Text-a-Scare: Doors

To: Rebecca

From: Unknown Number

Sent: 3:06am

Received: 3:07am

I’m right outside your door. Which door? I can’t tell you. For your sake, hope you don’t guess wrong. 

via

Author's Note: This week at Write on Edge we were assigned to "text a scare" in 160 characters or less. Hope you'll come check out the great scares this morning, just click the link below!

A Cage Without a Key

The fog is like a cage without a key. - Elizabeth Wurtzel

Fog sat heavy on the horizon, a cloak of condensation hiding the secrets of the city, of its inhabitants, of its past. The streets were empty, the air silent. An outsider might have thought that something was amiss, but in this city, in this time, the scene was commonplace, more normal than not.

Within one of the boarded up buildings lining the abandoned streets, a little girl sat quietly at a small desk. She carefully traced the outline of her hand on a yellowed sheet of paper with a stubby red crayon. Over and over again, she traced, methodically, almost hypnotically, until the sheet bore the indentation of her ministrations.

The adults around her paid her no mind, interested only in their own affairs, but she felt no loneliness, no sense of longing or need. She just kept tracing her hand.

The building she occupied somewhat resembled a home but was a mere shadow of its former purpose. Furniture was strewn meaningless around the room, lopsided, upside down. The desk that the girl sat at was the only item that seemed to still have any sense of import, a relic from a different time and place.

Across the room, one of the adults ran into an upended table, the resulting sound that resonated through the largely empty house startled the occupants. The little girl finally stopped her tracing, dead brown eyes lifting towards the source of the noise. A thought skipped through her empty mind, a fleeting piece of her humanity grasping at anything tangible.

Loud.

The woman who caused the commotion stared blankly at the table then grunted and shuffled away. But the little girl was mesmerized. Carefully, she put down the crayon, which was almost completely used up anyway, and rose from the desk.

She had grown used to focusing her broken mind on a single task, much like her tracing, so she managed to dedicate her energy to making her way across the room, motivated only by that single coherent thought.

Loud.

When she arrived at the table, she pushed at it with her hand.

Nothing.

She tried again, this time pushing harder. A squeak resulted as the edge of the table scraped across the hard-wood floors.

Noise.

A smile tried to work its way across the girl’s broken face. Her mouth twitched with the effort. Those nearest to her stopped to watch, forming a small and awkward audience around her and the table.

She lifted her leg a fraction and kicked the table with all her might. This time she re-created the sound that had initially startled them all. And this time she did smile.

Loud. Noise.

“Loud noise.” She said in a quiet voice that was rusty and hoarse from lack of use.

The adults moaned their agreement and went back to shuffling aimlessly.

But the little girl was awakened, as if from a dream. She remembered the day of the outbreak. The panic in the streets. The rush to quarantine the infected. She remembered being herded into the random house, being separated from her parents. The men in masks had shouted at her to “move it!” She had cried for her mother.

Once inside the house, there had been panic. Adults rushed around, yelling at each other, yelling at the men outside. The doors were locked, then immediately boarded up from the outside.

They were trapped.

And the little girl remembered that they had been trapped for a year or longer.

Reeling from the rush of memory and feeling, she looked down at her cold, gray hand and finally knew that she was dead.

Author's Note: This week we were to be inspired by one of two pictures for the Red Writing Hood prompt. I chose the picture below, which gave life to my zombie tale. New Orleans always sparks my imagination. :) This is the 600-word prologue of a longer piece. 

Skip Me Over

Single White Female Seeks No One. Because I don't need anyone. Least of all, do I need you, flipping through these ads, looking for a cheap one-night stand, or whatever it is you're looking for. I’ll tell you what you’re looking for: Not Me. Not Me cause I’m independent, bull-headed, opinionated, strong-willed, dramatic, hard-to-handle.Your worst nightmare.

I like cats and books about ghosts. And tables. I have the strangest affinity for tables. Take me to an antique store, and I'll find a table I must have. Guaranteed. It'll be my downfall. I'll go into debt buying tables and hoarding them. You see, I'm neurotic in some of the worst and the best ways.

I’m Not Easy. I’m selfish and self-absorbed, constantly looking for ways to make your life miserable, or that’s what you’d end up thinking, so skip me over. Don’t dial me up. Check out Britney three ads down instead. She likes to be used. She enjoys being bossed around and dinner at cheap Italian restaurants. She’ll be your doll, all dressed up and perfect, while I’m in jeans and a t-shirt, hair sticking out every which way, crooked teeth, no tan. Britney’s better for you anyway. Y’all match. You look good together. You make a handsome couple. She suits you. It’s true. Plus, she’s easy, and I’m not. I’m anything but. I will complicate your life to no end, but if you can handle me, if you can handle a little bit of crazy and a little bit of mean. If you can handle a complex girl, with a complex complexion (cause I do get zits, man), who’s anything but easy, then I’m worth it. I’m your girl.

But if not, don't waste my time or your's. Just skip me over.

Everyone else has.



This week's Red Writing Hood prompt had us writing personal ads for our characters. Click the button above to check out all the amazing responses. 

PS - I totally missed my one-year blogiversary this past week! So have some cake and thanks for sticking around to read my words and watch me grow. Much love!

The Madness of Love

Love that is not madness is not love. - Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Jane Farrell was in love. Those around her knew this to be true because of the uncharacteristic rosiness in her cheeks and the soft twinkle in her eyes. Plus, she unabashedly told everyone around her, whether they asked or not.

Family and friends were relieved at this blossoming of first love. Whispers of “old maid” and “spinster” had surrounded Jane for years, and now, it looked like that fate would not befall her after all.

The sullen and shy Jane Farrell was actually the object of some unwitting man’s affection. It was a miracle, but one that no one seemed to suspect or question.

Jane’s coworkers, who didn’t share her family’s easy affection for her, did not find the news of Jane’s relationship so easy to believe.

“What’s his name?” Suzy Callahan had asked casually when Jane first declared her undying love and affection for some mystery suitor.  

The bustling room full of telephone operators had suddenly fallen silent, as everyone anxiously awaited Jane’s answer.

Jane, gangly and coltish with legs to her neck and long, unkempt, rat-colored hair, had smiled wistfully, showing off a mouth full of crooked teeth. “Daniel.”

“Daniel what?” Suzy had grinned, knowing full well that she’d caught Jane in a lie.

But Jane did seem to know her lover’s last name, and it had fallen off her tongue as easily as her own. “Daniel Roberts.”

So the ladies had gone back to connecting their calls and eavesdropping on party lines.

But Suzy refused to let it go. She just couldn’t fathom how Jane Farrell had gone from a nervous and neurotic single woman with no prospects to a newly confident and cheerful other half of a couple in one day.

She continued to question Jane on her relationship with Daniel daily.

What’s he look like?

Where does he take you?

Where’s he from?

And Jane politely answered every question posed without hesitation: giddy and gay over her first love and thrilled that the popular Suzy Callahan had apparently taken an interest in her.

She happily detailed date after date and even began dressing better and wearing more and more rouge. Her long, stringy hair was washed on a daily basis, and the shadow of her former, awkward and plain self began to fade away.

But, as it goes with first love, Jane’s world came crashing down on a sunny Friday morning.

She rushed into work with tear-filled eyes, and Suzy and the other girls knew immediately that the dream relationship had ended.

Curious as always, Suzy was the first to approach the distraught Jane. “What happened, Jane?” The sweetness in her voice belied her true intentions: to fetch a juicy piece of gossip.

Jane looked up at her new friend and sobbed. “It’s over with Daniel!”

“Why, whatever for?”

But Jane was far too upset to answer, and she was excused for the day, leaving Suzy and the other girls to speculate like mad.

They didn’t have to speculate long.

News of Jane’s termination from the telephone company spread like wildfire. The cause? Well, that information was sketchy at best, but Suzy, ever the diligent investigator, discovered the answer herself after tracking down and visiting the infamous Daniel Roberts, who was recovering in a midtown hospital after being attacked by a stranger.

As he described his attacker, a mousy woman with gangly legs and rat-colored hair, Suzy smiled smugly.

She reported her news back to her coworkers with glee, and each time she ended her story of Jane Farrell’s tragic first love, she punctuated it with two words and a wicked grin: Love hurts.

Author's Note: This piece of fiction was written in response to Write on Edge's Red Writing Hood prompt: 

"Your assignment this week was to write a piece where you explore the first broken heart for your character – or for you."

A Bus to Nowhere

Sometimes I think of escaping on a Greyhound bus, just heading over to that station in town that doubles as a beer and lotto haven and demanding a ticket to anywhere. Wouldn’t that be romantic of me?

Of course, the clerk behind the dusty, crowded counter would ask, “Where to?” And I’d have to actually make a decision.

Decisions have never been my thing. Probably why I’m stuck in this dirty little town with nowhere to go and nothing to do. I should work on that, making a decision once in awhile.

Every now and then.

But the impulsiveness of my Greyhound dream is ruined by the uptight clerk just working for the weekend and that miniscule pay stub that’ll barely keep the hot water running.

Hot water is always the first to go, too. You figure you can’t live without electricity, but hot water is far from being vital, so you stop paying the gas bill first. Unless you’re my sister who takes forty-five minute showers. She scalds the impurities from her skin and gets down-to-the-bone clean. When she steps out of the bathroom with her dark blonde hair hidden under the tall towel turban resting on her head, she smiles with sweet ferocity and asks, “Oh, did you need to take a shower?”

I learned at an early age to appreciate a cold shower, so hot water would definitely be the first to go if I was the clerk behind the counter, with my tiny paycheck, enjoying a chance to ruin a customer’s attempt at impulsivity.

“Hey, lady.” The squeaky voice of the clerk knocks me out of my daydream violently, and I find myself standing in the stark reality and fluorescent lights of J’s Quik Stop.  The clerk behind the dusty, crowded counter says, “You’re holding up the line.”

What am I doing?

I blink at the clerk with the leftover pimples and crooked teeth and find myself demanding a dream. “I want a bus ticket.”

“To where?”

There’s a hundred and forty-seven dollars and sixty-three cents in my pocket. I grabbed it from the bottom of my jewelry box before leaving the house and telling my mom: I’ll be right back. She smiled sloppily at me and took another swig of Jack’s.  Okay, honey.

“To where, lady?”

And I tell him some anonymous place that doesn’t matter.

Two decisions in one day. This must be a world record for me.

He prints out the ticket, and I hand him my money. It’s a transaction that will determine my future, my place in life. The ticket feels heavy in my hand. Substantial. I stare at it for a moment, while the line behind me made up of men with six-packs sighs and fidgets like a six-year old who has to go potty.

The clerk clears his throat.

I smile, then turn around and walk away. There’s a bench just outside of the Quik Stop, with an ad promising of a quick and easy divorce for just under six hundred dollars. I smile at the pretty irony, because I divorced my life for just a hundred and some change.

I sit down and wait for the faint sound of the bus in the distance, arriving to carry me away.

I don’t know what awaits me in that anonymous town, hundreds of miles away, but I do know that I’m finally doing something. And, for now, that has to count for everything.

Author's Note: This week for Red Writing Hood we were challenged to write about a season of change for our characters. I was once a bored and jaded teenager, dreaming of leaving my small town behind for a pipe dream. Thankfully, I stayed put and realized my dream just where I was, but the romance of a bus trip to nowhere has never left me. 

Come check out all of the amazing writers at Write on Edge! Just click on the button below.

Well?

At the bottom of the well, she wept silently. 

Hours had passed, and she knew:

Time was her enemy, ticking away in darkness. 

Counting down.

Author's Note: This week's Write on Edge Red Writing Hood assignment was to Tweet a Story in 140 characters or less. Greedy girl I am; I used every one of my 140 characters. This story has been in my heart for quite some time, and I thought I'd use this opportunity to write it. That's it for now. I'm all twittered out. 

The Move Within

We had to leave immediately. Papa said so. Driven away by some unseen force, we fled what I thought of as our safe, secure home and went out into the vast world without an inkling as to where we were going. Well, that may not have been entirely true. Papa always seemed to know where we were going.

In fact, he always seemed to know a bit of everything, and so we followed, myself and my little brother David, because we loved him and because we had no other choice.

I was eleven years old, and this was my seventh move.  I could say I’d grown used to the moving, but I’d be lying. No one ever gets used to picking up their entire lives time and again, being forced to find a new place, a new niche in the world.

For some kids, this kind of thing may have been easy.

Move to a new town. Make new friends. Play with new friends. Repeat.

But I wasn’t just some kid. I was what Papa called an odd duck. An odd duck waiting, always waiting, to transform into a nice, normal swan.

A day or two after leaving our sixth home, we landed at our seventh. It was a nice brick ranch. It was larger than what we were used to, three bedrooms and two baths. David and I wouldn’t have to share a room anymore, and I found that thought incredibly pleasing.

I shared my excitement with Papa, as we were getting settled in. He’d been on edge the last few days, and I kept trying desperately to cheer him up. We were unpacking boxes in the kitchen, one thing I could actually help with, and as I was filling one of the cabinets with our cups and glasses, I casually remarked, “I’m so glad I have my own room now.”

It happened fast, so fast that it took my mind a moment to catch up. One of the plates that Papa had been putting away in the cabinets whizzed past my ear and crashed unceremoniously against the wall behind me. I kept my eyes trained on Papa, whose face had gone red in anger. “You’ve always had your own room!” His words echoed in my head, over and over. “There is no David!”

No David? My mind raced. It couldn’t be true. David was just in the other room, playing with his toys. He had grown tired of helping us sort through boxes.

Hadn’t he?

As I looked up at Papa, my eyes filled with tears. “I just want to go home.” I said quietly, and I could tell his anger was abating, because his gray eyes had softened.

“I know.”

He put me to bed early that night. After drying my tears and singing a quiet song, he laid me down in a soft pink bed, one that was achingly familiar to me.

The truth came crashing down on me suddenly and without warning.

There was no move. No David. No unpacking.

Just me, Papa, and my madness.

I sat up in my cozy pink bed and looked around a room that was my own, had always been my own. Somehow I knew that when I woke up in the morning I might be in a new place, a strange place. This moment of clarity was probably fleeting, destined to disappear into the madness once again.

The sanity would be fleeting, yes, but for now, my whispered wish from earlier had magically come true…

“I just want to go home.”

…because I realized that we were already home.

Author's Note: This was written in response to Write on Edge's Red Writing Hood prompt. The assignment was to begin a piece with the words "We had to leave immediately" and end it with the words "And then we realized that we were already home." I cheated, because that's how I roll, and tweaked the last sentence to fit my tale. 

Two Mississippi

Lightning flashed. The young woman watched as the terrified little boy burst through the front door of her home. She wasn’t startled. She’d grown used to children trespassing without any regard to her. She always appreciated the company.

So, as the boy ducked under her dining room table, she just watched him unnoticed from the corner of the room.

He was terrified. She could see the fear in his young eyes; she recognized it, because she’d seen it in the eyes of the many other children who’d come to her house to visit. She hated the fear, mourned it, for she knew it drove them away.

But this fear was different. The boy hadn’t spotted her yet, so it didn’t originate from her presence. This made her curious, made her wonder.

Thunder clapped overhead, and the boy crowded further under the table. She couldn’t help but smile at his discomfort; it was so childlike, so innocent. A simple fear of storms, a fear she’d faced during her lifetime as well. If only things were so simple now.

Above the sound of the storm, she could hear the back door banging against its frame. She could tell that the boy could hear it, too, because he kept glancing nervously towards the back of the house.

He still hadn’t noticed her, and she was torn about whether she even wanted him to or not. The past taught her that when her presence was discovered they would always leave. And she didn’t want this boy to leave like all the others.

As she watched and wished, the boy thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a yellow cats-eye marble. He kissed it quickly, and then stuck it back into the pocket of his shorts.

When she saw the marble, she knew why she was so drawn to this boy, so curious about him. She knew that his visit to her home was not accident but fate. She knew, because she had an identical yellow cats-eye marble in the pocket of her own faded dress. She kept it with her always, a lucky charm, a protective token, a reminder of the life she’d had.

The boy was a kindred spirit; she just knew it. And at that moment, this kindred spirit was gathering up all his courage and crawling out from under the table. The curiosity about the banging door had got the best of him, and he was going to investigate.

She managed to stay out of his line of vision as he slowly made his way across the room and towards the kitchen. His hand stayed in his pocket, and she knew he was worrying his marble, just as she’d done herself hundreds of times before.

When he finally worked up the nerve to push open the kitchen door, he gasped and then hesitated for only the briefest of moments. She held her breath, anticipating his next move and hoping he’d stay.

But he didn’t. The back door moving in time with the wind was the last straw. The boy’s fear took over, and he spun around, nearly falling over himself in his struggle to get out of the house.

The young woman sighed, moved across the room to the front window so that she could watch his departure. As he ran off into the storm, she lifted a hand to the window and smiled. She wasn’t sad that he’d left, and she didn’t feel lonely. No, in fact, she felt better than she’d felt in a long time. Because the boy with the yellow marble might be gone now, but she knew, without a doubt, that he’d be back.

Author's Note: This is a rewrite of my short story "One Mississippi," which was born from a Lightning and Lightning Bug photo prompt. I've wanted to revisit this story from a different perspective and was glad to be able to do so in response to this week's Red Writing Hood prompt. 

By the way, "One Mississippi" is currently published in Volume #35 of Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal. Be sure to check it out!

The Red Tag

She stalked the aisles of the ancient shop and tried desperately to ignore the sounds of its ancient proprietor at the counter ruffling his newspaper and slurping his coffee. She had to focus, tune out any sounds so that she could concentrate on her objective.

Cameras lined the shelves of the shop, relics of a simpler time and place, antiques now all but obsolete. Her eyes touched on each one, searching for one with a red tag, one she had searched for in countless other shops. As she passed, the cameras seemed to cry out to her, each telling her its own tale.

Some of light. Of birthday parties and weddings. Vacations spent with families of four at the beach, journeys across Europe and time. Sunsets and newborns.

Some of darkness. Of haunted alleys and houses. Graveyards and dark rooms. Blood and sex and violence. Souls captured on film, damaged forever.

She ignored their pleas and furtive cries, eyes searching wildly for a flash of red. The shop’s air was becoming thick and heavy; her breathing came fast. As she turned down the last aisle, desperate to finish her search and burst out of the shop into the fresh air, she spotted it.

On the bottom shelf, shoved to the very back, a camera with a red tag.

The noises and thoughts crowding her busy mind fell silent. The ancient shop-owner and screaming cameras faded. If possible, the air around her grew heavier, thicker, so that as she moved through it towards the camera it felt as if she were walking through heavy curtains, pushing through some invisible force.

She kneeled at the shelf, hesitated only a moment, then reached for her prize. The camera felt nearly hot to the touch, and even though she knew that couldn’t be, that none of this could be, she felt the heat, was nearly burned by it.

The red tag was attached loosely to the shutter release button. Her name was printed on it in faded handwriting.  The camera was hers. She knew that without having to see her name; she knew when she dreamed of it months ago, sitting on some dusty shelf in some ancient shop with its bright red tag, waiting for her.

Taking a deep breath, she stood up, lifted the camera to her face, and gazed through the viewfinder into her destiny. 

Author's Note: This was written in response to a Red Dress Club prompt. We were to write a story based on the photo above in 400 words or less. Check out more great tales by clicking the link below! 

Barefoot in Wet Grass

Via

Barefoot in wet grass

The cool trimmings of

Yesterday’s lawn

Cling to my feet

Like shoes of an

Organic sort, the shoes

Of a childhood spent

Barefoot in wet grass

Bonding with the ground

Grounded to a place tread on   

Many times before by many more

Than just me, just me and

My bare feet, dirty and rough

From many days passed

Barefoot in wet grass

And yet not, freedom wanes

A sensible pair of black flats

Take me through a work day

Blisters and bandages cover

Those beautiful bare feet

While I dream of standing

Barefoot in wet grass.

My poetically prose-y response to this week's Red Writing Hood prompt: shoes. I have a love/hate relationship with shoes. I prefer going barefoot.

The Last Boyfriend

In my dream, I told him that he’d been replaced.

“Replaced?” He asked absently, keeping his eyes trained on the screen in front of him.

We sat together in the floor of his old apartment, the one with the dreadful orange carpet; he was playing video games, and I was watching, picking at an orange thread and wondering why I was here again. I remember thinking, wow, this is just like real life.

It was a very linear dream. My dreams about him usually were. In response to his question, I said, quite decidedly, “Yes. Replaced.”

“By whom?”

Whom. He’d always been able to remember the who/whom rule, just another infuriating thing about him: his impeccable grammar. I remember sighing in the dream. “Someone. Someone, I think, more special than even you.”

For the first time, he took his eyes off the pixelated characters on the television and looked at me. Mild interest danced in those wide, slightly misshapen orbs. I imagined that his voice took on a feral tone, when he asked, “Really?”

“Yes, really. Replaced completely. I’m fairly certain I’ll never think of you again.” My dream voice was lying, but I didn’t mind. In real life, he’d lied to me plenty, so I figured I owed him by some. With sick satisfaction, I watched his eyes narrow. “Tell me about him.”

He was a video story clerk, and I didn’t know his name. The extent of what I did know about him included the fact that he wore a lip ring and almost completely ignored me. I didn’t tell my last boyfriend any of this. Instead, I said, “his name is Taylor.”

“Taylor.” He tried the name out loud and grimaced at the sound of it, and I couldn’t blame him. It sounded completely fabricated, a soap opera pseudonym. I would have thought that in a dream I could have come up with a better name that Taylor. My last boyfriend said, “Sounds made up.”

“So do most names,” I retorted, “in certain contexts.” For example, in lies, especially dream lies.

He smiled then, a full-out crooked smile that showed that left front tooth he’d chipped on a beer bottle during a night of karaoke and carousing. “It’s made up. I can tell when you lie; your eyelashes flutter, and they’re fluttering now, baby.”

Baby, as if I were a hundred and forty pound toddler there for his amusement. In my dream, I suddenly realized that he had been replaced but not by what’s-his-name at the video store. No, indeed. My last boyfriend had been replaced by good common sense.

I was with this man, sitting on his ugly orange carpet, poised and ready to do his bidding always, because I actually believed he was the best that I could do, that he was perhaps the last boyfriend I would ever have. My last chance at marriage, procreation, and happiness.

I believed what many other women believed, and because I believed it, I had settled for him. I had allowed myself to be with someone I didn’t really like because I valued a relationship, even a bad one, over being alone.

A linear dream with an obvious message, how very neat and convenient of me.

I left my last boyfriend and his ugly orange carpet behind, in both my dream and in my reality. I dated the video store clerk for awhile, but he wasn’t my last boyfriend either, nor were the other two guys I dated seriously in my twenties.

My last boyfriend actually ended up being my husband, a man who...whom?...I never dreamed of leaving.


Author's Note: This is a work of fiction and a response to the Red Dress Club's Red Writing Hood prompt. This week's prompt was to step out of your comfort zone. I struggled A LOT with what my comfort zone is. I've written from both male and female perspectives, written historical and contemporary fiction, written horror, suspense, etc. I finally determined that my comfort zone is "weird." So this week I tried to write from a more "normal" perspective. A contemporary female's perspective about love. I don't typically write about love or relationships, so this was a challenge for me in a big way.

An Unfulfilled Promise

The note was carefully folded. Once, then twice over, so that it was just a small paper square, unassuming and mysterious all at once.

The creases in the paper were so well worn that they were almost translucent, making the note appear delicate and nearly beautiful despite its grisly message. It spent most of its life in the darkness of her pocket, but she’d pulled it out and was allowing it to see light. She stressed the fragile creases once more as she unfolded the note again.

The words within it were committed to memory, but she read them anyway, as if to torture herself with their reality and weight. A flurry of activity surrounded her, but she was oblivious to it all, focused only on the note and its message.

As she had dozens of times before, she tried to read between the lines, to find any secrets hidden within the words. Her desperation was palpable. So much was riding on her being able to decipher something from this message; lives were hanging in the balance.

“Excuse me?” The voice barely penetrated her thoughts; she kept staring at the note. “Isn’t it time for your lunch?” Food? How could she possibly think of food? Did no one realize the gravity of this situation? Was she the only one who cared?

Absently, she looked up at the source of the voice. A woman, familiar, but her name escaped her. It didn’t matter. “I’m not hungry.”

“But…”

Her patience was wearing thin. She felt the urge to snap at the woman. “I’m not hungry.” She repeated, dismissing any further conversation by looking back down at the note.

The words came into sharp focus. Hate my life. Giving up. Don’t care anymore. Want to die.  How could she possibly help this lost soul? How could she change the course that they were on? Her heart broke at the thought of the writer of the note, shedding tears over the words that might be their last.

“Mrs. Baldwin?” The man’s voice was powerful, demanding. She reluctantly looked up from the note. “It’s time for your lunch. You have to put that away and eat now.”

He was a very handsome man, she thought, as she stared up at him through old gray eyes. But she didn’t take orders from anyone. Not even handsome men. “Like I was telling that woman before, I’m not hungry. I just want to be left alone. Why don’t you people leave me alone? I need to read this note.”

The handsome man sighed. “Mrs. Baldwin, you’ve read the note before. Thousands of times before. It’ll be waiting for you when you’re done with your lunch. You must eat your lunch. You’ve got to keep your strength up. Your family will be visiting you later today; don’t you want to be at your best when they arrive?”

She was getting tired of fighting; she suddenly remembered that fighting was useless. They always won. Her tight grip on the note fell away, and it dropped silently to the floor. She felt the nurse grab the handles of her wheelchair, found herself being pushed away towards the dining room.

The note, forgotten, lay face up on the floor. Its words hinting at a troubled past, an unfulfilled promise.

Whoever should find this and find me, I want you to know that no one could make me happy or unhappy but myself. This is no one’s fault but my own. I hate my life. I’ve spent so many years trying, keeping up the guise of life, and now I’m giving up that guise and taking charge for once. I don’t care anymore. I just want to die.

Sincerely,

Alayna Baldwin




This was written for The Red Dress Club's Red Writing Hood prompt: You or your character find a forgotten letter or card from someone important in your life--whether good or bad.  What does it say?  How does it affect you or your character?  What is done with it?

The Bar at Third and Oblivion

I haunt the bar at the corner of Third and Oblivion, or it haunts me; I can never be sure. It’s a mutually satisfying relationship that’s standing hip-deep in beer and tequila. It’s stale but alright with me, because it’s better than nothing or anything or everything that I’ve ever had.

Marianne sits in the far left corner of the room, chomping on yesterday’s mistakes. Marianne, who smiles at all the fat jerkoffs in suits-too-small and crooked hair pieces, hopes for a successful one-night stand.

Then Ryan walks in seeking moisture in this dry heat. He settles for the combustible whiskey that Harry likes to serve. Ryan, with his chipped front tooth, 2 o’clock shadow, and lip ring, smiles at Marianne as she floats by in a haze of easy ignorance and generic perfume. She’s singing Penny Lane and thinking of olive shag carpet and forgettable moments with men who enjoy easy women. What’s so easy about looking for love, acceptance, and companionship? Being called a slut, a whore, and a floozy for an honest stab at happiness?

An honest stab through Tony Portman’s ribs made him bleed. He bled easy and ruined Marianne’s favorite dress, a blue number with pit stains and now blood stains, too. She just got fed up with cheap words, hair plugs, and hands too rough. Fed up, so she showed Tony what she was good at.

As Marianne walks by, Ryan’s depthless eyes follow her, a kind of numb interest in the swinging of her bulging hips, encased in electric blue. He downs the whiskey and goes after her.

He’s doomed and doesn’t know it. Another victim done in by a victim. But life goes on. It always does, even when a little death is served on the side.