Gossamer Ghosts: Gossamer, #2

By Robert J. McCarter

A story from an unusual apocalypse.

 

The aliens came in peace and we met them with violence. After we attacked them, we thought they left for good, but the day the alien's gossamer threads fall, everything changes. Now the dead become gossamer ghosts, haunting the living, intent on balancing the scales of their lives.

 

In "Gossamer Ghosts," Glenn watches as events unfold that will change everything. Not knowing what they are, he welcomes the gossamer threads when they fall and witnesses the appearance of some of the first gossamer ghosts. Amidst the chaos of a changing world, he desperately tries to pull together the fractured pieces of his family and build something worthwhile as the world falls apart.

 

In this innovative short story of a "karmic" apocalypse, Robert J. McCarter, the author of Woody and June versus the Apocalypse, shares an unforgettable vision of a future, one both terrifying and hopeful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Little Hummingbird Publishing
• Release date: May 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781941153789

Book preview

Gossamer Ghosts

A Story from an Unusual Apocalypse

Robert J. McCarter

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Little Hummingbird Publishing

Foreword

This story was originally published in 2022 in Pulphouse Fiction Magazine Issue #18.

Other titles in the world of Gossamer:

Gossamer Threads

Gossamer Ghosts

A Story from an Unusual Apocalypse

Copyright ©2022 by Robert J. McCarter

This story was first published in Pulphouse Fiction Magazine’s #18

Except as permitted under the Copyright Act of 1976, this book may not be reproduced in whole or in part in any manner. This book is a work of Fiction. Names, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used Fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Cover image ©Deposit Photo, Wirestock

Version 1.0, May 2023

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-941153-78-9

Print ISBN: 978-1-941153-77-2

Visit Robert’s website at: RobertJMcCarter.com

Published by:

Little Hummingbird Publishing

P.O. Box 23518

Flagstaff, AZ 86002

Contents

Gossamer Ghosts

More Sci-fi?

About the Author

Books by Robert J. McCarter

Gossamer Ghosts

I can remember the moment when I knew that we were screwed. All of us. The entire human race. And that’s something.

It was after eight p.m. on a cold February night and I stood behind the bar, my feet aching from having been standing so long and being too damn old to tend bar anymore. CNN was playing above me, a near constant since the aliens arrived. The Treaty was being signed and CNN had their main line anchors on covering it, the coverage oscillating between the talking heads, live footage of the signing taking place at the United Nations headquarters in New York City in the vast assembly hall, and more live footage from the protests outside the building.

The bar was long and narrow with brick walls and short windows high on the wall, a basement space recently built out below a historic hotel in Flagstaff, Arizona. This was my bar, well mine and my partner’s and the bank, of course.

The crowd was heavy for a Wednesday and not just college kids, but all ages. No one wanted to be alone for this.

It was a little warm from all the bodies and smelled sharply of fear, but there wasn’t that much talking, most of it low whispers.

This wasn’t like a Sunday when football was playing or like a weekend when the college kids came