WINNER, Fall 2026
The Ghost Story Supernatural Fiction Award
BY GERARD J WAGGETT
Ally’s last deadbeat of the day told her, “You sound like you have throat cancer. Good.”
“I will call back another time.” And because the bitch had pissed Ally off, that time was going to be eight o’clock tomorrow morning.
The pronounced rasp in Ally’s throat was not cancer, but it did kill her plans for a career in telemarketing. Eight months ago, Dan Colby suggested that the rasp would serve her well in debt collection. He offered her a job after listening to her chainsaw her way through a service fee at the bank. He called her voice “irritating but scary.”
Ally preferred her husband’s description, “dangerous but in a sexy way.” It wasn’t just the words. It was the way he whispered them in that Southern drawl of his.
Tonight, the two of them were going on a FaceTime date, their first in over a month. Billy would be calling at eight o’clock, which was three in the morning Baghdad time. Ally had decided upon an electric blue cardigan and a bright red bra, a patriotic salute to her soldier boy.
While she was debating how many buttons to leave open, the phone on the kitchen wall began to ring. Ally did not even consider answering it. Nobody of importance ever called on the landline. The line had only been installed for emergencies—like calling her cell phone when it was nowhere to be found. Normally the kitchen’s ringer was set to silent. Ally couldn’t remember when or why she would have changed that.
The ringing stopped, waited 30 seconds, then started up again, this time louder. The intervals between each ring were shorter, more insistent. As someone who spent all day on the phone, Ally noticed the difference right away. The ringing grew louder and louder until the phone was vibrating. The receiver rattled itself out of its cradle.
Ally watched all this from her bedroom doorway. She cursed herself for not recording it. Billy loved freaky shit.
The receiver dangled above the kitchen floor calling: “Miss Marshall! Miss Marshall!”
That was the name Ally had been assigned at the office.
“Miss Maaaaar-shall! Miss Maaaaaarshall!”
Ally grabbed the receiver. “Can I help you?”
“Good evening. Am I speaking to Miss Marshall from Arrowhead Recovery?” The caller’s voice was deep, like sub-subbasement deep. His accent was Middle Eastern.
Ally repeated her question. “Can I help you?”
“You can help me,” the caller said, “by verifying that I am speaking to Miss Marshall from Arrowhead Recovery.”
“You know you are.”
“In that case,” the caller told her, “You may refer to me as The Debt Jin. I ensure that debt collectors like yourself pay the debts you owe.”
“I don’t have any debts.” Ally took great pride in that achievement.
“Not all debts are financial.”
Ally didn’t understand what he was getting at, but right now she didn’t care. “I don’t have time for this.”
“Of course not.” The Debt Jin completely understood. “Your soldier boy is calling.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“I will call back another time.”
Ally couldn’t stop this weirdo from calling back, but she could switch the ringer to silent.
She decided against mentioning the call to Billy. Her husband was living in the middle of a war zone. Worrying about her could get him killed.
Unfortunately, Billy knew her too well. Even half a world away, he could sense something was up.
“It was a bad day at work,” she lied.
“Make a list of all the people bothering you, and when I get home, I’ll beat them up. Every single one of them.”
Ally missed her husband’s sense of humor and that irresistible drawl of his.
Only he could get away with asking, “Is that sweater gonna stay buttoned all night or will you be showing your soldier boy some titties?”
“Who knows I call you that?” she asked.
He thought for a moment before answering, “No one.”
But the answer wasn’t no one. You-may-call-me-The-Debt-Jin knew. He also knew that Billy was calling tonight. And his Middle Eastern accent could have been from Iraq, where Billy was stationed.
Ally couldn’t ignore that many coincidences. “You haven’t racked up any debts over there, have you?”
“Are you kidding me? My wife would kill me.”
Experience had taught Ally to worry when Billy answered serious questions with jokes.
“What about gambling debts?” she asked.
“Allyson Honey”—he was getting mad—”I stopped gambling two years ago.”
“But I know how you get when you’re bored,” she said. “And you text me all the time how boring things are over there when you’re not—”
“Did I or did I not swear on my grandmother’s grave?” When Ally threatened to leave him two years ago, Billy drove all the way down to Georgia, just so he could place his right hand on his grandmother’s headstone while he swore that he was done with poker, done with Foxwoods, done with scratch tickets, done with all of it.
No, Ally did not need to watch the video again. Halfway through her apology, the FaceTime app froze. Billy’s face sputtered, pixilated, then disappeared completely. The majority of their FaceTime dates ended like that. Ally wouldn’t have thought anything of it had the kitchen telephone not started ringing.
Before she answered, she doublechecked the ringer. It was no longer set to silent.
“How are you doing this?” she asked.
The Debt Jin told her, “You should be more concerned why I am doing this.”
“Okay, why?” she asked. “What non-financial debt do I owe? And who do I owe it to?”
The Debt Jin could not tell her that. “My clients value their privacy. Just like you. Isn’t that why you hide behind the name Miss Marshall?”
“The only people who know me as Miss Marshall are deadbeats. If your client is one of them,” Ally had bad news for The Debt Jin. “He is never going to pay you.”
“I will call back another time.”
Before Ally could tell him “Don’t,” he was gone.
True to his word, The Debt Jin called back just after midnight. Ally had nodded off on the sofa, waiting for Billy to resume their date.
“Am I waking you?” The Debt Jin asked.
Ally had woken up countless deadbeats with that same question. She enjoyed shaming them for sleeping in while they should have been out looking for work.
“You should know you’re not allowed to call between eight pm and eight am.” In case The Debt Jin was calling from Iraq, she specified, “That’s eight pm and eight am my time.”
The Debt Jin responded, “I will call back another time.”
And he did. He called back twenty minutes later—and then twenty minutes after that. The calls continued every twenty minutes even when Ally left the phone off the hook. And every call began with the same question: “Am I waking you?”
At 1:40, she asked him, “What the fuck is your problem?”
At 2:20, she tried scaring him. “Calling like this is illegal. I can go to the police.”
At 3:00, she blew a whistle into the mouthpiece.
No matter what Ally said or did, The Debt Jin always responded the same way: “I will call back another time.”
The calls did not stop until 5:40, twenty minutes before her alarm clock began buzzing.
The sleepless night had left Ally’s voice especially ragged. Maureen at the reception desk offered her a cough drop.
Coffee was provided free of charge in the break room. While downing a second cup, Ally reminded herself that she could get through the day. She had come to work after many sleepless nights, the majority of them spent worrying about her husband.
Her first call of the morning woke up the bitch who wished cancer upon her throat. For the first time, Ally could not bring herself to ask, “Am I waking you?” In one night, The Debt Jin had gutted all the pleasure out of that question.
Evan Brewster, the next deadbeat on the schedule, had been evading her calls for the past three months. On the rare occasions when he did pick up the phone, he claimed to be his twin brother Ivan.
Ally’s childhood had taught her that men did not reach Evan Brewster’s level of irresponsibility without someone, usually a woman, mopping up after him. Since Evan Brewster had never been married, that someone had to be his widowed mother Evelyn.
Ally tracked down Evelyn Brewster to a middle class suburb just outside Columbus, Ohio. The woman owned a single family house with no payments left on the mortgage.
“I’m so sorry for the early morning call,” Ally began, “but it’s just so important that I reach your son before he winds up getting arrested.”
“Did you say arrested?” The tremble in Evelyn Brewster’s voice confirmed that Ally had hooked the right fish.
“Your son lied on his credit card application. He lied about how much money he earns. That constitutes fraud. And since some of the items he purchased were delivered by mail, he might be facing federal charges.” Ally added that line to her spiel in the last few weeks. Dan Colby called it genius.
Mrs. Brewster convinced Ally to let her pay off her son’s credit card bill, the whole $9872.56. “And I apologize for Evan’s behavior.”
Closing a file that size for the full dollar value energized Ally better than a dozen cups of coffee.
* * *
The ringing began the second Ally settled her groceries onto the kitchen table. Not tonight, she decided. She grabbed a pair of shears off the counter and snipped the cord. She went right to the source. Yes, she could have simply unplugged the phone, but this felt so much more satisfying. As she tossed the decapitated cord into the trash compacter, she cursed herself for not thinking of this last night.
After a quiet glass of wine and a long, hot shower, Ally slid open Billy’s underwear drawer. None of his t-shirts fit her, not properly anyway. Neither did his boxers. Still, she liked wearing them to bed while he was away.
Four hours later, she was woken up by the sound of someone knocking on her apartment door. But not just knocking. Someone was full-fisted pounding.
Even half-asleep, Ally knew enough to check the peephole. She recognized the face as a guy who lived in the building. Every morning, she’d see him coming in with his bike when she was walking out to her car. Sometimes he’d hold the door for her. Sometimes she’d hold the door for him. She couldn’t imagine what he wanted or why he wasn’t wearing pants.
“Is your name Miss Marshall?” he asked.
“Can I help you?” she replied.
“Your boyfriend’s worried about you.” Her neighbor was talking a little too loud for the hallway this time of night. “He says he can’t get a hold of you.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m married.” Ally flashed the ring.
“Whatever you wanna call him,” the guy said, “he’s pretty anxious to talk to you. He’s been calling me for the last hour.”
“Why’s he calling you?” Ally asked. “Do you know him?”
“No, but somehow he knows me. He knew my name, and he had my number. And he knew what floor I live on.”
Which meant The Debt Jin also knew Ally’s address, including her apartment number.
While her neighbor stood there trying to make sense of all this, Ally realized that he was wearing bicycle shorts not boxer briefs. She also realized that she was the one standing here in her underwear, technically Billy’s underwear.
“If he calls back,” she said, “you can tell him the message has been delivered.”
Her neighbor took the hint. As he was walking away, he muttered something Ally couldn’t make out, but she suspected that he was done holding doors for her.
Ally needed to buy a new phone cord before the next neighbor came knocking. She wasn’t looking to make friends in the building, but she didn’t need any more enemies.
There was a drugstore across the street from the Arrowhead office. Everything in there was overpriced—twelve dollars for a tunafish sandwich—but the place was open twenty-four hours a day. Ally couldn’t remember the name of the store until she saw the white plastic bag dangling from the knob of her apartment door. The red and blue logo read Webster’s 24.
Ally unknotted the handles, then pulled out a brand new phone cord. According to the sales receipt, the order had been placed online. Her credit card had been charged $12.72 ($11.99 plus tax). Two-hour delivery tacked on another twenty-five bucks. On top of that, the driver had been tipped a hundred dollars, which explained the smiley face drawn on the receipt.
She could report the fraud and close the account, but The Debt Jin could hijack the replacement card. If he wanted to play mean, the sonofabitch could ruin the exceptional credit rating she had worked so hard to build.
* * *
Ally’s childhood home had always smelled like cancer biding its time. Her mother smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, sometimes three, and she did not believe in opening windows. Ally considered herself lucky to have escaped this house with nothing worse than a permanent rasp.
Which paled in comparison to her mother’s. Every other sentence out of her mother’s mouth ended in a coughing fit, which she blamed on her blood pressure medication. “It’s a side effect,” she’d say. “Look it up.”
After a week of sleepless nights, Ally was not up for running errands, but her mother had left her no choice. If Ally did not pick up the pills, her mother would happily go without.
The pharmacist pointed out a change in her mother’s Amlodipine, five milligrams down from ten. When Ally got back to the house, she asked, “Ma, Did Dr. Puleo say anything about lowering your dosage?”
“He could have.” After a brief coughing fit, her mother admitted, “I can never understand a word he says. He talks like he’s got a mouth full of marbles.”
“I’m gonna give him a call.” Yes, Ally knew that his office was not open on Saturdays, but he’d always been pretty good getting back to her.
“He’s not calling today.” On that, Ally’s mother would have bet one hundred cartons, not packs, of cigarettes.
When Ally’s cell phone rang five minutes later, she took immense satisfaction from showing her mother Dr. Puleo’s name on the screen.
“Am I waking you?” The Debt Jin asked.
Ally hurried into her old room and shut the door. Despite everything The Debt Jin had done so far, she couldn’t believe that he would interfere with her mother’s medications. “You could have killed her.”
“I still can,” The Debt Jin replied.
“Please.” Ally lowered the anger in her voice. “She’s done nothing to you. And she’s done nothing to your client.”
The Debt Jin hmmm-ed before asking, “Since when do you hold mothers sacrosanct?”
“Is that who hired you?” Ally asked. “Is this payback for me calling up somebody’s mother?”
“I will call back—”
“Wait! Please.” Dan Colby had trained Ally how to negotiate a debt. She hoped that he had trained her well. “If I promise not to bother anyone’s mother ever again, will you leave my mother alone?”
The Debt Jin told her, “That would be up to the client. I will call back another time.”
Ally’s mother was tapping her cigarette ashes into a hardboiled eggshell. Watching that still turned Ally’s stomach. To this day, she rarely ate breakfast, and she never ate eggs.
Between puffs, her mother asked, “Do I need to find a new doctor or a new pharmacy?”
Ally told her, “Neither one of them made a mistake. Somebody tampered with your prescription.”
“Why would—?” A coughing fit swallowed up the end of her question.
But Ally knew where it was going. “This past week, I’ve been getting calls. Lots of calls. They go all night. He calls himself The Debt Jin. That’s Jin as in Genie not Gin like gin and tonic.”
“Thank you for the clarification.” Her mother then stubbed out her cigarette butt in the middle of her plate, another habit Ally could never stomach, especially since she was the one who washed the dishes.
Getting back to The Debt Jin, Ally said, “I haven’t slept in days. He won’t let me.”
“You look like death warmed over.” Despite the wording, her mother was showing concern. “If you want to take a nap in your old room, I’ll make sure no one wakes you.”
Ally appreciated the offer, “but I don’t want The Debt Jin calling you.”
Her mother understood how The Debt Jin was keeping Ally up all night, “but how did he change my prescription?”
Ally said, “He does a lot of things I can’t explain how.”
“Like what?” her mother asked.
“This will sound crazy, I know, so you don’t have to tell me, but he can make my kitchen phone ring even when I leave the receiver off the hook. And when I try to record that with my phone, the audio won’t work.”
“As long as we’re talking crazy,” her mother suggested, “Maybe this Debt Jin is a real genie.”
“More like a computer genius,” Ally said.
“Why would someone like that be going after someone like you?”
Ally ignored the insult underneath her mother’s question. “The Debt Jin was hired by some deadbeat who’s pissed off at me for making him pay his bills.”
Her mother slid a fresh cigarette between two lips that could not resist twisting into an I-told-you-so smile. Given both her husbands’ troubles with debt collectors, Ally’s mother hated seeing her daughter become one. She warned Ally, “You’re asking to get yourself shot.”
As long as the bullet missed all her vital organs, Ally would have preferred a one-and-done attack like that to The Debt Jin’s unrelenting phone calls.
* * *
To keep from falling asleep at her desk, Ally was constantly splashing cold water on her face. The only person spending more time in the ladies room than her was the receptionist Maureen. The poor woman suffered from year round allergies. Her voice always sounded so nasal, so congested, just listening to the woman talk, Ally felt the urge to blow her own nose.
Maureen checked underneath each of the three stalls before confronting Ally. “You need to stop all these questions about The Debt Jin.”
Ally took that as an invitation to ask, “What do you know about him?”
“I know that he is a very sore subject around Mr. Colby.”
Dan Colby never struck Ally as thin-skinned. She imagined him as an alligator in a golf shirt.
Maureen proposed a deal. “If I tell you what I know, you need to stop bothering your co-workers.”
Ally agreed because none of those assholes were willing to tell her anything. Not one of them would admit that they had even heard of The Debt Jin.
Maureen kept her eye on the ladies room door while she talked. “There was an agent who used to work here. Allan Boudreau. He was here from the very beginning. He was an awful lot like you.”
“In what way?” Ally asked.
“He was very successful closing files.”
“Is that all?” Ally suspected there was more.
“It’s the way the two of you close them. Your methods are not always nice.” The woman was not wrong about that. “One day, the police found child pornography on Allan’s home computer. They found it here too. He claimed that he was being framed. He claimed that someone called The Debt Jin planted the pornography on both computers.”
After clearing her throat, Maureen continued, “Mr. Colby lost a lot of clients because of Allan Boudreau. He also lost a lot of money. The police shut us down for three weeks while they investigated each and every computer—including mine.”
“Was Allan Whatshisname able to prove he was framed?”
“No.” Maureen was dumbfounded that Ally would ask such a ridiculous question. “It was a desperate lie made up by a very sick individual.”
Ally saw nothing to be gained from revealing her own troubles with The Debt Jin. She just patted her face dry, then blew her nose into the paper towel.
* * *
The metal stools in the visiting room had not been designed for comfort. More than likely, they had been designed to discourage visitors from overstaying their time limits. Ally had been allotted twenty minutes with Allan Boudreau. On her way in, she had been handed a wetnap to wipe down the phone she’d be using. She had also been directed to review the rules which included: Remain fully clothed.
Almost ten minutes late, Allan Boudreau appeared on the other side of the plexiglass. His lawyer had prepared Ally for the sling. The man had been attacked again, but Ally was not to ask him any questions about that.
The lawyer had not mentioned the missing front teeth, which slurred the man’s words. “So you really think you can get me out of here?”
“To do that,” Ally said, “I’m going to need to know a few things. First off, did you ever find out who put you in here?”
“The Debt Jin,” he replied and none too nicely.
What Ally was asking: “Who sicced The Debt Jin on you?”
“Probably someone with kids,” he guessed. “Or one the kids themselves.”
“What kids?” Ally asked.
“The ones who lied to me. I tried to be nice. I’d ask them nicely if mommy or daddy was home, and they’d always say no just like they’d been trained to do. They’d say, ‘Noooo, Mommy’s not here’ when I knew damn right well the bitch was standing beside them. Sometimes I could hear her in the background. Doesn’t that kind of thing piss you off?”
Growing up, Ally had been one of those kids. But no debt collector had ever called her “a filthy little liar.” No debt collector had ever told her, “You’re gonna burn in Hell right beside that deadbeat father of yours.”
Allan Boudreau did not regret making children cry. He only regretted not stopping Dan Colby from recording his calls. “The D.A. used those tapes against me. Hearing those calls made the jury hate me.”
Hearing about those calls was making Ally hate the man.
“After I get out of here,” he said, “I’m going to sue Arrowhead and Dan personally. I don’t remember ever signing a consent form.”
Ally didn’t want to hear about some lawsuit that was never going to happen. She still had important questions, and Allan Boudreau showing up late had cut her time in half. “Looking back, was there anything you think you could have done to make The Debt Jin stop?”
“I thought about killing myself.”
That was not the answer Ally was looking for.
She checked the clock on the wall. She only had time for one more question. “Does The Debt Jin still harass you?”
“The last time The Debt Jin contacted me, I was sitting right there.” Allan Boudreau pointed to a chair on his right. “My lawyer had come here to break some bad news in person. My petition for protective custody had been denied. The Debt Jin cut into our conversation. My lawyer says he didn’t hear him, but I don’t see how he couldn’t.”
Ally asked, “What did The Debt Jin say?”
“‘The debt has been settled.’”
“That’s it?” Ally was expecting more.
Allan Boudreau was surprised as well, “but that was it, and I haven’t heard from him since.”
“The debt has been settled.”
Ally could not wait until she heard those words.
* * *
The last time Ally had been summoned to Dan Colby’s office, her boss had been holding sizable commission checks in each hand. This morning, his hands were empty, and he was not grinning.
Dan Colby spoke fast, and he never repeated himself. “Explain to me why you thought it was okay to visit Allan Boudreau on company time.”
“It wasn’t company time,” Ally said. “I used half a vacation day.”
“That was still time you should have been in the office. And why does Allan’s lawyer think you’re going to help him overturn the conviction.”
“I only told him that so he’d set up a meeting.” If anyone would appreciate Ally’s deception, it should have been Dan.
Instead he told her, “You should have come to me. I would have saved you a lot of time and trouble. The Debt Jin does not exist.”
“But he does.”
Before Ally could explain how she knew that for a fact, Dan was off and running. “The Debt Jin does not exist. I know this because I spent over twenty thousand dollars trying to prove he was real. When Allan was arrested, I didn’t wanna believe he was a pervert. He wasn’t just a longtime employee, he was a friend. He’d been to my home. I trusted him around my kids. I wanted to believe his crazy story. I hired the best computer experts I could find. They examined every inch of his computers, every microbyte. You know what they found? Nothing! Nothing to prove that either computer had been hacked. And this was on top of the police investigation.”
Finally given the chance to speak, Ally told Dan, “The Debt Jin does exist, and he has been calling me every night for the last two weeks. He calls twenty, thirty times a night. He won’t let me get to sleep.”
Dan sized Ally up before declaring, “You do look like hell. And I think the lack of sleep is making you a little crazy.”
Ally was too exhausted to respond to either one of those insults. “Last week, The Debt Jin messed with my mother’s blood pressure medicine. What he did could have killed her.”
“Is she okay?” Dan asked.
“I managed to straighten out the problem.” She’d done so by going to the doctor’s office in person. And yes, she used vacation time.
“I’m glad,” Dan said, “but for the sake of the office, you need to stop dredging up all this Debt Jin nonsense. We can’t go through that again.”
“But it’s happening again,” and Ally needed more than a little guidance. “What do you expect me to do about these calls I’m getting?”
“If someone’s harassing you,” Dan said, “call the police.”
“I did. His calls don’t show up on their wire tap.” Ally knew how crazy that made her sound. She didn’t need Dan looking at her the way the detective did.
Dan brought Ally back to her first day at Arrowhead. “You were talking about your husband being in Iraq and how worried you were. What I told you then applies now: Keep your home problems out of the office.”
“But they’re connected,” Ally said. “I think The Debt Jin was hired by one of the deadbeats I’ve been calling.”
“Which one?” Dan asked.
That she didn’t know, “but something The Debt Jin said about mothers being off limits—”
“Stop.” Dan raised his hand. He wasn’t just done with this conversation. He was done with Ally. “Maureen’s going to escort you back to your desk so you can grab your purse. She will then escort you to the door.”
Ally could not believe this was happening. “You can’t fire me over this.”
He assured her, “I’m not firing you over this. I’m firing you because of your unethical work practices. In reviewing your calls, I have discovered that you have been discussing personal debts with people who are not the debtors.”
* * *
The telephone did not start ringing the second Ally walked through her apartment door. The entire ride home, she had been anticipating The Debt Jin’s victory dance. Maybe he had not yet heard the news. Or maybe her mother was right. Maybe now that Ally had been fired, The Debt Jin was done with her. The next time he called, Ally was hoping to hear, “The debt has been settled.”
While debating whether she should tell Billy the news, Ally noticed that she had missed a text from him, a rather urgent text.
Soldier Boy
WHO IS THIS FUCK?????
In case Ally didn’t know which fuck Billy meant, he forwarded her a video he’d been sent: footage from a security camera on her floor. The video wasn’t long, just a few seconds, but the angle was damning. Her neighbor, the bike rider, looked as though he was leaving Ally’s apartment in his underwear. Ally herself was standing in the doorway dressed in nothing more than Billy’s Paris Island t-shirt and boxer shorts.
“No no no no no. Nooooo!” Ally threw her cell phone onto the bed.
She should have told Billy about The Debt Jin. She should have told him from the very beginning. If she had, she could have explained how her neighbor wound up at her door in the middle of the night. If Billy already knew about the incessant phone calls and her mother’s blood pressure pills, he would understand how she’d been set up.
Anything Ally said now was going to sound ridiculous, nothing but a desperate lie. Ally thought about Allan Boudreau trying to explain away the child pornography on his computers.
The only way Billy might believe her was if she looked him in the eye. She texted: “Can we Facetime???” Then she added: “PLEASE”
Billy got back to her immediately, which she took as a good sign. Another positive sign: he answered on the first ring.
Billy was standing outside somewhere dark. He was fully geared up.
A voice behind him shouted, “Turn that fucking thing off! You wanna get us killed?”
“I’m trying,” Billy shot back. “It won’t—”
Suddenly, his head jerked backwards as if he’d been sucker-punched.
A different voice, this one a woman, shouted, “Sniper!”
At that point, Ally’s phone lost audio. Then the FaceTime app froze. It froze on the image of Billy’s head on the ground with a bullet hole where his right eye should have been.
Ally covered the hole with her thumb. Billy’s remaining eye was staring at her, and it had every right to. She had just gotten her husband killed. Her call had illuminated his location for every sniper within shooting distance. As if that guilt alone would not haunt her for the rest of her life, her husband died thinking she cheated on him.
Ally rarely cried, but when she did, it always began with deep, ragged breaths, like someone whose head had been held underwater right up to the point of drowning.
The kitchen phone began to ring.
Before The Debt Jin could ask if he was waking her, Ally lit into him. “You sick sonofabitch. Nothing I’ve done deserved this. Nothing!”
“The debt has been settled.”
“This is not over. Not until you tell me who sicced you on me. Who hired you to kill my husband? I want a name. I don’t wanna hear about your privacy rules. I don’t give a fuck. You owe me a name!” When Ally paused to catch her breath, she realized that she’d been screaming into a dead telephone.
________________________________________________________________________________
In addition to 11 books of soap opera trivia, Gerard J Waggett has published several crime stories in Mystery Magazine (formerly Mystery Weekly Magazine). The latest was a Sherlock Holmes adventure. In late 2022, his one-act play “Elizabeth” was published in the premiere issue of Dracula Beyond Stoker. Last spring, Archer’s anthology Dark Mirrors included his horror/science fiction hybrid “Operation Rat Poison.”