I walked into a old house and a ghost told me that he had been waiting for someone to visit the house for 200 years.. I asked him what he did with his time and he said that he wrote and re-read crumbling books and dreamt of a having a friend someday. I told him that I was here now and willing to be his ear, but we sat in silence for many minutes afterwards. “I would speak but I don’t have anything to say”, said he. So I moved to the cracked window letting in the dust-speckled light and spoke to the vine of english ivy “what is your place here?”. It did not respond. And it was neither sorrowful nor desirous as was the old man.
“Old specter, if you committed to being a dead thing as the ivy commits itself to being ivy, maybe you too would become content.” And so he smiled at me and closed his eyes and ceased to haunt the realm of living things, and I left and returned to my home where my husband and my children live. And I fed them a pie made of the blackberries I had gathered during my venture into the woods.

I was cutting a bulk portion of beef into slices to freeze, when I noticed that a slice of meat had fallen off of the side of my cutting board and onto the counter. I extended my hand to retrieve it, but it jerked out of the way just before I could grab it. I watched in perplexity as it curled itself into an arc and moved four red nubs on either end of its length. It struggled itself upright and turned to face me, its countenance rudimentary, consisting of three recesses which constituted its mouth and eyes. I pressed my knife to its chest and slid it across the counter until I had it pinned against the backsplash. It seized and twitched as I impaled it while slapping its front nubs erratically at each side of the knife.
Then it opened its mouth and a garbled groan escaped its wet throat. In my peripheral, below my breast, the pile of flesh I had sliced writhed. Wet meat pawed at my stomach and under my breast and the bottom of my arm. I jumped backwards immediately and tore the clinging strips of meat from my shirt and mashed them into red mush with my shoe. From behind me I heard a scream and turned behind me to witness a face contorted in horror, then I screamed, but I realized that it was only my neighbor, the widow. I turned my attention back to the meat, but the counter had been cleared of all traces of carnage.
“Are you alright?!” Said the hag. Nowhere in the kitchen could I find any trace of meat.
“What are you doing?” she persisted.
I looked at the knife in my hand and then back up at my uninvited guest.
“I saw a mouse! It.. scared me to death.”
“I was coming home and heard-“
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but I need to find the mouse”
She hovered where she was so I pushed the door until it hit her, and finally she disappeared into the hallway with a huff. I locked the door as soon as it shut. In the distance I heard her door shut, and then I leaned against the door in the completely silent kitchen, in complete pause, thoroughly confused.

I was bathing in the ravine, when, out of the corner of my eye, something lunged towards me from the shadows and appeared before me in an instant. Before I could even reach for the helm of my sword, the tiger (as I recognized it initially) shattered into a million pieces! Because it was not a tiger, but a terracotta pot, animated and creature shaped and so enfeebled with fissures that all it took to break it was contact with the point that it had pounced upon. The chasm echoed with the dispersal of its pieces like a choir of thousand bells, and then the reverberation faded and died.