Tag Archives: short story

Mrs. Claus

25 Dec

A horror story for the holidays.

–

She pulled off the fancy bow, throwing the ribbon tidily onto the ground next to her. Opened the lid, slowly. As was proper. Breathed in a little as the top jiggled loose with a quiet puff of old dust. Looked inside.

A moment of silence.

“This is… not what I was expecting.”

The man in the red suit with the slicked-back hair and black goatee, all glint and glimmer and promising shine, smiled his lopsided smile. Deceptive as ever.

“What do you mean?” he asked, sickly sweet as an overly gummed candy cane. He slid closer, gliding like a hellcat in the shadows. “What were you expecting?”

She looked up, her eyes an angry flash at his bloody veneer. Her lips curled up into a snarl. “Immortality.”

The man in the crisp red suit threw his head back and laughed, all mirth and mockery. A tear dripped from one eye and he brushed it away with a black-gloved hand. “Oh, my dear,” he hissed, “That would have been an awfully big present. Too big for one as little as yourself. There’s not enough soul in you, to pay for that.”

Her slight frame shook. She pulled the bauble from its box. A glass knife. No – it was already dripping – an ice knife. Sharp. Pretty. Ephemeral.

She had asked for control over life and death. He had given her a toy.

Sly cat. No matter. She had some claws of her own.

“I will take what is my due,” she whispered, her voice thin as a blade and three times as sharp.

The man in the red suit lounged back on her sofa. “Oh really?” he purred, one eyebrow arching up. “And how is that, pet?”

She smiled. Carefully. Slinked towards him in her dress, red like blood and seduction. A sin for a sin. Of course he’d said they’d need to match.

She climbed onto his lap and put her hands over his chest.

“You’re magic,” she murmured under her breath. The man in the red suit leaned into her words. “Ageless.” She let a little reluctant wonder creep into her voice while one finger crept up the red suit and came to rest just over the heart that beat beneath the red suit. Her nails were long and pointed, sharp like daggers. Red from cuticle to tip.

Red. His color.

And now hers.

She dug her claws into the suit, into the flesh, into the man and his magic and his terrible gift-giving and she stole it. Pulled it up, out of him, away from his years and years of cheated death and trickery treasure and into her own body. She felt herself grow large, taking it all in. Bigger. Powerful.

Beneath her claws, the man in the red suit withered. His skin wrinkled and aged. His goatee frayed and greyed and whitened. Flab arose and clung to his middle like denture paste to an old jawline. His eyes sunk and his nose reddened.

And he began to scream.

She pulled her claws out then, cackling.

The old man in the red suit wailed at the sharp blades of her fingers cutting their way back out of him. There was pain. Oh yes, there was pain.

But there was no death.

He healed. Instantly. There was still enough magic left in him for the job.

She had made sure of that.

His chest rose and fell, clunkily. Ragged.  “Ho. ho. ho.” The old man’s wheezing was short and clipped.

The woman smiled. “Ho ho ho,” she laughed.

The man looked up at her, fearful. “Who are you?” he whispered, eyes growing wide with fear.

Ah yes, a name. The woman looked down at her fingers, covered in red like cherry slowly drying to crimson around the cuticles. Her eyes narrowed.

Yes, that would do.

“Claws,” she said, voice firm as desire. “Mrs. Claws.”

She pulled the man up from the couch, thrusting him back towards her fireplace. “Now, if you don’t mind, dear, I believe you have my bidding to do.”

The old man in the ancient red suit was silent. But he nodded, then disappeared back through the flames.

Mrs. Claws’s eyes glinted in the firelight. She looked around the room, wondering where to start.

A now-empty box caught her eye. Mrs. Claws smiled. Cracked her knuckles. Stepped into the fireplace to follow the old man back to his workshop. Yes, that would be her first order. That is how he ended. That is how she would begin.

“Toys,” Mrs. Claws hissed. “Toys for everyone.”

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Desperate: A Free Short Horror Story for Halloween

31 Oct

Happy All Hallow’s Eve, spooksters.

I’ve finished up “Desperate,” a short horror story, and am releasing it on Gumroad for Halloween! You can read the start of it here and, if you like it, hop on over to my Gumroad store to download the full thing for free/pay-what-you’d-like.

It’s got monsters, and fire, and edge. It’s got gore. It’s a little bit haunted. And that makes its characters a little bit desperate.

Actually, that’s the title.

fire banner

Desperate

They’d been a desperate threesome. Nikki had made it out first, kissing the world goodbye for the military (an escape to violence that would at least get her pride along with the bruises). Calvin had settled where he was, dropping into the familiar Midwestern monotony of a comfortable desk job with spreadsheets and quarterly reports and a girlfriend who’d fuck him enough that he could forget for thirty sweet minutes about the slipping mind of his ailing mother.

Em had been the first to leave but the last to make it out. If she were really honest with herself, she was still running.

She wondered if the other two were just lying to themselves too. She wondered if they’d really escaped the nights of writhing, trying desperately to claw their way out of their own body while dragging along a splitting mind behind them. Sweating into pillows, tears staining the sheets, howling to the dark from behind a dead smile. Always prepared to jump back into place. Waiting.

She hated spending nights alone. Screaming.

She wondered if they’d really managed to exorcise their demons or if they, like she, had merely managed to become better friends with the devil.

They’d all learned how to hide their scars, eventually. She’d just never learned how to stop making them.

She could imagine what Nikki looked like, underneath. Calvin she wasn’t so sure about. Numbness made it hard to get the truth. She was supposed it was better than his old pain, though. Cold and sharp. Howling.

Some days, she ached for his warmth.

It was very hard not to tell him that.

—

There was mold growing on the counter. Em frowned and tried to ignore it as she splashed the gasoline over her arm, careful to hold it steady above the sink. Old bloodstains soured their stench up at her. She sighed at the taste.

Em sat down on the leaves, moist and decaying on the kitchen floor. The house was old when she’d gotten there, and the cobwebs in the corner had only begged her all the more to stay. She loved it. Nikki would have, even more so. Calvin would probably hate it.

Em picked a match out of its box and struck it to life. She held it to her skin, setting her left arm aflame. Her dark eyes glittered in the light.

The heat roiled over her curling skin, seductive and swaying. The warmth slowly tingled up to her shoulder, then down to her bones. Em breathed out slowly. Shut her eyes. Whispered his name.

Waited.

Her arm crackled softly in the silent night. Em hoped he wouldn’t be slow about showing up tonight. Gasoline only burned for so long, and she wasn’t going to set her arm on fire twice in one week for the fucker.

The leaves around her crunched lightly, then harder as a body shuffled its way closer. The visitor sat down, and there was silence again.

Save for one deep, tired sigh.

“Em, that’s gross. Cut it out.”

She grinned at the exasperation in it. Em opened her eyes, both of them turned to wells of pupiless black. She looked fondly at her burning arm, pink and blistering now. “It’s beautiful,” Em breathed.

Calvin made a face. “It’s gross.”

“It’s effective. You’re here, aren’t you?” Calvin was silent. Em shrugged. “But fine, have it your way.” There was a snuffing noise, and the flames disappeared, plunging them both into darkness. Em brushed a small clump of ash off her arm, now back to its normal flawless white.

Calvin ran one hand down its alabaster smoothness. Em shivered under the rough touch of his callouses.

“You okay?” Calvin murmured, his voice low.

Em only glared.

Calvin leaned back and sighed again. “Fine. Well, I’m here. What did you want?”

Em swallowed down the pain surging up her throat. She ran her fingers through the gossamer strands of her hair, absent-mindedly twisting and untwisting her curls.

“I… just… wanted to see you.”

“Why?”

Em tugged too hard at her hair and pulled a strand loose. “Ow.”

She held the strand up in front of her eyes and stared at it.

“Em?”

She tossed the strand. Looked up. Glanced at Calvin, now standing and ready to leave.

Just like she didn’t want him to.

“She’s getting restless.”

Calvin’s brow furrowed. “Who? Nikki?”

“No.”

“…Oh.”

Calvin crouched down beside Em and pulled her into his arms. “What do you need?” he murmured, pressing his face into her hair.

Em hugged him closer. “You.”

Calvin let out a breath, long and slow. “You know I can’t do that. Shelley…”

Em growled.

“Fine, I won’t say her name. But you know the rules.”

Em dug the nails of her right hand into her left arm. Calvin flickered a little. Em snarled. “Since when do you care about rules?”

Calvin gently pulled her fingers off her arm. Solid again, he kissed her on the forehead and backed away. “You know when,” he whispered.

But Em could hear the sting still in his voice. She knew he was lying.

Even when he was gone, and not even his shadow was left to show he had been there, Em knew he didn’t really care.

Not enough. Not yet.

She could hear it in the dark spaces of his voice. The poison that still pooled in the corners.

Em dug her nails back into her arm and breathed in the smell of his memory.

He couldn’t lie to her.

Not when he was still hungry.

Not yet.

—

She needed Nikki. Badly.

Finding her was not going to be easy. Nikki had always been the hunter out of the three of them. Lithe and dangerous and predatory. Stealthy and graceful and very, very good at covering her tracks.

But when it came to Em, she’d always been a little bit obvious, too.

The moon was high that night, spilling milky sheen onto the wet floors of the old house through the holes in its roof.

Somewhere, a drip of black water fell from a windowsill. The clink of gravity rippled through Em’s ear, expanding into her consciousness. She shivered as the waves hit her.

Full moons had always made the night an ocean. At least this time she was choosing the drowning.

“Nikki,” Em thought, her voice small and helpless and floating. “Nikki, where are you?”

The world was silent as deep water. But one part of it was more silent than the others. Em smiled.

“Nikki!” she shrieked gleefully, stepping through the black space and into reality. A tall girl with short hair glared at her from beside a campfire.

“What are you doing here?” Nikki spat. She glanced around. “And what the fuck did you do with my platoon?”

Read the full text of “Desperate” on Gumroad for free/pay-what-you-want.

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Three Types of Hell

7 May

Three Types of Hell

– A Short Story –

My life is a confusing brand of hell.  They’re not all so hard, you know. Some people at least get to know why they’re doomed to an eternity of being burnt about the toes. You’ve got the straight-forward malice types, the murderers, the robbers (sans raisons), the loose liars and the psychopaths. You know, the people who didn’t give a damn about others and so heaped up a whole lot of damnation for themselves. Their souls started burning even before their dead eyes shut.

Then you’ve got the regretters. Or at least, that’s how they think of themselves. They’ve got no grand feat to speak of, just lots of small grievances piled up without remorse. An annoyance here, a slight there. Never any thought as to how treating their fellow humans like a convenience mart might go in the long run, for those fellows or themselves. No, the regretters, it’s almost ironic, their chosen name in their little red-taped clique of the hot place. They spent their lives making being alive just a little bit harder for others. Now they’re spending forever making it harder for themselves. Each and every one of them tucked into the regretter section, a club of mopers and moaners whose only task all the live long day is to trip up the no-longer-a-body next to them. They keep doing what they were doing. It’s just limited to their own kind, now. And these people – bureaucrats, most of ’em – they just sit about regretting. If only they’d known. If only they could’ve done differently. But no, it’s as they told every customer, every broken-down landlady or tired old veteran – they had no choice, the stamp was there, the law in place. Regrettably, they could do nothing.

And so now they do nothing but regret their regretting.

But then… then there’s me. And a few others, here and there. We don’t see each other very often. We’re not the skulking type and we’re too faded to scuttle, but occasionally one of us will scuff along the floor loudly enough for another of us to hear if we’re nearby. We are… we don’t have a name, actually. Because that’s the point of this kind of hell, isn’t it? There is no point. There is no name. There is no reason. We’re all just here. We don’t know what we did. We carry some amorphous, pervasive sense of guilt, but it’ll never coalesce together enough to show us its true shape. We question. And we wonder. Why are we here? What did we do? Was it some wrong choice? We cannot remember taking any wrong path… Did we do another wrong? Look long as we might, our memories show nothing but love.

Or so we think.

So we think we think.

And onward, downward, inward.

There is no escape.

Not that we know where the entrance was, anyway.

It’s a confusing brand of hell, this life of ours. We’re all still trying to do right, even down here. But eventually, our numbers thin, until the next crop comes along. I’m about three generations of influx along. About my time to be passing away, actually. I don’t know which direction I’ll take. The ones who say fuck it all and throw themselves to where the flames burn blue, or the ones who shrug and accept that perhaps their damnation was in fact a small pile of nothing, nothing so significant as to have warranted all that… Malice or minutiae, we all go one way or the other.

It’s hard, scuffling along, your toes slowly turning crisp about the edges. Eventually, you need a reason for why your toes are turning black.

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Fish and Lavender

19 Apr

The apartment smelled of fish and lavender. It was an odd combination, but then again that’s what the apartment was too, an odd throw-together of temporary and permanent lodgers, the floors and shelves strewn with things of people who did and didn’t yet live there. A large enough place to have in so short a time become both a prison and a refuge. A three-bedroom townhouse full of free lodgers who could not escape themselves.

Fish and lavender, depending which breath you took.

The oldest girl – though she felt the youngest, might as well have been for all the stability in life she’d managed up to that point (How had she managed to become the mature one? The most mature and the most fool. Ever such disparate titles to hold, reconcilable only by as much a bleeding heart as hers.) – shoved her book away, tossed the blanket off her lap and scrambled across the room for her laptop.

The younger girl – not so young as to deserve being called it, an older soul than she often let on unless you cried in front of her enough – looked up from her own tomb.

“Restless?”

The older girl slapped her laptop open. She waited for the wi-fi to connect, agitating. “I’ve got wanderlust, still.”

The younger girl only stared blankly, her eyes saying obvious.

The other shook her head. “No, not your kind of reckless abandon. I don’t want to go just anywhere, I want to go somewhere. I want to travel, to adventure. To have some place to go and some place to be and something to do.” The girl shut her mouth. And some one to love.

Her friend rolled her eyes. “So go somewhere.”

The girl shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”

Love and distance, uncertainty and security, loss and comfort. These things did not often mix well together.

Fish and lavender. You never knew which breath.

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The Night The Moon Was Eaten

15 Apr

Yesterday, April 14th, was my 23rd birthday. It was actually one of the loveliest times I’ve had on my birthday in a while. I woke up to a super sweet email from my boyfriend, got to spend the day with old and new mates, and then climbed to the roof of my apartment with a couple of my oldest friends to watch the lunar eclipse. A blood moon on my birthday? Why thank you, galaxy. That was an awesome gift.

And that time on the roof, wrapped in a blanket talking about everything and nothing in particular as the moon waned and waxed and became saturated with its bloody hue before us, as the moon took on an oddly placed shadow as the earth passed by the sun in front of it, causing the moon to look almost as if something were eating it – well that, of course, inspired a story.

So thank you, to everyone who made my birthday wonderful with your well-wishes and hugs yesterday. One day after my birthday, this, a story, is my gift to you.

 

Thank you to Casey Handmer, friend and photographer of this fantastic timelapse photo. Permission to use this photo must be obtained directly from him.

Thank you to Casey Handmer, friend and photographer of this fantastic timelapse photo. Permission to use this photo must be obtained directly from him.

The Night The Moon Was Eaten

Something was eating the moon.

Killey leaned back against the thatched roof and stared up at the sky above her. Bale, her little brother, a mere seven years in this village of ancients, had been the first to see it. He’d run screaming through the town, child that he was, screeching in his sweet little voice the same way he would have if a cow had gotten loose from the fields or a stranger had come visiting or a particularly choice piece of candy had just been given him by one of the elder ladies. Bale had not quite learned the art of tone differentiation yet.

And so he had gone streaking through the streets with his shouts naked of discernible emotion beyond urgency and surprise (what kind of urgency? surprise at what?) repeating those two unassuming words over and over again.

“The moon! The moon!” A chubby little hand with its chubby little fingers stretched up toward the sky, waving in no particular direction round the galaxy. “The moon!”

Eyes had turned skyward. Eyes had widened. Eyes had shut.

Smiles turned to swallowed groans.

The moon – that was no typical waxing. That was no mere shadow. It was in entirely the wrong place for this night of the lunar cycle. No, that darkness – it was no usual momentary lapse of our beloved lunar orb. And – eyes opened only to grow wider once again – it was getting bigger. Right before our eyes, the moon was being swallowed up.

Something was eating the moon.

Within moments, ladders were raised and roofs were climbed. Families sat atop their homes, feeling safer in the height and the open than trapped between a lid and the ground. Whatever it was, if the moon was not enough for it and it came to swallow the earth next… Well, the ground did not seem like a particularly safe place to be.

And so we sat on our roofs and watched as the darkness chewed away at the lunar orb.

Something was eating the moon.

“Papa,” I whispered early in the night, “why aren’t we doing anything? Why are we just sitting here, watching?”

Papa had sighed and pulled me closer at that. “Killey, dear, what can we do? The moon in her fortress is far, and there is no certain way to reach her. The veil between us is vast. We can do nothing.”

Except sit. And wait. And hope that the darkness swallowing the moon would deign to return her to us once again.

There was so little left of her. Just a mere scrap now. Soon, there would be nothing but a hole of where she used to be.

The night blew on. The moon continued to fade as we watched.

And then, suddenly, there was nothing.

For what felt like hours we sat on our roofs with bated breath, hoping to see some sign of return of our moon.

But for so long, nothing.

“Papa!” The entire village turned their heads toward our hut as Bale’s voice pierced the air once again. Around me, I could see the faces of our neighbors blanch. No tone was needed to see what had sparked Bale’s outburst this time. The terror on his face was so thick it dripped into the night and leaked in puddles on the roof around him.

“Papa,” Bale’s voice no more than a whisper this time. “The moon is bleeding.”

Papa’s gaze jerked to the sky. All eyes returned to the moon. Yes, Bale was right. There, up where the moon kept her court, was the tiniest sliver of a moon returning to us. Except she was not waltzing back to us, finally free of whatever monster had tried to imprison her in its jowls.

No, she was being regurgitated.

Up in the sky, the monster hacked up the moon queen, bit by bit,coughing up a pile of ragged flesh. The moon we were seeing returned was no longer the cool, pale glow of the star courtiers that danced around her. No. Now, the moon, she had turned sickly, undeniable blood red. And as we all sat and stared, her white gown was only drenched all the more in that frightening color of dying.

“Papa?”

But my father said nothing. I saw his lips move and the knob in this throat slide as he gulped down hard.

I did not like it when Papa was afraid.

The moon was so saturated with blood now that even the glow she cast on our fields reflected the laceration of her veins. A wind rustled through the corn and the cows moaned at the sight of the grass turned the color of rust before them. Around us, the world creaked and cracked and wailed.

Disturbed.

I sat down on the thatched roof, bracing my feet against the straw. Boring old blessedly normal straw. My knees were shaking. I pulled them toward me and held my arms around them tight, trying to make the shaking stop. Bale stumbled over the slippery thatching and plopped next to me. He buried his face in my arm.

“Killey, I’m afraid,” he mumbled as best he could with his nose and mouth smushed into my skin.

I swept a hand lightly through his hair, fixing a few of the tousles. “Me too, Bale.” Against my arm, Bale started to sniffle. “Shhh, Bale. Come here.” I pulled him into my arms and rocked back and forth, humming softly. His little sobs quieted. I continue to croon over his tiny form, a lilting strain from nowhere in particular.

Papa came and sat beside me, listening. He’s always told me he likes it when I hum. He says it reminds him of Mama. She used to sing all the time, he says. I just like to hum, but I like it too, that maybe I could be like Mama was.

Papa leaned in so he could catch my notes better. After a while, he nodded and started humming too. It wasn’t quite the notes I was doing, but he played around them, so it sounded nice. His humming was more repetitive than mine was.

The family on the roof next to ours started humming too, something close to what Papa was doing. Soon, the humming had spread through the whole village, and all the thatched roofs were vibrating with the low chant of families sitting on top.

I wanted to laugh in delight but just put the happiness into what I was humming instead. Bale lifted his head, eyes still droopy with sleep, and smiled up at me. He sat up in my lap and craned his head, looking around at all the other families.

Suddenly, Bale’s body went rigid in my arms. His breathing stopped for just a moment. Relief flooded my melody when his body went loose again and he turned to me, his eyes wide again.

“Killey,” he said breathily. “Look.”

My eyes immediately snapped to the sky. The moon! The moon…

The night had long since carried away the torn and bloodied strips the monster had vomited in the moon’s palace. We had watched as the red mess was replaced again by emptiness.

But now, the emptiness was not complete.

Now, there was something else in the emptiness.

I tiny little sliver, a small glow.

The moon. She was coming back.

And she wasn’t bloody anymore.

“Killey! The moon is coming back!” Bale turned his young eyes, nearly as wide as the moon themselves now, towards me. “You’re healing her.”

I glanced at Papa. He shrugged, his face surprised and uncertain. I don’t know, his eyes told me. But his mouth kept humming.

I kept humming too. Just a little louder.

I met eyes with the woman on the roof next to us. I nodded up at the sky, trying to show her. She looked up, saw. Her eyes got wide too. Came back to rest on me. Nodded.

She looked across the way at the roof next to her, to tell her other neighbors too.

Soon, the village moan had turned to a murmur, a resonant melody punctuated by gasps and caught breath as the rest of the families on the roof looked skyward and saw the moon returning to us, growing whole once more. Coming back from the dead.

All around, our humming filled with wondering. Was it because of us? Had our song saved her? Or had it just been the moon herself, always cheating darkness out of death, just like she did every month?

We didn’t know. So we kept singing anyway.

And the moon kept coming back, brighter. Just barely on the edge of waking, Bale giggled from where he was curled in my arms. His eyes fluttered close, some dream finally claiming his tired mind. Around us, the village song slowed and softened to a close. The moon was back. She was safe. The monster in the darkness had not claimed her yet. Our guardian in the sky was still safe at her post. She had not been eaten down to nothing.

Which meant that for now, we would not be eaten down to nothing either.

Gently, I shifted Bale so he was draped across my shoulder and started down the ladder so I could put my little brother properly to bed. Papa smiled at me and nodded, but stayed where he was, stretched out on the roof, looking upward at the sky. At the moon.

Bale only stirred a little as I jostled him on my way down the ladder. “Shh, Bale,” I whispered, willing him to stay safe in dreamland. “It’s alright now.”

Still more asleep than awake, Bale nestled closer to my neck, his head held right in the crook at its nape. His small arms tightened their grasp around me. His eyes fluttered open, searching the sky for a moment before the lids dropped close again. I carried him inside and laid him gently on his bed. His eyes fluttered open one more time, looking up at me. Drowsily, Bale smiled. “Killey,” Bale murmured in his sleep. “Killey, the moon – Mama came back.”

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The Man in the Moon: Steampunk Style

10 Mar

“The Man in the Moon: Steampunk Style,” a short story inspired by the artwork of Eric Fan, “Moon Travel.”

There is a man in the moon.

There is the man in the moon, actually. He’s been there, always. Or for as long as matters for “always.” He’s been sitting up there, watching. Keeping an eye on things. Making sure the cogs of the moon keep turning, keep it rolling around the earth like we’ve always said it does. It’s his lookout. He needs that circling, around and around and around. Day after day, month after month. It’s how he watches everything.

I don’t know, but some say there are switches and levers and buttons up there in the moon, too. Switches and levers and buttons for us. For the earth. The man in the moon, he’ll watch and make sure the roiling and the broiling down here is going on how it’s supposed to – there is some roiling and broiling that’s supposed to happen, you know, that’s how creation has to happen, with some struggle and some clash and then something that’s been clanged and chipped and cracked, it comes out looking beautiful. Well, the man in the moon, whenever the roiling and the broiling gets too frenetic, he’ll pull a lever, change the course of a current. Flick a switch, stop a missile. Press a button, change the direction of a conquest. Maybe even stop it all together. Sometimes you’ve got to get your hands off a creation, after all. Sometimes it’s time to let it go, to leave well enough alone.

I suppose he might also pull a lever or flick a switch or press a button if things get too stagnant down here. You know, push a mountain up through the continental crust. Stir up some bad blood between kings. Cause a tsunami. Keep the human race moving.

Because what with that golden orb up there, all metallic gears and brass whistles and silver pipes, he’s got to keep it moving, too. If we stop, I bet that it, the moon, stops too. So the man in the moon, he’s got to keep the human race moving. Maybe not quite like cogs in a machine, maybe something more like a robot with an imagination. It’s got to find out what it’s capable of to keep growing. Otherwise, that shiny sphere of possibility it keeps looking up to, keeps watching wane and wax over the course of its breaths and years and life, well that shiny sphere will just come crashing down, if it’s not forever moving round and round in an eternal chase. Just barely catching – but no, somewhere a machine jolted and the contact wasn’t quite made.

I wonder if it’s a game to him, the man in the moon. I wish I could sit up there with him, in his chair nooked in the curve of the crescent moon.

I think it would be fun to play.

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Evening Storytime

2 Mar

Well, lovely readers, I think it’s time for an evening story. I sure could use one. A simple story. You know, the kind that you tell little kids. The kind that don’t sound scary, the kind that’ll make ’em laugh, but also the kind that when they remember that bedtime story again when they’re older, will give them a few moments pause. Will make them sit down and think. About whether there was maybe more to that story than they had caught onto at first.

That whatever they decide, at least it will have made them wonder.

So, a story for you this evening, lovely readers. A story called “Ice Cream Cone.”

ice cream cone

Ice Cream Cone

“Sue! Sue, hurry up!”

“I’m coming! I’m coming!” Sue’s voice ricocheted down the stairs at out the front door to the porch. I shuffled my feet on the wood planks, swung the creaky porch door back and forth. Swung it back and forth again. Still bored.

Grown-ups always take so long to go anywhere.

“Suuue!” I called up the stairs again.

“Hold your livestock, I’m coming!” Sue shouted down the stairs, clanging down each step in her steel-toed boots.

I held the door open for her as she bustled out. “Livestock?” I asked, curious. “Why livestock?”

“Oh, you think I should have said horses?” Sue locked the door after us. She looked down at me with her big, brassy face of loudness. “What if people don’t have horses? Don’t you think that’s a mite insensitive?”

I bit my lip and tried not to laugh. Sue was making her funny face again, the one where her eyebrows went all wiggly and her eyes got big and her voice got all squeaky and indignant. “But Aunt Sue,” I skipped so that I would be fast enough to keep up with her. Mama says that I have long legs for being only eight, but Sue’s legs have always been longest, ever since I can remember. Sue told me it’s her job to keep astride of everyone, she has to, so that’s why her steps are so big.

“But Aunt Sue, what about people who don’t have any animals? What if they don’t have cattle or sheep either?”

“Eh, little miss,” Sue stopped and bent down so that her heels propped up and her knees jutted out and her face was on the same level as mine. She reached out one of her hands, all rough from life’s work, she says, and brushed a stray piece of hair back from my face. She cupped both her hands around my face, the way she does when she’s trying to tell me something real important. “What about the people who don’t have any animals? That’s a good question, innit, little miss?”

I nodded. I didn’t know what Aunt Sue wanted me to say, I don’t a lot of times, so I just nodded and tried to look real serious, like I always do when I don’t know what Aunt Sue wants me to say, and she nodded back like always, ‘cause me nodding is good enough for her. She tells me to think about it. I don’t know why. Maybe one day she’ll ask me again, and then I’ll have an answer for her. Maybe. Mama usually just gets real quiet when I ask her if I should, and she just says I should try.

Aunt Sue was big-striding again. I skipped faster to catch up. Aunt Sue looked down at me, now she’s the one who’s all curious. “Little miss,” Aunt Sue always calls me little miss, not my name like Mama and Pa do, but I don’t mind because it’s special, “how come, little miss, you got so much energy like that? All the time?”

“Um,” I looked down at my feet, “Mama says it’s because I eat so much ice cream. But I like ice cream, so I don’t mind.”

“Well, I sure could use some energy.”

I looked up at Aunt Sue and made a face. Sometimes she didn’t seem to realize the obvious things. “Well,” I said, trying to sound like Aunt Sue did, “then you should eat an ice cream cone, of course.”

Aunt Sue stopped. She looked down at me and smiled, then opened her mouth and threw back her head and made a big belting laugh, like Papa sometimes does.

Me, I don’t know what was so funny.

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A Slightly Crazed Lump of Blog Anthropomorphizing

30 Dec

Also called, “What do blogs do when they’re alone?”

I wonder what a blog does when nobody’s viewing it. Does it get lonely? Does it run amok and mix up all its characters and throw letters across posts and then jump back into place as soon as somebody clicks on one of its links? Do its posts talk to each other? That would be weird for the blog, wouldn’t it? Bit like schizophrenia… Well, maybe not, if there aren’t any guest posts. If it’s all the same writer, all the same voice, then I suppose that’s more of a busy brain than a disordered one. Those poor blogs with guest authors though… can you imagine it? Suddenly their page views dribble down to zero, and they expect a nice, quiet moment full of single-minded introspection, and then HOLY FUCK WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT VOICE COME FROM??? And some guest author just keeps babbling on, while the poor home blog starts having a break down – Why don’t you sound like me? How are you talking to me? You say you’re a different person? But you’re here, in my blog! How can you not be me? And then some other guest author tries to step in and explain and HOLY FUCK THERE’S ANOTHER VOICE INSIDE ME OH SWEET JESUS I’M GOING CRAZY!

… Or maybe blogs are better at sorting that kind of thing out than I’m giving them credit for. Maybe it’s more like a love affair or something. You know, some guest author’s post making eyes at the top bits and bottom bits of the home author’s posts around it. Lots of winking going on and whatnot. Or maybe the blog has an orgy! All those authors milling around, linking to each other, getting hot and steamy about their topics all on one blog…

Eh. Perhaps I’ll just leave unviewed blogs to their privacy.

In any case, keep clicking! Who knows what you might come across, if you happen to be the lucky one who stumbles upon a quiet moment and catches my blog unaware 😉

I believe this is suitably creepy for this blog post...

I believe this is suitably creepy for this blog post…

** This story maaaay have been inspired in part by a section from the children’s book A Little Princess **

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The Electric Toaster Support Group

18 Nov

In which I completely ignore all the homework I’m behind on, and write a good ol’ fashioned short story dedicated to Miss Katherine Fritz of the fantastic “I Am Begging My Mother Not To Read This Blog,” who came up with this title.

“It just… pops out at me! Every time! I can never expect it!” Sadie dropped her head into her hands, stifling a sob. Around her, the group nodded knowingly. One member reached out and patted Sadie on the back. She looked up, and there were tears streaming down her cheeks. “I never know when it’s going to happen! I look for patterns, try to anticipate the time, but it’s never the same. I can’t handle all this anxiety, every single day!”

“I burned myself yesterday,” another group member mumbled. He’d pulled his hood up over his head and had his hands stuffed deep into his sweatshirt pockets. Now, he pulled them out to let the group oggle his bandages.

From a chair far away in the circle, a small, flighty voice peeped up. “Why’d you do it, Howard?”

Howard shrugged. “Didn’t really mean to. I just… needed to know when it would be over. I had to get that control back.”

“Well,” a woman’s deep, husky voice slid into the conversation, “Mary and I, we’ve started bringing… implements, if you know what I mean, into our daily routine. Makes it easier to, uh, get things out, without having to worry about putting yourself in too much danger. More structure, more distance.”

The group was silent for a while.

“I don’t know,” the flighty voice again, now a little less tepid, “seems like you’re just trying to ignore the problem, by removing yourself from it. Doesn’t require any physical action on your part. Almost like you’re putting up a wall.”

There was whispering and head nodding and murmuring and head shaking at that. The group leader looked up from her clipboard, finally noticing the din that warned her group might break out of control.

“Celia,” she cut in, “that was some very good insight – if it had been about your experience. Let’s all focus on talking about our own feelings, and not telling other people out theirs, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Celia piped timidly. She grasped the edges of her chair with both hands and slid herself as far back as she could go.

The husky-voiced woman stared at her. “You haven’t even been able to do it at all, have you?” she asked. “At least, not recently. Look at you, all pale and trembling. When was the last time you were actually able to go all the way through, satisfy yourself?”

Celia burst out into tears. “All right!” she wailed. “I admit it! It’s been a year! I just… I couldn’t take it, the waiting and the uncertainty. And sometimes it comes out too hot and then I get all grossed out. I tried adding oils and all that stuff, but nothing helped! By the end, I was so nervous, I just fell apart!”

More sounds came out of Celia’s mouth, but they’d devolved into noises that were more animal than human. The group sat silently on their folding chairs, most of them looking at their hands or feet, some of them displaying a nervous tick or two that only got worse with the increasing tension. But the husky-voiced woman, she got out of her chair, completely ignoring the disapproving look the group leader shot her, and crossed the room to kneel by Celia. She wrapped her arms around the smaller woman.

“Hey honey, it’s going to be okay. I know it’s hard. Why, before Mary and I started our new approach, I could barely take all the build up too. It just takes practice, and finding what works for you. Electric toasters, they don’t have to be so scary.”

Celia sniffled and dragged a mealy tissue from her coat pocket. She blew her nose loudly. “But it’s so hard!” she cried. “You never know when your toast is going to be done, not really! And then it just shoots out, sometimes even lands on the floor if you haven’t calibrated the springs right! And Howard’s right, sometimes, it’s too much! I used to burn myself so often, trying to pull the toast out before it was really done. And even if I managed to get through the toasting alright, the toaster was always there, on the counter, staring at me. And I knew the toast came from it. Butter, olive oil – nothing made it friendlier!” She collapsed back over her knees. “I just don’t know what to do!”

The husky-voiced woman was silent.

The group leader checked her watch. “Well, that’s all for now. I think we’ve had a very productive session today.” The room stirred with the sound of feet shuffling and chair legs scraping against the floor as people started preparing to leave, even as Celia still sobbed under the ministrations of the husky-voiced woman. The group leader seemed unconcerned. “Please remember,” she continued, checking something off on her clipboard, “everything we discuss in the electric toaster support group is confidential. This is a safe, private place for people to move beyond their fears and learn to enjoy toast again. Good luck with breakfast, everyone. I’ll see you all next week.”

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Waiting

2 Nov

Image

He threw his hands in the air and looked at her with angry bewilderment. “Well what was I supposed to do?” he shouted. “Change what happened? Fix everything? You know I can’t do that!”

But she only closed her eyes and gave one small, sad shake of her head. “That night, I just wanted you to come and find me,” she whispered. “You didn’t.”

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