Advent Ghosts 2025: To Face Unafraid the Plans that We Made

Here in Chicago the snowfall from the last three weeks is all but melted but the Christmas lights are up, the wreaths are hanging on front doors and inflatables keep blowing down from the gusty winter winds. It's the holiday season and that means it's Advent Ghosts time.

Loren Eaton who blogs at I Saw Lightning Fall invites bloggers and creative writers to contribute vignettes for his Advent Ghosts celebration. It's a Flash Fiction Challenge but with a word limit set at exactly 100. No more, no less. The only other rule is that we write in homage to the Victorian tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time. Be it old-fashioned, chain rattling specters or visions of bloody horror each writer makes up his or her own mind how to interpret that rule.

Here's my contribution inspired by our nationwide menace worse than any winter storm.

To Face Unafraid the Plans that We Made

When the whistle blew, she went into action. It was December, the perfect time.

A Bruja had cursed Esperanza punishing her cold hearted, cruel self transforming her into a wintry Midas with a frozen touch. But isn’t it possible to turn the curse into a blessing, she thought.

And now the neighborhood was a veritable sculpture garden of literal ICE men. Her neighbors were wishing for a white Christmas that would blanket these ICE men with glistening snow. But Esperanza secretly desired a rise in temperature.

She smiled when she checked the weather. For tonight, the evening forecast was rain.

Source: StockCake