Ghost Word Problems by Chelsea Stickle

If you passed by a sign twice a day that offered a service where you could anonymously scream away all your pain, fear and loneliness, how long before you tried it?

If Lizzy and Kait charge $3 for screaming in their dead grandmother’s field and $2 for a cup of lemonade, and they have an average of 7 customers a day, how many days before they can afford a new bike?

If traumatic events create ghosts inside people that can only be expelled through screaming, and the sisters start jarring those ghosts to keep people safe from reliving someone else’s trauma, how long before a group of teenagers break into their dead grandmother’s house and smash the jars?

If ghosts move like smoke, taking into consideration that there’s no wind that night and the summer humidity makes the outside feel like swimming in clam chowder, how quickly can the ghosts spread throughout town?

If two out of five screamers are haunted by personal ghosts, how many ghosts are currently rushing through the town, inflaming the dreams of the sleeping into nightmares and forever changing the way they look at the people they go to school with, work with and see at church on Sunday?

Chelsea Stickle lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and a forest of houseplants. Her flash fiction appears in matchbook, Pithead Chapel, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and others. Breaking Points, her debut chapbook, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press (Fall 2021). Read more at chelseastickle.com/stories
and on Twitter @Chelsea_Stickle.