Fast Reads: Selected short stories, drabbles, and flash fiction

Banshee Revenge

Molly the banshee hovers over the road to torment a midnight traveller. She draws herself into the air, gathering despair into accursed lungs; preparing to unleash her fatal wail. Fists clenched, she opens her mouth to scream... but nothing happens.

Alive she could act; dead she could herald demise with her wail. But now, her voice had lost its effect.

Molly snaked vaporous along the ground, encircling the traveller's legs. How she wanted to constrict and break them, like a python. She had seen his face now, and knew. This man was her murderer, the one who buried her here, twenty years ago. Why was she denied revenge?

Her body trailed like vapour, but she willed her face to materialize before him. "Why?" she shrieked, but he didn't even flinch.

This wicked man must not pass out of her domain unpunished. She strained to grasp him in wispy hands, but might as well try to stop the moon. He shuffled on mumbling, without even pausing to remember her grave.

She rushed ahead and threw herself in his path, weeping until tears turned road dust to mud.

When he stooped to examine the muck, she saw his eyes dart wildly. His jacket looked tattered, even in the dark, and he babbled as he fiddled with something stuck in his ear. Then her murderer retreated, but before he got far, Molly heard an unnatural, high-pitched shriek.

Her once-terrifying murderer was brain-lost now, melting Molly's revenge lust to pity. She understood she served no further purpose here, even as she began to fade. Time had ruined him worse than any banshee could, even if his hearing aide worked.