Ghostscapes

Helen eventually settled on the 31st of July as the date of her death. It was difficult to be certain because for days, perhaps as much as a week, she wandered around the cottage without any glimmer of what had befallen her. Mid-August, it finally occurred to her that an e-mail sent to her editor in late July asking about the color palette she'd chosen for a book about sea birds hadn't been answered. Her inbox, frozen on he screen, displayed only spam, her daily horoscope, the pollen count. There was no snail mail in her roadside mailbox; no newspaper had been tossed on her lawn in weeks. A frisson of fear crept over her. When a passing cluster of bicycle riders threatened to run her down, she had an inkling of her situation.

Ms. Abbott's "Ghostscapes" is in BEAT to a PULP: Round One edited by Elaine Ash and yours truly, coming soon.

Patricia Abbott's fiction has appeared in more than seventy literary and crime fiction publications. Most recently she has had stories in Needle, CrimeFactory, BEAT to a PULP, and Between the Dark and the Daylight. Forthcoming stories will appear in Damn Near Dead 2, Bats in the Belfry, the print edition of Crimefactory, Spinetingler and the 2010 Ed Gorman anthology. She lives and works in Detroit.

Ms. Abbott's blog can be found here.