Beleaguer
100 Words a Day Challenge: January 7th, 2025
I'm attempting to use the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day to write 100 words of fiction daily, focusing on horror and sci-fi flash fiction. Today is day four, cerulean. These will all be around 100 words, never under 100 or over 200.
It took me a while to figure out at first. I was there floating over myself, wondering who it was in this car wreck I was looking at, when I realized it was me. It took a while to accept I was dead and longer to admit that there was an afterlife and that I was fated to roam Earth as a ghost. What to do with the time?
Time is a bit squishy here. I can move backward and forward, but it’s just me. There aren’t any other spirits to chat with and figure things out. Eventually, I got curious and flitted back to the accident and filed the driver, drunk, who lived, of course, all the way to their trial: Senator’s kid, no jail time or conviction.
What to do with the time? Well, I wasn’t going to let crime go unpunished. So haunt him, I did. Any opportunity I had, I caused trouble—just enough to be constantly frustrating, never enough to completely kill their hope or end their life early.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to subscribe or comment. I’ll be back tomorrow with more flash fiction.