Boo Hoo - A Halloween Short Story

I stood in the rain and watched the water drops splash up from the ground through the arches of my feet. The light from the street lamp sparkled and refracted on liquid beads. I turned my face up to the weeping sky and felt nothing.

I was the only being out on the street tonight.

The wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube jack-o-lantern in my neighbor’s yard dodged and bobbed in the wind. The blowup ghost hissed and moaned. An umbrella, its bones turned inside out, tumbled down the avenue, skipping to the tune of spooky music blaring from static speakers.

The children in the only decorated house on the block pressed their runny noses against the living room window, sadness painting their faces instead of costume makeup. I waved to them. The brats ignored me.

Halloween in the time of covid. No Trick or Treating.

The weather wasn’t helping the festivities. If it weren’t for the freezing rain, the brats would be outside all night, hooting and hollering at the Blue Moon while their mother sat on the stoop sipping wine.

They usually kept me awake as their house was right across the street from my bedroom window. Being a crotchety old man, I grumbled about irresponsible parents and rowdy children with no business having fun while my ancient body ached.

I’d yell at them to get the fuck off my lawn, but they never came anywhere near me or my stuff. No one had any respect for old people nowadays. Even worse, they had no time.

My children and grandchildren lived hundreds of miles away and rarely called. I hadn’t seen them in years. Once their mother left me ten years ago, they felt no genuine compunction to contact me. I had few earthly possessions to tempt their attention, and mutual affection evaporated around the time of puberty. Mostly, I was ignored.

Just like now. I stood in the rain, staring at those damn kids staring at me, and they acted like they couldn’t even see me. I approached their fenced in yard. I wanted to pop all of their inflated decorations. Besides the orange tube guy and the trite white ghost, there was a black cat with demonic eyes, a dancing witch with neon pink hair and bright green skin, a hairy wart wiggling on her nose, and a skeleton that fell apart and reassembled to the tune of “Dem Bones.” Frankenstein’s monster had given up its Mortal coil. He lay shriveled on the ground like a spent water balloon.

I went through the front gate. It didn’t squeak. Disappointing. I glided around various homemade tombstones, quiet as a corpse rising from its crypt. I have to admit they were kind of clever:

I TOLD YOU I WAS SICK

BEN BETTER

NOAH SCAPE - ALWAYS FELT TRAPPED

PLEASE DON’T WAKE THE DEAD - THEY’RE GRUMPY

HERE SHE LIES - DEE COMPOSING

I even chuckled at a few of them, but I would never admit to that, especially after nearly stepping in dog poop. You’d think they would clean up a bit before putting out the ornamentations. It seems they had better things to do. In my day, we cleaned and straightened up for days before a holiday so we’d be worthy of a celebration. It felt like getting a trophy just because you showed up.

I survived the canine waste obstacle course and hunkered down in the bushes under the window. I rose a little, my eyes and nose breaching the sill. I got a good view of childish chins lowered to immature chests in sorrow. You’d think someone had died. The floor behind them held an assortment of drug store costumes, plastic masks, and discarded candy wrappers.

Mom lay on the couch, an arm thrown over her eyes, an empty glass on the floor under her dangling fingers. Their German Sheppard, Fang, rested in the chaos, his ears twitching, shifting like a satellite dish on the lookout for alien signals, and his eyebrows danced like Groucho Marx.

The mutt jumped up and rushed to the window. He barked and lunged, scattering the children. Mom startled, sat up, and yelled at people and the animal. I ducked down and ran for the street. The front door opened, and Fang shot into the yard, followed by the mother and her brood.

I dove into the hedges next to my house and sat on the ground to catch my breath. I expected rapid breathing and a palpitating heart. I felt weirdly calm.

From my hidden perch, I watched the unwashed masses storm the road with weapons in the shape of brooms and shovels. One of the minions brandished a three-legged doll that was missing patches of blonde hair. The dog snarled as Mom held it by the collar. Her heels dug into the lawn’s dirt while his licked up tufts of soil and brown grass.

This was more excitement than an aging person needed. I always knew by sixty I will have had enough. The noise, the mess, the constant upkeep. Why bother?

I felt justified and satisfied with my decision even though I had made it jokingly in my twenties. I had no desires left. I bequeathed curiosity to the neighborhood Tom. I watched all of the Andy Griffiths and Gunsmoke reruns. I couldn’t hang out at my local bar anymore.

Thunder and lightning chased the little monsters across the street back into their den. The slam of the door snuffed out their shrieks. Mom must have pulled the plug since all of the blowup figures deflated, the lights went out, and the tin canned spirits exorcised their right to some rest. The night returned to the unnatural pandemic quiet.

I turned back to my home, reached the front stoop, and grabbed the door handle. It passed through my fingers. I pushed on the door. It didn’t move, but I ended up in my front room. There I sat in my recliner, slumped over, head lolling to the left, my favorite beer mug on the side table, my revolver on the floor under my lifeless fingers.

 

May Day, May Day

A new knight murders a mother, 

so he becomes a priest, 

and because of that changes his name, 

and because of that loses his inheritance 

until a childhood friend recognizes him 

and tells everyone he's still alive. 

That's the start of May's short story. I wonder where it will go.

Neverland

The stinging pain of her mother's hand print on her cheek faded. The sharp burn of her mother's angry, hurtful words continued to clamor in her head.

She closed her bedroom door without a sound. She stuffed a handful of her mother’s sleeping pills into her mouth and swallowed. She flung her body on the bed. She wanted a few moments of peace, of nothingness.

She tried to snuff out her life with her pillow, the feathers old and broken, the quills poking through the navy blue stripes faded to gray and the white stripes dull as fog. She passed out, her internal vision going black except for the pinpricks of stars swirling around her mind, that moment of dizziness the brink to another one of her existences.

* * *
The wizard stood on the precipice, his toes curled over the sharp edges. The rock cut into the naked flesh of his feet, his blood dripped down the red wall below. The iron from his blood mixed with the iron in the stone making both stronger.

Wind ripped at his clothes, shredding them to rags. The tendrils of fabric tangled with his long blond hair, pulling at his body and his scalp, keeping his body anchored to the earth. Without that stinging and pressure, his consciousness would float away.

He felt ten times older than his seventeen years, but he had been at this all his many lives. If he added them all up, he might just very well be one hundred and seventy. He deserved a break. But they needed him again so here he was once more.

The rocky bottom of the rift beckoned him. He wanted to fling himself over the edge and fall until the world went black. He tilted his face to the night sky. The stars winked at him, teasing him with their glorious light. He sacrificed his blood every year and every year remained the same.

He could give in to the dizziness. No one would suspect he had done it on purpose. None of the other wizards made the sacrifice for more than a couple of years. He had lasted seven. Surely, seven years of spilling his blood over the cliff was enough.

He inched his feet forward. He shook his head. He closed his eyes, lifted his hands in supplication and leaned forward. He floated down like a feather, the wind slowing his descent. At first he was worried that he was going too slow to hit with enough forced to die. Being crippled would be a worse fate than his current life.

The breath left his body in a loud rush as his bones and blood and flesh meshed into a pulpy mess. He didn't care. He had left his body about a hand's width above the ground.

* * *
Her whole body felt like she had been hit by a truck. She knew what being hit by a truck felt like. When she was eight, she had run into the street to retrieve her flip-flop. Her mother had told her to cross then called her back. The confusion forced her to lose her shoe. Her mother had her go back to get it. That's when the truck hit her, pushing her into another journey.

* * *
His hard and distended belly bulged out like a melon. It felt like a melon was lodged in his body just at the top of his colon and anything he put in his mouth, whether it be food or drink, sat upon that blockage. He knew how that little boy with his finger in the dike felt. The pressure built. He felt like throwing up.

He spent the last six days walking, swallowing castor oil, drinking prune juice and eating stool softening pills. Nothing worked. If the dam didn't break soon, he'd be forced to go to the hospital, and that he couldn't risk. They'd draw blood and find an ancient strain that hadn't mutated in thousands of years. His blood was at once ancient and young, his DNA so pure that he had no antibodies for some of the most basic diseases that men in this age survived. Constipation would kill him and he was ok with that. He'd had enough of this particular life as it was.

He knew, of course, that technically he wouldn't be dying, ever. Contrary to popular belief, reincarnation wasn't a soul’s linear movement through time, leaving one body and entering the next. It was more like living simultaneously in various forms, in multiple dimensions. Most of the entities did not know of each other. He was one of the few who knew the others.

Psychiatrists and psychologists mistook this phenomenon as multiple personalities or schizophrenia, but they were wrong as they were wrong about so many things. The various diseases they diagnosed were merely various forms of consciousness and instead of medicating people out of those states, they should have been helping people explore them like the shamans of old.

A sharp pain punctured his belly button. He rolled off of the mattress on the floor, got to his knees and crawled to the bathroom. He threw up in the toilet, sweat broke out on his forehead, chills wracked his body. He climbed onto the toilet seat just in time for the gush of poison to leave his body.

Poison. He hadn't considered poison before. He knew, like a light coming on in a pitch black room, that he had been poisoned. He knew who had done it. That stupid girl. Somehow she managed to cross dimensions and invade his body. She was so miserable she thought she could end the pain by killing herself.

He shook. His muscles strained. He pushed all of the detritus out into the toilet. He had to flush several times. Six days of waste seriously stopped up the pipes like it stopped up his body. Once all of this crap was gone, he'd have to have a serious talk with that little bitch.

Rachel - Part 2, First Draft

Her pillow had soaked up all of the water from her wet hair. The damp was cold and uncomfortable. The room was pitch black when she opened her eyes. She reached for her phone, and knocked it on the floor. She hung over the side of the bed, feeling around on the wooden planks, leaned too far over to check under the bed and fell onto the floor. Her naked breasts, belly and thighs were plastered to the floor. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling.

She smiled at the ridiculousness of her position. She swept her arm and hand under the bed, shaking off dust bunnies. Her fingers touched the glass case of her phone. She pulled it towards her, pressed her thumb to identify herself. It recognized her and flashed the time at her in bright blinding light.
Fifteen hours since she had collapsed into bed.

Banging on her front door startled her. She lay still, barely breathing. They’d go away whoever they were. They did. After two brief poundings. She was happy and sad at the speed with which they gave up. She really didn’t want to see or speak to anyone but she kind of wished someone cared enough about her to keep trying.

Her stomach moaned.

Rachel crawled up onto her knees, leveraged her hands on the mattress and struggled to stand. She hadn’t managed to die in her sleep. She was still alive.

Perhaps she should try to act like it.

She turned away from the bed. She desperately wanted to crawl back into it but her body insisted she feed it and she had no food in the house. Ketchup and olives wouldn’t cut it no matter how much she loved both. She threw on some sweats and ran her fingers through her tangled hair. She brushed her teeth without looking at the dirty sink. She might need to speak to the cashier at the grocery store and couldn’t bring herself to expel putrid breath. She didn’t care how she looked. She had no one to impress.

She cried in the bakery section. She didn’t have to buy Danish anymore and it broke her heart. Her tears leaked out from under her black sunglasses. A man looked at her.

With pity.

He made eye contact. She ran to the bagged salad aisle, concentrated on finding the bag of butter lettuce with the longest sell by date. He was there beside her. He asked her if she thought one brand was better than another. Ingrained politeness made her answer with her favorite one. Then, she spun her cart and escaped to the cereal aisle, grabbed a box and snuck over to the checkout lines, hiding behind displays like some spy master evading the enemy.

As she loaded her cloth bags of supplies into the back of her van, she glanced up. He stood in the next lane over, near his car, his back to her. She watched him move. He had a nice ass.

Where the fuck did that come from?

He turned to put his empty cart in the kiosk. He saw her looking at him. He smiled, gave a little wave, got in his black SUV and drove off.

She changed the day and time she went to the grocery store the next time she went. She didn’t want to take any chances. But she did start wearing clothes. Just in case the universe had other plans.

It didn’t, of course.

Oh, well. She knew better.

She got a part-time job working a couple of hours each morning at the local convenience store so she had a reason to get out of bed and get out of the house. No pressures. No responsibilities, although she did have a hard time not organizing things. She had to remind herself that she had no business being in charge of anything since she couldn’t even manage to manage herself.
In the afternoons, she explored the town with her camera. She haunted the graveyards, examined the architecture and strolled the banks of the river. After a few hours of discovering the place she had lived in for more than twenty years, she’d treat herself to dinner at a local pub. She arrived at the odd hour of four. She managed to get the same table in a back corner because it wasn’t quite happy hour.
She’d spread out her notebook and her tablet, eat, write and watch the business people slowly arrive. She was old and quiet, so no one bothered her. She tipped well, so the waitress learned quickly to be efficient without disturbing her. Rachel never stayed past six.
Friday night and her dinner place was invaded by a hoard. They were numerous, loud and such a mix of unmatched people that she stared.

Must be work colleagues.

She watched the dynamics with fascination, guessing who the bosses were and who the worker bees were. She glanced towards the door when it opened because everyone seemed to move and make room for the newest occupant. They hadn’t bothered to move before.

Oh, God. It’s him.

She looked away quickly. She hunched down in her seat, turned the angle of her body away from the door. She opened the book she had with her and covered her face with it. She used it as a shield, peeking around its corners, trying to find a good time to escape.

He sat at the bar, facing her and right next to the door. He seemed to know the people in the large group. He spoke to people as they came up to him but the conversations were brief. He looked sad. Not frowning, or weepy, but not open, the way he had appeared in the grocery store. The corners of his lips rose occasionally but never wrinkled his eyes.

He motioned for the bartender, leaned into him to speak over the TV and music. His eyes caught hers. He narrowed them. Frowned. He seemed quite upset at seeing her. He stood, handed the bartender his card. He turned his back, leaning his elbow on the brass rail. He leaned into the bartender again when he brought the sales receipt for him to sign. The bartender glanced at her, nodded. Said, yes.
He said something to the man in the suit next to him, handed him his credit card. The suit held onto his denim shirt sleeve. He firmly dislocated the man’s grasp. By some invisible signal, the crowd yelled, “Thanks, Sean.”

He waved and darted out the door.

Rachel waited five minutes. She called over the waitress, asked for her check. She gathered her things together and piled them into her multi-colored peace sign bag. She was standing by the time the waitress came back. She needed to get home before she bawled like a baby. This really was too much.

Weepy old bitch.

She got through the crowd and out into the parking lot.

He had that nice ass of his propped against her silver van. He pushed off of the vehicle when she jerked to a stop in front of him.

“I just wanted you to know that I won’t ever come here again, so you don’t have to stop coming here to avoid me.”

“I…”

“Don’t even,” he said. “I was just trying to be nice. You looked so sad. And you treat me like some sort of perverted, stalker, crazy person.” He wasn’t yelling but he was intense. Full of emotion. He was insulted.

She stood there, mouth hanging open, unable to say anything. Her brain had ground to a halt. She shook her head.

“No, what?”

“I don’t know.”

He growled.

“I don’t understand,” she said and she didn’t. No one had shown her this much emotion in years. It scared her to death.

They stood less than three feet away from each other. He was looking at her. No, he was staring at her with such hunger, she envisioned a wolf stalking her. She shivered.

The door opened next to them and bar noise broke whatever spell they had been under.

He took a deep breath, visibly calming down. The door closed. The exiting patrons got in their car, slamming the doors. They drove off. Rachel and Sean watched them until they were out of the parking lot.

They turned back to one another.

“If I asked you to join me for coffee, in broad daylight, in a very busy diner, would you show up?”

“I don’t know.”

“Please join me at the diner at eleven tomorrow for coffee,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because you have to make up for making me feel like a criminal.” He smiled. “Yes, I’m manipulating you with guilt. I saw you thinking it.”
She had been thinking that. She looked away so he wouldn’t see that she found him amusing. She didn’t want to be amused by him.

“Don’t be a chicken,” he said. He squawked.

She guffawed. A dare.

“What are you, like two years old?”

“Five.”

“There’s something wrong with you,” she said.

“There are many things wrong with me, but have coffee with me anyway.”

“Fine,” she said.

“Good.”

“OK,” she said.

“Promise,” he said.

“I promise,” she said.

Rachel - Part 1, First Draft

Rachel brushed her teeth. She spit. White foam tinged with pink swirled down the drain. The sink needed cleaning. A glob of neon green toothpaste clung to the rim. Congealed liquid soap pooled around the facet. She moved her eyes away from the mess and captured her own gaze in the medicine cabinet mirror. The shock of seeing herself brought tears to her eyes.

She couldn’t even remember the last time she had looked at herself. This wasn’t her. The image in the silvered glass did not match the picture of herself she had in her head. She tried to look away, but stared at the person in the mirror the way you stared at an auto accident.

Her eyes were puffy, with deep dark slashes under the pocket as of fluid. There weren’t many wrinkles, but gullies went from the corners of her nostrils and down beside her mouth. Her eyes, nose and lips were swallowed by corpulent flesh with the notorious wobbly turkey neck hanging below her chins.

If she had looked at herself more often would she have been so shocked? Would she have been able to prevent the horror that stared back at her? How was it possible that anyone else could stand to look at her?

She cried great gulping sobs. Sounds escaped her mouth, louder than the water running from the faucet. She had forgotten to turn off the water. She cried harder thinking of the water she wasted, lost down the drain, never to be recovered. She sucked in her breath, held it, smashed her lips together and covered her mouth with both hands. When stars flitted in her vision, she allowed herself to breathe once more.

Pathetic much?

The empty house didn’t care how much noise she made or how loud she was. It wouldn’t even echo back at her despite its size. She was alone after decades of caring for others and the house was not a solace. The house now belonged to her alone but it had never been her home and was not her home now. She did not belong here. She never did. She did not belong to anyone, anymore. It wasn’t likely that she ever would again.

She slammed the lid of the toilet down. The cold plastic shocked her naked ass. She leaned her elbows on her knees, placed her chin on her fists and closed her eyes. The tingling of cut off nerves in her thighs woke her up. She stood, steadied herself with the sink and forced herself to look at herself again. She stuck out her tongue.

God, she hated being pathetic.    

She was free to do whatever she wanted. She walked around the house naked: through the kitchen and into the basement. She laid on the beds in all four bedrooms. She went into the backyard daring the neighbors to peak over the fences. The Spring breeze raised bumps on her skin. She went back into the house, crawled into her unmade bed and slept for the next three days.

Her cell phone rang several times. She texted brief responses back to her daughter and her sister to let them know she was still alive but unwilling to chat. She had to maintain some contact or they’d be on her doorstep. Seeing her relatives at the funeral had exhausted her.

The next time she looked at herself her hair was greasy and stuck out at odd angles. She stank. Her cheeks smelled from where she drooled and hadn’t brushed her teeth. Now, she really looked hideous, as bad as she felt. Her stomach grumbled. There was no food in the house and she was hungry. She looked and smelled so bad that she couldn’t even considered going to a fast food drive-through.

Fine.

She forced herself into the shower. As soon as the water hit her face, she cried, nearly drowning in the hot spray. She sat down, her legs unable to hold her up in her hysteria. The sadness was so profound. Her heart was breaking. She pressed on her chest trying to stop the pain she felt there. She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her cheek there. The water ran cold.

She rose, shaking. Turned the faucets off. Walked wet into her bedroom, grabbed her big, white terry robe, wrapped in it and crawled under the blankets. She’d eat later.

and now for something completely different

I walked into the dark bedroom, closed the door. I flicked the light switch.

“Turn off the light.”

I paused, my back to the room. My pulse rate increased.

“You know how this works.”

I obeyed. A soft grayness tinted my vision. I breathed deep, air caught in my constricting chest. I waited.

Time stood still, its weight pressed in on me. I imagined that I heard his breathing, but it was just my mind yearning for contact. My ears ached. My cheeks burned as my need grew. I wanted. My skin tingled. My breasts tightened. My nipples throbbed. My legs weakened and trembled.

“Turn around.”

I obeyed.

“Unbutton your blouse.”

I looked down at my shaking fingers as I slipped the top button from its hole.

“Keep your eyes on me.”

“I can’t undo my shirt without watching what I’m doing,” I said.

“I didn’t give you permission to speak.” His voice was calm and quiet.

Adrenaline surged through me.

“Take your time and do the best you can. Just keep your eyes up. You may respond.”

“Yes, Sir,” I said.

I pushed the second button loose. I watched the dark corner from where his voice emanated. I glimpsed a large chair, a body positioned as if on a throne, elbows and hands resting on the arms, feet planted on the floor. The only light in the room came from behind the chair, soft, velvety and aimed at me over his head.

My fingers slid over my shirt, searching for the next button. Not looking down was a real challenge, but I knew, from before, that not following directions would lead to punishments. Since he was very creative and thus, unpredictable, no two chastisements were the same. Each pushed me to a new place, unchartered territory. I wanted to step into the unknown. I craved new experiences. I yearned to be free of responsibilities. I dreaded what I had not yet done. I warred within myself over the fear of what he might tell me to do and the desire to release all of myself to what he would require of me.

But it was too soon to give in to my itch to disobey.

I kept my head up, my eyes focused on his invisible eyes, my mouth slightly open, panting.

“Very good,” he said. I thought I could hear a smile in his voice. I revelled in his approval.

The fourth button popped out of its tight prison. I slipped my fingers along my exposed skin, parting my blouse until my hands reached the junction of the fifth and final button. I grasped the material on either side and pulled the two halves of my shirt apart, a small violence in the motion. The button caught, held and I pulled harder. The fabric ripped. The button popped off and pinged on the floor.

I looked down, watching it roll across the hardwood. It came to rest on the edge of the plush area rug.

“I told you not to look away,” he said.

semi-colon

When you lay face down in the bathroom sink and your tears and drool are circle down the drain with the escaping water, your eyes see a semi-colon. Your arms tremble and go numb with the strain of holding yourself upright. The tooth brush drops from your tingling fingers and you think, “All you have to do is rinse out your mouth and you can go on.” Eons pass as you try to convince yourself you have a reason to go on, yet no good excuse seems to come to you. The white sink, the clear water, the lit room all seem thick and black. Reality has no bearing on what your brain sees. Whining, like the bird call of a wild fox echoes and drones on in painful stabs inside your ears. You feel phantom blood worm its way over cartilage, down the column of your neck and over your collar bones, drip and stain the porcelain bowl.

Once the guilt of twenty-eight minutes of wasted water seeps into your brain, you stand, look at your puffy eyes in the mirror. The red mark on your forehead and your red nose also make a semi-colon.

This might not be you, but it is me.

It’s funny the things that keep me going.

I need to shut off the water running into the drain.

I can’t leave the car with an empty tank of gas when the temperature drops below 20 degrees.  

No dying in old underwear.

My password list isn’t up-to-date.

The upstairs closet is full of twenty year old papers.

There’s one vanilla cupcake left.

The darkness recedes.

I rub my forehead, look into my eyes. I never seem to remember that they are green.

I pull worn black jeans over my worn, cotton panties. A soft, gray t-shirt goes over my two year-old bra, the long sleeves cover my scarred wrists down to the knuckles of my fingers. Black socks and black storm trooper boots go on my feet. A deadly-sharp switch blade and my wand go in the left back pocket of my pants, in easy reach of my dominate hand.

I check on my stash of heroine in the medicine cabinet. Still there, just in cases.

I brush my blonde hair and gather it into a black scrunchy. I won’t pay it any attention again until tomorrow morning. One green and two clear crystal studs go in my ear lobes. Four stack rings go on the ring finger of my right hand. I read the words on each as a morning mantra as I slip them on my finger: live – one – more – day. I slather balm on my chapped lips. I take a deep breath, watch the silver pendant stamped with a semi-colon rise on my chest. I hold the air in my lungs for the count of seven and let it out to the count of nine. Rites, routine and ritual and I’m ready for my day.

It’s time to go out and kill something.    

Theobald the Great

Storm clouds hung in the sky, dark, thick and heavy. The trees held them back, branches out like arms extended in supplication, leaves palm-up, their lighter undersides shaded by the angry black of swollen cumulous. They leaned into the wind, straining against the buffeting air, gaining strength in resistance. They dug their roots into the ground like toes curled into the dirt. They communicated with one another in a language secret to themselves, born of shared water and oxygen and earth.

Just hold on. Stand tall. Stand strong. Bend. Don’t resist. Move with the onslaught.

Sharp, frozen water, condensed and solidified into knives of moisture shooting down, cutting bark, causing sap to flow like amber blood. Timber groaned and cried out in pain, creaking and cracking along the grains within old and new wood. Limbs broke off and fell on ancient turf. Thunder growled, vibrating the air. Lighting struck out, attacking with electrical precision. Fire engulfed the defenders, their silent screams swallowed by crackling heat.

A mere hour later, the battle field smoldered under a clear, blue sky. Ashes and soot floated where a once majestic forest stood, devastated now by magic driven weather. Death lay upon the world.

Theobald walked among the dead trees, a small smile raising one corner of his lips. This destruction required so little of his power to accomplish. These remains would fertilize a new generation of plants that would know only his domination and influence, producing poisons he would use to take over other beings or used to kill them, if they, too, tried to resist him. He stretched into his satisfied feelings, the joy of his exertions humming along the hairs of his body. He strolled through the wasteland as if he were on a leisurely morning constitutional.

The cuffs of his white wool slacks turned gray. The burnt cells of the trees crawled under the cloth and clung to the skin of his shins. Angry chemicals burrowed their way into the wizard’s DNA, making changes to his most basic being as they went.

Theobald’s skin tingled with tiny needle-like pin pricks, that feeling one got when blood rushed back into a sleeping limb. He stomped his feet, willing the sensation to go away. And it did. His feet grew warm and went numb. His knees trembled and vanished. He looked down to see if they had, in fact, disappeared. Pain stabbed his belly which had blown up like a bloated corpse. He doubled over, retching vile acid, the spittle stretching from his overly moist mouth to the blackened ground. A high-pitched squeal pieced his eardrums, coming from inside his head, causing him to lose his balance. He fell face first into the cinders..

The trees, not extinct in essence, but merely changed in form, rolled Theobald over on his back, crawled along the edges of his body that had contact with the land, engulfed him, covered him like a sarcophagus sealing a mummy for burial in a tomb. He wailed but the sound got lost in the newly sprouting trees from his eyes, throat, lungs, stomach, groin and calves.

Fool's Paradise

What just happened?

A dog barked. Birds twittered. A cricket called from the other side of the wall.

Light flashed across my bedroom window. I lay on top of my blankets unable to sleep. I didn’t toss and turn, or tangle in the sheets. I was just too tired to sleep. I closed my eyes. Light strobed against my lids.

Magic bloomed.

A wisp of ectoplasm wafted over the foot of my bed, hanging over my naked feet. It thickened to form a solid bat, larger than normal. It’s claws gripped and ungripped the wood to the beat of my racing heart. Bats looked weird right-side up. Random thought. Not important. It ruffled its black, leathery wings, settled lower on its tail and spoke.

“Dracula greets the Green Witch,” Dracula said.

I touched my bright chartreuse hair. “Trite, baby,” I said. “What’s up, Drac?” I sat up, plumped my pillows.

“Dracula brings news of import.”

“Do tell.”

Talking to the vampire in his bat-form caused a stabbing pain behind my left eye. He slurred his words and had an accent.

“The Beast bursts forth from the Netherworld.” Dracula took a breath. When he converted to a mammal, he needed to breathe. Just one of those odd things about magical creatures. The air passed between his fangs and he whistled.

“He hunts you.”

“Not new news, Drac,” I said. “Gorgon has been grunting through the various planes of existence looking for me for several centuries.” I hefted my dead legs over the side of the bed and touched the power points on the outside of each knee. Energy sizzled and I stood. When I faced Dracula, his stood in his elegant vampire form.

“Gorgon fractured the prison of the House of Mirrors.” Dracula waved his elegant, long fingers in the form of a slashing “Z.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“He shocked his guards into oblivion.” Dracula lifted my white unicorn stuffed animal from my granny square quilt. He stroked the soft plush.

“Can you feel that?” I asked.

“You know I can not,” he said. “My skin has no nerve endings. None of my senses function in this form. I am dead.” He frowned.

“But, hey, you get to live forever,” I said.

“Droll.”

“No one says that anymore.” Some old creatures had a hard time adjusting to current times.

“He has captured Rust.”

I stopped smiling. Rust. The town of my birth. The place of my ancestors and my descendants. Ten generations in both directions, past and future.

My magically animated legs moved me closer to Dracula. I took the unicorn from his lifeless fingers and touched the silver horn. It transformed into my sword, the metal of the blade a mother-of-pearl rainbow, the hilt wrapped in soft white leather. Ignis Fatuus, the sword of illusion, deception and confusion - Fool’s Paradise. I kissed the blade, slid it into the sheath that materialised on my back and rolled my shoulders, remembering its weight.

“He has imprisoned the entire town and will crucify one person a day along the perimeter until you meet him in the mountains.”

“How do you know all this?”

Dracula blinked. There was no reason for him to blink. His eyes turned red, the black pupils fading to scarlet.

I moved a hair’s breadth in reality and saved my life. Dracula was starving. I don’t know how he had hidden it from me. He wanted my blood.

“He sent me,” said Dracula. His incisors elongated. He lunged in my direction. I thought of Rust. I folded space and time. I flashed out of hiding.

God has Heard #ShortStory #critique

[critiques sought - thanks]

Sunlight splashed water colors through the stained glass onto the marble floors of the church.

“Heavenly,” said Mrs. Smith. The longtime parishioner took a closer look.

“They are like paintings in an art museum,” said Betty Albert. The sisters, Miss Albert and Mrs. Smith studied each window they passed holding up the flock fluttering behind them.

Samuel knew the windows cost a lot of money, money Mrs. Twindle spent with deliberation and purpose when she commissioned the work. The first window depicted the baby Jesus cradled in his mother’s loving arms. Soft, sweet faces gazing with adoration at one another done in soft pastels of blue and yellow and pink. At the bottom of the window, at eye height for anyone that mattered, a bright red square, repeated in each window exactly the same, proclaimed in bold, black letters, “Gifted by Mrs. Twindle.” Twelve windows in all, each designed to illuminate the generosity of the great patron, Mrs. Twindle.

The font of this generosity stood at the front of the church with the minister, the toes of her shiny, black patent leather shoes pointing like an arrow at the brass plaque in the marble floor that echoed her generosity with the windows, “Gifted by Mrs. Twindle.”

The minister gushed in Mrs. Twindle’s ear as the people came to genuflect at the beneficent stature that was Mrs. Twindle. They touched her hands with their fingertips, as if hoping to be cured of their ills. She smiled upon them like the Madonna in the first window gazed upon her godly son.

Samuel stood in a corner near the doors, out of the sunlight, the blue-grey of his wiry hair and beard blending into the blue-grey of his collared shirt and worn dress pants. He stood in mirror image attitude of Mrs. Twindle, feet together, hands clasped at the waist. But where he was all shadow and blurred edges, she stood crisp and sharp: dyed black hair that shone like her shoes, tailored, bronze Chanel suit, 50’s style makeup.

Mrs. Twindle was the church’s savior. She accepted the accolades of the people with calm, the perfect saint. They  expressed their gratitude for her generosity in rebuilding the church after the fire had destroyed it, bringing them back from the ashes.

She smiled her Mona Lisa smile. Only Samuel knew that she was calculating how each and every one of them would be expected to repay her. Mrs. Twindle bought, she did not donate. She owned and it would not be long before her spiritual brethren discovered this.

The window directly across the aisle from the adoring mother protectively cuddling her baby, showed mother cradling her broken son, blood pouring from his heart and staining her hands and dress. Samuel remembered other times when a son’s blood was on a mother’s hands.

He shivered and looked up at Mrs. Twindle. She slowly lifted her right hand and crooked a finger at him. He didn’t want to go but that finger moved and his feet moved. He shuffled forward.

He stopped in front of Mrs. Twindle and The Reverend Toddy, leaving enough room for people to pass between them.

“Yes, Ma’am?” Samuel’s voice was as dull and grey as he appeared.

Mrs. Twindle looked Samuel up and down. She made a production of opening the shining silver clasp on her black, patent leather purse. Samuel saw his reflection in the side of that purse, distorted and rippling. As he raised his eyes, Mrs. Twindle’s hand rose from the purse interior. Samuel felt the blood drain from his face. He looked into Mrs. Twindle’s face with its secret smile as she handed him the wire bristled hair brush. The backs of his thighs tingled and burned.

“Try to do something with your hair,” said Mrs. Twindle. “The little boys’ room is downstairs in the basement.”

The head of the brush poked Samuel in the chest. He didn’t move to take it. Mrs. Twindle put it in his hand, raking her manicured nails across his fingers as she released it.

“Go on,” she said. “You are not afraid of the basement, are you?” Her capped teeth blinded Samuel.

He shuffled towards the basement stairs.

“He is a bit slow,” he heard Mrs. Twindle tell the minister, who giggled in response.

Samuel held the brush like a knife. He envisioned jamming a spear into Mrs. Twindle’s heart.

The basement served as the church’s community room. The bathroom stood at the very back corner of the basement. The lights were off and Samuel had a hard time finding the light switch. His breathing turned ragged as he swiped and pounded at the wall on the left. His fingertips met damp paint.

He gripped the door on his right with both hands, his fear making him sick to his stomach. He worked his way around the door, closing it slightly, blocking off the pale light from the basement proper. In the four inches between the wall and the door frame, he hit the light switch. The florescent lights blinded him like sunlight when a drowning man breaches the surface of the sea.

Standing between the door and the wall, he looked across the room to see himself in the mirrors above the sinks. He looked like a frightened old man. Happy Birthday he mouthed to himself.

Mrs. Twindle had reminded him this morning while he put on her make-up and brushed her hair. Not with presents and a cake but with the story of his birth.

“You almost killed me,” she said, as she did annually for 27 years. This year she had a surprise for him, though.

“You missed your chance, then.” She locked eyes with him in her vanity mirror. “You have been a coward from birth. You will not pull it off.”

His hand paused mid-stroke, the knuckles of his hand turning white as he gripped the brush handle tighter in his fist. He didn’t respond. He tried never to responded to her taunts. Speaking his mind carried consequences.

“I told Minister Toddy about you and your little plans.” Mrs. Twindle reached up and stroked Samuel’s cheek, her cotton-candy pink nails scratching across his skin, trailing red marks.

“He suggested I have you evaluated.”

Samuel moved the brush through her hair.

“I would like to talk to a psychiatrist,” he whispered.

“Would you?” Mrs. Twindle watched Samuel in the mirror as he finished her hair. He placed the wire bristled brush in her outstretched hand. He stood behind her, an old grey ghost reflection of her. Their images in the mirror reminded him of the portrait in Oscar Wilde’s novel.  At sixty-two, Mrs. Twindle looked younger than Samuel.

“What would you say to a head doctor?”

Samuel felt his skin shrivel as Mrs. Twindle watched him.

“Would you tell him our secrets?” Mrs. Twindle’s skin was smooth as stone, unblemished, pink, tight. There were no worry lines around her bright, beetle-black eyes.

Samuel smashed his lips together. He scrunched his eyes closed, blocking the triumph in Mrs. Twindle’s eyes.

Mrs. Twindle’s laugh came to him in the restroom. It echoed her laughter from this morning. His hand shook as he brushed his hair. At first, he thought it shook from fear but the more he brushed and the more he thought about it, he thought maybe his hand shook from rage.

Killing Mrs. Twindle today would be the greatest gift he could give himself. He had been thinking about it for months; years, really. He wasn’t sure how Mrs. Twindle had figured it out but she was clever. He must have left a clue somewhere. Or maybe she just read his mind. She always knew what he was thinking. She was always in his head.

His hair looked exactly the same as before he brushed it, but his hair didn’t matter. He cleaned out the brush, an involuntary sob leaving him as it did each time he touched this implement. He put it in his pocket, keeping a hold of it as a reminder.

He shook the bottle of pills in his other pocket. He liked the idea of poisoning Mrs. Twindle. She would suffer. The iron supplement pills sounded like he had a rattlesnake.

Perhaps he could push her down the stairs. No. He would kill her today and she was already down the stairs. Pushing her up the stairs would only result in skinned shins. Not good enough.

He was back to his very first choice, spiking the church’s bug juice with antifreeze. He just had to figure out how to get it to Mrs. Twindle and not to all of the other parishioners. And maybe not get caught. Not getting caught ought be part of his plan.

The antifreeze was in the supply closet a few feet away with all of the cleaning supplies. Mrs. Twindle’s money had paid for these items, too. Samuel imagined Mrs. Twindle dying from her own antifreeze: her money finally being put to good use.

He’d have to get into the supply closet without anyone suspecting his purpose.

He walked past the refreshments table and bumped into it, knocking over several cups of fruit punch. Empty twenty ounce, red Solo® cups rolled into the spilled juice.

The white-haired woman behind the table yelped in surprise as the white plastic tablecloth overflowed with red liquid and red plastic.

“I’ll clean it up,” said Samuel. He went to the supply closet and came back with paper towels. He righted the cups. He wiped up the red juice.

Mrs. Twindle came up to the table. She placed her hand on Samuel’s arm.

“I hope Samuel is doing a good job cleaning up this mess, Miss Enid.” Mrs. Twindle pinched Samuel on the back of the arm.

Miss Enid glowed from the attention given her by Mrs. Twindle.

“I, yes, thank-you,” she said. She took a deep, warbling breath. “Ma’am.” Miss Enid was at least eighty years old.

Mrs. Twindle ran her hand across Samuel’s shoulder, down his back and across the pocket holding the brush. She pressed the bristles into the flesh of his hip before heading to the ladies’ powder room.

Samuel could follow her in there, push her head into the pink toilet bowl and drown her in the blue sanitized water. She would end up with a mask that the undertaker would have a hard time covering with makeup.

“She is so sweet and kind,” said Miss Enid.

“It does look that way,” he said. “Can I help you serve tonight?”

“Why you are sweet, too. I would love your help.” She removed the soiled table cloth.

“Where do you keep the punch?”

She pointed to the kitchen area next to the supply closet.

“You will find all you need in there.”

“I’ll just put these extra paper towels back in the supply closet.”

“While you are in there get the extra drink pitchers out. They are stored in there. They will look so much more fancy while we pour than those ugly cans.” Her head bobbed up and down as she spoke. “Yes, quite festive for this special day.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Samuel, “special for this special day.”

After putting the paper towels on their shelf in the closet, Samuel found the dark purple glass pitchers still in their cardboard box. He turned each pitcher over and pulled the stickers off all but one. In that one, he poured antifreeze. The color of the glass disguised the color of the liquid.

He replaced the four pitchers in their cardboard box. In this way, he could take them into the kitchen and no one would see the liquid already in one of them.

The cans of juice stood ready on the kitchen counter. Samuel opened the first can. He emptied the juice into the pitcher holding the antifreeze while it was still in the box. Once full, he poured the rest of the can’s contents into the next pitcher. Once all of the pitchers were full, he took them out of the box.

He took two of the unpoisoned pitchers out to Miss Enid where she began serving the people milling about her table. Samuel went back into the kitchen for the other two pitchers. He held the antifreeze pitcher tight in his right hand. He placed the other pitcher on the table, then picked up a couple of empty, red plastic cups.

“That boy will be the death of me,” said Mrs. Twindle to Reverend Toddy. The minister nodded in agreement.

Samuel crossed the room towards Mrs. Twindle carrying two full red cups.

Mrs. Twindle and Reverend Toddy turned in unison as Samuel approached them. Samuel handed a cup to Mrs. Twindle. Samuel raised his red cup, tipping it towards Mrs. Twindle in salute. She mirrored Samuel.

“Happy Birthday to me, Mother.”

She drank.