Judy's Journal, Vol 5, Feb 2022: Judy's Journal, #5

By Judy Lunsford

Judy's Journal magazine. Filled with short stories and novels all by Judy Lunsford.

Included in this collection are the following short stories:

Moth to the Flame
Voices
Ticked Tock
The Gallery
Marionette
Burn-Out
Coming Home

Also included in this issue is the complete fantasy novel The Red Dart.

This collection includes a variety of genres and subject matter. Everything from light-hearted fantasy, to dark fantasy, to sicfi (Burn-Out), to light horror (Marionette).

Happy reading.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Judy Lunsford
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201630416

Judy Lunsford

Born and raised in California, Judy now lives in Arizona with her husband and Giant Schnoodle. Judy writes with dyslexia and a chronic illness & is a breast cancer survivor. She writes mostly fantasy, but delves into suspense, horror, romance, and poetry. She has written books and short stories for all ages. You can find her books and short stories at your favorite online retailers.

Book preview

Introduction

I’ve decided to try out restarting my magazine. It is filled with short stories and novels of my own creation.

Included in this collection are the following short stories: Moth to the Flame; Voices; Ticked Tock; The Gallery; Marionette; Burn-Out; Coming Home.

Also included in this issue is the complete fantasy novel The Red Dart.

This collection includes a variety of genres and subject matter. I have everything from light-hearted fantasy, to dark fantasy, to sicfi (Burn-Out), to light horror (Marionette). I hope you enjoy what I have to offer here.

Happy reading.

Judy Lunsford

January 2022

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Moth to the Flame

Nixie watched intently as the human boy walked towards the fairy circle. 

Humans were suckers for fairy circles. Nixie knew that to capture a human, all she had to do was lay out some colorful mushrooms in a circle underneath a tree and human children were drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

Nixie usually just toyed with humans when she caught them. Just like any other fairy. But this time was different.

Nixie was tired of being different herself, and this human was going to change things for her.

He was going to change everything.

No longer would Nixie be the outcast of the fairies. She would be able to join in with the other fae after this day.

The boy was young, maybe nine or ten in human years. His brown hair tumbled over his eyes in errant curls that he flipped aside with a twitch of his head.

He stared down at the circle of mushrooms and then looked around him. His eyes were searching for fairies. She could tell he was looking for something hidden. He was looking for her, although he didn’t quite know it yet.

Nixie looked around her as well too. She saw a bird above her. Its beak was open and its chest was vibrating as it sang its song out into the forest. A song that Nixie herself had never heard. But she knew it was beautiful. And she longed to hear it for herself.

Nixie watched the leaves blow in the breeze. She knew that the leaves sang a tune as well. Yet another thing she had never heard. But she knew the other fairies could hear it. 

It had taken her a long time to figure out that the other fairies could hear things she could not. It wasn’t something that had registered to her because it was something she had never experienced.

The other fairies knew she was different and they bullied her in merciless ways. Nixie shuddered as she tried to block all of the horribleness out of her mind.

It had taken her many years, and many failures, but this time she knew she had the magic right.

All she had to do was wait for the human boy to step into the fairy ring and she would be able to steal his hearing away from him. And then she would be just like all the other fairies.

She watched with tingling anticipation as the boy drew closer to the fairy ring. Just before he stepped over the mushrooms and entered the circle, Nixie felt a slight pang of guilt as she thought about what she was about to do to this human boy. To his life.

But more than anything, Nixie wanted to belong. She wanted to hear, so she could be like the other fairies. So the bullying would stop and so she would finally know what it meant to belong. What it meant to have a friend.

The boy stepped into the fairy ring and sat down on the ground in the center, just like all of the other children who came to this forest searching for fairies.

Nixie pushed aside all of her guilt and rushed forward towards the boy. She cast her spell on him before he ever even saw her.

She tore the hearing right from his ears and she quickly gobbled down the magic and waited for the glorious sounds she had been expecting to wash over her.

But they didn’t. She remained engulfed in a world of silence.

The boy’s face brightened as he saw her. 

He made some gestures with his hands and looked at her expectantly.

She shook her head at him and shrugged.

He smiled and laughed and waved hello.

She weakly waved back, still trying to understand where her spell went wrong.

The boy waved her over to him and made a few more gestures with his hands.

She slowly, carefully approached him.

Nixie had gotten good at reading lips over the years and she watched carefully as the boy used his hands

while he spoke.

I’m Oliver, she watched his mouth form the words. Are you deaf too?

Nixie blinked in surprise as the boy smiled at her and made more gestures in the air. She watched and realized that he was trying to speak to her with his hands. 

Nixie laughed in relief as she saw the human in the circle in a whole new way.

Three circles, one filled with diagonal lines

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Voices

The house was empty again, and that was the way he liked it.

The last family had moved out over the weekend. It had taken him longer to get rid of them than he normally liked.

He relished the quiet. The tranquility of the empty house.

It was something he had never experienced before he died.

But it was something he had grown to love over the last few decades.

Families came and went. Never lasting too long once he made his first appearance.

He figured he would have some time alone before a real estate agent came and cleared out what this last family had left behind to make the house sellable once again.

He kept telling himself that he was going to stop haunting the house. He was going to stop scaring the people who moved in. He kept promising himself that he would live peaceably with the people who came to live in his house.

But those nasty teenage boys with their cracking adolescent voices were all he could stand. Once again, he promised himself that they would be the last ones he would scare out of the house.

But he knew it was all a lie.

He knew that he was cursed to live out his eternity in this house, scaring all those who dared enter it. Driving out those who moved in and tried to call it their own.

It was his house.

And he would never relinquish it. 

It belonged to him.

And he relished the quiet.

It was too soon when the next person moved into the house.

He felt like it hadn’t been very long since the last family moved out.

He had no sense of time anymore, so it could have been a week or ten years since the last family.

But she moved into the house, nonetheless.

He watched as she moved in her things. 

There was no moving company. No one even came to help her.

But she didn’t need help because she didn’t seem to have a lot of things.

She dragged a futon into the bedroom and set it up herself.

She had no couch, just a few comfy chairs that she set in an odd pattern in the living room.

What was missing?

He looked around.

Everyone seemed to set their living room the same way. But not her. Something was different.

Ah, yes. No TV.

He remembered there was a single cable connection where every family so far had plugged their TV into and set their living room around that horrid noisy box.

But not her.

She circled her chairs to face the fireplace.

It was how his wife had set things up.

And the vast majority of her boxes were filled with books.

She spent the day unpacking.

He never once heard her voice.

He watched from the attic, peering down through the vents in the ceiling so he could watch her without making his appearance known.

He always gave new guests some time. Some space. In case he decided he could live with them.

But there was never anyone he liked.

Until her.

She was quiet. 

A perfect houseguest, as far as he was concerned.

She was a writer. So, she sat at a computer in the office that faced out into the once beautiful yard that his wife once kept.

But the garden had died. Neglected from disuse. No one had ever stayed long enough to fix up the yard.

She read in the evenings. She did all her own cooking.

He watched as she cooked in the evenings and wished he had a sense of smell again. 

It had been a long time since he had even thought about what something smelled like, much less wished that he could use that sense again.

He was fascinated by her.

One day, she sat and stared out the office window and looked out at the overgrown garden.

He watched as she got up and went outside and wandered along the overgrown path that his wife had once laid down out in the yard.

He could only stand at the window and stare at her through the glass. He couldn’t leave. He was trapped in the house. So he had to be content with watching her from inside.

He was happy to be roaming the house once again, instead of trapped in the attic. But he hadn’t wanted to scare her. 

Not yet.

He watched as she came back inside, got her keys, and left the house in her small car.

She returned home later in the afternoon, her car filled with gardening tools and other things to take care of the garden. She laid everything out in the yard and came in to make some dinner.

He sat down at the table across from her and watched her while she ate.

He wondered what her plans were for the yard.

He wondered what her dinner tasted like.

He wondered what her voice sounded like.

She washed the dishes and then sat down in front of the fire she built in the fireplace and read.

He sat in the chair across from her and watched her read.

She got up and quietly went to bed.

The following morning, after she had cleaned up the breakfast dishes, he watched her through the window once again.

She trimmed up the overgrown plants and trees and bushes in the yard. She pulled the weeds. She spent the whole day outside. Only taking time to make a quick sandwich for lunch.

Within the week, she had given new life to the garden. 

His wife would have been pleased.

He had sat at the table with her every evening at dinner. He loved to watch her eat. He loved to watch her cook. He loved to watch her.

It occurred to him that he had never once thought about haunting the house to scare her away.

He liked her. He wanted her to stay.

He spent his evenings sitting with her in front of the fireplace. She read, and he watched her every move.

He could see her eyes move across the pages of the books she read. 

She devoured books. She had read most of the books on her bookshelves.

And he had watched her read them.

He still had never heard her speak.

She lived alone. She wrote for a living. She read books. She used email and text exclusively. She worked in the garden.

He longed to hear her voice.

It was the only thing he didn’t know about her.

It was the only thing he wished for in this afterlife.

He sat and stared at her one evening, as she read a book that made her smile.

Oh, how he loved her smile.

He jumped with surprise when she laughed out loud at what she was reading.

It was the first time he had heard her laugh.

He felt happy for the first time he could remember since his death.

It was brief. Only for a moment.

But her laugh had made him happy.

If only he could hear her speak.

He stood up and followed her as she went to make some tea.

He watched as she put a kettle on to boil and he watched as she put a tea bag into a mug.

Oh, if only she would speak.

He watched her for weeks. Months maybe. He still had no sense of time.

It was the longest he had ever lived with a tenant in his house.

It wasn’t until after dinner one night that he noticed her push in his chair.

He watched the following morning as she pulled it out for him, so he could join her for breakfast.

He felt the joy well up in him once again. 

Could she really know he was there?

He watched her as she ate.

She pushed in his chair after breakfast.

At dinner that night, he longed for her to look up at him.

Could she see him?

She looked in his direction now and again, but it never occurred to him that maybe she could see him.

She smiled at him briefly and went back to her food.

He wondered if the smile was truly for him.

He sat across from her that evening, in front of the fireplace.

He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She read, and she laughed at the book again.

He felt an overwhelming joy fill him as he realized that he loved her.

And then, he disappeared.

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Ticked Tock

It was a morning like any other morning. The sun was coming up over the mountains and was catching in the rearview mirror as Wesley was driving towards the city.

He tried to avoid looking in his mirror because the sun was blindingly bright as it caught his eyes in the reflection. He didn’t want to adjust the mirror because it took forever to get it back to where he liked it. So, he figured he would just avert his eyes