Talespinning

Word Count:  467

It was your birthday present to yourself. You’d saved up in a special account just in case you were still single when you turned thirty. It isn’t right, you know this; it isn’t the way it should be but men would always be men and flat-chested women don’t make the cut where physical attraction is the only way you can get a man to sit down and discover your mind. It’s unfair. It’s shallow. But it’s the one thing that never really changed.

All the years you’ve suffered low self-esteem. All the teenage frustration as the other girls grew and you didn’t. The prom where you alone didn’t wear strapless. That fancy pushup bra your mother let you buy that threatened to crawl up to your neck. When handfuls of tissues were stuffed in your bra. The humiliation when a boy tried to feel you up and you accepted the label of “prude” rather than be found out. The worst, the very worst: when the tissues shifted around and peeked out the short sleeve of your dress.

So you took a couple weeks off and called it “vacation.” You went to the best plastic surgeon you could afford. You didn’t ask for recommendations; all your girlfriends were Italian. Or Jewish. Or African-American and none of them shared your particular flaw. You chose a size 36B finished product, which doesn’t sound like a lot but for you was a very huge jump. You closed your eyes, fell asleep under anesthesia, dreaming of Marilyn Monroe, Pamela Anderson, and yes, Dolly Parton herself.

Now you can stand naked in front of a mirror. Now you can walk normally into a room. Now you feel you can take on the world! You buy that low, low cut little black dress. You go to the cocktail party feeling like a vixen, a goddess, sexy as hell and the men respond like you’ve dreamed. They hang around long enough to talk–really talk! You have choices. It’s crowded tonight and you, for once, have the upper hand so you mingle. But as you ease through the groups with your gimlet in hand, something feels terribly wrong.

You twitch, you sneak a peak in a mirror. You gasp as it becomes all too clear. Your left boob has slid down to your waistline. As you move, it drops beyond to your hip. With your gimlet held close to your chest like the pledge of allegiance, you frantically head for the ladies room in a stiff gaited slither. But it’s moving, it’s sliding, you feel it and just as you’re halfway there, it slips down your leg, trapped in a big bulbous 36B bump by your little black satin sandal.

You look down. You look up. You look down. And everyone stares.

Word Count:  507

His preferred method was strangulation. His favorite means was a pair of their own silk panties. He liked lacy, black or petal peach, and he really didn’t care for thongs.

He liked to take them first to a fine restaurant. He tended towards Italian or French. The wine was always exquisite, made their eyes soft and liquid, made them lean their bodies into the table revealing decolletage. Or leaning back in their chair, which to him indicated a sense of comfort, of trust.

Brunettes were all he would take out to dinner, later murdering them in their own apartment or house when invited in for coffee, an aperitif, inevitably, sex. He loved big velvet eyes that grew even larger in confusion and fear. Pink pouty lips that opened like a guppy puffing for air. Her hair would be longish, falling like silk from her head as he slowly garroted her lovely throat tighter and tighter until that expression of innocence and acceptance came over her face. Stayed there as he carefully arranged her limbs in a soft sexual pose. He’d linger a while, sometimes smoothing the cool silk of her panties against his cheek. He always took them with him before he turned off the lights, locked the door, and sadly left.

Not that he felt remorse, but rather a deep melancholia for the necessity of what he did and the subsequent loss of perhaps another evening of good food and wine, making love to them one more time. No, he didn’t consider what he did as immoral, or even unusual. He would tell you that he’d learned a long time ago that he was not a rare abnormality of mankind, but that he was one of very few brave enough to act on their impulses. He could say that he’d met hundreds, maybe more, murderous souls in his lifetime. He could look into your eyes and see how well you controlled it, how much you were able to accept of your natural instinct and how much still danced in a frenzy of conflict inside.

She invited him in and opened a bottle of wine. They had good conversation, were amused and inspired by much the same things. He made love to her slowly, appreciating how her skin glowed bluish-white in the moonlight, how her lips circled her moans. When he reached for her panties he’d set under her pillow, it was with a slight hesitation. But he knew that he couldn’t, couldn’t let her go.

She never made even the slightest of sounds. Her legs were still warmly wrapped around him to hold him inside. Her lips were just the slightest bit open, almost curved into a smile. Her eyes leveled at his were fearless. He tightened the thin rope of silk on her neck, stared into the deep recesses of her eyes.

And he knew, just a scant instant before he felt the knife plunge up through his ribs and into his heart; knew, that he’d finally wined, dined, and bedded his own kind.

Word Count:  358

Somewhere in the darker rooms of the mind are stored bad memories fed by years of fear. With time they grow up and scratch at their gray-mattered walls. The psychiatrist was helping me, bit by bit, to open up each door and peek inside. He would be there, he assured me, to help me face them. To stare them down and prove myself strong enough to squash them underfoot.

Each session made me feel a little better. Each ghost came up and, terrified, I looked it in the eye. The psychiatrist was by my side to give me confidence, to help win the battles that I’d hidden deep inside. Each confrontation left me exhausted. Yet each seemed to let loose a demon that shriveled and died in the light. He’d talk me through it, hold my hand, stand ground together. I felt I could eventually overcome them all with his help.

He taught me exercises to do when the nightmares threatened or thoughts wandered in in the midst of day. Taking control. Peeking in and slamming the door. He said it would help, that I’d be stronger still if I knew what I was facing. That half the fear was of the unknown. To familiarize myself with the enemy and thus prepared, win the war. He said it was important to do this. That he might not always be there when they came.

I tried it tonight as I awoke in a cold perspiration, my breath in short gasps. In the dark I keep my eyes closed, try to remember the evil I’d brought to the surface. There it is, a wisp of a grin, fingers over my mouth, a whisper of warning in my ear and the weight of a body that takes my breath away.

Clearer, clearer in memory, almost getting the face. I open the door a tiny bit more as the doctor had told me and with a rush, all the demons fly out! In a circle around and above me, they laugh like hyenas, shrieking in devilish delight. And I can’t, just can’t, with every shred of my will, shut the door.

Word Count: 459

“Not now, Timmy, I’m making dinner. Go ask your father.”

“Let me just sit and relax a minute, will you, son? I’ve had a hard day.”

“Come on…please? Pleasepleaseplease? You guys are always too busy to play with me.”

His mother hollered out from the kitchen. “All right. We’ll play Hide-n-Seek. Go hide and dad and I will come find you. Won’t we, Norman…”

“Yeah, you go hide. Sweetheart, you count,” said his dad, and set his drink down and opened the newspaper.

“One. Two. Three,” she counted out slowly and loud. She counted up to two hundred.

“Dinner’s ready,” she told Norman. He got up and sat down at the table. “Here we come, ready or not,” he yelled out.

“He’s eaten?”

“Mac and cheese,” she said with a smile.

He helped her clear the table and load the dishes. They sat down to watch some TV.

“Oops!” she said, “We forgot to find Timmy.” Norman went upstairs, came down, and said, “I believe he’s ‘hiding” in bed.” They both grinned and settled back into the sofa. At bedtime, they both blew a kiss into his room.

But Timmy didn’t come down in the morning and they both were a bit concerned about that. “Don’t worry, I’ll find him,” she told him. “Call me later from work.”

She spent most of the day searching. She even looked in the attic and down in that dark cellar room. When he called she told her husband that maybe he could come home early and look too.

They called the police who suggested he must have gone outside and been kidnapped. After a year they gave up all hope. They missed their son terribly, felt a bit guilty too, but with time the heartache eased up and they nearly forgot him with the arrival of two more little boys.

“Let’s play Hide-n-Seek! Come find me!” Charlie the older one said and the little one nodded in glee.

“You go hide then,” said his mother, “and Daddy and Joey and I will come find you.” She turned off the stove and started counting loudly to ten. Her husband folded the paper and took the little one’s hand.

After five minutes they started to get worried. After seven, really anxious. At nine minutes missing they started quite tearing the house apart.

“I know where Charlie went,” announced Joey. “He’s in the cupboard upstairs in the hall.”

“Why Joey, that’s cheating,” his father said, but they all headed upstairs in a group.

They opened the door and with a big sigh, his mom laughed and said, “We found you!”

And as Charlie crawled out, they looked deeper inside and though a bit of a shock, they found Timmy too.

Word Count:  385

He was hot and cranky in his Mr. Peanut costume and he still had one more gig to go. St. Lawrence’s school up in Rochester. It was already 2:30 p.m. when he got there a half hour late.

He hated kids. Especially the five and six year-olds who wanted to touch him and see if he was real. Hung on him like monkeys. Sticky hands and a hundred questions and a teacher who stood in the back of the room just relieved to have someone else take over.

Sometimes they snuck out for a cigarette; this one did, cranky herself because he was late and the kids were in chaos, as always, that last part of the school day.

He spotted the little girl immediately. He could tell because she alone stayed in her seat, a small frown on her face, looking about ready to cry.

He went on with his spiel with an edge to his voice as two little brats kicked at his shins. He was ready to whack them away when the teacher popped her head in. She called their names sharply, told them to behave, then promptly shut the door back again.

Sweat streamed down his sides in the heat of the big peanut costume. His hair matted inside the big peanut head. He left out huge parts of his memorized tale of the peanut from field to the grocery store. One of the brats cautiously kicked at his calf.

“Bet you love peanut butter,” he said to the one quiet kid in the class, who sat controlling her tears.

She nodded. “I can’t have it,” she said, and a tear slipped from between her long lashes.

“Whaddya mean?” he asked in a near-gentle voice.

“Not supposed to,” she said and hiccuped from holding it in.

“Everybody eats peanuts,” he said, and shelled one especially for her. The room stilled and grew silent. The kids circled around. “Go ahead,” he said, “peanuts are good for you!”

“That’s it today, kiddies!” he said and he nodded to the teacher as he opened the door and walked swiftly out.

He heard the scream, the kids joining in, and imagined the little girl turning blue as her throat closed and her long-lashed eyes opened wide as if to gulp air.

Word Count:  344

“Did you kill it?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he replied.

She meant the spider; he meant the fly. He knew that, of course, but said nothing.

“I swear,” she said, climbing down off the chair in the kitchen (though the spider was found in the den), “the spiders here are incredibly large. And each one seems to get bigger than the last one I saw.”

“They’re no bigger here than anywhere else,” he said, keeping the annoyance out of his voice as much as he was able to manage. “You’re still a million times bigger.” He watched her clamber down to the floor. Swore he felt the weight of her shake the room. Maybe two million times bigger now, he thought.

She had been so pretty, tiny and dainty when they married twenty-seven years ago. When he took delight in being her knight and killer of bugs. When she willingly packed up the house and followed him anywhere his transient jobs took him. When everything seemed an adventure. But the years left behind them now appeared to find their way to her backside.

“One of these days you’ll come through the door and find me caught up in a web that hangs over the house,” she said.

Please, God, he thought. Though he didn’t believe any web could be woven strong enough to hold her.

The next evening she stood on the porch as he pulled in the driveway. She was crying and waving a dishtowel over her head. As he came up the sidewalk he knew without understanding her sputtering by the way that she hopped around shrieking.

“Where?” he asked.

“Bathroom,” she cried, “under the sink! Kill it!” and she held onto the porch rail as the sobs rocked her body and threatened to buckle her knees.

He went room to room until he found one. Held it by its wings carefully and headed to the small bath.

“Simon?” he whispered, “Where are you?” And, “Ah there you are,” when he spotted him and placed the dead fly on the floor.

Word Count: 313

It was at the cabin she’d taken over after her father had died where they had their worst argument yet.

“Why are they called Endless Mountains,” he said, “when there’s obviously a beginning and end. Don’t even stretch across a couple of states. It’s all here in podunk Pennsylvania.”

“I don’t know why. But that’s the name,” she said.

“Real creative, these folks in the outback.”

She grit her teeth. This vacation was supposed to bring them some peace. Some common ground. He’d never been up here. As long as they’d been married, it was impossible to have him and her family in the same town. The cabin for even a weekend would have been fatal to somebody, surely.

“I’m going out for a walk,” he said after breakfast.

“Wait, I’ll come with you,” she said.

“I’m just going down to that lake we passed somewhere on the way here.”

“But that’s a mile or more away,” she said. “It’s easy to get lost, even the road forks off in some places. If you wait while I find my boots I’ll come along.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “The lake isn’t that far by a long shot.” He was a city boy, used to measuring distance by blocks. He just wanted to get away from her and the three rooms of the cabin. He just wanted to get away.

She held her breath to keep in what she was ready to say. She let it out slowly. “Follow the ridge,” she said.

“Yeah, right. Like you know your way around here.”

And they argued again about the name, “Endless Mountains.” She finally gave up and said he was right. He left with a smugness she hated and let him go out the door, knowing he might walk from one end of the state to another but he’d never, ever, find his way back.

Word Count:  310

They told her he was bad but of course, she didn’t believe them. Young girls believe in the power of love, nothing more.

It’s new to them, you see, to have someone who tells you that you are beautiful, who claims that no one before you filled up his life. At that age of first love, a mother’s low opinion of anything, from fashion to boyfriends, is held as an emblem of its opposite. A father, if interested at all, is simply protecting his little girl from the wolves.

She was fifteen and a virgin. He was seventeen and riddled with anger. He had a record for drinking and stealing a car. The small thefts went unrecorded since he was also a clever dude and never got caught. He rolled her first joint, poured her first whiskey, seduced her into her first sex. In short, he was her savior from normal, though normal was what she thought she wanted to be.

She called her mother one night and said they had run away to get married. Her mother cried and begged. Her father threatened to find them and kill him. The dude only laughed when she told him.

Long months went by, a year, almost two. Then the phone call her mother had prayed for. Can she come home? Yes, of course, all is forgiven. She came back the very next day.

There was something different about her. They didn’t ask and she didn’t offer. They knew she’d been through things no parents should know of their children. She got into trouble; drugs, they suspected. And stealing; from them and from others in town. Things that were missing they suspected she’d sold. One day they found their savings all gone.

She only laughed when they asked her. And the very next day he rolled in and they left town again.

Word Count:  372

The worst horror of all is not in that instant when you recognize the possibility, nor in the aftermath of the event. It is rather in the slow motion happening, the thousand and one frames that make up the film. Each one building one upon another, each one etched into the mind as it occurs. A real and true horror is a compilation of images that flicker like lightning on the brain.

It starts with the concept, the known dangers. Your toddler stops breathing at night. Or first steps that slip on the sidewalk. Or running out into the street. Each image expands out to the next, like still animation, flipped through with fingers. Each horror lived each time he’s out of your sight until you see him again, safe and whole.

Like that instant you realize he’s slipped out of your hand at the mall. Each moment rises in drama, each possibility rolls out in a story that ends with him taken by strangers, crushed in a door, lost in the crowd and screaming your name. As the seconds click by you think you will burst with the fear, with the heartache, until you spot him ten feet away and the story’s forgotten until next time to happen again.

You think you’re prepared for your teenager’s first solo drive of your car. You know what’s out there, the close calls, the idiot drivers texting, switching lanes, running red lights. You know how many times it’s happened, how many times you’ve escaped. You imagine him down at the end of the street, about to turn onto Main. The traffic, the pulling out into the flow. The hesitation, the experience that he doesn’t have. You imagine the driver intent on not letting him out, or not even seeing him there. The guy in a hurry. The one that t-bones him, blending his body into the seat, mashing his bones into red dust. You see his face screaming, his eyes wide as it happens too fast for him to react.

And this time the movie is full length-longer. A half-hour, an hour past the curfew, till you hear the car in the driveway. Even after the policeman knocks on your door.