“For a moment, the two men stood opposite one another utter confusion, both too flabbergasted to know what to do. The man looked like he was a few decades older than Oscar. His face was weathered with a lifetime of hard work, and what was left of his hair was wispy and grey. His outdated clothes were slightly oversized, old, like he had lost some weight and not updated his wardrobe. There was something about him – perhaps his stance, or his pattern of speech, or even just the way he looked – that gave Oscar the anxious feeling that he was from a different time.“

Oscar is crumbling under the weight of relentless, working-class loneliness. Something in his life desperately needs to change. Fortunately, he’s about to get his own personal poltergeist.

Read it here.

(published under J.L. Corbett, a previous pen name)