Show Your Voice Blogfest

I don't normally post on Sunday, but this seemed especially worthy. Brenda Drake is holding a blogfest with the cooperation of Natalie Fischer, Literary Agent. The prizes are AGENT critiques—20 pages, 10 pages... query... good stuff... And you can post today or tomorrow, so there is still time if you want to play (though it is only for finished manuscripts). Anyway, here is my entry... (finalists will be posted at Brenda's blog Thursday if I have my facts straight...) So this will serve Sunday and Monday, if you don't mind...

Name: Hart Johnson
Title: Kahlotus Disposal Site
Genre: Young Adult General Fiction

I was shocked to realize I'd been dead so long. The notice nailed on the door was dated 2012. Sixty years. I'd been a fifteen year-old for sixty years now. I had been so convinced the world would end in 1984, like that book said. Time had ceased to be relevant until that sign went up. That was at the new moon. It was waning again before anything else unusual happened.

I can move through things, and things can move through me, but it's not like I don't notice. I'm insubstantial enough that I can fill the blank spaces. But if all your blank spaces were filled, you'd notice, too. So when the building started to rumble and a two by four that had been propped in a corner for several decades fell through me, I suddenly paid attention to the new noises.

There were men and machines knocking things around and churning up dust. Nobody had been in the building besides daring kids and teens since about six months after I died. The pranksters at Halloween, or on a dare in summertime, sort of broke the monotony, but I hadn't come out for anyone since the séance where they had bothered to find out my name. “Helen Bixby!” they called. Still, I never minded the visitors much. So I thought maybe it was time to see what the world was up to all these years later, even if these adults were more intimidating than the earlier visitors who were closer to my age.