And I Do Not Forgive You: Stories and Other Revenges

by Amber Sparks

I’LL BET YOU THINK GHOSTS ARE SO FUCKING ROMANTIC. I’LL bet you think they only haunt rich people, or like, Europeans: pale lords and ladies in castles or governesses in old family mansions. I’ll bet you’d laugh your head off at the idea of a trailer park ghost.

She worries sometimes that she’s a bad influence, as if there were any other kind in this town.

For me, I just like to see all the people and places and emotions and conflicts and struggles all exploding out of the pages of one single amazing book. Because that’s how life really is, right? You don’t get to just sit there and concentrate on one tiny little thing. Life just comes at you from everywhere and you have to deal with it all at once. Human life is a huge, messy, complicated, unbelievable thing.

This is the kind of terrible surprise where you just sort of stand there, doing nothing, holding your hands in fists. This is the kind of surprise where your insides quietly eat each other, and your brain goes dark and red and sad.

She could hear screams, shouts, the sickening sound of bodies crashing into new ideas. She could hear speeches being made. She could hear the present coming apart.