Wednesday has rolled around on the calendar again and we are inching every closer to Halloween. I won the #ThursdayThreads flash fiction challenge week before last with a snippet from my Cajun Wolves WIP. Still a bit in that headspace, and with it being the spook season, this week’s #1lineWed and #ThursdayThreads prompts–**UNIVERSE: The. Everything. Cosmos** and “They aren’t real”– just kept me rolling with that story, this time with Luc and Sunny, rather than Beau and his lady (who is still yet unnamed. Maybe I should ask for suggestions…) Anyway, I hope you enjoy this expanded version.
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Luc parked his SUV, locked it and started down the sidewalk. He’d found a spot about a block away. Sunny stood in front of the gate, waiting for him. Her outfit all but glowed under the autumn sun, bright emerald green and purple amethyst. She bounced up and down on her toes as he approached.

“You’re here!” Her smile would light up the gloomiest of rainy days. “Come with me.” She turned and headed through the wrought iron gate. He hesitated and she glanced when she realized he wasn’t at her side. “They aren’t real.”

He couldn’t help himself. He was a Wolf and an unmated one at that. His gaze darted to the curved neckline of her green blouse. “Damn sure look real to me,” he muttered quietly under his breath, making sure Sunny couldn’t hear the comment. By the time she glanced back at him, he’d fixed his eyes on her face once more.

She twirled, the purple gypsy skirt she wore flaring to reveal her shapely legs. Her eyes danced with mischief as she grabbed his hand and tugged him along in her wake. “But they might be.”

How did he get in these predicaments? This was more Beau’s catnip than his yet when Sunny had called that morning insisting they meet at St. Louis #3, he’d come. Cemeteries were not his thing. At least she wasn’t dragging him to Marie Laveau’s tomb at St. Louis #1.

“Cher, I’m all kinds of confused here. What’re we talkin’ about?”

“Ghosts of course.” There was an implied “silly” tacked on the end.

“Darlin’, it’s almost noon. No self-respectin’ ghost is gonna be hangin’ out in broad daylight.”

She danced a few steps, twirling under their clasped hands. “Who says? Show me the rule that states ghosts can only come out at midnight.”

“I’m sure there’s one somewhere. All those ghost huntin’ shows on TV are filmed at night.”

“That’s to make it all spooky and stuff. Besides, those people end up scaring themselves more often than they actually find ghosts.” She stopped dead still, a quizzical look scrunching up her face. “And why do ghosts have to be scary? I mean, really. There are far scarier things out there in the Universe.”

She had a point, since he was one of the scariest beings in the cosmos.
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It’s coming up on Halloween. What can I say? And besides, these prompts just sort of fell into place and wrote themselves into the story. Writers, any universal things that might or might not be real in your stories? Readers, I can’t help myself. “Are they real?”