[This was the first honorable mention for our Ghost Story Flash Fiction contest.]
“Got a light, buddy?” my friend asks, his voice a low whisper in the fog. I keep my eyes fixed
on the darkness in front of me, where shadows shift between the shell holes.
“Here,” I pass him my cigarette. Strange, how the ember glows but no light was cast.
“Awful quiet tonight,” he whispers, but I don’t answer. The smell of tobacco mingles with
something else – like rotten fish.
“I’m feeling cold, buddy.” His voice sounds farther away now.
“Here,” I offer him my jacket, feeling his fingers brush mine. They’re like ice, those fingers.
Or perhaps it was mine that were.
“Remember what Mother wrote?” His voice sounds wrong in the darkness. “Said she’d have
Christmas dinner waiting for us. Turkey and all.”
I nod, my fingers clenching my rifle till my knuckles were white.
“You’ll tell her, won’t you? Tell her I wasn’t scared at the end?”
My throat closes.
“You’re right here,” I insisted, but my voice cracks.
“Am I?” His laugh sounds like that of breaking glass. “Then why won’t you look at me buddy?”
I don’t want to. God help me, I don’t want to.
“Please, buddy. Just once.”
I finally look, seeing only empty space and my jacket, neatly folded where he should be. The
cigarette lying there unlit beside me. Beyond the wire, half-buried in mud, no more than twenty
yards away, I can see him, what was left of him, and those lifeless eyes staring right back at
me.
