The Haunted Traveler Vol. 2 Issue 1 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Weasel The Haunted Traveler Copyright © 2015 Weasel Press Front Cover and back Cover © Betty Rocksteady All written and visual works remain the sole property of their creators. They are free to use their works however they see fit. The Haunted Traveler is an independent anthology that is published twice a year. It is published by Weasel Press. If you would like a copy of the magazine you can order one through our website listed below. The Haunted Traveler is a non-profit based magazine and runs solely off the support of its readers, authors, and artists. Contact us to find out how you can help keep the roaming anthology moving. If you would like to be considered for our next issue, please visit our website to see when we open up again. http://systmaticwzl.wix.com/hauntedtraveler http://www.facebook.com/thehauntedtraveler http://www.weaselpress.com Table of Contents ULA by G.N. Boorse Pgs. 68-73 Going to Eat You by Chlo’e Camonayan The Mystagogue by Arthur Staaz Pg. 6 Pgs. 74-80 Stealing Roses from a Grave by Scott Thomas Outlar Punk’d by Leslie Bohem Pgs. 7-13 Pgs. 81-84 Late-Night Drive by Gwendolyn Kiste Get Off the Phone by Brian Rowe Pgs. 14-18 Pgs. 85-92 Corruption by J.C. Michael The Yonder by R.M. Warren Pgs. 19-20 Pgs. 93-103 Love That Don’t Quit by Eryk Pruitt Leaves by Diane Arrelle Pgs. 21-23 Pgs. 104-111 Drive by Alyssa Roseman Dead Talk by Ace Antonio Hall Pgs. 24-31 Pgs. 112-119 Breakroom Etiquette by G. E. Smith Freaky by Leon Saul Pg. 32 Pgs. 120-135 Wham-Bam by Nicholas Lee Huff Good Dog by Llanwyre Laish Pgs. 33-35 Pgs. 137-140 Silent Night by Searska GreyRaven The Witching Hour by Joseph Rubas Pgs. 36-39 Pgs. 141-155 Midnight Feedings by Donald Jacob Uitvlugt Dark Passage by John W. Dennehy Pgs. 40-41 Pgs. 156-167 A Matter of Perspective by R.K. Gold Safe in the Dark by Andrea Lorin Pgs. 42-56 Pgs. 168-171 The Mad Ones by Jeffery Scott Sims Face Off by Chlo’e Camonayan Pgs. 57-67 Pg. 173 Few artists thrive in solitude and noth- ing is more stimulating than the conflict of minds with similar interests. —Arthur C. Clarke 6 7 Stealing Roses from a Grave Scott Thomas Outlar I think about death all the time. It is my calling. It is all I know. I think about death because of its mysteriousness. Truly the most misunderstood topic known about by man. That’s the genius of the thing. Is it even real? Do we die? Or are we simply transubstantiated to another layer of reality? Does Karma play a role? Are there- here it comes- gods involved? Or a God? Is there a source from which life blooms and then returns to after what we perceive as death occurs? I think about death because I know about life, and it, except dur- ing rare occasions, is quite a disappointment. So death offers a mystery that at least has the potential of being better than life. I think about death in terms such as these: pain, hatred, jealousy, greed, bigotry, fear, guilt, shame, and other such nasty emotions that must be dealt with during life. I think about death with a question such as this: Why, during Autumn, do the leaves turn shades of the most brilliant yellow, purple, blue, orange and red while they are in the act of dying? Is it that death is the beginning of something brighter, sharper, more colorful, more sensational, than life? Is it that death hurts, yes, but life hurts even worse? — I think about death when it takes someone that is loved and rips Going to Eat You Chlo’e Camonayan them away from life into a mysterious, unknown region that has abso- lutely no meaning for those still alive. I think about death at night, shovel in tow, blisters covering my hands, as I dig into the soil of the earth. 8 9 I think about death in the graveyard after hours of macabre relat- after. ed consciousness rites performed with incense, candles, and a cigar that I I think about death because every family member and friend puff on while slumped against a tree taking a breather before, tossing the I’ve ever known is dead. cancerous thing to the dirt, I hoist and heave the body (sometimes they’re I think about death because I saw both my parents shot to death just small babies and quite light, while other times they’re monstrous by soldiers on our front doorstep moments before my brothers and sisters brutes weighing in at 300 pounds) down into the hole that my work has were hunted down and killed by savage slices received from a blade led to. across their throats. I think about death during the winter while the wind scars my I think about death because the first time in my life that I was face with its intense ferocity as I drag a new shipment of tombstones confronted with it, when all I had to do was come out from under the along a cobblestone path toward where the newly deceased are being floorboards and die alongside my brethren, I remained hidden below. prepared for burial. I think about death as I toss another body in the hole. I think about death because I am surrounded and numbed by it. The hole is where I hid as a scared six-year old child. I think about death when I watch a mother and her two young The hole is the one place where death was not able to grasp and children visit the site of her husband and their father, a shipman was lost clutch me to its mysterious bosom. at sea during a war where thousands of other people bring about more The hole is where I make sure, for it is my life’s duty, that what death by the minute. goes in to be buried truly is dead. I think about death when I am mowing the grounds on a spring I think about death because the crow is black and the raven day with a warm, sparkling blue sky above, not a cloud in sight, as the hunts at night and the eagles have talons that can easily crunch the bones full intensity of the sun fuels life to continue through its revitalizing of even the heaviest corpses I deal with. energy. I think about death because the world is a lonely place for a man I think about death during the raging storms of summer, when who can not sleep at night due to traumatically induced insomnia, and levees break, towns flood, and families are torn apart, as water, one of the so goes out into the graveyard guided only by the light of the moon, or most important chemical compounds to sustain life on earth, is not being sometimes just the stars, or, if cloudy, with a flashlight in tow, and digs drained from a glass for hydration, but is instead draining the life from graves for dead people. the living through heavy doses of torrential downpour and the primal I think about death a lot. For fifty-nine years I have considered power of hurricanes that murder the innocent and cause catastrophic the subject in earnest. The first six, before the murder of my family, are chaos. not spared in the calculations, for I was taught from my first days in the I think about death while dressed in black, fedora hat pulled crib about those in the world who hated us and wanted us dead simply for low to cover my eyes, beard and hair grown long, shoes caked in mud, who we were. the foul stench of sweat combined with the putrefied odors of dead flesh Dead? What does this word mean, I wondered at such a tender combing to create the fragrance which drips from my pores. age. Being the youngest child to parents that had raised five others I think about death long after the moon has arrived, all my holes before I was even born meant that I received the gathered wisdom and having been dug, as I howl and moan dark lamentations to the black sky. instruction they had accumulated about the awful things done to them I think about death while showering in cold water to rinse away and my older siblings, and how those people in the world who hated us the grime which represents what was once living, but now, by witness of would not spare me the rod, either. my own eyes, is very much dead. I think about death because, years later, at fifteen, after escap- I think about death while eating meat. The animal flesh my ing my hometown, traveling through the country with hair and facial teeth gnaw into tastes of skin, muscle, tendons, blood vessels, and some- disguises, upon reaching a recruiting station, I enlisted in the armed ser- times even trace amounts of shit from inside the organs of that which was vices. I signed up to kill. I signed up to deliver death. I joined the very once living. people and forces that I’d been taught hated my kind. I fought alongside I think about death because death is my job, my work, my sol- them and murdered anyone that the general, sergeant, or high commander ace, my only comfort in a life that has left me with nothing but the vague ordered me to.