Episode 6: "Titration"

This is Drabbletober, the podcast of tiny fiction.

Hello, and welcome to Drabbletober. This is episode 6, for Sunday the 6th of October 2024, and I'm Elizabeth Guilt.

Your one-hundred word story for the day is:

Titration

After the earthquake, shorn power conduits shook and writhed until downtown was flooded with electric. Dirty, unaligned electric - no use to anyone, and lethal. The council set up cordons, and tried to explain they couldn't clean up yet. Couldn't plan operations until they knew the Wattage.

Which is where I come in, with my suitcase of ghosts. It works, and science guys hate it. Electric and ghosts don't mix - lit rooms give spectres no corner to hide. So I just let 'em out, one at a time, until there's enough to be visible.

37 ghosts. That's 14 TeraWatts.

You're welcome.

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There is an idea, which I've heard a few times though I haven't been able to find out whose it was originally, that electricity killed ghost stories. Once rooms were well lit, people stopped seeing ghosts.

I like the idea that the ghosts are fighting back.

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Take care, everyone, and I'll see you tomorrow for episode 7.