Haunted

/ Liz H-H
Spooky Moon

The challenge? Write a story in exactly 6 sentences based on Denise’s one word prompt: HAUNT. Visit, comment, and write & post your own on SIX SENTENCE STORIES. The Café is open. Come as you are!

Past midnight in a late winter thaw, Eddie stretched his limbs, smooth as ectoplasm and pale as the silver moon that shone in through the basement window. He’d grown tired of waiting, but why did he even care?

The usual noisy parties he commenced after her kids went to bed had always roused her enough to pad downstairs in her nightshirt and bare feet to talk to him (and various friends flitting through), to politely hush them so her children could sleep; that glimpse was enough to keep him going.

But lately, she was too exhausted from picking up the slack at her downsizing workplace, an extorting ex-husband threatening court again, her elderly parents’ health problems, and her youngsters feeling the tension and acting out; instead she would lie awake and not come downstairs to visit.

Knowing this, he chose soft jazz and comforting poetry, using furnace-blow to amplify his message to her bedroom alone, hoping she would be rested—no, renewed—enough to come back down to the basement and maybe sit with him for awhile, just to listen and get to know that he truly was there for her and worth getting to know better.

It seems they both were haunted.

© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2025)

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