Eric Robert E
“Artists lead and hacks ask for a show of hands.”
Eric Robert E
“Artists lead and hacks ask for a show of hands.”
“Artists lead and hacks ask for a show of hands.”
“Artists lead and hacks ask for a show of hands.”
A pop-pop-pop plants sky flowers They shine and dance and say hello Mama says they rain down like showers I’ll think long about it from my pillow
Some of them look like shapes Circles and stars and other things One even looks like a crazy ape I like the whistling one that sings
Everyone loves it just the same They cheer and yell and clap I wish they’d up there spell my name My feet stomp tap-tap-tap!
Daddy gets me an icy drink And a yuck one for himself Mommy sneaks some candy, winks And says ‘don’t worry about the health’
Smoke from up and down and side Dad throws hands high, higher, high I time it right from on the slide I hit the grass and boom and sigh
A rocket shoots off from my hand No one sees the magic I become master of the land Secretly I know it’s just a gadget
Someone screams here’s the finale My face lights up, boom boom boom Once it’s done we cut through the alley I’m not even tired, zoom zoom zoom
That changes right inside the car Mom and dad know I’m done I still smell smoke even this far I drift off to sleep, the flowers gone
Sabrina nearly punched the kitchen door open as she entered. The hot, salty air, thick with fryer oil and cigarette smoke and profanity, rolled over her red cheeks. She didn’t stop to talk, not even when Dawn offered her a puff or when Alex lifted his plate of ‘accidental’ chicken parm her way.
She reached the break area and halted for a moment, processing. The snide look that the customer gave her as he passed his note replayed in her head like the knockout blow in an MMA fight. It stung the same and left her head ringing. Bastard.
She tore the paper at the corner she opened it so hastily. Once it was, she sincerely couldn’t believe what she was reading.
It went beyond a professional indictment, a formal complaint and instead attacked her personally. The words on the page, which would have held no power individually and little power spoken aloud or in passing, were each another burning slap on her cheeks read like this. Sabrina took them all, intellectual slurs and all. Before she could stop it, she realized she was crying. And then that made her mad.
It took her time and a cigarette to calm back down but when she did, she went to work. Not waiting tables, but preparing. She went to the office and printed a surprisingly clear frame of the villain in question, in motion but clear in the face as he stood to don his coat.
She left the image and the note on the kitchen bulletin board; complete with the words “do not admit, if you do, show him a gooood time.”
That felt good. It was a start at least.
Nurse Mel-Mel, as Melinda Marks was occasionally referred to as by children staying on the ward, entered the nurses station with the trifold piece of paper in hand. Something about it made her feel dirty, as if she were stealing secrets. But she knew the night nurse would have simply thrown it away for garbage had she left it. And the way it was addressed…
She certainly was that.
After making double sure that the nurses station was empty around her and that no other patients needed her desperately of course, she peeled open the letter.
The words inside were scribbles, rough to read from the kindest of angles. She gave it her best.
A crudely scribed laughing face worked as a paragraph break.
The window near my bed opens, I’ve seen it. I want to go out with the wind on my face, not collecting bed sores.
Get me?-
It took her a minute then her eyes widened.
Thank you,
Mr. Jacob Timmits -
Nurse Mel-Mel froze, unsure whether to report it or go give him a hug.
Then again… in his position… could she really blame him?
Yes, but she got it. And she wasn’t about to lose her job for manslaughter.
Carter was a little too drunk to have heard the knock on his bedroom door, and way too high to have cared. So there he lay; face down on the engine-block-sized beanbag chair. He’d had the wherewithal to roll himself over in the middle of the night to avoid the whole Hendrix thing.
Anthony knocked once more before just barging in, hoping his brother had also remembered pants. Boxers was enough, he supposed.
“Wake up, wastoid.” Tony hurled a bottle of cold water his way. It connected with his lower back then rolled off, leaving crisp droplets to trickle down to his ass.
He shivered but didn’t look.
“What…?” It was a canine whine.
“You’re leaving with Beth tomorrow? What’s that about.”
“Fleetwood Mac.”
Muffled against the beanbag, Tony wasn’t sure he heard it right.
“Excuse?”
Carter finally rolled himself back turtle’s end style and looked at his brother.
“We sang karaoke the other night; Fleetwood Mac, and it was glorious and we’re in love and she got a job in Chicago and I’m going with her.”
Tony was shocked. All he could do was ask, incredulously, “that’s that? I can’t believe you’re going with her…”
“That…is that.” Then, after a thought, “Hey Google; play Fleetwood Mac.”
“Okay. Playing Return of the Mack.”
“Close enough. He rolled back over.”
Anthony shook his head at the mess in front of him, in all meanings of the word.
The embers danced their way up toward the overhanging canopy. It looked kaleidoscopic from any distance. Unfortunately, not a single one of the campers noticed the beautiful sight. They had been properly ensorcelled by Pops, who had just stood up, throwing his hands around in a showy, emphatic motion.
“It was, and I mean this with no fooling, no crazy talk, no… no BS, this frickin’ tall.” He raised his arms up. Pop continued…
The beast threw its log-like arms up skyward, held them there in that monstrous pose until young Pop took off running-
“That isn’t scary even if you aren’t making it up.” Little Scud sneered from the stump he has perched on.
The spell broken, a few of the boys began to chuckle. Pops frowned.
“Well, lookit the brave boy. Got a story for us then?”
Put on the spot, Scud hesitated. After a moment, he cleared his throat to begin…
It had happened at a camp just like the one they were at now but so much longer ago that details had been lost. A troop of scouts on survival training has bunkered down for the night when their fire just suddenly went out. No explanation, just total darkness. It had—
“Ahhh!!” Scud interrupted himself to scream when the giant, hairy hand grabbed his shoulder. The rest followed into an eruption. That was, except Pops who was laughing through it. The other Scout leader, the one with the bear costume, was late. But at least he made it.
The room had lost its carpet to a new one of torn wrapping paper, cast off gift box tops and twine. BB sat in the middle of it all as her siblings went bananas. No one knew what she did so everyone seemed to be having a good time.
Dad, playing Santa as always, handed her the next (and seemingly final) package. She accepted the gift, feeling a swirl and mix of feelings inside her. It didn’t look just as it had in her dream; but the look wasn’t the important part. A sensation of sickening Deja vu burrowed through her gut. It was the same feeling that had proceeded her death in the dream.
She smiled politely and set it aside. Just a delay for sure. The rest of her family went about their unwrapping. They truly were going all out. Brook, ever the nosy one, eventually noticed BBs reluctance and pointed.
“What’re you waiting for Beeper? You’re not getting another one.” She sneered through fake smiling teeth. Dad was too busy to intervene.
“I don’t want to rush.” BB attempted.
“Don’t worry, no one would say you are.”
BB thought for a long few seconds about how to proceed. Just when she thought eh, what the hell, I’ll open it, she caught a whiff of something nutty on the air. She shook the box and the scent intensified. Peanuts.
She was deathly allergic.
She set it back down calmly and walked away from Christmas.
Glenn pulled himself free of the pile, heard something pop. A short, airy utterance fired from his lips. To him, any creature that made such a sound must have been injured and quite pathetic.
The entire pile of holiday rubble shifted and shuffled into a rockslide of papercuts running over Glenn’s expose skin. He gritted through the pain and stood up.
Everyone else had seemingly gone while he was under and out. There were still a few fires burning. Little puddles of glass burned and blinked up at him.
“Shit…” Glenn shook his head, and in so doing remembered. “Ellen! Can you hear me?”
His voice call back at him in echos. It was like a new wave of anxiety.
She had to be somewhere, at least that’s what he told himself. It was easier to swallow than what might have been the truth.
He moved a little ahead, hearing the crinkle of glass underfoot. His boots didn’t mind.
He never thought that he’d survive a war, that’s why he never enlisted. So why the fuck had he gone shopping on Black Friday?
That was easy, it was for her.
So where had she gone? He’d start by going home.
The crack of the staple gun snapping the paper to the post made him flinch, even though he was the one doing it. It took three staples to get the missing persons sign to stand upright against the wind and gravity. Ben knew that by weeks end this one too would be covered up by yet another but it was protocol by now. Might as well try.
He moved along down Main Street, past all the businesses with their shuttered front windows. It was hard to run a business with no workers or no bosses, but even harder with no customers.
Quarry was a small town before it all started, now it was more like a stage. By which I mean that if you peeked behind any one wall you’d find less than you might expect. There weren’t even enough kids to keep the school from shuttering. Whatever was doing the taking seemed to just love children.
Ben left another sign on the overtaxed bulletin board near the bus stop, and another on the fence blocking the old vacant lot. He remembered how often kids used to sneak in there to mess around. Not anymore.
Ben, passing the next alley, heard a noise. It sounded almost like a car meowing out from under something. He decided to ignore it just too late. The taker got him too, leaving a dusting of missing persons signs on the breeze.
Beep Beep Beep-beep.
“Shit, m’am can you— please, can you come here?”
Footsteps, high heels, cut through the clamor of the crowd. She’s a manager.
“I double scanned the bottle so can you just take that off?”
She sighs, mutters into a walkie talkie on her lapel.
“No sir, I’m gonna have to void the whole transaction. Sorry for any inconvenience.” She pulls on a lanyard, another beep. She punches in a code and it’s reset.
The line behind him watches in agony. Feet tap. Hands clench, become fists.
The man struggles to scan everything again, faster this time. He curses self checkout all the while.
Beep
Beep
Be-beep!
“Motherfu…” he spins around, feels the eyes on him begin to burn through his back. The old lady who began her checkout at the same time as him waddles slowly out to her car.
“Uh, m’am?” His voice comes out deferential; weak at the knees.
She’s helping someone else. Another double scanner maybe?
“Bro, can you hurry the fuck up?” The voice comes from somewhere behind him, not at but about him. His heart rate rises.
“M’am?”
“I’ll be with you in a moment sir…” her voice is flat as ever.
Behind him, the line begins to wrap around the deli counter on the far side of the store.
Cora blew the bits of plaster from the paper folds of the journal. They misted into the air like a first snowfall and wafted down to her feet and the floor.
The words on the page were hard to make out; clearly the works of a sub-eight-year-old girl doing her best at good penmanship, under duress at that, if Cora had to guess.
Some words stood out though. Mommy. Hungry. Hidenseek.
Monster. Cellar.
The last one was nearly drowned out by what could have been the half gallon of red-brownish… something that had been splashed all over the book.
She told herself it was dirt. Old mud. That was all.
She kept flipping through and through, picking up more and more of the scant story before her.
Lights off. No snacks. Hurt. Bad things.
She shuddered again. Her sister was a child psychologist who played fast and loose (occasionally) with her confidentiality so she’d heard a few stories of abuse victims. This could have been just that. But how old was it?
She went to set the book down when she felt it. None of her five conventional senses took it in, it was another. Or all of them. That same bottom-of-the-stairs feeling that tells everyone that they’re not alone.
Whatever had happened to this girl- whatever Bad Thing had taken Mommy and made the Lights Out… was standing right behind her.