To Love A Ghost || ONC 2023 Shortlist
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- Votes 20
- Parts 10
MatureComplete Wed, Apr 26, 20233h 3m
Prompt #23: They were not real, everyone told me they were not real. But why are they here? Why are they trying to talk to me? Why are they calling me the ONE? Why are they staring at me like that?
***
When bored corporate 9 to 5'er Jace Palmer inherits his great-aunt Lorraine's flower shop in tiny River Bend, Wisconsin, nothing will stop him from realizing his lifelong dream of owning his own coffeehouse and bookstore. No matter what he must sacrifice to achieve it...his life savings...his marriage...and, as strange things begin happening in the shop and the apartment above it, his sanity.
Jace is certain he's going crazy, but then one day the apparition of a young man appears before Jace's very wide-awake eyes, looking and speaking like an ordinary human. Except no human can vanish and reappear. No human can walk through walls and closed doors. And no human-not even his ex-wife-has ever stirred the feelings in Jace that he has for the ghost of Daniel Walsh.
*To Love a Ghost is a paranormal small-town M/M romance explicitly written for ONC 2023. This story contains adult language, themes, and depictions of 1930's era as well as modern-day attempts at gay conversion therapy (which some readers may find uncomfortable or disturbing) and a rather unconventional HEA.*
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Jace Parker, age twenty-six, an Emergency Medical Technician in Baltimore, Maryland, meets a young girl named Aleix Boysfti, who is ten years old, who dies from a sudden death after suffering a cardiac arrest in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, things are about to get worse. After Aleix's death, Jace begins to see Aleix as a ghost and haunting him and Jace begins to question himself why he is seeing one of his former patients as a ghost. Therefore, Jace begins to experience symptoms. As well as seeing in his flashback of a psychiatric hospital located south of Baltimore where Jace as well sees in his flashback where young children are being abused and tortured by their nurses and their doctors. However, Jace thinks that Aleix had died from complications of the abuse as Jace thinks that the same symptoms he experienced are the same symptoms the children suffered from while being abused. Jace thinks Aleix had escaped from the psychiatric hospital to save herself. But since Aleix had come back to life as a ghost and giving Jace some mystery to solve, Jace decides to partner with a detective named Ava Knox, age thirty, to shut down the psychiatric hospital. Jace and Ava are shocked to discover the truth behind this evilness of this tragic tragedy of young children. And will the children be saved? If anyone who sees this story being plagiarized by someone else, please send me a quick message as soon as possible. I do not tolerate plagiarism at all, and I will sue whoever is responsible of stealing my work. ©️2025 Rebecca Clark. All Rights Reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the prior permission of the author, except for the brief description of the book in a book review.
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