With his foot drawn up against the other chair, the one across on the other side of the table, he leaned back and drank down his beer. Cody next to him, Shawn off at the other end of the almost, near empty guesthouse in Babenhausen Germany.

Here is a death diary, and a short story to boot, of what took place for a man named Troy Burroughs after death. Being dead is going to take some getting used to. According to earth time this would be day three of my so called, death. I keep looking down on North America, I guess it's still home to me for the moment anyway.

Katita whose Christian family name will not be mentioned here, for it would at once, draw attention, unneeded and uncalled-for attention to the family, her father had abandoned her mother at a very young age; the period of his death, which forms the initial subject of my heretofore, narrative to be. At this exact point, Katita's mother received a pension-for the most part, on behalf of her daughter, to care for her and her education, until she would turn twenty-five years of age. At the age of twelve years old, her mother died, in a like manner of her husband, drowned, and found along the hard rock and cemented shores of London's Tames River, and so we see the inheritance of Katita's father goes to her, and her guardian (whom is of little significance in this narrative, but nonetheless, I shall mention her name, Claudia Belmont, a small structured woman, of a very old age, a relative, Godmother, to the child).

There are many stories surrounding the celebration of Halloween. It’s obviously a day of fun and mischief for children around the world, but just how did it start? Why is it that we dress our children up in strange costumes and send them out to beg for candy from the neighbors? It’s a strange tradition and one that needs and deserves an explanation.

The execution of Jose Sebastian, a Peruvian Soldier of the Pacific War, 1879, in the Mantaro Valley of Peru, was to commence immediately for disobeying an order from his commanding officer. Sergeant Sebastian stood accused by this bright-eyed, young officer; Jose being in his 40s, the young officer in his early twenties, with small thin wrists, and ankles, slumped shoulders, and slightly balled. Jose, wide-eyed, broad shoulders, thick fingers, and a dark shadow, even after he shaved upon his face.

The first part of the battle was over, only ghosts, and the dead remained silent. The stretcher-bearers stopped looking for the dying, the wounded, the ones that had shown some life were all abandoned, a few officers in the far distance disputed this, but a new battle was ensuing, and the dead and dying, the unusable were considered a less priority (unable to walk, fight or shoot), thus, they were abandoned, and would get their due respect, if the battle was won. Hence, I repeat, the unusable soldiers, were left where they lay to be buried or cared for another day.

It was early afternoon, they, Joseito, his eleven year old son, Lee and his wife Rosa, they arrived in a taxi, to the old dirt, and dusty road that led down a shadowy lane to Jose's mother's adobe premises: along this walk were tall adobe thick walls used for fences, and inside these walls were folks getting ready to plant for the season, and would harvest sometime in April through May, in this rural Peruvian landscape outside of the city of Huancayo, Peru. Jose like the writer and poet Lee, had quiet drinking, Lee twenty-four years ago, Jose, had about one year of sobriety, but in that short time he had turned his life around most dramatically.

Outside the bar it was dark, twilight had come and left, you could see the gibbous moon setting in from the window; it was high in the heavens. The Major leaned heavy on the bar, reflected on his war wounds from Vietnam, it was 1971, and he had been there in 1968 through 1970, now stationed at Fort Rucker, Alabama...

The Roads, Puno and Real, passes by the Plaza de Arms in the city of Huancayo, Peru, the streets go back to the days of the Inca's, now modern with smooth hard concrete, and dusty on this early Saturday morning. Surrounding this city are the Andes, high mountains, green and brown...

He couldn't stay married so he simply stopped getting married after his forth marriage. It was most difficult to keep a romantic relationship, romantic, ongoing while living this lifestyle, he'd tell you up front, even his wives he told up front, "It's very hard, extremely complicated, if indeed, possible, matter of fact, statistics are against you, that is to say, the greater part of marriages no matter where you go around town, the state, the country, and perhaps around the world, maybe not including Bangkok, don't work, they just don't work. Sad but true."

Bell Edwards Lynn, he was no Jessie James, but he killed almost as many as Jessie did. Born 1947, in Minnesota, wanted by the FBI since, 1985, and no one have ever caught him, or kept him long enough to serve over 18-months in anyone jail.

(Summer of 1996) He put his nose straight forward, straight down, less than one-hundred feet from the surface of the tundra, the Russian pilot was chasing caribou, over the wide open spaces between Barrow, Alaska, and Point Lay, alongside the Chukchi Sea, then inland two-hundred and fifty miles we went, then back to Barrow. We had just left Point Lay, now was further inland, in the interior of this isolated region, he spotted a herd of caribou, descended from five-hundred feet to one-hundred, watching the caribou herd running in a sedate circle across the brownish tundra of June.

(Intro :) His body was swollen, lumped, inflamed looking, bruised, and his last feelings were that he was deserted, clotted by a python, and this was going to be how he died, what people would read in the morning paper the following day. "The young man was only 23-years old, discovered at the Como Park Zoo (in the summer of 1957), he had let an eleven-foot python out of its glass and steel bar cage, in the little stone zoo building, built sometime in the 1930s. He was an intern from ...

As I have mentioned before I do a lot of Flash Fiction, meaning, stories under 1000-words usually, and so here is a Science Fiction story for you today...the second one in the Yellow Planet series. Now we discover the fireside of the planet, not just the jungle side, as the previous story led us in!

Valentina was a young cute, petite woman of twenty-three years old, where she was from no one quite knew. But she was young and a woman of ingredients-you might say-of that present time anyway. It was said, and we all kind of guess it to be more right than wrong, she was from Peru, living in San Francisco: from poor stock, as they say. She had never married, and had she it would have been someone who owned a business, or a thousand acres of land, and was educated, and could take care of her in a lively and interesting style. But as I said, she was not married, and really had no intentions to for the moment.

(Summer of 1862) Josh Jefferson worked on the Hightower Plantation throughout the duration of the Civil War, and beyond, so he got used to seeing Confederate soldiers either marching through the woods, the plantation fields, up and down the road, camping out along side of he roads, in the city of Ozark, in Shantytown, everywhere, for the war's duration. They often looked like bums, he thought, more or less, ragged looking, they fought for the love of the South, more than money, it was obvious, by their apparel, Josh didn't really take note of it until 1862, when the plantation lost its first crop to bad weather, and insects in over ten years.

Sometimes we need to think like a child to see the work of the supernatural. To quote from "The Santa Claus:" Believing is seeing." The following is a true story.

Fourteen-years old, Emma Hightower, was a long-legged child, turning into a lovely reddish hair woman, which soon she'd be. Her thick red hair shined like a rainbow cast over the cornfields, with her blue eyes, and Charles Hightower was all too aware of the thumping hearts she aroused in town, but she wasn't. However for that day in August, 1863 she was more spirited, and akin to a tomboy.

The war was almost lost, Granny Mae kept to her kitchen work, and Mr. and Mrs. Charles Hightower, went on as usual with their lives, planted and harvested the best they could, in a way, both the Smiley and Hightower plantations were glad the war was descending, coming to an end, a kind of quiet dust fell over the atmosphere, although the graveyards were being filled up with the dead, a lot of folks on their knees weekly in the church, the sheriff in town and Mr. Ritt, the bank owner felt those negroes weren't worth fighting for, not to the death anyhow, '...forbid it that our southern brothers have to die for it...' they told one another in private.

It was told her at a young age, by her gypsy mother, she had the strongest looking mount of the moon near her wrist any psychic ever had, meaning in terms of a palmist hand, her abilities could be quite developed, and at an early age, she could read hands and faces, and fingers, in an instant,

It now was spring, several months had passed since Josh had that sick bout, where Molly came over and sat with him in his shanty, he was sick, and in a way wanted to remain sick if she stayed to nurse him, but of course she didn't, she simply insured he was ok and abruptly left, because Josh was getting other ideas. And today, as other days, Josh was staring down towards the Creek, where Molly's little house was. Mater of fact, Silas was kind of getting tired of watching his father night after night looking down that way, and especially this night for some odd reason.

This fortress was built in the time of Napoleon, a time of stress for Haiti, built in fear his navy would try to enslave Haiti, and this fortress high on the mountain top was ideal, yet it took 20,000-slaves to build it, and something like four-years, and thousands of deaths. Some have called it the 8th Wonder of the World, but Master Gordon has called it his experiential lavatory, and has paid a good sum for privacy of the fortress, for several months. This is where I come into all this.

The trip was nasty, packed like bananas in a cargo bin, hurtling though space like an asteroid. Siren, and her two comrades, Tangor and Rognat, were with her, and they were for once not in the Black Galaxy, rather next door to earth's solar system. Which consisted of the planet Moiromma, which her mother was born on, and Ice Cap, its moon, and Cibara was nearby and the comet Sedna as large as

I stayed there that night, in Josh O'Hara's hut, in the Minnesota wild (Hibbing), thinking perhaps I could come to some conclusion what took place, and I felt as the uncanny night went on, death stalked it, I mean the ghosts that he so readily feared stalked it, so, he had a good reason to fear, I was not believing in his story at first, I am no detective, nor need I be, but they were out there, in the darkness breeding as I was breathing, and pacing within his timber hut, such insights, come too late too often. Why they simply did not come into the hut, was beyond me, perhaps they were forbidden to desecrate, or violated with their malicious hearts, the place of the dead, code perhaps among them, because they didn't want their death beds dishonored, like to like I always say.

[The Hermit's Ghostly Dilemma] Josh O'Hara lived a solitary life in the thick of a northern wooded area in Minnesota, near the town-let called Webster. He lived there most all his life, and when his father and mother passed on, he remained there.