Ficlets

The Spirits of Parties Past( Haunted House Challenge)

I’m not going to lie to you. I was severely messed up when I worked at there. I was nearly always in an unnatural chemical twilight and far more sensitive to those tenebrous presences than I naturally would be.

The Audubon Hotel was a fairly swank place when first built around 1908. Both Tennessee Williams, and William Faulkner stayed there occasionally. By the time I was working in the bar, it had become a retreat for crack hookers and longshoreman, the clientele occasionally sprinkled with artistic types attracted to the historical rot by the new management.

All I know is I would always hear my name called, in my own voice very distinctly when the bar was completely empty. That didn’t bother me much…I chalked it up to the drugs.

There is one shift I will never forget. I had been working for 12 hours, awake for 36. No one was there, but the entire bar was filled with glass people. That’s what they looked like, transparent human forms filling the entire bar in the middle of the afternoon…

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