Kelsey and the Burdened Breath

Published in the anthology New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color

"Hand stretched toward the bedroom ceiling, Kelsey climbed on her wooden footstool. "Here, Pal," she called. A shimmer - a tiny Fata Morgana, light bent through not-quite emptiness - flowed across the ceiling, down her arm, and around her shoulders. Pal's weight lessened hers; an alien gravity drew all last breaths from Earth.

"Good boy," she said. "It's work time."

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A variation on a ghost whisperer type story. A woman and her ghost dog search for the last breaths of dying people which have somehow gotten stuck in the world of the living.