By Christoper Locke
The school bus held us like breath. At stops in the jungle, barefoot girls walked the aisle selling armloads of socks, tubs of batteries clicking like teeth. A speared fish, curled and fried, was offered through an open window. For hours, the road split the mountains leading somewhere otherly. We arrived at a small town and dust rose in hallelujah. Tres Hermanas (Three Sisters) charged a single dollar for a room and breakfast near a pond with its squabble of ducks. Lisa and I discovered a ranch making wheels of Swiss cheese. In the Guatemalan mountains. We returned to the hostel full and happy. Electricity cut after dark, candlelight our only option; I shook our flashlight and cursed the batteries I didn’t buy. Our bed was scratchy with hay, tough wool. Making love was dangerous. We blew the candle out like a dandelion. Later, I woke uneasy in the dark. Lisa moved formless beside me, spoke into the air: I’m afraid. The house is on fire. I fell into terror. Lisa touched my arm. Go back to sleep, she said. Next morning, we ate eggs and tortillas with the ducks, watched Koi circle the pond. Why did you say the house was on fire? I asked. I didn’t, Lisa said. I heard the voice too. I understood. Years ago, the government rounded up the town’s boys and men, shot and bulldozed them into the ground; homes burned to ash. We finished breakfast. I returned our plates to the kitchen. One of the two remaining sisters, nearly ninety, turned bacon at a woodstove. I told her what happened. Said we had a ghost. She looked at me very hard, struck the cast iron with a spatula.There are no ghosts, she yelled. All we have left are the living.
Christopher Locke’s flash has appeared in such magazines as SmokeLong Quarterly, Jellyfish Review, Barrelhouse, Flash Fiction Magazine, MoonPark Review, New Flash Fiction Review, JMWW, Maudlin House, Flash Boulevard, and elsewhere. He won the Black River Chapbook Award for his collection of speculative short stories 25 Trumbulls Road. His latest book of poems, Music For Ghosts, (NYQ Books) and a memoir-in-essays, Without Saints, (Black Lawrenec Press) were both released in 2022. Chris lives in the Adirondacks and teaches English and creative writing at SUNY Plattsburgh.
MoonPark Review 