He's out there...

"I'm telling you it's haunted," Chuck said as he watched his brother Randy slip past the boards that had been nailed across the decrepit building's window. Even with the light of the full moon Randy immediately disappeared into the darkness within.

"Come'on Chuck, you're missing out," Randy's called.

"Easy for you to say," Chuck replied. Two years younger than Randy, Chuck was half a foot taller and twice as broad, which is why he played left Guard for the Junior Varsity football team while Randy ran cross country. Chuck squeezed himself through the gap, his Boston Red Sox hat getting knocked off in the process. Turning around in a circle, he flicked his flashlight beam back and forth until he spotted his hat in a dusty, spider webbed corner.

"Ew," Chuck started to put his cap on, but stopped when it occurred to him that the owner of those webs could very well be lurking in his hat, waiting for the opportunity to climb down his red hair, slide its chubby carapace into his ear, and lay a million billion eggs. With a shudder, he jammed his hat into the pocket of his wind breaker.

He played the light of his flashlight around the interior of the building. There were some dilapidated tables and stools and a dusty bar with barren glass shelves behind it.

"Hey Chuck, over here!' Randy called.

As he walked toward his brother's voice, Chuck was suddenly blinded by sparkling, dazzling lights. "Hey, cut it out Randy," Chuck said, holding up his hand to shield his eyes.

"Heh, got you," Randy chuckled, shifting the beam of his flashlight off the sparkling ball dangling from the ceiling. "It's an old mirror ball. I told you that this was once a dance club. I wonder if we could get it home."

"Steal it?"

"It's not really stealing. This place has been condemned for like eight years, if anyone cared about the ball they would have taken it out already."

As usual, Randy's logic was impeccable. Yet Chuck felt uneasy, his stomach was all in knots like before last year's championship game. And there was something else. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"That music. We should..."

"Do a little dance..." Randy said.

"What?"

"Make a little love..." Randy sang.

"Eww, Randy, don't... Get down tonight," Chuck was suddenly twisting his hips.

Randy spun his hands one over the other like a windmill and did a two step. "Get down tonight..."

A glowing silver skeleton descended from the mirror ball. It wore a broad shouldered zoot suit and a wide brimmed hat with a glittering white plume. The skull grinned at the brothers as it started dancing alongside them.

"Get down tonight..." Chuck and Randy clapped their hands and spun in a circle.

And the night went on.

*   *   *   *

Randy's car was discovered in the abandoned lot the following afternoon when their parents reported them missing. Detective Van Hoff was summoned to the scene.

"What do you have doc?" Van asked the coroner who was crouched next to the sheet covered bodies.

The coroner pushed his glasses up on top of his head. "Well, it's the damnedest thing, Van, but if I didn't know better, I'd say these boys died from exhaustion."

"They boogied themselves to death, eh?" Van said, looking up at the dull mirror ball that hung over them.

The coroner smiled. "Yea, ridiculous isn't it? We'll have more answers when we get the bodies back to the lab. I'm sure there's more to it."

Van watched the coroner and his assistants wheel the bodies out on the gurney. Alone, he looked around at the musty hall and felt the hair on the back of his neck rise. He decided to go check the boy's car.

As he stepped out of the door, he found himself humming. "Do a little dance..."

THE END                                                                                                                                        copyright 2013 John Lance

For the curious, the song I'm referring to is Get Down Tonight by KC and the Sunshine Band. You can hear it out on YouTube here.

Not sure how many folks realize this, but Dickens was quite the rock star during his time.

"You will be visited by three ghosts," the apparition said as it hovered a foot off the floor.

"Three ghosts,,," repeated the man in the nightcap as his pen scratched across the page in front of him. The candle on the small desk threw off barely enough light to write by, but the ghost's bluish glow provided more than enough. Despite his rumpled nightgown and the disarray of his wire brush beard any of his fans the world over would easily recognize Charles Dickens.

"The first ghost will be the Ghost of Christmas Past, the second will be the Ghost of Christmas Present, and the last..."

"Wait, wait, slow down Marley, you're going too fast," Charles pleaded. He dipped his quill and continued writing. "Ghost of Christmas Present. Okay, go on."

"And the Ghost of Christmas Future. They will teach you the true meaning of Christmas, Charles."

"True meaning of Christmas... wonderful! This is gold Marley, pure gold. I always told everyone you were my favorite editor. Tell me, can you see the future? Will this tale sell well?"

Marley reached up and tore great clumps of hair from his head. "No, Charles, you're missing the point. There is more to life than money!"

Charles stared at the ghost, and an immense smile broke across his face. "That's a fantastic idea! I'll make the protagonist a miserly banker who learns that lesson. This story will sell more copies than any of my other books. If you weren't dead I would pour you a brandy. "

Marley sighed. "You never listened to me in life, why would you listen to me in death?"

"Your character is going to need some work, though. I mean, you hover and glow, but otherwise you look very much as you did when you were alive. You're not very intimidating. Perhaps I'll give you some shackles and chains in the story."

Marley sniffed indignantly. "I think I'm done here." He floated out the door.

"Wait, Marley!" Charles called.

Marley stuck his head back through the door. "Yes Charles?"

"When are these ghosts going to arrive?"

"They arrive when they arrive, Charles. You can't dictate the behaviors of spirits."

"Hmmm, that lacks punch. I'll have them appear on the stroke of each hour, beginning with midnight," Charles began writing again. "What do you think of the title A Christmas Carol? Does it make you want to buy the book?"

"It'll be popular for all eternity, Charles," Marley replied. Then, as he melted away, he muttered, "I hope the Ghost of Christmas Future kicks your ass."

THE END

                                                                                                                                                    Copyright 2012 John Lance

Believe it or not, sometimes these little set up lines at the beginning are as hard to come up with as the Title. But "Titles and Little Intro Lines Are Hard" is too long a blog title.

Theirs was a combative marriage. Murry and Angela argued about everything: politics, religion, the bills, what color to paint the kitchen, what television show to watch, what to have for dinner, who left the bedroom light on. No detail was too small, no topic so trivial, that one couldn't find a definitive, unyielding stance that was contrary to the other.

Murry told his friends that the arguments made them feel young. Angela told her sister it was how they kept score.

They both laughed when they said these things, but was the laughter of someone who didn't quite get the joke.

Angela's sisters asked her why she didn't get a divorce. "Because," she said, "he'll win."

Murry's friends asked him why he didn't just leave. "Because, then we'd be dead," he replied.

So it was that they spent the next fifty years quarreling and badgering one another. Most people who knew them, including Murry and Angela, thought it was a blessing they never had children.

Then one chilly March night, Angela had a heart attack and passed away in her sleep.

"Strange," Murry said to a friend outside the funeral home, "I always thought an aneurism would get her." He smiled as he remembered how Angela's face would flush and her eyes widen when she was yelling at him.

After the service, Murry brought Angela's ashes home and scattered them around an Oak tree in the backyard. Then he went inside, made himself a bowl of spaghetti, a meal Angela never liked, and fell asleep in front of the television watching a western that Angela would have despised.

April rolled around, and Murry found himself standing on the porch looking out at the backyard. He had put out the bird feeder, even though he always told Angela that April was too early, and a Cardinal was roosting on it and picking at the sunflower seeds. For the life of him, he couldn't remember why he thought April was too early for the bird feeder, or why he felt it was so important to argue about it every single spring.

He had been having a lot of those moments over the last month. The green in the kitchen as not quite as lime or glaring as he had once thought, Jeopardy could occasionally be entertaining, and, after all these years, it turned out that he was the one that kept leaving the bedroom light on.

Murry went and stood under the oak tree. He cleared his throat. "Angie, I don't know if you can hear me. And I know if you were hear right now you would immediately start arguing with me about that, so I'm just going to keep going before you can get up a head of steam. I just want to say, Angie, I think we may have made a mistake arguing all those years. Somehow all those arguments that I thought it was so important to win don't seem as important anymore. I miss you." He paused, then added, "And I'm sorry I scattered your ashes under this oak. I should have scattered you under the rose bush like you wanted, even though the oak has the better view."

Looking out from the bedroom window, Angela's translucent poltergeist smiled. "I win," she said.

Then she flipped on the bedroom light.

THE END

                                                                                                                                                    copyright 2012 John M Lance

Based on the "Lipstick Message" writing prompt.

I know what you did.

Freddy Snips stared at the message scrawled in red across the bathroom mirror that hadn't been there a second ago. It wasn't something you could miss, being right in the center of the mirror, the looping script blazed across the mirror's width. It looked like lipstick, or blood.

Freddy preferred lipstick.

"Ow" he yelled and pulled his hands out from under the hot water. They were bright pink. He absentmindedly wiped them on his blue polo shirt.

Confess.

"What the?" Freddy spun around, but there was no one behind him. The hotel bathroom wasn't very big, just a toilet and a shower. He tore the shower curtain aside to reveal nothing but a run of the mill tub and tile. He pulled at the mirror, but it was securely mounted to the wall.

There's no one here but you, me, and your conscience.

"The hell with this," Freddy muttered and turned the door handle. It was locked.

You're not going anywhere.

"Fine, ha, ha, guys. Davey, you got me." Freddy tried to sound chipper even as he promised himself he would make Davey pay dearly for this prank. That SOB didn't understand limits.

Who is Davey?

"Fine, then whatever Candid Camera, Punk'd, rip-off show this is, I've had enough."

I'll tell you when you've had enough. I've waited a decade for you.

Freddy noticed that there was frost forming along the edge of the mirror. His breath floated before him like a fog.

They always return to the scene of the crime.

"I don't know what you mean," Freddy's teeth chattered. "I haven't done anything wrong."

You will pay, Fred Snipes. You thought you could have your way with me, and leave me for dead. But I knew you'd come back and I would have my revenge. You'll be joining me soon enough.

"Snips," Freddy said.

What?

"My name is Freddy Snips!"

Really?

"Y-y-yes" Freddy collapsed to the floor, curling himself into a tight ball for warmth.

Oh. I mus have misread the register. Sorry about that.

The red writing faded away and the temperature returned to normal. After a few minutes shivering on the floor, Freddy slowly sat up.

"I will not be recommending this establishment to my friends," he muttered. Then, after a moment, a puckish smile crept across his face. "Well, maybe to Davey."

                                                                                                                                                     Copyright 2012 John Lance