HONORABLE MENTION, Fall 2025
The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
BY VICKIE FANG
It’s all right, Edgar. I’m here now. Got my arms around you—can you feel me? I heard you half way across Baltimore, moaning and banging that skinny leg of yours, and I came like I always do, slipped right through the window. Easy there, Edgar. Take it easy. I know the staff in this place won’t do a damn thing, won’t even give you your meds on time, but what do you need with tramadol, anyway? You got something better, you got your Molly now. That’s right. You want to hear the story again—take your mind off things? Want me to go all the way back to the beginning? The beginning of you and me?
Yeah, yeah, look at you smiling already. Wanting to hear about how you made me a star. Thinking you’re all that. Well, don’t forget, I was doing fine without you, Edgar, had a nice room over on Watson and steady work hauling trash. And you weren’t my only regular neither. Most girls my age, men don’t want but one thing and barely even that anymore, but there were still lots of guys wanted to be my boyfriend, see me every week. Only then you heard me sing that time, and you started up with that star business, got your college books out, wanting to play teacher, gonna make me a mezzo soprano, like I knew what that was. Mostly I just thought you were making fun of me with those sounds you made me do. “Yaw, yaw, yaw, yo, yo, yo, mi, mi, mi, moo, moo, moo,” then making me listen while you grinned like a fool and played that mess back up in my face.
It was months that all I did was watch that hairy old finger of yours hit that one white key. I hated it sometimes Edgar; I kept trying, but I kept making the wrong sound, every time, every god damned time, Edgar, the wrong sound. Then I had to wait for you to get that big, shit eating grin in the middle of your cue ball face, and tell me, “Almost!” I knew it wasn’t even close to almost.
Only thing is, one of those nights I sang it right. Remember that? Remember? I hit the note, and you looked at me, and I looked at you, almost afraid, and you made me do it again. I did it again and again, not saying one word in between. Afraid to look at you anymore, just kept hitting that note, bang on perfect, until you were making your own noise. It sounded like fireworks in that room, but it was just you, Edgar, cheering your lungs out. Cheering for me. Cheering for me and calling me your darling and your diva too.
I left out of there that night and went to my new home, the Redeemer cemetery—did you know all that time I’d been singing with you and not working, I ended up getting put out of the room I was staying in? I didn’t even care, not that night. I had a big bag of Doritos and a cold can of coke—dinner under the stars, and it seemed like I could see every one. I could find the big dipper, and the little dipper too. I saw that some of them were golden, and one of them looked like a ruby hanging in the darkness, and they had been waiting for me all those nights and all those years when I never looked at them. I was an old woman by then, almost fifty, but when I sang that one note to myself, it was like the whole world was ready to start all over just for me. I thought I’d done it—broken free of this thing I’d been trapped in all my life, that whole miserable walk to the back seat of some trick’s car, his fingers, his dick rooting around inside like worms would do if you were dead already and then on the street again trying to find something to take the edge off, hoping to go in a rat-filled old building and pull some trash for a while instead, but something always making me go back to the cars again.
Yeah, I thought I was turning into a brand new woman, and I got up off my dumb tail and really started to sing.That‘s when I learned to hit my three octaves. You’d take me one note lower, and then one note lower than that, and I cussed you sometimes, but god damn if I didn’t do it. I could even sing the men’s songs too; remember, you rescored the hunchback’s part in Rigoletto so I could sing it tenor. I made that song my own. And then I was the one who was the hunchback. I was the cripple. I was the one who spent my life like a slave playing the fool for a duke, and I was the one to step out and tell the whole world what it meant to live like you were worth nothing. I sang all my ugliness, and I sang all my hatred. I sang that the thing I loved most in the world had died in my arms. I practiced until a voice came rising up out of me like a flock of birds with the sun shining on their white feathers. Every wing beat perfect. Every last stroke taking me closer to a whole new life. So. You want to stop here, Edgar? Should we just stick with the singing and new woman stuff?
You’re shaking your head. Maybe that’s because you never remember the next part no matter how many times I tell you. You never remember, and me, I can’t stop living it.
So, anyway, the next part, the day I went to your apartment and the lady upstairs told me you didn’t live there anymore. I didn’t know about your big stroke; I didn’t know how fast some of these landlords move on. I was just banging on the door screaming Motherfucker, Motherfucker, banging ’til my hand got bruised because what I did know was you left me and didn’t even say goodbye. I was screaming because my whole world had turned ugly again, and I was nobody; I was the kind of girl people would start calling garbage now. Did you even think about me when you were in the hospital, Edgar? Did you think any of my other regulars saw who I really was inside; did you think I could get anybody else to call me their darling?
I lived hard after you were gone, drinking vodka til I passed out, back on the heroin til I woke up in a hospital with some squint-eyed little man wanting to know wasn’t I too old to be out here killing myself with drugs? Wasn’t I ashamed of myself?
And I did feel ashamed, the way you do when you try to get too big and shrink down to nothing instead. But after a while I told myself I was a strong woman, the kind that knows how to act brave even when I was scared, and I decided to sing without you. I got some clean time under my belt, and then it turned out the Baltimore Opera wouldn’t let me even try out unless I had a demo tape, and where was I going to get the money for that? Only one place. It’s always that one place, Edgar, and I went there again yesterday, and I’m going today. I was a strong woman, going back to Dancers that first time, or maybe a weak woman, and Dancers was a spider that’d been waiting for me all these years.
You never saw Dancers, Edgar. It’s not much anyway, a little concrete building with windows painted black, parking lot full of pot holes and trash, a bunch of light-up red stars that half of them don’t even light. But it was a big part of my life, and when I was young, I was dumb enough to think it was exciting. We used to hold onto those poles and waggle our naked little behinds for the whole world to see. “Kiss my ass! Kiss my ass!” The men liked us so much they gave us presents sometimes, and if one of us ever got a diamond ring, we’d call ourselves diamond girls. And when we got through with the stuff we had to do with them—in their laps, in the champagne rooms, wherever else they wanted to grab us—we’d run outside in the lot with our heels still on, and we’d chase each other through the grass, like little kids just let out of school. We ran beneath the stars and the moon, whooping like a pack of wild Indians that no cowboys would ever kill. Lots of nights, I’d sing, too, and some of the other dancers would stop and clap for me. In Pig Town those days, you could see the stars sometimes, and they shone down on us just as much as they shone down on anybody else. As for the rest, the parts that weren’t so good, well, whoever said life had to be perfect?Anyway, look out Dancers! I sashayed in there with my big ass and old face and three beautiful octaves like I was going to Carnegie Hall and demanded to talk to the manager, which was Blevin, same guy that ran the place when I was stripping there. He made me wait almost an hour, but he came in at last, uglier than ever, shirt half open showing a mat of solid grey chest hair. “What do you want?” is how he said his hello to me. I’d had a long time by then to think about what I was doing there and wonder who did I think I was, and at first I just stared, no words coming out my mouth, but the thing about me is I knew how to act brave.
“I’m here to make you some money, Blevin.” Big phony smile on my face.
He told me to go on into his office and I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you’re falling off a cliff, and everybody’s watching so they can laugh when you die, but I walked into Blevin’s office with my head up high, and told him I had a business opportunity that would make him a fortune. His eyes got a little bigger in spite of the sour look he was trying to keep on his face. Then I told him I wanted him to invest a thousand dollars in my singing career.
The look he got when he heard what I meant by making him money.
“I can sing.” I told him. “I can sing, and I’ll sign a contract right now so you get fifty percent! I just need a little studio time to make my demo, and then I can go to New York or, or anywhere.”
“You want money to sing somewhere? Or do you mean some other . . .”
“I’m the real deal, Blevin. Molly the opera star, and you get half the cut for just a thousand. Half the cut for the first year. And I’m gonna be making big money. I’m a mezzo soprano. Voice like . . .”
“Oh Christ! Jesus God-damn Christ.”
“You got to listen to me, Blevin. I could sing for you right now. If you just heard me, you’d know how good I am.”
“Useless old bitch,” he said it the same way he used to say “useless little bitch.”
“You going to call me useless? You going to call me a bitch? I can sing opera. I was a diamond girl. I—” But he was already waving me away, telling me to take my ass out of there, and I couldn’t stand it, Edgar. I couldn’t stand to be just some used-up old stripper, begging that man for money. I had to show him I was more than that. You know what I did? I sang the Rigoletto right there in front of him, in perfect pitch and perfect Italian too. You should have seen him! Mouth hanging open, eyes bugging half outta his head. He didn’t know what to do.
I was so proud of myself, Edgar, but then when I walked back out into the stripping room, I thought: what did it matter what I’d showed him? It wasn’t my voice that followed me back out—it was Blevin’s. Useless bitch. My beautiful three octaves hadn’t changed a thing. I was still nothing to nobody, and when I looked at what I could see of those men in the darkness waiting for the girls to come on, I called out to them like there might be one of them that cared. “Fuck that old Blevin!”
“Fuck him is right,” a man’s voice said. And that’s when I realized one of my regulars from a long time back was in the room. It was Lucky. I looked him right in the eye, still breathing a little hard, and the words just came out of me.
“Take me away, Lucky. Take me away.”
I’d learned to sing, but in my whole life, I never did learn to think, not really. It was all just feelings.
Old Lucky stood up slow. He looked like my father the year the heart attack got him, body like a tree trunk, thick, dead, decaying already, just too big and heavy to fall over yet.
“I got to ask my friend,” he said.
I knew Lucky didn’t get on his feet for me. I looked around for the friend, and there he was, a red light from somewhere shining right on him. He was one of those raw boned, tow headed boys with faces too hard already to be so young.
“Your friend’s ugly,” I said. That’s how bold I acted, how stirred up I still was. “I don’t like him.”
“The question is,” Lucky told me, “The question is, if you want to party, does my friend like you?”
A slow smile spread from one side of the boy’s face to the other like a drop of fat sliding across a pan when the stove gets hot. So that’s how it is, I thought. That boy doesn’t look it, but he is the man. He’s the drug man.
I looked at the boy. He looked at me. I had two months of clean time, but all of a sudden that didn’t matter any more. Useless bitch.
“Some kinds of ugly can be real nice,” I said.
He got another smile on his face almost as bad as the grease smile he showed me before.
“I heard you singing. You think you’re better than all those other bitches, don’t you?”
“Well, I know I’m good,” I said. “The thing I want to know is how good are you?” I looked him in the eye, and I said it with a wink because I’d already gone back to being the kind of fool who’d follow a drug man the way a dog will follow the smell of shit and bury his nose in deep and never, not once, ask myself why.
He didn’t say anything; he just led me out of there to an old white truck with a bumper sticker on the back that said “TITTY BAR INSPECTOR.” All three of us crammed in the front, with the boy in the middle, and we passed the 40s back and forth. And just as I was getting my second big swallow of cold malt liquor, Old Lucky started playing NWA and “One Less Bitch” on the kid’s cell phone. Old places. That’s what they say to stay away from in the Narcotics Anonymous meetings. Old People. Old habits. And now it was old songs too.
“Remember that?” Lucky wanted to know. “You girls used to rock that song.”
“That we did, Lucky.” The best beer in the world is the first one you drink after some clean time. When we got parked, Lucky climbed out, but the ugly boy stretched his arm out and did something to the door on my side. I was feeling so good I didn’t pay attention, and that was another mistake I made.
“Molly!” Lucky said. I can still see how he looked then. He was standing on the street with a big smile on his face, but he didn’t mean it. He had eyes that looked like they were going to cry, and I stared at those sad eyes and that lying smile, and I didn’t say a thing. “Molly!” Lucky told me. “I got a idea! Why don’t you and my friend here ride around a little bit? He’s the one . . . he’s the one who can help you party.”
“You’re not even coming with me, Lucky?”
“I’m an old man, Molly.” And Lucky put his head down. “I’m too old for this shit.” Then he turned his back on me and walked away.
The boy slid himself over to the driver’s seat. The keys were still in the ignition, and he started the truck back up without saying a word. I could’ve tried to make a run for it, but I didn’t. You know how it is, drink the beer, get with the drug man, remember old times—pretty soon you want the dope. And anyway, it was more than that. When Lucky left, the whole world got quiet and slow and so big I couldn’t look at it anymore, and I knew soon I’d go back to hearing that voice in my head, useless bitch. It was just easier with the boy; I figured I could take whatever he was going to do to me.
“Lucky owes you a lot of money,” I said at last. It wasn’t even a question.
The boy nodded. He’d pulled out on Lombard, headed to Wilkins.
“I guess that’s because you got some pretty good stuff.”
The kid nodded again. “I got what you need,” he told me. And for a little while neither of us said anything, but I looked out at the world again. I rode shotgun, and I saw the streets how they darkened, losing their ugliness and all their color too, and it was like the night sky was an addict that closes his eyes, slowly, but with no stop. I saw how the people came out then, more and more corner boys riding their bicycles and selling their drugs, and there were the women like there always are, nervous, in a hurry, grown men with guns watching the young and pretty ones.
It was the kid who broke the silence.
“I heard you singing.” He had his lips in a little boy pout, and that look is dangerous once the boys get big.
I made my voice friendly and soft, the way you do with guys like that. “Did you like my singing?”
He gave a laugh. “It’s what I picked you for. You planning on being some kind of singing star?” I tried to feel some hope.
“Kind of a star,” I told him. “I can sing opera.”
There were some birds pecking on a pile of garbage at the end of an alley we were driving by. From up top, they were white like something that crawled out of a cave instead of flying out of the sky. And anybody who lived in Baltimore knew they were black on the bottom like something that was dirty. “Even birds like that can sing,” he said.
I understood what he meant.
“Angels can sing too,” I told him.
“And so can whores!” he yelled out. “Like god damn opera stars! That don’t stop them from being whores, though.”
I was going to say something back, but then—what happened? Did he turn on the radio? Verdi’s Requiem was everywhere. Violins shrieking, big drums booming, and a thousand voices singing, Day of Wrath! Day of Wrath! I put my hands over my ears, but I couldn’t stop it. A new thought came into my head. The boy could be a last-night demon.
And then, almost in a whisper, but I could hear him fine, like he had his lips right against my ear, he said, “Useless bitch.”
“Not a bitch,” I had to scream to make any sound at all over all that noise. “Mezzo Soprano!” I was screaming on the inside too, get out of the car, Molly. Jump! But we were almost out to 295. Girls die when they jump out on the Parkway.
I was holding my breath, but the last light stayed green, and the music kept playing louder and louder. I’m not going to die, I told myself. I’m not. I closed my eyes, and I had a vision. It was the demon when he was a little boy. He was all by himself in a dirty room, and he was crying and laughing at the same time and saying he knew me. Had I seen him before? Maybe when I was tricking over on Wilkens?
And it was like he heard what I was thinking. “Maybe when you were tricking over on Wilkens?” He laughed, and the violins shrieked, and the singing wouldn’t stop, and the sound—oh God, oh God, I think it was coming out of him not the radio.
Jump, I told myself. There’s traffic sometimes. Soon as we slow even if it’s just to 30. Jump.
“No jumping, Miss Opera Star.” I hadn’t even put my hand on the door—he’d got inside my brain somehow. “I fixed that door already. It don’t open.”
I was so scared. I was so scared, and all I could think was I had to get out. Maybe through the door on his side?
He took an off ramp, slowing for that, slowing to 20 maybe, and that’s when I made my move. I went right across his lap, got his door open a couple inches. So close. I could see the pavement. My arm was shaking, and I knew how bad that road was going to tear me up, but I was going to do it.
He caught me by the hair. “Useless bitch.” Voice cut through all the screaming and the drums. “Useless bitch.” He was pulling my head back so far my chin was pointed to the ceiling, and my throat was stuck out in front of him like I was waiting for him to cut my head off. Only I wasn’t waiting for anything. I got my foot up flat against the passenger door, and I pushed. My legs were strong, and I pushed myself hard; maybe we both’d go falling out that truck. But he slammed the door shut, and I guess he’d made the turn by then because he didn’t even bother to put his hand back on the wheel. He just drove with his knees, one hand in my hair, the other one punching me in the head.
I did what I always do when they hit me, made myself just half alive. It’s like sex. You’ve got to be dead on the inside, but still moving on the outside where they can see it and feel it. You can’t act like you’re afraid.
He hit me in the ear, and I knew I was deaf on one side forever, but all I felt was like I’d gone half under the water. The nose was going to be next. I knew it. And when the fist came I had my mouth shut tight because I don’t like the taste of blood. Anyway, I had something else to think about. I had one hand going for his balls and the other one digging for his eyes. Pretty soon, guess which one of us was screaming like a little girl?
But he moved while he screamed. He got me back on my side of the truck, mashed against the window. One hand back on the wheel and the other one around my throat, his arm locked straight out so I couldn’t grab him, and soon as he gets me pinned, his voice come snaking its way in my ear again, What are you? What are you? And I’m choking. My chest feels like it’s being squeezed from the inside, and it’s taking both my hands just to pull his fingers back.
“I’m Molly,” I said, but my voice came out all shaky. “I’m a, a, a — Mezzo Soprano.” The Demon laughed. “I’m Molly!” he squeaked. “I’m a a a—Mezzo Soprano.”
We were swinging around the back of a warehouse in the dark. Nobody else anywhere and Demon so much stronger than me. He was going to murder me. “I’ll say it,” I told him. “I’ll say it! I’m a useless bitch. Just don’t kill me, please. I’m a useless bitch.”
“I’m a useless bitch!” he squealed. “Don’t kill me. Oh, puleeze mister, don’t kill me!” Demon stopped the truck and dragged me out across the driver’s side, both hands on my arms so I couldn’t get him, Day of Wrath still booming out his head, drums and violins, and screaming filling the whole world.
He had me down on my knees in front of him. He kicked me in the stomach, and I said “I’m a useless bitch,” but his roaring was so loud it was like no sound came out of my mouth. I knew he wanted me to beg him some more, but I sank my teeth into his hand instead. I bit him so hard, it felt like chicken bones snapping under my teeth. A lot of things happened very fast after that.
He let go screaming again, and I put my hand on a big, broken piece of cinderblock. That’s what I remember the most. The miracle of finding something like that. The hope I felt. I grabbed that piece of cinderblock and came up hard. I cracked him right in his crying mouth. There was light enough and time enough for me to see what happened next: his face coming open, lips, eyes, the skin tearing right up the middle, and the red blood bursting out everywhere. Like fireworks in the darkness. Like I was going to win.
Then my head was back down, all the way down on the ground, and his foot was, well, it was kicking me again. Like I said, a lot of things happened fast, but after he got me in the temple, I didn’t feel it. Not really. I was already crossing over to the demon’s world of ashes, and when a last-night demon gets you like that, it never lets you loose. See, what they do, Edgar, is they keep us going the same way forever, all us murdered girls. Now, every night he beats me; every night he kills me, and every day all I can think about is how he’s coming for me. And the thing is—I think all the girls at Dancer’s been killed by a last-night demon.
Everywhere you regular people go, there’re people like me all around you, tail waggling and getting in cars and all kinds of things. We could have been special, but instead we got to ride that same old murder truck. Nobody can see what’s happening to us, and we’re so scared we don’t know what to do with ourselves. Me, though, I got it better than most. I come back here ‘cause you wouldn’t know what to do without me, and when I go to Dancers, I rock their world. I sing first, before he gets me. I still got my voice, Edgar. It’s really just the same as being famous and going to Carnegie Hall, isn’t it? To still have your voice? And I can still remember being alive—dancing with the girls. Some days I remember it so well it’s like I’m sixteen years old again, waving a glass ring on my finger, and yelling “I’m a Diamond girl!” And everybody proud of me, pouring out the first drink of the night, letting me sing for them. I was a star all along, when you think about it.
Oh come on man, you ought to be smiling now, not kicking your leg and looking like you want to cry. I know we’re a bunch of girls getting our heads kicked in by demons, but even if I’m dying and afraid all the time, I’m still Molly; I still got dreams. You’ll see. I’m still gonna have a high old time with my life.
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This story was inspired by the nearly ten years Vickie Fang spent doing volunteer work with prostituted women in Baltimore. Other stories she has written based on these experiences have been published in Pleiades (after she won their annual Kinder/Crump award), The Baltimore Review, Pembroke, and After Dinner Conversations. She came to love the women she worked with and is writing a collection of stories about her experiences with them. She is also finishing a novel set in 8th century China. She would enjoy hearing any comments or questions readers have for her and may be reached at fvickie@comcast.net.