Featured Author: Jaime Jo Wright
The wind was like an eerie whisper that tickled Penelope’s ear with a warning. She slunk behind a wooden slat door that hung from its top hinge only and whined as the breeze pushed it against her. Seeing the shadow drift across her yard in the moonlight had heightened her senses and engaged her curiosity. But now, Penelope questioned her sense of reason. Her rationale was lacking. She should have remained inside the farmhouse, embraced by the warmth of the crackling fire in the woodstove, hands curled around her coffee mug in the safe façade of satisfaction after a long day at the corn maze and family farm.
Penelope peered around the old door into the dark cavern of the woodshed. The outline of a pitchfork, its tongs dagger-like in the shadows, reminded her that life was fragile. That within a moment, breath could be stolen from her. Her spirit would waft over the earth like a half-ascended headless horseman, questioning if love would pull her back down or if death would win and send her into the afterlife.
Penelope took a tentative step forward, unable to deny the almost ironlike pull that dragged her into the darkness. A calling. A need. An insatiable hunger for the shadow that had disappeared into the innards, beckoning her wordlessly to follow it.
Dry, dead leaves crackled under her footsteps. She could feel the earth beneath her feet, cold and hard. A moment to inhale her next breath, and Penelope choked as long, skeletal fingers launched from the dark void and dragged her inside. Her scream caught in her throat. She had nowhere to go, nowhere to—
“Penelope!”
The sharp burst of her name in the timbre of a male voice shocked her from her terrified, open-mouthed silent scream.
He shoved the plastic ghost-face mask up his forehead and shook off the fake skeleton hand. A flashlight popped on and illuminated a familiar yet ghoulish face. One that Penelope hated to love and loved to hate.
She lifted her hand and slugged his shoulder. A firm shoulder. Much more muscular than if he had been a skeleton or wraith hiding in the darkness.
“Preston March!” She slugged him again for good measure. “You’re awful!”
Preston released Penelope as she shoved away from him and staggered backward. There was a brief hint of a pause, Preston fumbled, and then light flooded the woodshed.
The pitchfork was far less ominous in the light.
A riding lawnmower sat unused in the corner.
A barrel filled with wooden handled gardening tools was pushed into the opposite corner.
Fake spider webs, a white sheet, a wooden chair, and other items adorned the room and finished off the makeshift stop on the haunted farm tour at the corn maze.
“So it’s good, yeah?” Preston looked far too pleased with himself. No man over the age of twenty-five should look so boyishly gleeful. But she had known Preston since grade school. He had been her nemesis. Her most irritating irritant. Now, the smug look of pleasure on his face told her that he had bested her once again, terrified her with his shenanigans, and held no shame in doing so.
“I hate you.” Penelope stalked past him toward the chair and then spun back around to face him.
“No, you don’t.” He flicked off the flashlight now that there was plenty of light. He wore all black and the ghost-face mask perched on his head made him look like an oversized middle school boy ready to go trick or treating.
“I do.” Penelope crossed her arms. “You knew very well you were going to scare the life out of me.”
“Well…” He conceded with a nod. “But it goes to prove that this haunted farm tour will be fun for families.”
“Fun for families?” she countered, her voice rising. “I think it’s appalling! Whatever happened to apple cider and hay rides, scarecrows and pumpkins? Whose idea was this? You’re going to give someone’s grandma a stroke, Preston March, that’s what you’re going to do. Stop their heart and they will forever be imprinted in your mind and soul as your responsibility.”
Preston’s eyes shuttered, and he took a step toward her.
Penelope backed away. She hated him. No. No, she loved to hate him. Wait. She hated that she loved him. Yes, that was it. And when he came toward her with such dark intensity, it made it worse. Deliciously worse. Wonderfully worse. Terrifyingly worse.
Preston lowered his face, the plastic chin of the mask brushing her forehead. His whispered words sent a delightful shudder through her body.
“If that is what has happened to you tonight—that you’re forever imprinted in my mind and soul—then that means, Penelope Pritchard, you are mine.”
There was a vampirish accent to his words, but his breath, warm and enticing, floated across her lips. Yes, t’was the season to be scared to death. But what would it be like to be loved back to life?
Connect with her at her website, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter, and check out her podcast, MadLit Musings.
Spark Flash Fiction 