“You could not have kidnapped my daughter, for she has left us for America.”

Read Ghost Story by Ananda Lima on Electric Lit

Filed under: Ananda Lima, electric lit, short story

This short story was published in Electric Lit today. There’s a lot going on in it — it’s full of metaphor and symbolism, politics and religion. From the introduction by Manuel Gonzales:

Modestly, the story begins as a writer is revising a draft of her own story that everyone misunderstands—including the narrator’s mother, living in Brazil with the narrator’s father and brother. Because she cannot figure out a way to change her readers’ perceptions, the narrator changes her own perception, and in the process manifests—in both fiction and real life—a ghost that begins to haunt both the narrator’s story and, chillingly, the narrator’s mother.

I didn’t really know where the story was going until past the halfway point. The writing is subtle and beautiful:

A few weeks later, my mother called me:

“You need to do something about this ghost.”

“Ghost?” I opened and closed the kitchen drawer where I usually left my keys. I was late to work.

“Yeah, ghost.”

“Mom, what are you talking about? We believe in ghosts now?”

Not on the table or the counter. Marc must have taken them by mistake, again.

“Whether you believe it or not doesn’t matter. It’s here, haunting me.”

Read the whole thing on Electric Lit.