Old Appleboy’s ghost sat in a high-backed chair near the roaring fire. It was Christmas Eve and the only day of the year he was allowed to return to his old haunting ground (so to speak).
The house was empty. The only ones left were his wife Victoria and her lover. He wouldn’t forgive her for sharing her bed (their bed) with him for years before the murder.
Now it was payback time for that night she slipped a mickey finn into his thermos flask. She knew he would take a coffee break on his drive up to Scotland and then as he sped up the dual-carriageway he would fall asleep at the wheel. She was banking on him smashing the car and killing himself. What she hadn’t planned was the family of seven in the people carrier he took with him.
Did she have a conscience over that, the selfish cow, did she heck.
The clock struck midnight and the door opened. His wife was alone, she saw Appleboy’s ghost and for one moment, the silence was punctuated only by the weight of his presence. Victoria, unremorseful and unyielding, met his gaze with steely calm. There was no flicker of regret in her eyes.
‘Piss off, you don’t scare me,’ she snapped. Humiliated once more, Appleboy’s ghost dissolved into the darkness, leaving behind nothing but a lingering chill.
Her cold heart remained unshaken, and now the ghost had vanished, its echo forever lingered in the silence of her triumph.
Words: Richard Rooney
Illustration: A.I.
Flash Fiction 250
Flash Fiction 250 