Day: October 2, 2026

The Caretaker’s Cottage

/ animar64 / Leave a comment

I was inspired by this Poetry  Prompt to write a short story.  : Is harmless the same as friendly when it comes to ghosts? 

There’s an abandoned caretaker’s cottage on the very edge of Gordon Wood and it is covered in moss and ivy.

Part of the roof gave away and the rain and snow get in and sometimes the sunlight does too.

Nobody lives there and it’s hard to imagine anybody ever did.

The Caretaker’s Cottage looks like a tomb.

I walk my dog near the Caretaker’s Cottage but I never looked through the doorway, I have never peaked through the windows not even on the days when I hear a phone ringing from inside the Caretaker’s Cottage.

Sometimes the phone stops ringing and I can hear someone whisper, as if they are afraid someone might hear them, ” Yes, yes come as quick as you can. I think someone is outside. Please hurry. Wait. Wait. She’s out there again, with her dog. It’s a big beast and it’s looking right at me. Please hurry. ”

I pull on my dog’s leash and we run as fast as we can out of the wood and up to the road without looking back.

We stand up there  on that long dark road for hours and hours, sometimes we stand there for a few minutes and when cars drive by, they never stop for us. Sometimes they slow down, but they never stop.

Ever.

But we always go back, sometimes a day later, sometimes a month, sometimes it feels like minutes.

We always go back because it preys on my mind, is the Caretaker’s Cottage is haunted by human, or beast or a monster?

What haunts me is the thought: which of three I am?

One Wish

/ animar64 / Leave a comment

WP asks: The genie grants you a wish. What is it?

If I could have one wish granted, my wish would be that Halloween could be a place you could visit instead of it just being a state of mind or a holiday that shows up at the end of the year and is gone like a puff of smoke in one night.

My wish would be that Halloween would be a town where the world is painted in shades of orange and red and yellow.

Every night frost would decorate the trees and plants and flower and window panes.

The air would always be cool, it would smell like freshly baked gingerbread and apples and when the sun came up, it would shine gently and when it set the Moonlight and starlight would burst across the sky like fire taking to old dry wood.

Black cats and black dogs could sit on porch steps next to rocking chairs and next to tombstones and crypts and shut their eyes with blissful expressions on their faces, even when a stranger walks by.

If Halloween were a place, a place where you could have a house and go to work and school and have little herb garden growing in your backyard, you could wear whatever costume you wanted and nobody would ever  think or dare to  say to anybody, ” maybe people would like you more if you were just like everybody else. ”