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Breathing Ghosts
Breathing Ghosts
Breathing Ghosts
Ebook45 pages46 minutes

Breathing Ghosts

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"Breathing Ghosts" is a collection of unique and different ghost stories from writer Costa Koutsoutis. Somewhere in the woods, something exists that we just cannot fathom. A horrific crime doesn't make sense compared to a man's memory of the killer. A mother comes to visit her child at an important time in their life. A thief gets what is coming to him when a hiding spot seems too good to be true. A family slowly dies, but somehow, life is still okay. Ghosts and the unknown play a part in all of these stories and more, in this latest short story collection.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateJul 20, 2015
ISBN9781310475115
Breathing Ghosts
Author

Costa Koutsoutis

Constantine "Costa" Koutsoutis is a writer and cartoonist who lives and works in New York City. He spends his time cooking, drinking coffee, playing with the cat, and watching movies with his girlfriend. A writer since he was little, he's been doing fiction, nonfiction, comics (as writer and artist), essays, zines, blogs, "real" journalism, and even web content stuff since he was in college for others to read. Costa always enjoys hearing from readers, so reach out, say hi.

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    Book preview

    Breathing Ghosts - Costa Koutsoutis

    BREATHING GHOSTS

    A Collection of Short Stories

    Smashwords Edition

    by Costa Koutsoutis

    -

    © copyright constantine koutsoutis 2015

    -

    INTRO

    So here’s the thing...I don’t actually believe in ghosts.

    And yet, it’s roughly a month since my grandfather died as I write this, and my grandmother has been pawning off some of his things on me, his razor and moustache-grooming kit for example. There’s something about them I can’t help but thinking about reverentially, and whenever I’m at that house visiting, the house I more or less grew up in...there’s something there. Is emptiness a kind of ghost? I feel like it might be, the total absence of something that should be there being just as powerful a presence as a supernatural shade or a haunted house.

    Then again, as a child of the 1990’s growing up on comic books, movies, and punk rock, horror and scary stories are an inevitable part of the formula that created me. You can’t help but waver once in a while as a rational person on those late-night drives through wooded highways, or in empty apartments for a fraction of a second right when you walk through the door, and you swore that book was on the table and not the couch.

    Come to think of it, the headphones next to me on the desk are always in the drawer...why are they out? I haven’t used them in days...

    For the Old Man. He gave me playing cards and coffee and WW2 movies, so for that alone, I’m forever grateful.

    Table Of Contents

    1. Paws

    2. Among Wolves

    3. Asleep"

    4. The Closet

    5. Breathe

    6. Ghosts

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    Paws

    I spent most of that year slowly watching my family die.

    Not all of them, to be honest. My grandfather mostly, a staple of my life slowly succumbing to cancer that chemo couldn’t kill, so we made him comfortable, I visited the house whenever I could, once or twice a week, said hi to him, asked him how he was, and occasionally stayed to keep an eye on him so my mother and my grandmother could take a break, go out.

    It was about this time I started to see the dogs again.

    -

    I was eight when I first started seeing the dogs during the daytime.

    -

    When I was five or six and first started being exposed to books and movies and TV and comics, I’d seen the dogs. They looked funny, not like real dogs, more like the monster ghost dogs I’d seen on some kid’s cartoon and had frightened me thoroughly. But I saw them at night when I went to bed, they curled up at the foot of the door or by the side of my bed, sleeping, their big rough sides, the high ridge of their backs rising and falling with each breath, one ear twitching to let me know that they were guarding me while I slept. It was comforting, and I think I remember telling my mom about it, for her to smile and probably assume it was a dream I had.

    They were there almost every night. I was scared of a lot of things when I was a little kid, skinny and shy, no real friends, but the dogs, they were there. They made sure I didn’t go to bed scared.

    -

    In the daylight, they hung back, me walking to school with my mom and baby brother, they were back there, but always almost out of sight. At school I never saw them, but they were at home waiting, in the shadows under the desk at my feet while I did homework before I was allowed to watch TV or play

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