ghosts

Can you really talk to the dead?" She gave me the look that I was familiar with by now: equal parts derision, skepticism, and curiosity. __ow much would it be? I mean, how much do you charge?

Better beware of the newly deadOf the white-handed ghostAnd the brightness of these lamps . . .

Quinns always come at half price, about half the time, and half-naked, even during the colder half of winter. A Quinn is like a queen, but draggier, and cheaper to buy and use for personal gain, unless you__e suspicious that you__e poor and illiterate like Jarod Kintz, in which case Quinns could be the spirits of your dead relatives, come to haunt you until you gather a massive fortune through selling books on the internet, to send some back in time through a portal you bought from the NSA, so they would have lived better lives without having to move a finger for their fortune. Oh, yah, and since they aren__ - they__e blue, like smurfs, yet they turn purple whenever tickled on the belly, which is something they seem to rather dislike, since they start biting and scratching when it happens, for no good reason, I might add.

It wasn__ one event, but a series of events followed by years of research adjudicated by panels of experts and committees of laypeople until a decision was finally made: we__e been going about handling dead people all wrong.

Boys often have permission to become men without the forfeiture of their desirability. And so these men write stories that grasp at girls who are ghosts twice over: first by being dead and second by being shallow shadows of actual girls, the assorted fragments of men's aging imaginations rather than the deep and dimensioned creatures that real girls are.

But more importantly, know I love you more than I can say with simple words. Poets have attempted for centuries to find the perfect combination, and I don__ imagine I shall have more luck than they.

Sometimes people graduate but they don't leave. They hang around for years, for no reason. I would think of ghosts like that, I decided.

I smile, comforted by the knowledge that I am not alone. That I haven't been left behind. That when everyone else moves on, when they find new lives and loves and joys, it just might be alright to stay where you are, as long as there's someone standing next to you, holding your hand, telling you it will be okay.

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.

Being dead does have its advantages._-Alastor

Fucking nightmares.My heart starts to slow down. Glancing down at the floor, I see Tybalt, who is glaring at me with a puffed-up tail. I wonder if he had been sleeping on my chest and I catapulted him off when I woke up. I don't remember, but I wish that I did, because it would've been hilarious.

There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas _ something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.

Mama wasn't dead...exactly. They all said she was, but when Elma was small, she seen Mama creep into her room at night, half-naked, head all bloodied red like when they found her by the well that day, and Elma reckoned dead just meant pretendin' you couldn't move or breathe until nightfall when you got up and walked around like you was free.

A shade flickered to my left, an eerie shadow balanced even more precariously on the railing than I. Her plimsolls struggled to grip the same rail my fingers now held. I knew her face, just as I knew her death; I__ watched it often enough, those times I__ been unable to avoid crossing here. Nerys was always here, tied to the moment of her death, an echo, forever hurtling down into those waters, only to reappear an instant later, once more wavering on the rails.

Many African societies divide humans into three categories: those still alive on the earth, the sasha, and the zamani. The recently departed whose time on earth overlapped with people still here are the sasha, the living-dead. They are not wholly dead, for they still live in the memories of the living, who can call them to mind, create their likeness in art, and bring them to life in anecdote. When the last person to know an ancestor dies, that ancestor leaves the sasha for the zamani, the dead. As generalised ancestors, the zamani are not forgotten but revered. Many _ can be recalled by name. But they are not the living-dead. There is a difference.

Look, Jordan, you__e not alone any more. It__ my job to protect you while I__ here and I can__ do that if you keep pushing me away.___hat__ the problem, Michael,_ I shot back. __ou have more responsibilities to your boss than you do to me. You taught me how to defend myself, how to heal myself, and that should be good enough. You can__ keep babysitting one little human when you have an entire cosmos to worry about._ He faced me again, those green eyes boring into mine as if he could see straight through me. __re you saying you want me to leave?__y chest tightened. I hadn__ expected him to say that. I bit my bottom lip, glancing away. __hat__ not what I mean.___hen what do you mean?_ __ince when have I ever known what the hell I mean?_ He touched my right cheek, making me face him. __ou do when it counts.__taring up at him, shirtless, vulnerable, and wounded, I felt like I couldn__ breathe. He had a knack for picking my walls apart brick by brick. It bothered me. He took a step closer, casting a shadow over me. __top,_ I mumbled, fixing my eyes on the floor. He brushed a lock of hair behind my ear, sliding his warm hand to lift my chin so I__ have to look at him. __top what?_ he murmured. __ooking at me.___hy?___hat__ how Terrell used to look at me before we kissed.__is lips parted to say something but I pushed past him, gathering up my duster from where it lay on the bed next to the dress. __et dressed. We have more ghosts to help.

A writer's journey may be tough, but never give up and enjoy every moment.

As we strolled into the hospital, I couldn__ help thinking about Maroon 5__ __arder to Breathe_ because I was having a difficult time staying calm. I had been kidnapped and beaten senseless by an agent of Lucifer, and yet the white coats the doctors wore scared me just as badly. The men who had taken me from my mother wore those same damned lab coats. Every time I saw one, it awakened a dormant fear inside me__ear that I__ be dragged away from someone I loved again, fear that I__ be placed into the waiting hands of another horrible person. It would never truly go away.Michael__ shoulder bumped mine, which shook me out of my thoughts. I glanced at him. __hat?___ou__e frowning.___m I supposed to be smiling right now?__e faced forward, looking at our reflection in the elevator doors. __o, but you look like you__e about to bolt at any second.__ watched the digital numbers change one by one as we rose up to the right floor, fiddling with the rosary in the pocket of my leather jacket. Somehow, the beads had a calming effect on me. ____ fine.___ard ass.__ tiny smirk touched my lips. __top thinking about my butt. You__e an archangel.__e grinned, but didn__ reply.