New words from the new story!

After stalling on the "YAGSIP" (young adult ghost story in progress) for the better part of a month, I talked at my writing friends last night trying to figure out why I couldn't push into the 2nd quarter of the story.  They were enormously patient, letting me fret and fume my way into some clarity.

Here is a brief snippet at the beginning of the second "act".  Marco and Lorelei are both ghosts in an abandoned amusement park.

   I let myself drift through the park, letting the breeze carry me wherever it wanted. Yellowed newspaper skittered across the remains of the food court. They used to sell the most amazing fried dough. The powdered sugar coated everything, sticky fingers, your clothes, even the air and more than anything else, that was the smell of the park to me. Now it was gone and even my memory of it was failing. I could feel the seductive pull of oblivion.

    I floated away from the food court, shutting out the chaotic echo of competing music blaring from all the rides mingled with the laughter of a summer night crowd. Without memory, there wouldn’t be any pain. The spirit world promised peace. But then there wouldn’t be any Marco either. Anger boiled up inside me, its heat only an illusion, but a familiar one. Without it, I would be lost, with no way to find my killers.

    Besides, no one returned from the spirit realm. The few ghosts I knew about who were able to settle just vanished, with idiot smiles lingering after them like some spectral version of the Cheshire cat. What if it all was a big lie? Just like the whole heaven and hell thing I spent my life believing in, thanks to my mother’s obsession with the Church and all its saints. No, this was all there was: the unhappy dead, locked in an eternal twilight by their own misery. So be it. I’d be ready to let it all go and die for good if only Tess could help me get my revenge.

    The ever-present wind wrapped around me like a cloak made of ice. It siphoned the anger from me, tightening its grip as it fed and I struggled to slip free. Not wind, exactly, nothing that the living would feel except the most sensitive and even then, only as a momentary chill in the strongest of sunlight. It, too, made promises. The stronger it became, the clearer it whispered. Let go. Let us carry your rage. We can make it a beautiful weapon, far more powerful than your paltry specter could ever achieve.

    There were so many times over the past seven years I came close to listening to it, giving all my pain over to make the mordant field even stronger than it already was. But not now. Not when I could almost taste justice. I shuddered and stopped struggling, letting my body dissolve into fog. The coils grasped after me, but couldn’t keep me solid.

    "I’m surprised."

    I looked down. Lorelei stood staring up at where I had been. I didn’t want to talk to anyone now, least of all to her, but something more than simple curiosity pulled me back into shape. "What do you want from me now?"

    A brief sadness flickered across her face before she tightened her lips and narrowed her eyes. "You’re getting stronger." She didn’t look happy about it.

    "Disappointed? Maybe next time it’ll take me off your hands."

    Lorelei shook her head. "Every ghost it subsumes feeds its hunger and makes it harder for us to keep the balance. If you were going to sacrifice yourself, I wish you would have done it years ago. Before your rage could provide it a three course meal."

    "How sweet. Someone might even think you were worried about me."

    She clenched her teeth together, the muscles in her jaw bunching. Coils of mordant energy swirled around her ankles, stirring the dark fabric of her long skirts. "Watch yourself, Lorelei, or you might end up as tonight’s snack."

    "I think not." She kicked at the thickening fog. Where her boot touched it, the fog retreated.

    "Nice trick."

    Her hands tightened into fists. "I don’t know why I waste my time on you."

    That was a good question.