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Monstrous – Free Short Story

(This story is part of the 30 Day Short Story Challenge I issued on Social Media! Want to take part? JOIN THE GROUP!)

Troy was, without doubt, one bad kid.

I don’t mean in the sense of merely disobeying his parents or finding ways to get into trouble. It went beyond that.

No, Troy was not your average, run-of-the-mill bad boy with a mean streak. He was evil.

Pure, unadulterated, evil.

I know this, because I was the monster under his bed.

He wasn’t always that way. When I was first assigned to him, though, I could definitely sense the troubled waters laying beneath the surface.

Oh, yeah, you didn’t realize that was how things worked? We’re not just some evil entities out to make lives miserable for kids. We are there for a purpose, and our assignments are carefully chosen by the higher-ups. Each of us is assigned someone we’ll be able to best attune.

That’s just a fancy way of saying we mold them into becoming better people, so they don’t end up in places they shouldn’t.

Our service is our gift to them, and we take pride when a kid grows up to be an upstanding citizen. We helped make that happen. We changed their ways by putting the fear into them, knowing something was always there, always watching, so their inmost secrets would not turn to rot and decay.

Troy… well Troy was an exception to a long-successful rule.

I tried. I really did. When I saw the pattern of his spirit emerging, the darkness festering there beneath the skin, I knew I had to do everything I could to prevent him becoming something this world would not be able to handle.

Serial killers, pedophiles, the absolute worst that humanity could ever offer started out with spirits like his, and I could not let another one come forth.

Not if I could help it.

So I did the best I could. I scared, I frightened, I made my best noises and the haunting songs. I did all the rulebook said to do, and more, to scare the child straight.

But I failed. Miserably failed.

I would follow him, sometimes, sneaking along with him, always enough of a distance away to not be suspected, hiding in the shadows in the way my kind can do best. I hated what I saw him do.

At first, it was simpler things, like throwing rocks at a dog, or kicking a littler kid when no one was looking. Even something like that could be forgiven, could be worked with eventually. It wasn’t even as if his parents had caused trauma, turning him into a bully like one might hear of. No, they were good to him, coddling his every desire and need, ever present in his life.

They were, really, blissfully unaware of the being he was becoming.

I knew, though. There as not a shred of doubt within me, and it only proved out when the killings began.

First a bird, the tiniest little thing, fallen from its’ nest and injured. Instead of picking the creature up and putting it back in place, or even protecting it in some kind of way like most children would do, Troy spent the next twenty minutes torturing the poor things. Pulling out its’ small feathers one by one, he then crushed the neck between his fingers and laughed at the way it died.

If only I could run over and stop him…

That was against the rules, though. We can do a lot of things, but rule number one is to not reveal ourselves fully, especially in the light of day. One could skirt the edges of the rule, and most of us did at times, but that was a big one.

I know, you might think it strange that monsters-beneath-beds – MBB’s – have rules of any kind, but it’s true. There are rules in everything else in life, why would there not be for us? We serve a higher purpose, too, as do all things.

Later, there was a kitten, and finally a puppy, all falling prey to this child-turned-sour.

I couldn’t fathom it, really. I had hard assignments before, but this boy was something else entirely. I was with him for a reason, and I became frightened of what that reason might be.

Yes. It’s true. Even MBB’s can be scared. If that seems strange to you, imagine how it was for me to understand the depth of what I realized I had to do.

He was due home early that day, and I was, as always, under his bed, biding my time and deep in thought from the moment he left for school. It was cold and already growing dark by the time he came into his room, the time of year and place in the world such that the sun faded into evening earlier than most parents got off of work.

Troy came in and flung his book bag to the small desk in the corner of his room, flopping himself onto his bed with a gust of breath. I’d been thinking long and hard about how to do things in a way that would not break the rules. Don’t reveal, don’t cause harm, be the conscience they need to become better humans…

They swirled in my mind like a litany, pushing hard against what I knew needed done, but not fathoming how to accomplish it.

My eyes roved, seeking something, some way, to cut through the red tape and meet my goal.

A small car lay across the room, discarded by Troy a few days ago when playing. And another object on his desk, one that gleamed with silver as the light from the lamp reflected across it.

I could do this. I had to do this.

One of the special things MBB’s can do is to cause things to reshape, to move, to shift around reality as it suited our needs. After all, one of the most frightening experiences for a child was the sight of a shirt across the room moving on its own.

I made good use of those skills.

The car slid silently along the floor, taking position only a few paces from my own face as I concentrated. Then, a small pull on the silver paper spike brought it to the floor, as well, and I moved it more to where I thought it would work best.

Troy was still above me, softly speaking as he read something. Maybe his homework. More likely that list he made of all the things he would love to do. Horrible,Horrible, evil things.

I shifted myself again, bringing my hand up along the ridge of the blanket on his bed, drawing ever further upward until I reached the edge of the mattress.

Then, my hands shifted, turned, became like a long snake, and I grabbed out for the leg I sensed was there.

He squealed, a satisfying, high-pitched squawk that echoed through the room, and tried to bolt away from my grip. His leg pulsed with the effort, but I pulled harder, making him twist closer to the edge of the mattress.

Only a little more…

Finally, instinct took him over completely, and he tried to jump off the bed, to leap away from the thing grabbing at him and run.

His leg came down to the floor, and I released my grip, letting it happen.

I could feel his weight shift, the familiar rusty squeak of the springs in his bed wrenching as I backed away a little further, thinning myself out even more.

As soon as his body cleared the bed, his foot stepped on the car I left in place, and he tumbled, his arms and legs flinging askew.

With a crash, his body came down, face-first, landing on the hard floor. His breath puffed out but there was agony in the sound.

As he rolled, frantically trying to right himself, the base of the once-glistening silver spike came away from his chest, falling to the floor with a clatter as blooms of red spread across his front.

I couldn’t turn away, even while he gasped for more air, the blood rushing from the wound in his chest as his heart, somehow, kept beating, despite the piercing it just took. His eyes glossy, he fell backward again, the strength he once had quickly ebbing.

Those eyes locked on my own and I could see something there, something of the child I had once known so long ago, before murderous intent entered his heart.

It was only a few moments later his breathing stopped and I knew I could finally move on, to get away from this horrible demon-in-the-making.

See, even monsters have standards.

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Published on September 04, 2020 15:14

A Good Mother – Free Short Story

(This story is part of the 30 Day Short Story Challenge I issued on Social Media! Want to take part? JOIN THE GROUP!)

“Hello mother.”

My stomach dropped as the words flowed out of the phone and I dropped it. The plastic case skidded across the newly-tiled kitchen floor.

I stared at it, terror oozing through every vein in my body as the white light of the screen faded away to black, the phone turning off once more.

It was her. There was no way it couldn’t be her. The voice, so sweet and high pitched, was hers, and the echoes of those two simple bits of the past caught my breath up.

Janice. It had been Janice. But there was no way it could be her.

I killed her ten years ago.

She had been a sweet girl, once. It was only after she hit her teenage years I started to notice just how wrong she was becoming.

It was small, at first. Getting testy with me, her snarky comments at everything I said or did chalked up to nothing more than the passing phase all teenage girls seemed to go through after puberty hits. Most girls spend their childhood wanting to be so much like mommy, and then desperately want to separate themselves from anything that could be construed as “mom?” as soon as their flow began.

Maybe it had something to do with them becoming women, themselves, and subconsciously knowing they would, one day soon, have to take on the responsibility of a family, themselves. Maybe it was just nature forcing a girl to become the woman she would be, and they feel a primal need to become their own person.

I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist or anything. I just know I did it to my own mother, something I regretted later in life, once I realized she had been right in the things she tried to teach me.

Especially after Janice grew more into her figure. That’s when things really turned to hell.

The sarcasm turned to venom, her lips spewing the worst vitriol I could ever imagine. And I was angry. All the time angry. Things she would say or do would haunt me from the minute I woke to moment I fell asleep again, each day becoming worse.

It wasn’t like she was hanging out with a bad crowd or something. No drugs I could ever discern or, when things got desperate, find in her room. The words, “I hate her, I wish she would die,” were strewn through her diary like a mad poet on the worst bender.

I started to believe I had given birth to a demon child, one who didn’t show its’ true colors until it was far too late to do anything about it.

I had to do something about it. My poor, deluded husband refused to see anything wrong with her. He just tried to write it off as I did at first, a simple stage of the evolution of a child. He didn’t see how she really was when he wasn’t around. Oh no, ever the daddy’s little angel when he was near.

I swear I could see her eyes change the moment he entered the room, switching off the demon and turning on the little girl charm for her protective daddy. Night and day in an instant.

I tried. I really did. I would arrange dates for us to go out and do something together, trying to build some bridge of communication between us, something of memories we could both cherish as she and I grew older. I found out, through her father of course, who her favorite band was, and bought tickets for the two of us to go see them.

That was a nightmare. She disappeared into the crowd when I was not paying attention and I could not find her for hours, trying to scream her name above a flock of maniacal fanatics worshiping the din coming from the stage.

When I finally did come across her again, I had to drag her away. The security guards even stopped us, thinking I was trying to kidnap my own child, until we got into some better light and they saw the family resemblance. They still ogled us as we walked through the exit doors, though, wondering, I am sure, how a mother could do that to her child.

Janice, ever screaming and crying about how I was ruining her life, did her best to give me the worse headache ever the hour-long drive home. I swear I have no idea how her throat lasted so long.

I know what you’re probably thinking. Why didn’t I spank her, or try to discipline her? It’s not that simple.

My own father and I had a rough relationship. My early years were spent with him drinking to the point he was incoherent most of the time, and it was only later, after the drinking stopped, that I could forgive him the bruises and scars those whiskey-binges would inevitably bring to me.

It’s hard raising a child when you’re doing your best to break the cycle of abuse, and I did not, no matter how bad things got with Janice, want to do to her what my dad did to me.

By the time we got home from the concert she was, as always, put back together again, walking through the door and smiling for her father who was just getting ready for bed, himself. Sure, I told him about what happened after the lights went out, crying into his shoulder as he tried to console me for what he claimed must have been a misunderstanding between Janice and I. Couldn’t I have been mistaken in what happened? Couldn’t Janice have told me she was going to go get something, and in the noise and heat I missed it? And then when I did find her, and made such a big deal out of it, couldn’t Janice have, maybe, been in the right for being angry with me?

Snowed. She had him completely wrapped around her little fingers.

Oh, of course he would talk to her in the morning, try to see if he could smooth out the rough edges of what happened and get us back to family tranquility. Sure, he would do that for me. He always did.

Right.

After a year of this kind of thing, I began to feel like a prisoner in my own home. Captive to the interplay between the two of them, her abuse and his gas-lighting my anger and frustration over the things she was putting me through.

The day the dam finally broke was so hard.

She had come home from school angry. Usually, I would get a little bit of a break before her tirades would start, an hour or so for her to put herself together again after getting home, grabbing a bite of food and so on before the demon would show up. I used to try to ask her how her day went, to get some sort of line of communication going on, but that was a long time ago. I had grown to dread those moments between her coming home and her father showing up from work.

See, by that time, my life had become a living hell, an endless stream of violent words without action, hatred pulsing with guilt over what I had become. I was living with my father all over again, endlessly trying to remain a mouse, unseen and unheard, so the wrath would not come down on me.

Fear of your own child is something no parent should ever have to endure, yet there I was stuck with the lot fate had given me.

I had gotten to the point I could weep no more, the tears weighing me down. I could see the trails of salt beneath my eyes, so much had flowed. When I looked in the mirror, that is. I had come to dread even that, not liking the person I saw behind my own eyes after so long being abused.

Instead of her normal routine, Janice started in on me right away. “You’re such a stupid bitch,” were the first words out of her mouth, slamming her bag down on the kitchen table.

Instant anger, my eyes flashing around instinctively, readying myself for an attack.

“Don’t start with me,” I shouted the same thing I had said so many times before. It never did any good.

Oh she was in rare form, though. “I kept telling you I needed the pink one, but you got the blue.”

Ah, the “pink one” argument again. This was, of the color of shirt she needed for gym class, the apparent only choice she the “it crowd” saw in school, out of the myriad other colors available. But they had been sold out of that color by the time I was able to get to it, all the other kids apparently thinking the same thing.

“I told you, they were out, damn it. Back off. I tried my best.”

A hideous laugh seeped from her mouth. “Are you kidding me? God, I swear, I can’t believe I have to have you as a mother.” She turned her back to me, slapping her hand against the bag laying half-opened on the table. “I swear, I wish I could get rid of you and just be with dad.”

Even though I had heard those same words coming from her before, something about the tone of it this time seemed different. Flavored with something I couldn’t quite put my fingers on. It didn’t have the scent of the normalcy I had become accustomed to from her. No, this time, it was like the demon inside of her had, truly, come to have enough of me.

Or maybe something else, something even worse, in my mind.

Whatever it was, I felt something inside of me snap. There was, a moment before, the angry red tinged with the despair of being saddled with this situation, something I was so familiar with I could feel it on my skin.

The next moment, there was nothing of it, a sensation of almost… calmness washing through me.

I moved, then, my hand grabbing a long towel that was resting near the stove. Her back was still to me, still mouthing words I could no longer hear. The whiteness in my mind grew deeper, instinct taking control.

I saw, though it seemed I was not controlling them, my hands wrap around the ends of the towel tightly, spreading the cloth wider as my legs pushed forward. The towel lifted, before coming down again over her head and around her neck.

Her blond hair pulled into my opened mouth as I inhaled, bracing myself as I yanked the cloth tight, bringing her body into mine as the force of it pulled her backward.

The words she was spewing cut off instantly, leaving only remnants as the shock of it coursed through her own veins, turning into small chuffs as she tried to gag in a breath. Her arms moved with a frenzy, scrabbling at my arms trying to pull the towel away from her neck, but I redoubled myself, bracing my feet harder on the linoleum tiles of the clean floor, gritting my teeth hard with the effort of keeping the thing, and myself, in place.

My lips did move, though, and I think words were trying to come out, but I could not recognize them. It was not my body anymore. The broken person I had been all my life seemed to finally explode out in the fury of the moment, and there was no stopping it now.

I’m not sure how long it took. A minute or an hour could have passed before I felt her body slump, the final beat of the slight pulse I had been feeling in her ebbing into nothingness.

I eased her down, the towel coming away from her neck, my own staring into her still-opened eyes, the shock in my body beginning to turn into a tremble.

It was only then the white flames within me subsided, and I began to fathom what I had done.

I could not stop staring into her eyes, even as the reflex to gag struck my throat. I closed my mouth, still unable to turn away as tendrils of bile came to my tongue. I swallowed it back, but her gaze remained locked on mine.

I searched those orbs, trying to find a hint of the demon I had come to know so well, but there was nothing. Even with them as wide as they were, I could sense something of the girl I once adored, my little angel peaceful and shy.

My hands trembling more, legs wobbling like an uncertain newborn deer, I bent down, my lips placing a kiss on her smooth forehead. A few stray strands of hair once again entered my mouth, but I didn’t spit them out. They came away from me as I brought myself back to sitting next to her, a sigh escaping my lips.

What had I done?

I was finally able to break the gaze flowing between us, and ripped my head away, the bile once more urging itself upward.

Oh god, what had I done?

It was only then I moved fully, bringing myself to my feet once more. Rushing to the bathroom, my hand in front of my mouth, silently praying I could hold it in long enough to get there.

My forehead smacked into the rim of the bowl as I went down on my knees and retched, the spew landing in the water with loud, wet splats. I hadn’t eaten much, thankfully, but it still seemed too much came.

I huffed, my breath catching in my throat as once more I threw up, and it kept going until I could do no more than dry heave. Even then, worms wriggled around in the pit of my gut, endlessly looping around in a circuit until my breathing changed from the huffing to heaving sighs, and, finally, morphed into a sob so loud I swear it could be heard a mile away.

I crumbled to the floor, covering my head with my arms as I wept, cold tiles pressing into my face.

I’m not sure how long I was there. Time seemed, for that brief period, to thankfully pause for me, gracing me with a precious moment for me to process what happened in those scant, fretful minutes between my demon child coming home and my final crazed actions.

How could I have done this? How could I, an otherwise sane, well-put-together person, have taken a life? And not just any life, but that of my own child. I couldn’t come to terms with it, the shock and adrenaline still coursing through me apace.

But then, after who knows how long I had been sobbing uncontrollably on the floor, the logical, reasonable part of myself began to take hold once more. A quiet voice, at first, slowly becoming louder in my ears, whispered that everything was going to be okay. I hadn’t done anything wrong, really. Couldn’t I see that? The child was more than a problem. She was out of control, and getting worse by the day.

She knew what she was doing, trying to play with me, just like my own father had done for so many years. I hadn’t been able to do anything to him, then. I was but a child, myself, defenseless against the brunt of an angry man with a quick fist and even quicker temper.

Janice was no different. Couldn’t I understand that? She was my father, the embodiment of all the hatred he contained. Even if he had finally cleaned himself up, he must have planted some kind of seed in me. Something that only came out when Janice was born, a worm inside of her that was malevolent, evil rot to the core.

It had to be that. Couldn’t I understand that? Couldn’t it be so? There was no way something like her could have sprung from me alone. My husband, Dennis, certainly wasn’t that way, himself. He was weak, even with Janice.

As that voice grew stronger, so did I. I started to comprehend what it had been trying to tell me subconsciously since the first spiteful arrogance Janice showed. She was something different. Maybe that voice was right, after all.

I hadn’t done anything more than defend myself. I hadn’t done anything more than what any reasonable human being would do to get away from an evil straight from the pits of hell itself.

I finally picked myself up off of the floor, wiping the tears from my eyes with the towel still clutched, forgotten, in my hand. I stared at it for a moment, the murderous thing sopping up the dampness from my cheeks, wicking it up into itself until there was nothing of my tears to be seen any longer.

I stuffed it in my pocket and returned to the kitchen, unsure of how I should proceed.

I couldn’t leave Janice lay there. Dennis would be home in a couple of hours expecting dinner and a kiss from his loving daughter.

No, I had to do something with her, and, as I stared at her body from the kitchen door way for more than ten minutes, I wracked my mind trying to figure out how to handle things. Where was that sure, steady voice now? Why was it silent when I needed its help now more than I did on that damn bathroom floor?

When an idea finally did come, I mulled it, turning it over and over in my head until I was sure any cracks it might have could be filled.

Then I started in.

I went outside and moved my car closer to the house, pulling up as near to the garage door as I could without hitting it. Normally, I parked on the street, leaving the garage for Dennis’ more expensive car to be protected in the one-car garage, but it wouldn’t look strange to anyone looking if mine was there.

I triple, quadruple checked to make sure there was no one around. It was the time of day most people, who did happen to be home, would have been eating dinner, so there were no kids running on the street. Not like there were many around, anyhow. The neighborhood was pretty quiet and sedate most of the time.

I left the car running and pulled the back door open, then went back inside.

As fast as I could, I grabbed some clothing from Janice’s dressers, shoving two pairs of underwear, a few teeshirts and a pair of jeans into the bag I grabbed from the table. Some makeup, and one of the stuffed dogs Dennis was always buying for her followed before I zipped the thing shut.

I closed the door behind me and sped to the kitchen once more.

I opened the interior door for the garage and tapped the button to slide the garage open before tossing the bag closer to the still-running car.

Her eyes were still open, and there seemed to be a glint there that was asking what I was doing, crying out at me in silence. My fingers closed them to shut her up. I swear I had seen that same look in my own eyes in the mirror when I was her age.

Keep moving. Don’t stop.

She was heavier than I remembered. It had been a long time since I tried to carry my child any distance, and without any assistance from living muscles, it make it that much harder. But I managed to pull her mostly to her feet and half-drug, half-carried her to the garage and, finally, to the car.

I put her in the back seat, strapping the belt across her lap and chest, before refreshing her hair a little bit. It had become quite mussy in the fray.

I closed the car up and went back inside for a brief moment to grab my purse and close the garage up. I locked the front door behind me as I left, trying hard to not stare around like a crazed woman who had just killed her daughter.

I slid myself into the front seat and breathed deep, steadying my nerves. God this was hard.

Before beginning the drive, I turned around in the seat and raised Janice’s arm, trying to arrange her so it would, if anyone happened to glance in the car as we drove, look like she was simply in the back seat asleep. That happened, right? Kids, even teenagers, fall asleep on car rides all the time. It wouldn’t look out of place.

The drive felt longer than it actually was, but that was probably due to my constant watchfulness. Every car was a cop, everyone I passed was staring at me, knowing what I did. Knowing I had my dead daughter in the back seat of my car.

I half expected Janice to pop awake the whole time, sure that she would pick a moment of vengeance, coming to life to drag me to the depths of hell I was sure I sent her. Would it have been well-deserved? Or was I judging correct when I felt I had done the right thing?

Twenty miles later, I was at the large park Janice loved to go to. I was surprised there were no other cars there by the time I arrived, but I guess being a weekday and most people still trying to come home and settle from work, there wouldn’t be much traffic. Not for a while, anyhow.

Still, I moved as fast as I could to get Janice out of the back seat and sling her book bag across my back. Just past the parking lot, the whole area became forest, and once I was in the first part of the tree line, it would be difficult for me to be spotted by anyone who happened to come along.

My luck held out, even more fuel to the thought I was doing the right thing. God had to be on my side. There was no way I could have gotten this far without it.

I remembered the last time we had come to these woods, back when we were still what would be considered a normal family. It seemed years ago, but, then, every bit of my life had become so protracted since Janice became possessed by whatever hell she fed on.

A little deeper into the woods was the familiar ravine-shaped indentation in the ground, a remnant, I think, of a wide creek that used to pass through the forest before drying up. Now it was a scar filled with dead leaves, fallen branches and other detritus.

And now it would cradle my child, too.

I put her down, laying her on her back and spreading her arms out like she had been defending herself against an attacker, and resisted the temptation to fix her hair.

I set her bag next to her and checked it to make sure none of my hair or other obvious things from myself were sticking to it. If there was an investigation, and I was sure there would be once she was discovered, anything on it could be explained just on the basis of my being her mother and our living together, but I didn’t want any more added on than needed.

I didn’t sit, tried to avoid putting my hands down on the ground, even, but my eyes could catch nothing that was overt about my presence there.

“Goodbye, Janice. I hope you can find peace.”

It felt strange to say the words, but with her laying there so quietly, with her eyes closed, she took on some of the aspects of the girl I had once known and loved, before she turned into the nightmare I had to live with.

Finally, shaking my head a little as I turned away from her, I began the trek back to the car.

There were drag marks here and there from where I had to put her down and pull her along, but those were soon hidden as best as I could manage by kicking some leaves and dirt around, scuffing up any indication of what the footprints would look like leading to her body. Shy of taking a rake to the whole thing, I hoped it would be enough to obscure my own prints, in case any cop got a bright idea of checking out my shoes.

There was still no one in the parking lot, and I breathed heavily as I jumped in the car and backed away from the woods. I drove slower than I probably should have the whole way home, but no one stopped me.

Dennis was still not home by the time I got there, so I parked in my usual spot and walked into the house. When I glanced at the clock, I saw I still had another half-hour to go before he would get there.

There was not much out of place, but I picked everything up as best as I could before remembering the towel was still in my pocket.

Damn it. How could I have forgotten the thing?

What was I supposed to do with it? I couldn’t just stick it in the laundry and keep it, knowing what I had done with it. Besides, when she was discovered, I was sure the cops would want to do a search of the house. There was no way I could just leave the murder weapon sitting around.

I snatched the pack of matches Dennis used to light the grill and one of my trowels from the garage and headed to the back yard. Near the far end of the fence, I dug a small hole and stuck the towel in it, then set fire to it.

It thankfully smoked little, and did not take more than a few moments to burn into char. I wished I had more time to try to light it up again and make it go away as much as I could but it would have to do.

I covered it all up, careful to replace the grass as best I could manage, before going back into the house to start a quick dinner cooking.

Of course, Dennis was concerned that Janice wasn’t home by the time he got there, but I played like she hadn’t come home from school. It wouldn’t have been the first time for her to not show up after school let out, going over to one of her friends before coming home. She had, after all, gotten into a little trouble over it a few times.

By the time Dennis and I finished eating, though, his agitation over the lack of her presence grew to the point he wanted to start calling any of her friends he could.

I played dutiful wife and mother, my concern written on my face. Oh yes, we should do that. We should ground her. He should really make an example of it this time.

It took a bit of effort to keep the smile off of my face, knowing he was not going to find her. Oh sure, I hated to see him upset, and knew even more was coming, but the thought that he was finally feeling a modicum of the misery I had been going through with Janice put a guilty pleasure through my veins.

No one had seen her or heard from her. Her friends hadn’t run across her since they were let out of school. Maybe she went to the mall or something?

All of these things, and more, came from the phone calls and it was another few hours before I finally offered that we might want to try calling the police. Maybe something had happened to her. Oh I put on the finest concerned face I could muster, knowing my act was only beginning.

They were called, and they did come. Just one, the first time, taking our statements and trying to reassure us that sometimes teenage girls will be teenage girls and do things on their own.

Was she into drugs or partying? Had she been hanging out with a bad crowd? Did she have any boyfriends?

I could tell they were standard sort of questions and he wrote the answers down in the little notebook he carried with him. Honestly, he seemed more bored by it all than anything, obviously having done this a few times before.

Oh but Dennis pushed him, stressing out that no one had heard from her and no, she wasn’t into anything like any of the things the officer was implying. At least, as far as he knew.

I didn’t say much, beyond acknowledging that she hadn’t come home and I was worried. This was more Dennis’ show than mine, after all.

Mine was yet to come.

By the time midnight rolled around, there were more officers there. Now they were concerned.

One of them, a younger guy, contacted someone from the school, and they managed to track down the fact that Janice had been dropped off. I caught a few sideways glances my way at that, but I gave them my prepared song and dance that I thought I had heard the bus, but was in the bathroom at the time. When I came out, Janice was not there, and I assumed she had either gotten off the bus and started walking somewhere else, or hadn’t ridden it at all.

Dennis confirmed it wasn’t the first time Janice had done something like that, his voice cracking with the strain of the situation he was obviously under.

Oh I played the good wife and mother. I made sure they all knew I was worried, concerned that something happened to her. Where was my baby? Where could she be?

It’s fascinating how the officers worked through everything. I hadn’t expected how thorough they were, since our town isn’t all that large, really. It’s not a one-light town, by any means, but most of the time the cops could be seen at one of the gas stations, bored out of their minds, on a Saturday night. Not much happened here that wasn’t brought in from outside somehow.

We provided pictures, they scurried away in hopes of tracking her down.

By the time morning light began to emerge along the streets, you could sense the change in them. They went from the rush of fretfulness to a more sedate and sympathetic ruse. Like they knew, with as much time as was passing away without hearing from her, the chances of getting her back slimmed.

I did feel a little badly for them. Most of them had wedding rings on, and were away from their own families while searching for my own. I used it to help me fuel the angst I was trying hard to maintain.

Neither Dennis or I slept that night. Both of us were drained with worrying, though his was, of course, for far different reasons than my own.

Around noon, one of the officers, whom I learned had some kind of rank, though I could not remember what it might have been, came to us with the news.

Dennis broke as the officer told us she had been found, but not alive. Someone had come across her in the woods at the park and called in.

From there, we went through the process of going to the hospital, where the town morgue was located, and identified her, then we were left alone for a little while.

I held Dennis, and when his tears were under control, he held me while my own flowed. Even now, looking back on it, I am shocked at the amount of grief I felt for the loss of Janice. Maybe knowing I was responsible added to it, but I could not help remembering her more as the little girl I adored rather than the monster she had become.

There was an investigation, of course, and both Dennis and I were interviewed about any potential part we might have played in her death… her murder. Again, I played the part of grieving mother, confused why they would be looking at us rather than searching for the monstrous being who could have done that to our little one.

My husband was more convincing than myself, I think, because they seemed to spend more time with me than him.

Still, their eyes began to move elsewhere, convinced that we had no involvement in the events leading to her death, and we were, for the most part, left alone to put our lives back together.

There were theories, of course, and I can’t tell you how many journalists shoved microphones in our faces trying to grab the newest, saddest sound-bite they could muster.

That was all ten years ago, and I think we managed things as well as we could in spite of the hell the outside world tried to put on us. Dennis had changed, and not really for the better, though I half-expected it would get that way. He adored Janice, and would have done anything for her.

I think he blames himself, though there are times I catch a sidelong glance from him and wonder if he, perhaps somewhere in the back of his mind, wonders if I had anything to do with it.

Everything of the past flashed through my mind, the hell, the guilt, all of it, as I stared at the phone resting on the floor.

There was no denying, the voice I heard come through the speakers was Janice. Two words, nothing more, and I was gripped with fear, the breath caught in my throat.

Was this some kind of prank? Was this some sick crank out to make a joke, finding some recording of her voice somehow?

My eyes finally moved to the window of the kitchen, the twilight outside barely peeking through the curtains I had hung only a few months before. Were they outside now trying to peek inward, laughing at their great prank?

I saw nothing, but I couldn’t move myself to open the drapes and check.

“Hello, Mother.”

I whirled, my heart leaping out of my chest, as the words I heard through the phone only moments before were spoken louder, this time behind me.

The living room was dark, but the small amount of light that did edge through the doorway to the kitchen back lit a figure who stood stock-still. It was too small to be Dennis, resting upstairs.

My hands didn’t move from my waist, paralyzed, somehow, with the intense fear that had become my entire being. I tried to open my mouth to scream, the highlights of blond hair seen even with the small amount of light the same as I saw that day I placed her in the dry creek bed.

The figure came forward, only a step, but it was enough to bring her into the full light of the kitchen, and even the breath in my lungs refused to come out, caught up in the pale eyes of the daughter I once loved and grew to hate.

She looked so much the same as the last time I saw her, laying still and lifeless on the gurney in the morgue, the only difference being her open eyes, which burned with a fury I was so familiar with.

Janice stepped again, and now that she was only a few feet from me, I could see the translucence of her skin. Something was missing there, the fullness of her body shriveled more than when she was alive, but my eyes flung up and down at the horror I could not overcome.

Move, damn it! my mind screamed, but I could not. I was trapped, impaled by her eyes and terror, pinioned to the spot I had been in when I first heard her words.

Her hands came from behind her, raising to her chest slightly outstretched, and I caught hold of what she carried.

Blue and white, soft and long, the same design and linen as the towel I used on her a year ago wafted in her hands like it was blown by a breeze I could not feel myself. She didn’t so much wrap it around her palms as it moved on its own, the length of it becoming taut as she sidled closer.

God damn it, move! The voice in my head screamed, and it finally seemed to break the paralysis I was under, forcing me to wrench myself around.

The garage door was only ten feet away.

My feet kicked into action, breaking away from the counter. Get to the door, get to the door. Get the hell out of this house.

Then the garrote went around my neck.

Like I was hit by a linebacker, my feet kicked out from under me and I fell backward, my momentum useless as I felt the coldness of her body against my own skin.

Oh that cold. Never, even when caught outside in the depths of winter, have I ever felt such a sensation. And it took over my whole being, pouring from her into me as if I was becoming nothing more than a block of ice. The laced towel around my neck heaved hard, instantly cutting off any breath I might have tried to take.

My brain began to dim as the blood in my veins was cut off with the choke.

The terror is already subsiding, maybe cut away from me with the breath she took. I can’t feel anything but for the glacier in my body seeping into every pore of me.

How? Why? None of it matters, I guess. I know the answers.

“Goodbye, Mother.”

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Published on September 03, 2020 22:25

The Red – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION

I buried my wife yesterday.

No, no. There is no sympathy required. I don’t need the unfeeling platitudes that always come with news like that. No need to waste your precious energy on such supplications.

You see, I hated my wife. Her being gone is a blessing, not a curse, and I am only too glad to have had it come. Finally, after twenty years of nagging, whining, and endless arguing, it happened. Just when I didn’t think I had the intestinal wherewithal to stand another moment, blessed relief came.

I was, as so often was the case, sitting in my easy chair in the living room, relaxing after yet another long day at work. Aren’t they all long days, though? Especially when you have to work with nothing but morons and liars, the dregs of humanity all congealed into one singular office, with you as the only shining beacon of reason and intelligence among the lot.

That’s the perfect explanation for Thomas Preston Office Supplies and Manufacturing I can give. The place is a dump, and I swear the only people that have been hired in after me must have been picked up from a dime store mannequin sale.

It had been a particularly horrible day, with my having to make up for the mistakes of not just Sally, the office tramp and consummate moron, but the main man, himself, Thomas. Of course he screwed up the biggest sale of the year. How could he not? Most of the time anymore, Thomas Preston spends his days drinking, ever since his wife left him. Was it depression over the loss that set the bottles in his hands?

Hell, I would have given anything to have my wife leave me like that woman did, and I would have been drinking in celebration, not depression. That’s for sure.

Anyhow, I had to make amends with the client, bending over backwards with my dearest, “May I help you sir?” voice I could muster. Choked back bile the entire time.

Two hours. Two freaking hours on the phone with the man, wheeling and dealing, until he finally gave in and allowed us to sign him back on. I mean, granted, he didn’t have much of a choice but to use us if he didn’t want to have to go nationwide to search out his products. He wouldn’t want to do that, though. After all, part of his business was based around the whole “support local” and if it were discovered he was doing otherwise, it’d likely ruin his reputation.

I don’t know if he realized that was something I was aware of but it did give me great satisfaction to know I was the one in control of that conversation, regardless of how angry he felt.

That little fact was the only thing that kept me going.

I threw the order sheet at Thomas before leaving, telling him that was the last time I was going to pick up after his messes. Oh he was mad, but there is no way he’d get rid of me. Not after I just pulled his ass out of the fire.

Home, eat, maybe drink a beer and relax. That’s really all I wanted to do after the mess of a day I had been through. I guess fate had a different idea in mind, for me, though.

Doesn’t she always?

Beer in hand, easy chair underneath me, Susan came strolling into the room from the kitchen, her hair up in curlers and the scent of the crap she puts in it when she is trying to “do herself up” stinking even from the ten feet distance between us.

“Did you ask him about the raise?” Her slight frame casting an over-long shadow along the floor.

“I didn’t have time.” Another sip of my beer, the bitterness of it washing over my tongue not even close to the loathing I felt at the sound of her voice.

You might be asking yourself why I didn’t just divorce Susan if she grated me this much.

Easy answer. I couldn’t afford to. See, Susan and I had been together long enough that everything we had was tied with each other, to the point the cost of divorce would have left me ruined. It’s one of those unfortunate setups that happens sometimes. Too filled with animosity to stay together, too wrapped up in each other to separate.

But I had my golf games once a week, she had her circle of friends she would go out with every few days. I had work and she got to sit her lazy ass around the house all day. At least I got away for those few hours. It was something.

I tried to go back to ignoring her as best I could, taking another, deeper, pull from the bottle. It was nasty stuff, the kind of cheap beer that could barely be called palatable, but still strong enough to get a buzz on if you drank enough of it. Good enough for simple peons like myself, I guess.

I hoped Susan would leave the conversation at that and go back into the kitchen, but she came forward, instead, her eyes burning into mine.

“What do you mean you didn’t have time, David? We need that raise.” Her bare feet slapped against the hard wood floor as she approached.

“You could get a job, too, you know.” I did little more than whisper it, the argument so familiar to my lips, but she caught it anyhow.

Oh, yes. She heard it.

Her feet stopped mid-step, the ire spreading across her face in a heartbeat. “Maybe if you did a better job around there, you wouldn’t have to ask for a raise.” Her eyes gleamed, fairly spitting out the words. “They would just give it to you. Did you ever think of that?”

I stood, the bottle dropping from my hand, forgotten. The clanking of the glass against the wood echoed through the room, as the yellow fluid spread out. My own feet trounced the distance remaining between us.

“Do you really want to go there, bitch?” A few stray droplets of saliva flew to the floor. The words barked out in a staccato beat. “I work my ass off every damn day so you can sit here doing nothing, and you have the audacity to think I don’t do enough?”

She stepped backward only a pace, shock at the vehemence of my words reeling her a moment, but then, as a fighter in the ring, replanted her feet to stand stock-still.

“You think I don’t do anything? I take care of you, and everything in this house.” Her eyes glistened with a wet shine, but my own could not help focusing on the large droplet of my spit that was embracing her left cheek, remnant from my tirade. “I buy your clothes, your food, and clean up after you decide the best thing to do is get drunk to get through your day, and you think I’m lazy? Go sell that shit to someone else.”

Her last words were punctuated by pushing my shoulder with her hand. No, not her whole hand. Just the tip of one of her fingers. It wasn’t hard, but my head spun toward it like she had fired a bullet into my flesh.

In that moment, my mind blanked. A canvas, empty and awaiting the hand of a master with a brush rolled over the thinking part of me and all I could do was stare at the fingertip barely denting my shirt.

The next second, my arm moved, though I had no real control of it. No intention, no impulse as to where it would go or what it would do.

I lifted my eyes once more to the miserable face of the woman I had grown to loathe for twenty years, the anger again coming into place within me. I opened my mouth to spew more vitriol, but stopped short mid-inhale when I saw the redness on her face was no longer the blush of her own rage and animosity.

It was a bloom of crimson, which seemed to begin at the base of her nose. Her eyes, only centimeters away from that splotch of red, rolled upward, like she was hearing something and trying to place where it was coming from.

They rolled more and her mouth hung wide open, more acid on her tongue to come out at me, but she remained silent but for a strange huffing breathing coming from her throat.

Her hand dropped, smacking against the side of her hip and her legs wobbled as the red blip under her nose grew larger, becoming a slow trickle as it crossed the rim of her top lip and disappeared into her still-opened maw.

One of her curlers seemed to pull loose, falling slightly as I stepped backward, the anger from seconds before draining away into confusion over what I was seeing. The lacy white robe she wore was stark contrast to the flow of red that poured from her nostrils, but she still made no sound beyond the huffing breaths that still puffed away, though with each one they seemed to take on an almost choking overtone.

The blood leaking out started to patter against the front of her robe. One, then two, then a few drops at a time scattered and spread, the maroon mixing up with the white in a patina of spectacular irony. Susan hated red and refused to ever wear it, and yet, somehow, in these moments, it was the most beautiful color I had ever seen her use.

Then her shoulders sagged and her eyes disappeared into complete white as they completed their turn upwards into her skull. Her legs wobbled once more before letting go completely and she went down. Her head hit the floor with a wet smack, but there was no outpouring of agonized sounds from her. Just silence. Blessed silence, for the first time in so many years I could hardly believe it was happening.

Only a moment later, the pulling in and out from her lungs ceased as well, and even that part of her was gone.

It took a few minutes for me to move. I said nothing, just staring at the body of the woman I had once, long ago, loved enough to marry, the curlers in her hair gone askew in such a comical way I almost laughed.

When I did finally begin to take action, it was only to press my fingers to her neck, searching for any sign of movement beneath the skin. There was none, though she was still as warm as the last time I had deigned to touch her. God, how long ago had that been? Weeks? Months?

It was only then the confusion over what had happened to my wife set in.

I know what you’re thinking. I had hit her, struck her hard enough to cause damage to her brain or something. But that was the first thing I checked for. My hands were clean, no signs of blood or even redness from a strike. You would think, if I had hit her hard enough to kill her, I’d at least see some reddening on my skin, right?

There was none, nor did any appear there for the few minutes I sat there next to Susan, a strange sense of discontentment within me.

I followed up by looking all over her, trying to find any sign of what happened to this woman I had grown to despise, but there was nothing to indicate what really occurred. I even looked for bullet holes, can you believe that? After all, things happen. A stray bullet from a drive by even a block away could have somehow passed through the walls of our shabby little house and taken her off of my hands. But no. Nothing like that. Her robe was intact and, besides, I would have heard such a shot. Right?

The house had grown quiet. Even the television set, feet away and playing the soccer game, seemed hushed, the crowd dimmed and mournful.

What could I do? What should I do? Those thoughts circled around, over and over.

I couldn’t call an ambulance. What good would that do? She was already dead and gone, the body growing colder as I sat next to it. It would only serve to be a waste of time for them to come.

I certainly couldn’t call the cops. They would, of course, assume I had done something to her. The last thing I needed was for her to have some ironic last victory over me and have me spend the rest of my life in jail just because she couldn’t be bothered to die in a hospital or something.

I wouldn’t let her do that. Not when I had freedom so close to my grasp.

Really, there was only one thing I could do, and, though I didn’t want to have to spend my whole night cleaning up her mess, it would have to be done.

We are lucky enough to have one of the bigger back yards in our neighborhood, a matter of pride in this run-down hellhole we called home. Big enough, even, to have a small shed where I kept the lawn mower and some tools.

I went to the kitchen and grabbed some trash bags, thankful that at least she had decided to start getting the big, black kind. Thick, but they always seemed to be on sale. I grabbed three of them at first, but by the time I was done wrapping her body in them, strapping them together with duct tape and a handful of zip-ties, I needed another three. I had to make sure, after all, there was nothing of her showing when I put her in the ground.

Have you ever tried to dig a hole for a body? It’s hard work, I can tell you. It took me hours in the darkness, but the one advantage of living in a bad neighborhood is people mind their own business. If anyone did happen to glance out of their windows to see me in my back yard in the darkness, they would have simply closed the curtains and returned to what they were doing. No one wants to get involved and, after all, if there wasn’t something illegal going on every night around here, it was an off-night.

They didn’t even take holidays off.

By the time I finally tamped down the last of the dirt over her body, I was overheated, sweating like a pig in summer, and bone-weary.

But, you know, that shower afterward was, perhaps, the most glorious one I had ever taken. The dust and grime fell away in swaths, and I imagined it was also my hatred for Susan and my desperate desire to be away from her that came off with it, too.

I didn’t give her any final words. I didn’t feel any were necessary. We had already spoken all we needed to say in the years we were together. No, all that remained between us was the deep craving to be done with one another, and it was simply a matter of her choosing to be the one to bow out first.

That’s okay with me. I still have a lot of life left in me to do whatever I want. It’d be nice to finally quit Thomas Preston Office Supplies and Manufacturing, to maybe throw a bag of shit on the desk and flip every single one of those sycophants off before walking out with a smile on my face.

I could get a job anywhere, do anything, really. Whatever my newfound freedom decided to carry me into was fine with me.

As long as I kept the house. That’s important.

Not just because of the body in the yard, of course. Can’t have some poor kid having fun in the backyard with a shovel and pail and run across a decaying finger or something.

No, though that is one of the best reasons for staying, I have one better.

I’m going to plant a nice, big rose bush above her body and make sure it gets the best of everything to grow. The thought of the blood red roses feeding on what remained of Susan would be the best twist of a knife I could give her.

I’ll have to go to the nursery tomorrow and talk to them about how to make them the best they can be.

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The post The Red – Free Short Story – AUDIO DRAMATIZATION appeared first on Original Worlds.

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Published on September 02, 2020 23:59

The Red – Free Short Story