightly against my bullet-riddled chest.

  With her palm in mine and her head on my chest, with the moonlight shining through us and the music thumping away from below, two lost souls danced the night away....

  The End

  Return to the Table of Contents

  Deal With the Devil

  Backstory: “Deal With the Devil” is not technically a short story. Sure, it’s short and sure it’s a story, but it’s actually a script for a graphic novel.

  Oh?

  A few years ago a graphic novel publisher asked me to write a supernatural detective story to include in an upcoming graphic novel anthology. (For those of you who don’t know, a graphic novel is a comic book that’s packaged to look and feel like a book.) Anyway, the publisher was quite specific: they wanted no more than fifteen pages and they wanted the story to be the first half of a story that would be concluded in the next anthology volume. Cool beans. I could do that.

  Well, I already had an idea brewing in my noggin that included Satan and a private investigator, but it wasn’t until I received the offer to write the graphic novel that the story truly fell into place. A week or so later, I wrote my first graphic novel and sent it off to the publisher. Luckily, they liked it and accepted it, and soon they had a young artist lined up who seemed eager to work with me. Everything was going smoothly. I was excited. I couldn’t wait to see this artist’s vision of my dark mystery.

  And that’s when the publisher went bankrupt.

  Ah, well, these things happen. The rights reverted back to me, and now I’m publishing it here on Kindle for the first time.

  A note on how to read a comic script. The story itself is clearly laid out in 15 pages, as you will see. Each page is sub-divided into different panels. What are panels? They’re the little boxes you see on a comic book page. Each box or panel represents a shift in the camera (or shot), so to speak. So basically, what you’re reading is a comic book minus the drawings. Easy enough, right?

  Anyway, I do hope you enjoy my first foray into the graphic novel world.

  —J.R. Rain

  P.S. Yes, the format is a little tricky, but I think you will get the hang of it. Remember, you’re reading a script to a graphic novel, so when you see words like “caption” and “bubble”, I’m giving cues to the artist (and sometimes you’ll even see me actually speak to the artist directly).

  Deal With the Devil

  PAGE ONE

  FULL SHOT. New York City. Bustling street corner. Cutting through the sea of humanity is a tall figure in a trench coat. The man is given a wide berth by all those around him. He is blond and incredibly good looking, perhaps the best-looking man alive. Except he’s not a man. He is Satan. The Devil. The Incarnation of Evil himself. Lucifer. The Fallen Angel.

  Although evil through and through, Lucifer has retained his incredible beauty. His blond hair is long and flowing. He wears a half sneer. But he is not just beautiful, he is also the ULTIMATE BAD BOY. He is Tommy Lee and Rob Zombie and Brad Pitt rolled into one.

  Those around him stare with amazement and attraction and also something else...loathing. Women see him as utterly irresistible, attracted to the bad boy. Men stare openly.

  Of course, these people do not realize the Devil is in their midst. All they see is an utterly enigmatic, magnetic, fascinating-looking man walking among them.

  The Devil ignores them all. He strides purposefully forward, head and shoulders taller than anyone else around. There’s a hint of a sneer on his lips. Those around him gape openly. Women fan themselves. Some look on with horror, perhaps sensing the evil contained within. The Devil wears black gloves and combat boots. Hair flows wildly behind him. Tattoos on the back of his hands and along his neck. He wears two gold hoop earrings. A satanic star swings from a black leather necklace.

  (I’m thinking that if the reader looks close enough, they can find hidden images of ghouls and demons along the city street. These are the Devil’s minions, who follow him wherever he goes. Nothing overt, just subtle. Almost like a Where’s Waldo. And not too many of them either. Just a thought.)

  CAPTION (top of page): One day, the Devil came to town.

  PAGE TWO

  Panel 1

  Aerial shot of a typical decrepit three-story office building. We’re now in Brooklyn. Bums lounge around outside. Someone is pushing a shopping cart. Paper and other debris drift across broken sidewalks and potholed streets. We see, on the top floor, the silhouette of a man in front of a window splashed with yellow light. He appears to be sitting behind a desk, working. Outside, above the cityscape, the sun is setting.

  Jagged balloon in the corner of the panel. The writing in the balloon is small and tight, as if someone is whispering. A single word appears in the balloon. The word is: No....

  Panel 2

  Now we are inside the building. We find ourselves in a barren hallway with torn carpet and even a rat or two scurrying across the decrepit floor. Doors line the hallway. At the far end of the corridor is another door with a pebbled glass window. There’s writing on the glass. Behind, off camera, we hear a DING, which signals an elevator door opening. Someone is coming.

  Another jagged balloon comes from behind the pebbled glass of the door. Another single word: No....

  Panels 3 & 4

  Smaller panel that shows a light bulb flickering, and then finally BLOWS out.

  Panel 5

  Tight on the pebbled glass door. We see that there’s writing on the glass. The writing says: Powers & Sons Investigations. One or two letters are missing from the word Investigations.

  Another jagged balloon coming from behind the door. The writing is bigger in this balloon. Whoever is speaking is no longer whispering: No!!

  Panel 6

  The camera continues moving through the door. And now we are TIGHT on a pair of WIDE OPEN eyes. The eyes are bloodshot. Pupils tiny pinpricks. Sweat pours down the forehead and over the bridge of the nose. Traces of dark hair stray into the shot. Most important, we see the circular remains of scar tissue over the right eye. The scar is the size of a nickel, and it’s an old bullet wound. At the moment, the puckered edges of the wound are red and inflamed. This is Jim Powers, Private Investigator, our hero.

  A balloon from Jim, as he screams the word: NOOOOOO!!!!

  PAGE THREE

  Panel 1

  Jim is sitting behind his cluttered desk. He throws back his head and pulls at his hair, kicking his chair away from the desk. Something horrible is clearly happening to him. Indeed, Jim is now in the middle of a massive epileptic seizure.

  JIM (screaming, voice filled with fear and horror): AAAAAGGH!

  Caption: The seizures are a result of a bullet buried deep within his brain.