Shared Storytelling: Advent Ghosts 2024

There is a wall.

(There isn't actually a wall.)

You begin to dig through the wall.

(Walls are only one of many images employed to explore the theme of separation, a fecund symbol of the same sort as the canyon or the sea. The list could go on and on. Such symbols often represent the liminal barriers one must transcend in order to achieve personal actualization or cosmic justice or some such similar goal. Note that I use the term "liminal" in its secondary sense rather than the sensorial-focused primary definition. So in reality, there is not—strictly speaking—a wall and no need to actually dig through it.)

You push your hands into the wall. You feel soil sift between your fingers. You scoop stones out of compressed clay. You hear the dull thud they made as they drop onto the packed earth.

(Please, understand that once one understands the meaning implied by figurative language, he should feel free to dispense with the signifier. In fact, one has a responsibility to in order to avoid incoherence. For instance, why does this "wall" need to be an earth wall? Why not a daub-and-waddle wall? Why not one constructed of cinderblock or epoxy microcement? Why all this concrete detail when we have established that there isn't actually a wall?)

You dig until your fingernails splinter. You dig until your palms grow tacky with blood. You dig until your shoulders ache and your neck is a molten bar of iron and the sweat runnels off of you, dark with dirt.

(Ew. Not only is all of this unnecessary, it's downright distasteful.)

You dig until you find the door.

(Oh, a door. Well, that changes everything. You know that a door is functionally identical to a wall, right? You may dispense with it.)

It's a door constructed out of a wood long unidentifiable due to the grit and dust, rough-hewn and thick-planked. The lintel sags under the weight of the soil pressing down upon it. You see a score of rocks lining the lintel's top, presumably for support. You scrabble at one, prying until it comes loose, and you note its rough edges, the sharp, digging points.

(Details hardly improve your case. In fact, this whole miserable exercise is simply embarrassing.)

You take the rock in both abraded hands, extend your arms, and aim it at the center of your forehead. You imagine the solid mass of sincipital bone that lies just beneath the skin. You imagine the sulci and gyri right below that, the hemisphere-splitting longitudinal fissure that is your own neurological canyon. Or sea. Or wall.

(What are you—)

"Quiet," you say. "This is my story. And I will tell it as I see fit."

* * *
Hullo, friends, and welcome to what will soon become the most frenetic time of the year. Taxes, death, and a deliriously busy December are constants in life, and here at I Saw Lightning Fall, we've done our best for the past few years to participate in another: the Christmas British ghost story. The Paris Review provides a nice intro to the tradition, but understand that we celebrate it a little differently here. Stories don't have to involve ghosts. They don't necessarily need to focus on the Advent season. And note the plural; we definitely have more than one storyteller spinning spooky yarns here. In fact, our rules are rather few ...

1) Email me at ISawLightningFall [at] proton [dot] me if you want to participate. (Please note that this is a different email address from previous years.)
2) Pen a story that’s exactly 100-words long—no more, no less.
3) Post the story to your blog anywhere from Saturday, December 14, to Friday, December 20.
Hosting on ISLF is available for those without blogs or anyone who wants to write under a pseudonym. (Don't worry, you’ll retain copyright!)
4) Email the link of your story to me.
5) While you should feel free to write whatever you want to, know that I reserve the right to put a content warning on any story that I think needs it.

Why not check out last year's stories while you're at it?