Three Mountain Ghosts & Currently Reading

That’s a working title, but there it is. I’m hurling myself over the gate in the Write-a-thon, here. That is, I’m working on “Fovea” with one collaboratron, and another story (with lycanthropic gangsters, with another collaboratron whose identity is now probably obvious to half my readers). For my third trick, the one on which I put in a thousand words today, I’m pulling together a triptych of ghost stories — somewhat linked, sort of, but also separated by time — set on mountains in Korea.

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Damn You Little Old Ladies!

Damn you, little old ladies! How dare you hike up Wonmi Mountain at a pace that puts me to shame! Damn you and your smiling faces as you head back down past me, having passed me on the way up, while I’m still struggling along. Damn you, fellas with neon-yellow- and hot-pink-eared poodles who go along the mountain trails without a drop of sweat in sight, whilst I leave a veritable trail of stinky dew behind. Damn you, teenaged couple who, having reached the top, do not take ten minutes to stop dripping and catch you breath but immediately start …

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많이먹어라…

Sometimes, you just have to wonder what makes people behave the way they do. When I arrived at the professors’ cafeteria this evening for dinner, I noticed this weird-looking guy staring at me constantly as I made my way up the line, adding food to my tray. When I’d finished, I stopped to get a cup of water, and by then he was staring directly at me. I noticed that he had a face like, well, like a slab of tenderized beef… meaning, I think the man had partaken in more than his fair share of fisticuffs. And, of course, …

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Tune the Damned Thing

While I have been trying to rest my eyes, one of the things I’ve noticed is that trying not to look at anything too long, or in a way that strains your eyes, leads to you noticing more about your aural surroundings — the sounds that surround you. This morning, I woke to what I think were magpies — black birds with blue and white patterns on them. Someone upstairs hollered out his window at them, in English: “Hey birds! I can’t concentrate!” I can see why. They were really dreadfully loud, and their “call” sounded a lot like electric …

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