Tag: artist

Last month, my Ko-fi subscribers & one-time “tippers” got access to my Christmas horror story “Special Day”. This month’s story is “The Coffee House at the End of Everything”. Both stories, though complete fiction, come from a raw, unprotected space deep inside me & contain bits of human and personal truth.

I won’t lie. “A Special Day” was hard to write. The mom’s emotional abuse hurt in a visceral way at every proof-read and revision. This month’s story was more fun to write, though that fun was bittersweet. It’s about two ghosts, but it isn’t a ghost story. I suppose, technically, it’s fantasy, a genre I love dearly.

I tried to capture the dark, fey humor of the friend who inspired Naresh. I almost certainly failed in that endeavor, though I hope my fictional ghost of him makes you smile. My real-life friend stopped walking this earth (in any form I recognized) far too long ago for me to forgive Grief for creeping up on me last year and punching me in the heart about him. This story, I guess, was an apology gift from Grief. I’m sure Grief doesn’t mean to be an asshole; he’s just awfully unpredictable.

If you’d like to read “The Coffee Shop at the End of Everything”, subscribe at $1/month or leave a dollar tip at my Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/dbmcneill. Next time you’re at your local coffee house, look around for the ghosts.

I’ll leave you with a link to a song my friend often sang as we walked together to high school classes a long, long time ago and far, far away. If you’re Gen-X, you’re legally obligated to dance. And, for the record, I wish he’d stayed. If you let the video play, it will take you to another song my friend sang, so in a way, he haunts you too. https://youtu.be/xMaE6toi4mk.