Magical Realism: Toxic Green: Magical Realism, #4

By M. Benjamin Naves

Magical Realism: Toxic Green

The fourth in a series containing two shorts stories (Ashes & The Unwilling Host).  They both pack a punch and are short and sweet and to the point.

(Ashes) There is something in the fireplace...

(The Unwilling Host)  Not everyone has a deathwish...

• Language: English
• Publisher: American Gothic
• Release date: May 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201087029

Book preview

Short Stories

by

M. Benjamin Naves

Ashes

"W hat do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you, but I know it's mine."

-  The Beatles

A NOTE

Written by Prof. Kurtis J. Faust, editor for The Grimwood Hangman.

Current Location: Unknown

Pages Found: Hanging from the corner of a sewer grate.

Of all the stories I’ve come across in my travels, this just so happens to be the first one I've ever heard. The reasons why I have only now included it in my notes? Well, let’s just say that in my earlier years, I was a lot more skeptical; being a young journalist, straight right out of college and ready to tell the world the hard-hitting facts that need to be told about our society in general, you offend forget (as I still do now, forgetting to include minor details that great a more grander picture), that the real stories—the ones that stick with you at least—are always the ones not found Wall Street. No, they were found in the most unlikely of places; in this instant, a lonely bar on the lower-east side of Manhattan.

The bar was called the Slaughtered Lamb; a name that provided a flattering homage to a famous film of 1981, An American Werewolf in London. In director John Landis’ film of the beastly nature of the human psyche, characters David and Jack (portrayed by actor’s David Naughton and Griffin Dunne respectively) wander into a small town pub in Scotland, only to come across a group of townies—maybe the same you’d find in Grimwood County—hovering wildly over their current belief that of a werewolf is currently present within their village; they are also not too keen on outsiders either—especially in this case, two young Americans backpacking through Europe. But I digress, as the only two things that are shared between my recanting of this tale and this brilliant film, (the first film