This short story is an entry in the 2001 Soc.Sexuality.Spanking Summer Short Story Contest and is copyright by the author and commercial use is prohibited without permission. Personal/private copies are permitted only if complete including the copyright notice. The author would appreciate your comments
Category: Adult
WARNING: This story is weird. Really. But I still hope you'll like it.
Emptiness
By
Haron <aster@mail.i.com,uaaster@mail.i.com.ua>
Thorn doesn't need us any more. Now laugh if you like.
On the library wall hangs a page from "Eidelberg Times", enclosed in a carved frame. Thorn's photograph - he is laughing, head thrown slightly back, and Marvin the upstart blinks happily in his outstretched hands. The article was called "Your pet ghost". Thorn was so proud of this article, like he'd written it himself. And we were proud of Thorn.
Why, he's the first scholar who had tamed a ghost. Who had tamed us. With his strap, and his petting hand, he had tamed us.
At the main gate he had dug in a pole with a sign. It reads: "Thorn's commune". Every morning Marvin the upstart goes out to the gate with a tiny bucket and a brush, and tenderly renews big print. Marvin is waiting for Thorn to come home.
Eli is in charge of the grindstone. He thinks that if all the knives are ground, Thorn will come back.
Aster will now and again stretch out her wings to fly round the house, but she always comes back. I guess she just likes it when Marvin grumbles: "Thorn woulda whipped you good, he don' approve of flyin', remember?"
You can laugh at us. The ghosts who'd submitted. Go ahead and laugh, we are tame, we never bite. Thorn told us not to.
Eli cries at night. He can't go to sleep without being tucked in.
I wonder, if we start to fly out at night and break antennas, like before, will that return Thorn home?
But no, he won't be back, he already got his Golden prize.
Thorn doesn't need us any more. What would he want with submissive little ghosts?
The End
© Copyright Summer, 2001 and don't you dare take it without permission, or I'll come to haunt you. It's not public domain, it's mine, okay?
Reviews
Mary Catherine <marycatherine(at)saintfrancis-sfg(dot)net>
A very clever, well written short short story from Haron. A real sense of loneliness and longing came from within this piece. I could see the author as a character within the story--as the ghost who stretches her wings but always comes back to earth (so to speak). Quite different from most of the stories I've read by Haron, but as always, very good. :-)
Pablo <Pablo(dot)Stubbs(at)newsguy(dot)com>
There's so much in this very short story. Haron economically creates a world that's strange, but which also feels very real and vivid. And there's a comic overtone, which is quickly undercut with great pathos. And a thoughtful question too: what happens after you've tamed someone/something? And what would happen if they were left alone? The result is, of course, haunting