Haunt

By Shane Wilson

Haunt is a 5,000 word long journey into a dark territory of rotting wood and dust sheets. On the way we encounter the mirror-foxed mind of a young girl, persecuted publicly by her peers, and internally by her home life. Reparation is tragically inconclusive...

Buyers of 'Static.', Shane Wilson's first short story collection, already own this tale, buried way into the back of the book where the true monsters lurk...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shane Wilson
• Release date: Mar 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476403472

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Haunt

By Shane Wilson

Copyright © 2011 Shane Wilson

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Haunt is taken from Shane Wilson’s short story collection Static.

*****

HAUNT

(I’ve stood, patiently, for so long. I can wait a moment more.)

Zandra walks. It’s a Thursday.

‘Her mother was fucked by a horse,’ she hears, the words imparted in snide, detestably familiar tones. Half a second’s thought and then Zandra swings round and goes for the bitch.

‘Hey! Fuck you, okay?’ she snarls, more in self-defence than anger, but Lori just stands there. Her posse feign intense surprise, their mouths flopping open whilst a look of delicious horror slowly creeps over their faces. Cat-fight, they’re thinking, though that’s not the response Zandra wanted. Lori’s face curls up into a feline smile, anyway.

‘It’s true, though,’ she adds, slowly, with relish; the knowledge is some potent nostrum that clearly nourishes the soul with more than the sum of its ill-conceived, bastard parts.

Zandra’s face seems to collapse in on itself, her expression tightening into a look of utter desolation. ‘Excuse me,’ she says with exaggerated calm, a drowning girl kicking for the surface. ‘I have to be somewhere else.’ and she spits, very deliberately, at Lori’s feet.

Two seconds pause, during which Lori