"Conspiring with a Ghost" by Alicia Hilton

​Whoever claimed that killers had sweet dreams, never met Connie.
She woke in her grandparents’ living room, sprawled on wet carpet.
The bogeyman that chased her in a nightmare wasn’t as terrifying
as her heart-thumping reality.
She’d helped Grandma kill Grandpa.
 
Connie had drifted to dreamland for only sixteen minutes.
Her hands stung, rubbed raw from scrubbing bloodstains.
She’d watched enough CSI to know she should’ve used bleach,
but it would’ve faded the chocolate brown shag.
Premeditation and conspiracy made the murder first degree,
but cops couldn’t arrest Grandma for swinging the bat.
Mortals couldn’t confine a ghost.
 
Trembling, Connie swaddled the stiff in towels and a tarp,
wrapped the leaking cocoon in duct tape.
Weeping, she dragged Grandpa’s corpse to the garage
and stuffed him into the Buick Regal’s trunk.
She climbed into the driver’s seat and cranked the key.
The engine rumbled reassuringly.
“You think God believes in an eye for an eye?” Connie asked.
“Don’t worry dear,” Grandma replied.
 
4:15 AM, too early for rush hour traffic.
Connie squeezed the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip,
drove under the speed limit, west on Division Street,
south on Lawndale Avenue, until they reached Humboldt Park.
“You sure you want to leave him here?” Connie asked.
“It’s where he left me,” Grandma replied.
 
Robins and wrens serenading the rising sun
quit chirping when the ghost shoved the body into the lagoon.
It bobbed before it sank.
Invisible arms wrapped Connie in an embrace.
Grandma exhaled ectoplasm that smelled like spring rain.
 

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Alicia Hilton is an author, editor, arbitrator, professor, and former FBI Special Agent. Her poems have been nominated for the Rhysling Award and the Dwarf Stars Award. Her work has appeared in Back 2 OmniPark, Creepy Podcast, Dreams & Nightmares, Eastern Iowa Review, Egaeus Press, Litro, Modern Haiku, Mslexia, Neon, NonBinary Review, Not One of Us, Space and Time, Stoneboat Literary Journal, Vastarien, World Haiku Review, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror Volumes 4, 5 & 6, and elsewhere. Her website is https://aliciahilton.com. Follow her on Twitter @aliciahilton01 and Bluesky @aliciahilton.bsky.social. ​

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