100 Ghost Stories by Jordan Key

The tradition of “100 Ghost Stories” began in Edo Japan as a popular Autumn-time parlor amusement involving 100 lit candles, 100 storytellers, and a single extinguishing puff of breath from each when their story was told. Darkness and tension gathered gradually amongst the assembled storytellers as the night crept in and lights went out. Meanwhile, camaraderie and overactive imaginations formed an invisible ward against chillier realities—the impending winter, and growing political unrest in their nation. Yes sir, things were bad all over, but not so bad that there was no fun to be had! That's why this Halloween-Election season, Wonder Fair invited ten artists and ten storytellers to participate in its own version of 100 Ghost Stories, taking the form of a print portfolio exchange, an art exhibition, a haunted installation, a zine publication, an evening of ghostly story-telling, and a special evening of film screenings. What you have here is the 100 Ghost Stories zine, one of a limited edition of 100 copies filled with 10 miniature versions of our mask portfolio prints (perfect for cats!), 10 original ghost stories, and a few special extras from illustrators Dustin Williams and Jef Czekaj. We recommend that you read this zine in the dark, under a blanket, using a flashlight, eating a slice of pizza.

Whos Whoooooooooo!

Zine Creators: Jordan Key, Cameron Lamontagne, Meredith Moore, and Solace Naeymi With Extras by: Jef Czekaj and Dustin Williams Mask Makers: Christa Dalien, Theo Ellsworth, Lizz Hickey, John Malta, Rudy Marron, Jeff McKee, Jennifer Parks, Alex Schubert, Dustin Williams, and Teal Wilson. Ghost Story authors: Crystal Boson, Mick Cottin, Phillip Garland, BJ Hollars, Megan Kaminski, Michael Lee, Kate Lorenz, Iris Moulton, Daniel Rolf, and Justin Runge.

Whoooooooooooo is Wonder Fair?

Since 2008 the Wonder Fair (www.wonderfair.com) has been a purveyor of fine hand-made and feel-good prints, books, zines, and jewelry. In conjunction with downtown Lawrence Final Fridays, each month the Wonder Fair presents a new exhibition of work by local or national artists. Everything bought, sold, or traded by the Wonder Fair is guaranteed to make you smile (unless you suffer from over-developed frowning muscles). The Wonder Fair is open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Sunday 12-6, and Saturday 10-7, with completely random extended hours when we happen to be there. Please visit www.wonderfair.com frequently for news, information, and to skew our Google analytics data.

Monitored BJ Hollars

When she first heard the voice over the baby monitor, she took it for her own. After all, she was the only one in the house with a voice. The baby's father was out of town on a sales call, and while she hated to be alone with someone so terribly fragile (the baby's arms felt boneless, like rubber bands), her husband had reminded her that air conditioners wouldn't sell themselves. “You'll be fine,” he'd assured, but her own safety was never her concern. What concerned her was what she would do when she inevitably dropped the baby, or forgot to feed the baby, or wrapped the baby too tight in his sheet. She knew there would come a night when she left the window open, or the stove on, or the front door slightly ajar. If she didn't harm him directly, who might she allow to harm her perfect, blue-eyed boy? Her mother and sister deemed these thoughts cause for concern. “Call me,” her sister pled, taking her hands. “If you're feeling low, like you might do something, just call me.” “But how will I know when I might do something?” she asked. “Just call me,” repeated her sister. This was days before, back when her husband filled the empty

space beside her on the bed. Now it was midnight and she was alone, the bedroom dark except for the red glow of the baby monitor. When the voice first came through, she'd watched that red light multiply, a rainbow of reds suddenly clicking up their scale. Bay-bee. The voice echoed like gravel inside a tin drum. Are you there, bay-bee boy? She'd kicked off her sheets but found herself unable to go to the nursery. Her feet were no longer her feet, but two thick bricks, and as she lay there, sweating, she wondered: Did those words come from this mouth? She'd been alone with the baby all day and hadn't dropped him once. Hadn't even allowed those rubber band arms to stretch unnaturally. When her perfect, blue-eyed boy had cried she'd fed him, and when he'd wet himself she'd changed his diaper, too. I am a mother, she'd reminded herself as she laid him down for his nap. I am acting just like a mother would. As the baby napped she'd loaded the dishwasher, scrubbing hard at his milk-stained bottles before cramming the tubes neck-down on the metal fingers. As she scrubbed she'd heard a rattling from outside, and she peeked out the open kitchen window to spot a grinning man—her neighbor—fiddling with the antenna atop his roof. “For my police scanner,” he'd said, nodding down to her. “Just trying to increase my signal.” She'd nodded and attempted a smile. “Noticed Arnold's out of town,” the neighbor had said, biting his tongue while maneuvering the metal between his sausage fingers. “You know my husband?” she'd called up to him. “Course,” the man winked, pointing the antenna toward her home. “Least I know he's out of town.” After his nap the baby bathed, the baby sobbed, the baby slept, and when he was down for the night—his blue eyes closed—she'd

turned her frazzled reflection to the the mirror and thought: You know, I closely resemble a mother. It had been a good day alone with the baby, and though Arnold had forgotten to call, she promised herself she'd tell him all about it in the morning. How he had been right; everything had been fine and she had kept their baby safe. He is still perfect, she would tell him, our blue-eyed baby boy. But then came the voice over the monitor. Bay-bee? Are you in there? If it was not her voice, then who's? Don't worry, bay-bee, called the voice. I'm coming for you now. If it weren't for the monitor's red rainbowing lights she never would have believed it. The voice was simply a crossed signal, or a reverberation, or a fixed frequency come unfixed. Surely there was some logical explanation, and all she had to do was convince her brick feet to move to the nursery and convince her brick hand to twist the knob. All she had to do was peek inside the crib of her blue-eyed boy and see that he was perfect. Suddenly she was doing it—her feet were moving!—but as she twisted the doorknob to the nursery, she heard a banging at the front door. “Your baby's in trouble,” cried a voice. “Please! I picked your signal up on my scanner.” She was relieved to find that she had not left the front door ajar and she opened it, staring at her frightened neighbor staring back. “Your baby's in trouble,” the neighbor said, bursting into the house. “I heard a voice... there was a voice...” The mother ran into the nursery and peeled back the sheets and there was her baby—perfect and blue-eyed and breathing. “He's fine,” she cried, turning to face her neighbor. “Oh thank, God, he's not in trouble.” The man grinned—and with a voice like gravel inside a tin drum— he assured her that he was.

Haunted Iris Moulton

Here's the thing: this house used to be new. I would take you down that shiny throat of a hall to prove it, but I'm not going in any deeper. Once it was I'd open the drawers and wonder what could fill them. What hand-hewn marvels will the next year bring? Out the window a fat Tongan worker takes a break against my neighbor's playhouse. What a blessing, what an unlonely world to see him take this moment. Used to be it was only the ice machine that would rattle. Used to be there was no screaming. Used to be the only mist rose from the teakettle. Even when I watched for hours it would never make a shape, all the water burned to steam. I'd just start another pot and sit again. Now everything is a shape it's not supposed to be. That is what it means to be haunted.

The drawers hardly pull they're so stuffed. I fought with one once, tugged it along its runner, and instead of a pair of silver forks I felt the tangled rib and sinew of that boy at the carnival. That boy with his shaved head who wanted to prove to me that he could steer the ferris wheel's basket more than he wanted to prove he could kiss me. He was a strong coward. His skin even at that age looked too clean, impatient for tattoos. And in the bread bin is the tongue of the vegan who sucked on my ear. Sweet but toxic. I still can't put an earring in that second hole. The point is sometimes you reach for something and you pull in something else. You can't eat with the ribs of an idiot! You can't make a sandwich on a vegan's tongue! It isn't worse at night, it's just different. The filmmaker I passed out with in Vegas opens the door of his bedroomâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I live in his basement when I dreamâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and says it's time to make a baby. Have you ever seen a jelly donut get made? he asks, undoing his belt. And this house used to be new. I look around and think how little time it took to muck it up. Even if it's ever mostly clean there will always be that bit in the corners that nothing can get. Nothing is the shape it should be in those desperate moments, scrubbing. Instead of windows I have her eyes, shutterless, as I emerge from the bathroom with her husband. You can't burn a house like this down. The way the smoke widens? And seeps?

baby Daniel Rolf

Baby don't cry, go to sleep, but the baby is crying, a baby, someone's baby, unseen, somewhere, behind an upstairs window, in a car in a baby seat, out in the dirt mounds, in the weeds, a baby crying I can't see, I can see the flat street, a dome if you press your cheek into it, new homes on one side, homes with faces, chests out, buckteeth, and dirt mound ranges forested with weeds on the other side, a baby crying, in a home, in the street, in the weeds, the distant ssss of the Interstate, baby don't cry. Baby crying, go to sleep, Why me? Why this? Airplanes never explode around me, always glide me in safely and I am somewhere and just fine, and here I am, safely, was shot into the air and put down fine, home, I had called her when I got in, I am walking to see her now, haven't seen her in years, baby crying, go to sleep, please be in a crib, not in the weeds, I was looking at her number on my phone in my lap while driving a rental away from the airport, almost home, but not really, I do not have a home just now, now I am between homes, but I was driving, looking at her number on Interstate, pastures, fields, creeks, trees, near where I have always called home, no matter where I've lived, where I grew big and tall, where my parents have been all these years, me away, moving

around, them looking into the backyard, aging, watching birds, waiting for death, but not really, my parents are a scream, they bought a little RV and are driving toward a Southwestern death, they gave me the house, but I don't want it, but I am between homes, so now I am here, walking, walking to see her, to see her for what? no reason, not really, but I don't know for what reason, baby crying behind me, in the storm drain, under the street, in a tree, baby stop crying, go to sleep. I called her, in the rental, driving, almost home, I hadn't heard her voice in years, she said she was happy, I was nothing, but not really, it's hard to know what I am here, back, the exit ramp had always been smooth, and was and is, a long clean slide into uplands scraped for homes, and it dropped me here, my hometown, home, but there is more commerce now, retail, gas, car washes, but still teens in American cars all over the streets, there was a carload of teens screaming at me when I put my phone back in my lap, a carload, look, look at me, fucks, I have a coffee, roll your window down, keep screaming, but no, they knew the old tricks, the traditions of dicks in my hometown, the stories of Slurpees exploding inside of moms' new Cherokees, so they screamed behind the window glass at me, but they were just a carload of young me, it would have been so easy to talk them into a dumb young death, no baby crying then, now there is, please, baby, go to sleep. The tree in the front yard of my parents' house, our house, my house, again, was unrecognizable when I arrived, the trunk thicker, a new big limb reaching over the driveway, leaves covering the window eyes of the face of the house, but I could see it, the house, it was looking at me with the face, like it used to, when I shot hoops in the driveway, it liked to swallow a clanked shot into the garage to hit my mom's Century, the garage door was down, a mouth full of teeth when I got out of the rental, the hidden house key was where it has always been, all of my friends knew, what did they do in there when they knew my family was not? I unlocked the door and put the key back under the old fake rock, just a visitor, this is not my house, I don't want it to be. Baby don't cry, go to sleep, but the baby is crying, in a yard, left in a swing, stuck in a window, a baby, someone's baby, has to be, babies are never alone, you never think you see a baby riding a horse on a beach but then you see it is tackling the horse, breaking its neck and feeding on it, a baby needs milk, a bottle, a breast, a face smiling at it, a chest rumbling with a hum. It was not my home when I walked through the front door, not how it looked when I knew it, as I was growing, hand-springing off my bed, punching holes in the basement sheetrock when there was

nothing else to do, the kitchen is different now, the living room floors have been tiled, the walls hold different frames, a heavier wooden clock, a cross in the half-bath, there was nothing to see, to look at, to remember, it is some model home now, a furniture showroom, but the garage smells the same, more shelving, but feels the same, the big ladder still hanging from hooks on the ceiling, the automatic garage door control is different, sounds different, a little higher, but the door raises the same, pulls in the same air from the same street. My bedroom could be an aunt and uncle's bedroom now, a single brother's, a widow's, a nursing student's, I don't know, but it isn't mine, not the one I had when I was growing, jerking in my bedroom closet, karate-kicking in a mirror, pulling tape out of cassettes and winding it back with a pencil, so carefully, so small once, watching my own little fingers, but it's my room again no matter how it feels, my parents' is theirs, they will visit in the spring and my dad will shake the place with snoring, but after I went inside my room it was quiet, carpet, in the upstairs, there was no sound, there was no light, there was nothing except sleep to come, I needed it, a cylinder of voices shouting for me to fall into it, I needed it, I thought of her, I looked at her number on my phone, we used to fuck up here, when it was the room I knew, frantically for exactly 20 minutes after school and then I would drive her home, I needed sleep, I needed the voices to scream my name, suck me down, but the baby started crying, in the bathroom, downstairs, in the basement, outside the window, but I needed sleep and voices gathered around me and screamed my name. The light through the mini-blinds made lines over the bed, there was no baby crying, there was no sound until I uncovered and released a new day from all my body's holes, my mom had left a good bag of coffee for me, it was good, the blackest stuff, there was no baby crying as I looked into the black, it wasn't crying when I watched TV, why am I not one of the ones on TV with flies eating my eyes next to a dead dog in a place without streets? the baby wasn't crying when I locked the door and put the key under the old fake rock, but then it was, crying, in the house, the upstairs, the basement, the garage, the backyard. Baby don't cry, go to sleep, crying under a car in a driveway, under a streetlight in a bush, I am walking to meet her, down the street, through some trees, a field behind the creek, baby don't cry, please, but it is, distant and just behind me, not bouncing or gliding, just crying from points, corners in the air, somewhere, someone's baby, alone, it sounds alone, no one to hear it except me, but it doesn't know me, would it stop crying if it saw me looking down on it from the peak of a dirt mound, with a bottle, with a woman? I don't know if I want to see her now, but I do, I'm here, sun setting,

she is standing, her face to the top of the sky, her neck flattened, long, her chin up, her hair hanging down, her breasts in a tank top, little shorts, her short legs, her feet slanted against the gutter of a new street not yet filled in with homes, a man beside her, keeled over, vomiting, no, laughing, she has a hand on his back, the sun lowering, her face levels, looks down to him, she is laughing, he vomits a little, dry heaves, she laughs, he laughs, she sees me and she laughs, baby crying, in the dirt mounds behind them, down the empty street, she straightens when she sees me, she is laughing, mouth shut, quivering, holding it in, he is hunched over trying to stay contained, she holds up her keys, Can you go get my car? she is laughing, holding it in, his head is between his legs, bobbing, it's just down the street, I take the keys, she bends over and puts both hands on the man's back, she can't hold it in, baby crying, behind them, inside her, between his legs, down the street, I walk, the street ends, the sun sets down, no car, I go back, they are gone, baby crying where they had laughed, in the dark, where they had gone, where I had walked, baby, go to sleep, babies should never be left alone, they are not strong, they can do nothing, all they can do is need, snuggled in a house, pushed in a stroller, put in a car seat and calmed, except there are those ones that can't be stopped, they just have grow out of it, there is nothing to see here, down the street, through the field, the trees, no streetlamps, just black weeds, dull shapes of dirt mounds, the city my hometown is attached to dispersing light in the distance, I am going to take the ladder out of the garage, take down the limb that covers the face of my house, let it see the street no matter the season, let it see the faces of the other houses, faces identical to it in structure, similar color schemes, my house has a fine face, it's fine, it looks like a face, it's a house, like all the others on this street, my street, I have never heard of anyone moving houses like these, do they still moves houses? baby crying, down the street, in the front yard, my house, crying inside, the key is not under the old fake rock, baby crying, go to sleep, the door is unlocked, she is curled on the couch in the front room, only ankle socks on, how she used to do when we did it, she remembered where the key was kept, she is laughing, begging for me, no, she is crying, begging for me, baby crying, in the basement, in the kitchen, she grabs hold of me, burrows into my ear, no, she is laughing, Do you hear a baby?

Some Alive, Some Dead Justin Runge

There were broken dogs on the road to the small Southern town, adorning the shoulders like shoes and decommissioned refrigerators. There were deer in the beds of pickup trucks, a few casualties, mostly prizes. Pickup trucks like wheelbarrows of the Black Plague, chuckling with fumes as they clattered into town. There were cats in town that scrammed like teenagers from under the chassis of compact cars, scrambling from the warmth of the engine blocks, evading messy deaths. Cats in heat that moaned like the mothers of drowned children, and cats in labor that moaned like mothers drowning. They fled, limp kittens covered in afterbirth between their teeth, from the holes that let them live below houses. There were squirrels that lived in the walls of those houses, shredding insulation into nests, chattering when the pipes grumbled with water. Overheated squirrels and confused squirrels. Squirrels that itched the plaster behind the beds of young couples with yearlong leases.

There were birds that called the chimneys home. Their fluewhacking wings caused the cats to chirp like modems. Hatchlings would tumble from the soot-black nests and crack against the fireplace brick like light bulbs. Their mothers would shriek. And there were cockroaches that clicked like fingernails across the hardwood floors. The young women would pull every limb onto their couches; the young men would use boots or fine art books to smite them. Overturned ladybugs in their own browned blood, from which the sniffing cats would be shooed. Skeeterhawks banging into the haint-blue roofs. Moths filling the fixtures, and ants, like rafts, bobbing in forgotten porch gin. The abatement men would breath toxic fog into the front yards and listen for a softening buzz. Still, there were flies wintering in every cavity. Spring released them like steam into the dining rooms. More flies than the young couples had ever seen at once. Flies meant for some absent corpse. Perhaps the house is the corpse, the young couples thought. Flies shimmying from the molding, attracted to light like prettier things. Attracted to their own blood. The young couples found this information on the Internet. Their nights were lit by single shadeless lamps. There were young men, nightly, obsessively murdering every digit in these infinite numbers of flies. Young men snapping towels at flies, flinging magazines and dog-eared paperbacks at flies, smearing flies, concussing flies, taunting flies and laughing. Fedup young men who called exterminators that just equivocated, who called landlords for solutions. Their solutions were wet-dry vacs. Attracted to their own blood, you know, said the landlords. Vacuums works pretty good. There were the bodies of all these things, some alive, some dead. Banging against the walls. Butting the roofs. Living under the porches and in the ducts, some alive, some dead. Some stumbling up from the shoulders of highways on broken legs. Some lying in bed, listening for the swarm, the scratch, the screech. There were young women that saw shapes at the feet of these beds, which makes sense.

Caroline Megan Kaminski

Gerald liked to visit the house after workâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;perhaps like isn't the word, though, it was more that he felt compelled to visit. Each afternoon at 5:00 he left the insurance office downtown, and each afternoon he intended to drive back to his condo on the eastside. He intended to send his resume out to contacts back in the city. He intended to box up his things and leave this place that had left him tired and gray and alone, but every afternoon his red Camry turned the wrong way onto Banford Road and carried him out to the edge of town to the house they once shared. Gentle creaks of the iron fence echoed soft, and sprouts of crab grass came up through sidewalk edging. Each day he visited that house under the guise of checking for mail or ensuring that doors and windows were securely locked. It had been nearly three years and still something prevented him from letting go, from putting it on the market, from moving back to the city from which he came. It was Caroline who persuaded him to leave the city and move to the house that had been her parents' and their parents' before that. Caroline's ancestors had landed on the craggy Maine coast countless decades ago, and in marrying her, Gerald had become connected to the place as well, not that he was particularly happy about it. Not long after moving to the coast, he began thinking about ways to get back to the city. He volunteered for assignments that entailed travel and started to think of ways to convince

Caroline that they had made a mistake. But Caroline loved the coast, and the fresh air seemed to do her good. She was pale and delicate when Gerald first met her; it often seemed like the city overwhelmed her. And while she was thriving in her childhood home, she was also developing habits and proclivities that bothered him. At first there were just long walks down the back path leading to the shore and spare moments around the house when he would catch her whispering to no one in particular. But then she stopped sleeping in their bed through the night. He would wake in the dead of night and call her name throughout the house to no response. He would find her in the morning, sprawled across the wicker couch on the back patio or feverish in some deep sleep in a front parlor chair. He began to see her less and less. She often was nowhere to be found when he returned from work, and she would appear late in the evening as if she had never left. She started to grow distant, and her hair grew long and wild, its dark strands tangling into knots down her back. One October evening Gerald arrived home late from a business trip to Dunstable. He threw his things on the floor of the front room, annoyed that Caroline wasn't there to greet him. When he woke in the morning, he was alone. He waited and waited, each day imagining that she would just turn up. He had gotten so used to her being away that he didn't think to worry. After a week passed with no sign of her, he decided to contact the police. They did a full investigation, but their only clue was a report of two figures on the cliffs late the evening of Gerald's return home. Caroline had no other living family besides Gerald, and the police tired of their fruitless searching. They found a body months later up the coast, too badly decomposed to identify definitively; the police decided that it must be Caroline and closed the case. On that day, Gerald packed a suitcase and left the house, wondering if he ever really knew his wife. In the days after his move to the condo in town, Gerald had dreams filled with blues and greens and whispers, a sad solitary bird late in the evening, warm figs, and his wife's soft fingers. Soon after the dreams began, he started taking drives back by the house, and not long after he began dropping in, ambling through the fields, on the cliffs, and eventually into the dust-covered halls. The faded wood creaked under his feet with each gentle

step. This had been his home for years, but he felt as if he were intruding. A rich perfume emanated from the walls covered with old wallpaper and peeling paintâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it was strangely familiar. The damp air soothed him, caressing the dark hairs on the back of his hand. It made him drowsy, but he always left just before the sun could set. There were some things that he did not need to remember. As weeks turned into months, Gerald became unlike himself. He fell into a wakeless sleep each night, sleeping well into the morning. He started visiting the house more often, constructing elaborate excuses for his absence at work. Each evening he lingered on the edge of the lawn, stepping into the car and driving off just before the sun set and his darker memories were able to settle into the place. But each departure just made him feel more of a pull to the house. One evening, just as he was about to leave, he thought he heard a voice coming from inside. He laughed out loud, thinking that he had allowed himself to visit a bit too freely with the past. But then he heard it again. Gerald put his car keys back into his pocket, opened the door to the iron fence, and slowly walked up the drive. He wasn't sure what compelled him. Every thought told him that he should go back, but he continued on. He unlocked the double bolts on the door and stepped into the dark house. He reached for the lights, but something stopped him. He heard the voice again, beckoning him to the back porch. Gerald hurried through the house, and when he opened the door, he heard the creak of footsteps across the porch. The sun had set, but he could hear the gravel of the back path crunching under some weight. He hurried down the path, following twig-snap and leaf-brush in the darkness. Could Caroline have returned? Gerald felt his gut rising up into his chest. His heart vibrated against his ribs. Memories started to flood back, memories he wasn't sure that he wanted to confront. The salt air and dark water swirling below. A purple ribbon wrapped round a wrist. He reached the cliffs and searched the moon-lit expanse. There, on the point overlooking the sea, he saw her. Caroline's white face reflected the light from the moon and from the water. Her hair was dark and tangled and she was wearing the grey dress she wore the night she left. She had come home. He called to her, apologizing. Her voice soothed him in a strange timbre, pulling him towards her. Gerald reached out to catch her hand, but all he felt was cold air and then the frigid water of the sea.

First Ghost Story Michael Lee

No one has ever asked me to tell a ghost story before, but that's not so surprising: do I seem like the type of person who would carry a flesh-creeping tale around in his head, just waiting for the day when he could tell it? You can always spot these sorts— their anxious, inward aspects give them away—and they're very unnerving to be around. Maybe I have a story, maybe not. Are ghost stories really still told and enjoyed? Doubtful, I think. I had always assumed until now that they had gone out of style, like greasy food and free time, and all other unuseful things being burned these days in favor of the future. But someone wants a ghost story tonight, and I say, “Why not?” It's fall again, the light is hazing, and we are all still here, for the time being, at least. A few years ago, I found myself in a very dark place. I worked long, irregular hours for a company I hated, my romantic relationships were all coming to abrupt and ugly ends, and one night, when I thought that my anxiety couldn't rise any higher, my apartment caught fire, and though I tried to wake each of them before seeing myself to safety, every one of my roommates burned to death, and had a faulty outlet not been fingered as the culprit, I would have been on the streets. But my carrier was surprisingly sympathetic after the debacle, putting me up in a hotel

and cutting me a very generous check. I suddenly had the freedom to do as I pleased. But what did I want? I knew I needed to get away: from my city, from my job, from the cries of my roommates, which were finding their way into my nightly dreams even in the hotel, but I didn't know where I wanted to go. How stupidly complicating money can be sometimes! I wanted to stay in the States, but I also wanted some place fresh and exotic. After a bit of research, I settled on the city of New Orleans, in the state of Louisiana. Many were put off by my choice, understandably—the city's reputation as a veritable den of disease, decay, and alcoholic dependency did not help them see any of the positives. In the end, I had no good answer for them. I just wanted to go to New Orleans. And I didn't regret it, not initially, anyway—though you can regret anything if given enough time. I moved, found an apartment all to myself, and filled it with weird, feral things. I made friends instantly, and we ate and drank and danced in every dive in the city. I took all kinds of lovers, even finding a few hours to sleep every night. For months this went on—I spent my settlement without a thought for the next day—till the money ran out, and I resorted to all sorts of shameful things to keep up appearances. And then one morning it was all over. Mardi Gras was in full swing outside, the whole city deep in its week-long debauch. I was on the floor of my barren apartment, dying. My teeth were chattering and I could feel the death throes coursing through me. So it had come to this. A tragic but life-affirming accident, a generous payout, half a year of high, uncareful living, and now the end. I began hearing the voices of my old roommates then, and I knew I wouldn't be long in joining them. But then I started gurgling with laughter, because I remembered something important. You see, in reality, I had died in the apartment fire that night, alongside my roommates; I could not get out in time. Clearly I hadn't wanted to accept this, so I invented the story about the insurance company and the money they gave me, tricking my dead brain into believing that I needed to apply the awful logic of the living world to my own—that I needed food, that I needed clothes, that I needed a roof over my head. You laugh, but put yourself in my shoes for a moment. It was so awful to burn alive. Flames racing toward me, smoke tearing at my lungs, the smell of charred flesh—you would have tried to forget it too. But I want to be clear: I really did make it down to New Orleans, really did have a wild and matchless time there, but it just so happened to have occurred after I had died. And once I finished remembering, I rose from the cold floor—whose apartment is this anyway?—and left out to join the rest.

Ghost Feelings Mick Cottin

I always wanted to be a decent ghost. Not that I'm doing so bad. I guess I've been doing the right things. I'm out there, sometimes where I can be seen. People say I look like a cloud. They say my face is asymmetrical. That I'm oddly pink and effeminate. They are right about these things. Some people say I look gay, lumpy, and like a scoop of melting ice cream. They call me the worst ghost ever. These people might be right, too, but these people have a bad outlook on life. I usually hang out by walls. That's just where I'm most comfortable. I'm oddly two dimensional. I don't like being snuck up on or walked through. When people walk through me they often say that it was thick, moist, and smelled like a moldy fridge, a sack of bad fruit, rotten. People often call me “it,” and that hurts my feelings. I have feelings, and they're just the same as people feelings. People often ask me who I am. “I'm a ghost,” is what I would say if I didn't have a gaping black hole for a mouth. Some people think I'm their dead relative. That I'm trying to communicate with them, that I have answers. Is there a heaven? Why couldn't you say you loved me? Why did you do that to yourself? These are all very serious questions and I would like to say to them, “I don't know the answers to these questions, I'm just a ghost,” but I have a useless hole for a mouth. I can't tell them anything, so I commit and listen with compassion. Ghosts have always been great listeners. People often reach out and try to grab me. They've never succeeded. They stumble forward and fall through me. I'd like to reach back at them and see what would happen, but I have no arms, no hands. I can't hug. I'd like to drink a glass of water, but I have no thumbs. Being a ghost means being thirsty. This is something you learn early on.

We float and can move around. It's quite easy. I've been all sorts of places and seen all sorts of people. When you're a ghost you like to watch, but you need to hide. Ghosts are creepy that way. I went to church once, but an old lady saw me and was convinced I was the Virgin Mary. People see what they want sometimes. I went to a wedding once, but I scared a plump kid by the cake and then he barfed. I've watched movies. I go to baseball games. Ghosts love museums, history, and culture. Ghosts love to learn about people just as much as people love to learn about ghosts. If we had ghost TV, there would be shows about people. We would have whole channels dedicated to people. We would pay premium prices for the most award winning people shows. If we had ghost TV I wouldn't have to go out, I wouldn't have to be seen. I could just float, and watch, and learn. But we can't have ghost TV because ghosts cannot make things. We cannot produce TV shows, or write scripts. Ghosts can't do much of anything. I loved a girl once, a person. She lived in a duplex I was haunting. I'd sit by the wall and she would cook herself vegan meals. She loved apple juice and had terrible taste in music. She would listen to her terrible music while doing dishes before bed. She liked to do this topless and I liked to watch. Sometimes she would forget to close the curtains while topless in the kitchen and I would get upset that people outside might get to watch, too. She had a dog that barked at me all the time. It wasn't a mean dog. It was just a dumb dog. Eventually the people in the other half of the duplex complained. The police showed up and cited her, and then they showed up again. It took three citations and one fine before she had to get rid of her dog. This hurt her, and consequently hurt me. I watched her cry. I watched her get angry. And as time went by I watched her move on. When she adopted another dog it barked at me, I knew it was going to happen again, so I left. Ghosts and people just can't fall in love. It never works out. Now I hang out at crowded and poorly kept bars. Bright neon lights hang in the windows and lure people in. Inside it's dark and people don't trust their eyes after they've been drinking. I startle people, but they move along quickly. These days, I'm just trying to be next to a wall. I'm just trying to be a ghost. When I was young I used to wake up and strive to figure out all those big dumb unanswerable life questions that have the potential to both inspire and ruin people. I'm getting old and I'm fading away. Eventually people will stop seeing me. The people who did see me will talk to their friends about it around Halloween when it's acceptable for such things, but they'll mess up the details, they'll embellish, and essentially the stories will not be about me anymore. I've traveled, I've scared people, and I've loved a woman. I've lived something that has the impression of a person's life. I've lived the life of a ghost.

The Day-One GhosT Phillip Garland

“Get it up there! Work it! Stretch! Extend!” Everyone hated Marjorie. But she was an old-school trainer. The sweaty new recruits traded insults when her neon-green rhomboid form left the room. Roger called her a bossy jerk. Danny had filed a complaint early that morning after she kept slapping his thighs. To Kim she was simply The Terror. “This is useless,” Danny said. “We don't need to know any of this stuff.” “She's obfuscating,” Roger said. “She is so totally obfuscating.” “Shut up with your words,” Kim said. She had been scaring three months already. The rest of the ghosts had only been dead a week or less. “You boys had better shut your traps before The Terror catches you and strings you up for a week of graveyard haunts.” “You frightened, Kim?” Roger asked. Marjorie reentered the room.

“And now the quads!” Danny lunged into the familiar pose. It was his first day as a ghost. He was surprised to wake up from the white void and find himself queued up with strangers in front and behind him, the line running through nondescript office space. Nothing in his fifty years of academic life had prepared him for this. He asked his neighbors what the deal was, but they couldn't say either. He stood in place a long time before an intercom called his name. Danny huffed and grunted, trying to keep pace with the others. He'd not exercised in half a century. “You alright, old man?” Roger asked. Danny ignored him. He supposed the white globular substance of Roger was a teenager. Instead he turned to Kim, an orange stringy glow. “What's it like once you get out there?” he asked. “Whaddya think? It's fun as hell scaring the crap outta folks. Especially the bastards who did you wrong. I got the drunk who run me over running through his bloomers in the middle of the highway.” “Work your flappers, not your yappers,” Marjorie sing-songed. “Old bag,” Roger said while flapping. “What's your story,” Kim asked. “Who you gonna get?” “I'm not sure,” Danny said. “I'd like to care for my dear old wife. She was in worse shape than I. And I'll look after the young ones.” “Mister!” Kim said, bored by the exercises and the two new ghosts she'd been paired with. “They'll haul you away faster than you can say Abe Lincoln. There's no looking after loved ones for folks like us. Folks like us do the scaring.” “Shit for brains,” Roger said. “Even I know that.” Danny whacked him with a flapper. “Nice form for a day-one,” Marjorie shouted. The roomful of ghosts was nearing the last quarter of the

exercise, what Marjorie had referred to in her introduction as The Ten Mountain Climb, and the air was getting gross with sweat. Everyone pumped their lower halves twice as fast as before. “I'm going to keel over,” Danny said. His heart, or whatever served now as his heart, seemed almost bursting, and in this new curiosity his head spilled out of the glowing cube he now saw was pink and dazzled in places with some kind of glitter. The new outgrowth which served as his head now dove back toward him and dug into the pink cube and wiggled there a moment before disappearing inside of Danny. “Fuuuuuuck,” Roger said, a look of disgust darkening his white orb. The exercisers slowly quieted and slackened their pace for The Ten Mountain Climb. They all turned their gaze to Danny. A second slimier appendage had sprung out of Danny's bottom and poured itself across the floor. Meanwhile Danny's pseudo-head ran in spirals through the substance inside the cube. His wild coil tightened toward its center. He dove through millions of tiny floating black balls humming in time a ghostly tune. He dove for what seemed to him centuries, the faintly hummed tune turning to cries of despair, until, finally, pushing past a dilute section of black balls, he found himself circling above a square patch of grass. Marjorie shouted in horror and led a sudden screaming exodus from the exercise room. Appendage after slimy appendage was erupting from the cube that was Danny and each spread out in pursuit of the fleeing ghosts. “What's happening here?” shouted an old security guard fluttering by the door with a grenade launcher strapped to his scaly back. His day-one partner had already trained his launcher toward the glowing pink mass. Danny rammed his head through the grass and into the dirt. It smelled strangely sweet to his atrophied senses as he burrowed deep into the dark earth. He'd not smelled a bouquet like this in years.

Little Hands Kate Lorenz

I am in the back seat of a car right now, as much as I am anywhere. There are no toys in this car. There were toys in the back seat of a car one time, and a mother. The driver does not know I am here. I do not know the driver. I face front. Then I flip to the big window in back and look at who's back there and wave my hands. This one is a lady the age of a mother. Not the driver, the one behind. The driver has another job, which is drive while I am in the back seat. She might not see me if she is too busy. If she is changing the music on the radio, if she needs to turn soon. If the sun is shining, the one behind might not see me. She might see a light spot on the window with my little hands waving. Hands that will always be little, because no matter what I will never get bigger. I live in these cars now, but I am always alone. There were toys in the back seat once, and a mother against the steering wheel. If this car goes under a tree, the leaves might shade the window. Then the one behind might see my face for just a second. And what would she think? What I want her to think is, I look at the child, I follow the child. Then I am lucky. If she changes over to the other side of the street, then changes right back. If she drives a little faster and closer so she can see me. If she moves her head or waves or even looks away and tries to pretend she has not seen but I see that she has. If she is a mother. This one moves her head down and up. She puts a hand above her eyes. I wave my little hands, and she smiles. And then I think, go faster now. We need to go fast, and this is what the driver does. I think, faster, and faster we go. The one behind must go faster, too, but I can't think that. That's why I open my mouth like a cry. Like a mother is against the steering wheel and there is glass all around and a child is crying and crying

before she stops and a hand goes over her eyes. I open my mouth and wave my hands, and the one behind puts her hand up to her eyes again. She speeds up the car because now she knows something is wrong. A child is crying. I nod and think, faster faster faster, and she waves and I wave and she drives so fast that she stops driving. Then I think, stop. And it is done. The cars are touching. The driver is against the steering wheel, but only for a second, and then is looking around. The one behind is against the steering wheel for longer. I have not moved. It is bad for me if the one behind is against the steering wheel for too long. But then she puts her head up and looks at her hands. She looks at the car ahead that is now part of the front of her car. She opens the door and puts her foot on the ground, and then I can leave, I can go to where she is. I am going against the ground, along the street, to her foot. To her leg. To a brown shoe, flat against the ground. A mother's shoe. I can see it and I can smell it. Close enough to touch. Because now, this is the only way I can touch someone. By causing hurt. Just a little hurt. Just enough to touch. “Are you okay?” the driver asks the one behind. I have heard this so many times. But she does not answer the driver, and she moves next to the driver's car, to the windows, looking around and in. She moves fast, and I move with her feet, her legs. She presses her hands against the windows. She presses her face to the glass. “The child,” she says. “What child?” “I saw a child,” she says. “There is no child.” But she will not believe this. She presses her face to the glass, and I lift my hands to her foot. “Where is the child?” she asks. I'm here, I think, my face against her leg, my little hands wrapping around. “Where is the child?” she asks. I'm here.

ASHCROFT Crystal Boson

for Luke Jacob and his terrifying black velvet painting of john ashcroft that watched me while I showered. look at my hands before i touch you i will think on bee stings meat a run in your grandma's hose on chasing you through a swamp with dogs nothing too obscene just something to moisten my palms look at them i will slather them with lotion before I press them into yours i will use them to button my slightly snug blazer i am sure that you've noticed that my hands are quite small i trim my nails just to the quick so the tips are all skin and pink look. at. my. hands. they are too small to clutch a whole apple these hands will lock you away

COLOPHON:

Published by Wonder Fair for the Fall 2012 exhibition 100 Ghost Stories Illustrations by Cameron Lamontagne (cammmablammm@gmail.com) Layout and Art Direction by Jordan Key (behance.net/jordan_key) This is number ________ of 100 Ghost Zines. The typefaces used are Deming and Satellite. No Ghosts were harmed in the making of this zine.