BOBBY'S FIEND

Contributor: MARK SLADE

- -
Bobby saw the fiend peering out from behind the large magnolia tree. This happened on the playground at school. The fiend was tall, very thin with large, black bulging eyes and blood red lips. The fiend was staring at Bobby, digging its long black fingernails into the skin of the magnolia tree. Sap bled. The white gooey liquid ran down the fiend's spotty hand.

The night before the fiend had stood at the foot of Bobby's bed and watched him sleep. Bobby just covered his head and prayed the fiend wouldn't hurt him. It's safe to say Bobby didn't sleep much that night.

Earlier in the day, while standing in line for lunch, the fiend tripped Monica Brant. She fell hard on the lunch room floor, breaking her nose. Everyone standing in that line had to go the principle's office and explain what they saw. No one saw anything except for Bobby. He saw the fiend trip Monica and laugh a shrilly as Monica lay on the floor in a puddle of blood, wailing.

But that's not what Bobby told the principle.

He reiterated what the other children said.

Later, at the drug store, the fiend followed Bobby inside. Bobby made his way to the comic books for the latest issue of Detective comics. He looked around the corner and saw the fiend take four Hershey's candy bars and place them in the left pocket of his dingy jeans.

The fiend pointed at Bobby and laughed.

Bobby went to the counter to pay for his comic book, when the owner, Mr. Ranse, stopped him. He demanded Bobby empty his pockets in front of everyone in the drug store. Bobby placed a comb, chewing gum, a note from Linda Thomas (saying she had a crush on him), and ten dollars and fifty-two cents on the counter. Then, out of his left back pocket were four melted unopened bars of Hershey's chocolate.

Bobby hung his head as Mr. Ranse took the newest issue of Detective comics from him and escorted Bobby out of his store.

Bobby ran all the way home in tears. He ran upstairs past his mother and slammed his bedroom door. He flung himself on his bed and bawled non stop for an hour until he fell asleep.

His mother knocked on bobby's door. She asked if he was all right. He didn't answer.

She shrugged, went into the bathroom.

Looking into the mirror, Bobby's mother laughed shrilly, her large bulging black eyes danced with delight. Licking her blood red lips, she dragged her long black fingernails across the bathroom mirror.


- - -
I HAVE BEEN IN BURIAL DAY, BLOOD MOON RISING, THE RUSTY NAIL, AND WORDHAUS MAGAZINE.
I LIVE IN WILLIAMSBURG, VA WITH MY WIFE AND DAUGHTER.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

A Refreshing Beverage

Contributor: C.J. Johnson

- -
Darren came home from work, anticipating, as he had all day, a cool, refreshing can of beer. Entering the kitchen, he whistled merrily as he opened the fridge.
There were 8 cans remaining from the 12 pack he'd bought the day earlier; he intended to finish them off tonight.
Scanning the few shelves inside the fridge, he stopped whistling and frowned.
Where the hell have my cans gone?
A note on the sideboard by the front door, left by his wife, informed him she had gone shopping and would be home roughly an hour after him.
So he couldn't ask her.
Where the hell had they gone?
He searched all the cupboards in the kitchen. He searched the large storage cupboard. He even looked in the freezer.
No cans.
He searched through the rooms of their one bedroom flat, one by one
No cans.
Lastly, he entered the bedroom.
He looked behind units and in drawers. He got down on one knee and looked under the bed.
No cans.
Pulling his wardrobe doors open, he sighed with joy and relief as he spotted his precious, and now warm, beer cans at the bottom of the wardrobe.
He carried them into the kitchen, frowning.
"Why'd the hell she put them in there?" he grumbled to himself.
An hour later, his wife arrived home with carrier bags full of shopping. He questioned her about his cans in the wardrobe the moment she entered the front door.
"So you found them okay then?" his wife said.
"I had to search high and low for ages. Why the hell did you put them in there?"
"Spot them easily when you opened the wardrobe doors, did you?"
"Yes," Darren replied haughtily. "I'm not blind."
His wife smiled at him. "Well you just remember that the next time you wake me up at quarter to six in the morning telling me you can't find your shirt for work when it's ironed and hanging right in front of your face."


- - -
My horror novel entitled Female of the Species is available to download now from Barbarian Books. Check out my Author page on Facebook for information on this and further novels.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Eye Candy

Contributor: Will Lawrence

- -
He was reminded of a moment in the fifth grade when, during lunch, while lonely and eating by himself, two girls took a seat across from him and bluntly questioned: “Why are you so ugly?”

Many of his current insecurities could be traced back to this instance, and over time he came to accept that he was not attractive; not a cover model or a sex symbol; not “eye candy.” Over time, he came to settle on the definition of himself as being a “face for radio, and voice for blogging.”

His natural response to those girls, so many, many years ago, remained a distant cavernous echo in his thoughts: “Why are you?”


- - -
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

It’s All Relative

Contributor: Marian Brooks

- -
Laura would rather sit through Chain Saw Massacre 3 D than spend an evening with Ted’s parents.

They’re creepy. His mother, Gertrude, seeks her reflection everywhere, even in puddles after a rainfall, totally unaware that she might be standing in a slow current of shit. She fairly oils her way across the floor as she approaches. Laura can imagine her mother-in-law with a silver cigarette holder between her fingers if only she smoked.

Ted’s Dad, Phillip, is a giant of a man at 6’6” with a voice to match. No one ever argues with Phillip. When he frowns, his eyebrows alone could sweep you up and into the dumpster behind the garden. To his credit, he is a world champion flosser. He has to bend his way through doorways. If only he didn’t bend once in a while.

Now they have come to spend the weekend with Ted and Laura and their teen-aged boys, Justin and Lewis. Laura disappeared into the kitchen as soon as she could, stirring plenty of rage into the soup. She calculated the number of hours until their departure – fifty-seven frigging hours. Of course, some of the time would be spent sleeping. Subtract sixteen hours and you have forty-one.

They last visited in May for Justin’s eleventh birthday. Gertrude complained that there weren’t nearly enough balloons and that the cake was a little stale. They gave Justin a golf umbrella. Justin does not play golf. Phillip slept through the whole affair.

The afternoon was spent catching up with who had died and whose children were, or should be, checking into rehab. The Wilson’s daughter was pregnant by that long-haired musician, Doug and poor Uncle Charlie, who once moved like a greyhound, needed a new hip.

Dinner and clean up would consume two hours leaving thirty-nine and so on and so on. Lincoln was playing at a local movie theater. It was over two hours long. “We’re getting somewhere,” Laura thought. Both of the kids wanted to see Skyfall and Ted, Silver Linings Play Book. Gertrude was on her way to a headache and so was Laura. At least they had that in common. They compromised and went to see The Life of Pi.

By the time they woke up the next morning, there were at least twenty four hours to go. Ted made his special blueberry pancakes. Gertrude was proud of him although she thought the coffee was too strong and the orange juice, too acidic. She asked her daughter-in-law what kind of fabric softener she used. “The sheets were like sandpaper,” she said. Laura snapped like a towel on the line in a high wind. She threw her utensils into the dishwasher without even separating them and marched out of the room.

Fortunately, Ted and Laura lived a mile away from one of the largest malls in America. Much time and money could be spent there. Phillip offered to stay home with the dogs. Besides he was convinced that there was a code embedded in the daily crossword puzzle and that he was going to discover it. Everyone else piled into the SUV. The silence was deafening. The boys headed straight for Model’s Sporting Goods to purchase Eagles hats. They put them on backwards and inside out and stood in line for over an hour at the Apple Store. They congregated at Friday’s and were about to head home. Gertrude insisted that she needed to pick up a rain coat at Nordstrom’s and an unmentionable item at Victoria’s Secret. She went in alone while Ted, Laura and the boys waited outside, mouths open.

Shortly after they arrived home, Ted’s parents announced that they were departing way ahead of schedule. All were surprised but not disappointed.

Ted, formerly a gymnast, hadn’t done a cartwheel for ten years. When his parents left, he performed two of them perfectly across the living room floor.


- - -
Recently retired, Marian Brooks has just begun to write some short fiction. Her work has appeared in Thick Jam, Curly Red Stories, One Million Stories, Short Humour, and others. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Tuesday Evening

Contributor: Mike Putnam

- -
We watched from our balcony as the hundreds of helicopters hovering over the lake suddenly began moving south. It took only minutes for them to be out of sight, along with the massive dome carried underneath. They were headed for what once had been Gary, Indiana, but in less than a year would be renamed New Chicago, Illinois.

Shelly had our floor plan brought up on the tablet and was decorating it using an application she had downloaded. At one point she had exclaimed, “Ohmigod you can walk around.”

I took a sip from the sweating bottle next to me, unable to believe something seemingly made of tough glass could withstand the effects of radiation and an indirect nuke impact. At the same time, it filtered air naturally through its walls. Science, I concluded.

“Wanna see our new apartment?”

“Won't I see the real one in six months?”

She looked up for the first time since the helicopters had disappeared. “Try again. Want to see our new apartment?”

“I would love to.”

She handed me the tablet and went to lean against the railing where she watched the lake as the sun continued its descent, hidden somewhere behind us. “Just tap around to walk, hold down and swivel to turn.”

“I appreciate that you've kept it all in the shopping cart.”

“Well it is a team decision.”

“Indeed it is, and you started out with an empty apartment?”

“I even picked the knocker on the door. Totally customizable.”

“Killer shower curtain, I can't believe you found it.”

“They had seven hundred and fifty to choose from, it was bound to be one of them.”

“I approve, bedroom looks really nic- wait. What? They let you pick out a sex room?”

“That was a quarter of the price tag. By the way, everything this company sells is American made: leathers, steel, plastics, everything.”

“Of course it is.”

“They've built their business on it, really popular with the military families.”

“Best factory job you could find, I'd say. Thank you, my love, that was a wonderful tour.”


- - -
Mike Putnam is an American writer currently living in Cleveland, Ohio. He has previously been published in Linguistic Erosion and Daily Love and considers himself a curious spirit.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Never rely on a Dust Bunny

Contributor: Michael W. Clark, Ph.D

- -
The plastic bag reminded him of something. Something in his past. The past wasn’t too far away considering his short life. But it was when he was three or four. When he was small and spherical of body. At least, that’s the way he remembered it. He used to play this game. He was a late walker too, so he spent a lot of time on the floor, a lot of the time on the hard, dusty wood floor. His mom wasn’t too interested in household chores so the floor was dusty, very dusty. “Dust Bunnies” one time his father called them. One of the times his father was home and actually played with him. One time that he remembered. So the game was called Dust Bunny. Dust bunnies were his only playmates, mostly. So he would imagine himself as a Dusty Bunny, blowing in the faint breeze. Even a foot step had the Dusty Bunnies scampering away in all directions. “Look mother! I am a Dusty Bunny!” He would shout up from the floor where he was all curled up in a ball, just the way a Dust Bunny should be; no legs, not arms, and no head. “I’m a Dust Bunny! Clean me up!” He would giggle. For some reason Dust Bunny simply made his mother angry. Not angry, mad. “I’ll clean you up!” She would shout, get her broom and then spank him with it. The other Dust Bunnies were not supportive of him at all. They all ran for their lives in all direction from the menace of the broom. He now thinks, when the world goes bad on him, “Well, you can’t count on a dust bunny.” Simply to remind himself of the way the world really is. Why the plastic bag that he gently lowered the severed hand into, reminded him of “Dust Bunny,” he really didn’t understand. Still, he reminded himself by saying out loud, “Never rely on a Dust Bunny.”


- - -
I am a biologist and writer with seven short stories published. Most recently stories have been in Lost Souls, Surprising Stories, Trembles, and will be in the 2013 Morpheus Tales.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Night Ride

Contributor: Sean Crose

- -
After dropping Cory off at Logan airport for the long flight back to Europe, Ben, Lance and I began our trek back to Springfield. It was great taking a long drive through the summer night. The Mass Pike wasn't clogged up and we laughed and smoked cigarettes as we cruised through the state. By the time we stopped at a Burger King off the highway somewhere outside of Worcester I knew it would be a night I wouldn't soon forget.
Not that anything special had happened – at least not at that point. It was simply the rush of being young, the rush of being out on a minor adventure that seemed like a major adventure; laughing, smoking and swallowing life in large gulp-fulls. It's great being young like that, when life seems endless, cigarettes seem harmless and everything has a feeling of newness and mystery about it.
Of course, being who we were, we missed the exit outside of Springfield and ended up riding clear up to Pittsfield. Ben, who was driving, thought he knew a way to get us back by taking the back roads down through Westfield.
On and on we rode. On and on we talked. On and on we laughed. It was a great night. Life seemed endless. The cigarettes we smoked seemed harmless. Everything had a feeling of newness and mystery about it.
After a while, as we drove through what I assumed was Westfield, we became aware of how late it was. We had just gotten through talking about Ben's ex, Trish, who lived in town, when we realized the night would eventually come to a close, the journey would eventually come to an end and life would move on.
“Unless,” Lance suggested slyly, “we keep on driving.”
At first we thought he was crazy, but, as we continued to float through the neighborhoods and deserted roads of Western Massachusetts, Ben and I began to see the sense of his words. Life was endless. Cigarettes were harmless. Everything would always have a feeling of newness and mystery about it.
“Should we?” Ben eventually asked.
After a moment Lance and I agreed we should.
Ben took a turn, where, exactly, I don't know, and pressed hard on the gas. Off we rode; off, off, off into the night. It would be years before I finally returned.
The others are still out there somewhere.


- - -
My name's Sean Crose. Besides Linguistic Erosion, my work has appeared in such publications as Breakwater, 6 Tales Magazine, Fiction 365, and Crack the Spine. I live in Connecticut with my wife Jen, and Cody, the world's greatest cat.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

FORWARD MOTION

Contributor: Gary Clifton

- -
Look up "no good scumbag" in Webster's and John Ralph Dupree's photo would appear. He laid around his aunt Mildred's house in south San Antonio, swilling sweet apple wine and sleeping most of the day. The neighbor's Basset Hound barked long and often, disturbing John Ralph's slumber. Not the sharpest of minds, he bragged around the neighborhood he was "gonna shoot the dog and blow hell out of the neighbor's house." He did both - dog and neighbor ended up deader than good manners.
The cops sent out Chris Alvarez, eight years in Homicide and Polly Klevis, in the murder squad two months. Alvarez was big, tough, and thought himself to be quite an amateur comedian. Polly, naturally anxious to prove herself in a male dominated business, had been a quarter-miler at Baylor and could outrun anybody in San Antonio.
Witnesses repeated dimwit John Ralph's threats and the two cops had a warrant for his arrest in three hours. Aunt Mildred said he'd fled to his father's place In Louisiana. The next morning, Alvarez and Polly de-planed in Baton Rouge and were humming east along Interstate 12 in a rented Dodge.
"John Ralph's ol' Daddy is a country preacher with seventeen kids still at home, most not potty trained," the local sheriff declared.
They found the place, north of Lake Pontchartrain propped haphazardly on a third acre of ground grudgingly given up a foot or so by the surrounding swamp with the aid of a bulldozer and many big rocks. Alvarez asked Polly to scout the rear while he spoke with Daddy.
Polly's scream drifted for miles across the soggy bayou. She came on the Baylor run around the corner, eyes wide as silver dollars. Alvarez, pistol drawn, charged to the rescue. "It's the Loch Ness Monster!" Polly screamed before she skidded headlong into a mud-sink puddle.
Alvarez found Big Willie, neck-chained to a magnolia tree at swamp's edge. He was big and tough, too. Willie was surprisingly calm. He sat in placid splendor, munching one of Polly's shoes. "Drop it fella," Alvarez ordered.
"Burp," Big Willie replied, wistfully eyeing the second shoe, just out of chain-reach. Brown Bears are like that.
John Ralph did his bit for justice by dashing from a battered shed up by the house. "Polly!" Alvarez pointed. Minus shoes, muddy as the tar boy, she had John Ralph in a hundred paces. Alvarez lumbered up, cuffed the sobbing, pathetic little screw-up, surrounded by a regiment of smelly kids.
When they checked John Ralph into the Baton Rouge Parrish Jail for overnight holding, the officers on duty inspected Polly's muddy, bedraggled state and single shoe. She managed to hide partially behind Alvarez.
"My demented sister," Alvarez seized the stage. "They sent me down to grab John Ralph here, but I knew she was hiding around here somewhere. Give her shoes and she'll bolt sure as hell." The jailers, journeymen in a silent trade, nodded sympathetically. John Ralph went to the slammer wailing like a scalded dog.
Motel shopping, Alvarez drove Polly down Government Street. A red light stopped them beside a Baton Rouge squad-car, blue lights flashing. The uniformed officer stood, shaking a finger at slender young man. The scruffy kid sported a stringy mustache, with penitentiary tattoos on both forearms.
Suddenly, the kid broke and ran. Polly, already mad as hell, bailed out in full chase mode. Astounded, Alvarez followed in the Dodge. The officer, more astounded, followed Alvarez. Polly was gaining.
At the brightly lit Capitol Inn, the fugitive veered through the lobby, danced across the dining room, knocked over three tables, then plunged over a railing into the indoor pool. Polly followed. When Alvarez and the uniformed officer arrived, she had the man in a standard choke hold. "I got him, Officer," she said upward.
The cop inspected Alvarez's credentials. "I just told this mope if he wasn't off my beat in sixty seconds, I'd run him in," he studied the scene. "But what the hell, he's still here. Kid, you're under arrest." The officer handcuffed the crestfallen punk and winked professional courtesy to Alvarez. "We'll find a charge," his smile was good ol' boy subtle.
The Capitol Inn desk clerk whose name tag ID'd him as Norbert, had been in the john and missed the chase. He stood behind the counter, a paragon of professional motel-clerk-ism. Norbert leaned over to inspect Polly's dilapidated condition. "Hit by a bus?"
"My sister. She's a little off," Alvarez said soberly. "Taking her to the Institution tomorrow. Give her shoes and she'll run sure as Sunday."
Norbert's face was grim understanding. "We have insanity in the family too, Sir. It's too bad you can't just put them to sleep."
A policeman burst in, out of breath. "Where's the lady who just whupped the guy in the swimming pool?" he blurted.
"Rook, it's the jailhouse for you. Guy musta died," Alvarez grinned again.
"No, no," the cop, out of breath, continued. "That clown was wanted for eighteen rapes. Ma'am you're gonna get a medal."
"I don't understand." said Norbert.
Polly drew her pistol. "Alvarez, you overgrown chunk of not funny monkey shit, I'm gonna shoot off your 'nads, if you have any. That oughta get a laugh."
"Oh my," Norbert exclaimed.
"Me, too, Norbert," Alvarez echoed.


- - -
Gary Clifton, forty years a cop has short fiction picecs published or pending with over sixty online sites. Now retired, he has an M.S. from Abilene Christian University
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

Summer in the City

Contributor: Brandi Gaspard

- -
We were both dealing with a lot of things that summer.

There were the physical things, like:

1) how your missing left hand made you hide in long sleeves, even though they stuck to your skin so heavily in this southern heat.
This wasn’t too much of an issue, though, because we spent most of our time sleeping, or watching your collection of tapes.
The blinds were always closed.

2) how my own hand lacked any sense of tact, even with the best intentions in mind.
The first time we shared sleep, I could tell that you were uncomfortable by the way you forced your breathing to be still, and quiet, and so I traced my fingers down your arm to make you feel better. But it was late, and dark, and I moved too close to what we didn’t want to acknowledge as gone, and I felt your chest sink. So I asked if we should switch sides.
 I would sleep closest to the wall that summer.

3) how after that night, you always walked right by my left side.
I couldn’t bring myself to ask what happened to make you feel that way. Or what happened that left you without a hand in the first place.
All I knew was what I could see—your left side always strived for the shadows.

4) how we both got to the point where, if we could drag ourselves out of bed, neither of us would leave without sunglasses.
Yours were a veil to avoid accidental eye contact with others. They saved you from becoming a public display of biological abnormality, and they saved others from the sympathy they might feel obliged to give if the long sleeves and slouched posture weren’t enough to distract from the absent.
Mine were there to uphold the idea that there was something worth obscuring behind those dark lenses, when really, all I could say about myself is that I couldn’t bear the sun.

5) how we had to find ways to keep this overbearing sun and the city’s decaying buildings out of view from our apartment windows.
The unavoidable daylight illuminated the city’s failures and their reflections still creeped through the cracks, no matter how hard we pulled on the cords of the blinds.
Downtown kept decayed buildings as keepsakes of what could have been, but never was.
These rotting mementos and trash-lined streets were flaunted by the city to give the illusion of big city living at a discounted price.
Sometimes, the city would sense that people were catching on to this construction, so they’d make improvements to keep the disillusion at bay.
Last year, they paved the streets with new, antiquated cobblestone, but they tried too hard, and so the roads became too rough to pass.
They installed giant signs with flashing letters that signal: it will not be easy.
We did what we could to hide from this glare of orange, along with the glare of the sun and the surrounding buildings, with layered sheets nailed above the window frames and a cool climate we could keep through adjustments of the thermostat.
And then there were things that couldn’t be cured with dark shades or cloths or the cold, such as:

1) how the city’s weight smothered us in a way much like gravity, always there, but only noticed in rare moments of consciousness, like when we would walk to the corner store to pick up cigarettes and sweet tea and the only other people we saw were the nine-to-five suits rushing to return from their lunch break and the vagabonds resting in the central plaza.

2) how we didn’t want to be conscious, to be reminded that we had nowhere else to go.
So we mostly spent our days inside of those blanket-pinned windows, filling ourselves with smoke and sleep to blur the movement of time and to blot out the city’s black hole ambiance.
There wasn’t much said in between exhales and yawns.

3) how we grew tired of nothing, and on those days we desired something, we’d wait until the sun lowered to leave our shrouded living behind.
It was at night when downtown seemed most alive.
Even less bodies wandered the streets in the absence of sunlight, but with the city’s upheld promise of hollow metropolis reveries, every building that remained lifeless by day was revived by the grace of glowing neon at the onset of darkness.
Their skeletal infrastructures were outlined in cool-tinted glows of blues and greens.
The warmer colors were reserved for the bridge, the only entrance and exit to the urban corrosion.
The florescence read: THE DARING NEW CITY.
We would walk to the center of the bridge and lie beneath the sign and stare until we could see the neon saying with eyes shut.
These nighttime walks to the bridge were the only time you’d let me stay at your left side. In the afterglow of this expired city, we didn’t need sheets keep the light out. Or dark shades to shield from the sun. Or long sleeves to cover what was missing. Or smoke to distort our dwindling time.

4) How some things are better left unsaid.


- - -
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati

NO SLEEP, NO DREAMS

Contributor: David Elliott

- -
Jacqueline could remember the moment of her birth. . .

Unlike every other member of the human race, she could remember being torn away from the womb, moving from darkness into blinding light; a recollection as vivid as it was horrific. She could recall her eyes adjusting to the new environment, seeing the woman bathed in blood, and having the immediate insight, despite being only a few minutes old, that she had suffered, that she had died giving her life, that she was her mother.

Other people, to Jacqueline’s surprise, seemed to have the luxury of permanent amnesia when it came to birth; a heavy veil drawn across their subconscious, shrouding the memories in darkness, preserving their sanity, perhaps, for the somewhat less traumatic life event of death. But not Jacqueline. Her memories were as sharp as the tools in her Father’s surgical kit; those fascinating tools that preserved life, but also brought death; tools that had kept hearts beating within the breasts of royalty, circulating blue blood throughout the regal veins, but were somehow unable to save her mother. Her poor, unfortunate, beautiful mother. . .

Sleep was no longer a part of Jacqueline’s life. Sleep brought dreams, and the dreams were disturbing. It was better to walk, better to wander through the dimly lit streets and try to outpace the memories, try not to remember the event she’d never be able to forget. Despite the crime, despite the sights, sounds, and smells she’d encounter during these hours, it was always better than the alternative. Nothing could be as terrifying as sleep. It was a thing of the past, a childish habit she’d had to overcome. She was constantly nauseous, hallucinating with alarming regularity, but that was nothing. It was a small price to pay, to keep the dreams away. Without the dreams, she would keep her sanity. Without the sleep, Jacqueline’s grip on reality would hold. If she kept on walking, everything would be fine.

She could even cope with the other women abroad at that time, impure women, sinful women, women who weren’t deserving of the gift of life, who had squandered that gift, made a mockery of it. But her mother had died. She’d died, while whores continued to live. Her beautiful mother, her body a mass of mutilations; a mother she’d never know, lying perfectly still, body frozen in a rigor of agony; her flesh cut away, her organs defiled, her belly ripped open so that Jacqueline might live. She was an angel, far above any of these earth bound demons.

And, as she walked she would hear her mother’s voice. Mummy would speak to her, call her by name. Not Jacqueline, of course. Mummy would call her the other name, the name she should have had, an appropriate name, according to her father, for the sex she should have been.

‘Jack.’ Mummy would whisper in her ear. ‘I love you, Jack.’

Yes, if she kept on walking everything would be fine. And, in its own way, Whitechapel could be quite beautiful at night.


- - -
David Elliott is a writer and musician, living in Cheshire, UK. His short fiction has appeared in Twisted Tongue, MicroHorror, Flashes in the Dark, Whispers of Wickedness, and Delivered.
Read more »
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • Sphinn
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Mixx
  • Google
  • Furl
  • Reddit
  • Spurl
  • StumbleUpon
  • Technorati


Help keep Linguistic Erosion alive! Visit our sponsors! :)- - -


Archive