mmkelleywrites

[mmkelleywrites]

Grandpa Tended Flowers

People wait for upwards of a decade to see the titan arum bloom. For me, the event lined up with some much needed extra credit for my botany course. Everyone was gathered around the bucket sized pod, waiting for it's arrival nine years in the making.

Like watching a rhino ballet dance the large petal gracefully unfurled. It had a certain regality to it. The green outside curled back to reveal a meaty dark burgundy. The perfume wafted through the green house. Some spectators had to leave, unable to cope with the smell. All I could do is think of the flowers my grandpa grew in his basement.

Everything about that flower reminded me of Grandpa Harvey. He kept the door to the basement locked. He always told us that his flowers were too rare to leave outside or let most people close to. Grandma always bragged that grandpa made the most beautiful flowers. One day, I saw the padlock missing from the basement door.

I had to see them. I wouldn't touch and he'd never be the wiser. The basement was pitch black, but I braved the stairs. I pulled the overhead string and a few old fluorescent lights flickered on with a few cracks. The smell was overwhelming and I reveled in it. The taboo of seeing Grandpa's creations made them better than perfect.

The petals were pink and a dark red on the inside with white stamens, the stems hard and white. The petals were stretched tight and varied from tan to green to black on the underside. I couldn't resist, I snuck up close to get a better smell. Red nectar pooled inside the bloom. Then I heard heavy footsteps on the old staircase, and the crack of my Grandpa's thick leather belt.

I hadn't thought of it in years. It must have been blocked out, but Grandma and Grandpa were both gone now. My brain started putting pieces together.

I nudged the girl standing next to me, snapping pictures. “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

She grimaced at me, “It's interesting to experience, I guess.”

“I’m Bill, would you like to go get a drink?”

She hesitated, “I’m Iris. I guess a little mind bleach might be good right now.”

“Iris… at a greenhouse. How serendipitous.”

I shot her a smile and knew she would make the perfect first rose for my collection.

[mmkelleywrites]

The Children of the Lake

    My daughter Dharma is six. She’s rowdy and fearless. Dauntless, even.  Since she’s been old enough to walk, she’s been drawn to the water. There’s one particular spot in the lake that she’s always been drawn to. We live in the woods on the edge of Lake Michigan. It’s a tiny, self sufficient commune that hardly anyone cares to know about. My great grandmother started her family here and we’re still here with a handful of others.

    Ever since the first time I took her down the bent trunk path with us, she’s been fascinated by that little corner cove of the lake. She would sit on the shore and stare intently at the still water of the early morning while I went through the motions of leaving a food offering, singing an old song and making sure the candles were all burning.  

My great grandmother started the tradition of leaving food, flowers and singing a song on the shore of the lake. She passed it down to my grandmother, then my mother, and eventually to me before passing. Every detail was specific and she was particular about execution.

In preparation, we gather fireflies, flowers and raspberries. We fast for three days, so that they do not smell food on us and become jealous. On the night of the offering, everything is carried to a particular cove in old wooden bowls. A cove that has a flat rock laying across two stumps at the edge of the murky water.

We wait for the fireflies to signal their lovers. Then we smear the fluorescence of their bellies on our faces. Squiggles to a child, wards and runes to an adult. They tell the drowned that the bearer is both there to help, but also not to be trifled with.

    Then the bowls are laid out. There's a pestle-like rock on the makeshift table, it's used to mash and mix the offerings in a third bowl. A splash of bourbon is added to help placate their restlessness. Once those preparations are  completed, the candles are lit and the song is sung.

“They need us,” grandma would remind me when my offering was disappointing or my song half hearted, “their mothers drowned them here. Their spirits need comfort.”

I was never into the whole spiritual aspect, though I did find the monthly chore to be cathartic.  After we lost  my great grandmother, it became my fondest memory and a tribute to her memory. It's been at least fifteen years since she passed, and I still make an offering at the lake shore right after the full moon.

I asked my mother once why she had the same birthmark as her mother. She gazed down at her navel and her breath left her chest. It seemed like a talk she'd been dreading for longer than she'd known me.

“We're special, Becca,” she said as she pointed to her left cheek, “All the women in our family end up with this mark eventually.”

“Isn't it a birthmark?” I questioned.     

“No, baby. We aren't born with this, but I have it. Granny Geneva had it, too.”

“What's it mean? How do we get it?” My young mind couldn't wrap itself around the idea.

Mom shrugged and thought for a moment, “Granny Geneva said it marks the sight. It's in our blood, it just waits until you need it, or it needs you.”

I must have looked puzzled in that long silence. I started to speak, but my mother hushed me. She smiled kindly and spoke softly, “No more, we can talk more after it happens. You'll understand it then, right now it's just useless words in your head.”

    I waited and waited, but my mark never came. After awhile I figured it was just her version of a Bible story for our hippie dippie pagan traditions. Eventually the task fell to me, tending to the spirits of the lake. After Dharma was born, my mother would look after her while I gave our sympathy to the lake babies. Eventually though she wasn't in a condition to watch her while I was out in the wilderness.

    Naturally, sometimes I had to bring Dharma with me. I would generally leave her up at the trail, within earshot, and be done around the time she lost interest in being there. One day, I was a little slow, she was a done a little early. She wandered down to the water before I even noticed.

I heard the sound of rocks being thrown into water, only, it sounded like I was hearing it from underwater myself. I looked over my shoulder first. No Dharma. I scoured the shoreline from the altar. There she was, hanging off a rock, staring into the dark water. Between the moon and the candles, I could faintly see dozens of little faces in the water peering back up to her.

    I scrambled down the steep bank to her, loose rocks skidded with me onto the smooth rock outcrop. I grabbed her shoulder and jerked her back. My eyes hadn’t lied, I could see them plain as day under the water’s glassy surface.  Definitely human, but the skin was blue and pulled too tight across the skull. The whites of their eyes were green with algae. They pressed their hands and faces against the water, like something in a horror film trying to climb through a mirror.

    The cold, still surface of the water held them back, though. They clawed at it with pruny, sharp fingers, muffled splashing sounds coming up from the lake. Some of them motioned to Dharma, as if to say, “Come on in! The water’s fiiiine!” She struggled against me, trying to join them. I leaned out over the ledge and barked the most powerful “No!” I could muster.

Their murky green eyes collectively widened. They turned and quickly returned to the muddy bottom. I caught a glance of curved slits like gills on the sides of their necks when they turned to retreat. I think my wards drove the point home, I could see the glow from the fireflies bellies in the water. I finished the ritual quickly and carried her home. She was absolutely entranced, determined to join those things. I fought into the night to keep her away from the lake.

“What’d you see in the water, sunshine bear?”

“When?” she asked, puzzled.

“Last night,” I pressed, “You kept trying to go to the lake.”

She looked at even more confused and shrugged, “I don’t remember being there.”

The next full moon rolled around faster than I’d have liked. I waited for Dharma to go to sleep before departing for my work. I floated through the ritual with muscle memory. The same one I’d performed hundreds of times. At the end, my stomach knotted and unease punched me in the gut. My eyes darted back and forth along the shore and further out into the dark. I couldn’t see them, but I felt like they were watching.

The sound of a knife across glass screeched through the woods. Small blue hands, scraping their razor like nails against the water’s still surface from below. The faces started coming close enough to the surface to see. They snarled green and black teeth at me, inching towards the shore. They jammed against the junction of the water and the gravelly shore, their heads deforming and squeezing into the tight space, those green eyes never leaving me. Their scraping and digging deformed the shore, making a pit at the water’s edge that let more of them pile in closer to me. I noticed the fading light of the firefly belly on my nose and ran.

I returned in the light the next day. The pit was still dug out right at the water’s edge. Claw marks were dug into the shore leading up to the altar. The bowl on the stone slab was licked so clean it was sparkling. I needed help.

“They aren’t human.” I blurted out to my mother.

“What?” she asked with a wavering voice.

“The things in the water, those aren’t human kids!”

She groaned to herself before answering, “They used to be, Bec. Over the years the spirits twisted, changed. They turned more… fishlike. Mom- your grandmother- thought it was the oppressive loneliness in the depths that made them that way.”

“Can I keep them in the water?”

“They’re just restless, they’ll be fine” she sighed.

“They wanted Dharma to come in with them!” I cried.

“It will be okay, just keep her from the water.”

The sound of knives being drug across the sheet metal roof of our little hippie hut. Knives tapping on the solar panels that gave us some modern amenities. On the windows. Scraping the outside of the mud and rock walls of our home. I ducked out and slowly peeked out of the corner of the window.

    They shambled on feet that weren’t quite feet, but weren’t quite flippers. Long toes, webbed deeper than a human’s, yet still recognizable as vaguely human. My heart nearly flew from my chest as one of them flung itself into the window by my face. It laughed hysterically, like a child watching cartoons for the first time. We covered the windows with curtains, blocked the entrances the best we could and hid until morning.

    Guests arrived that morning. Not a lot, just a single couple looking to unplug for the weekend. We ran them through the usual routine. Organic gardening, tending the bees, and checking our limb lines for catfish.  I was vigilant while we checked for catfish. One of the lines didn’t want to come up to the surface. I put on work gloves and pulled with all of my might. Eventually with some help from our guests, it started coming up. I started to worry that we may have fished up one of those things. In the end all that we had was a boot that was probably stuck on a submerged log. They didn’t notice the cuts in the glass, doors or walls of the commune’s structures. But I did.

    Their stay had been uneventful. A few days in I’d decided to go check on the cove, to see if there’d been anymore activity. It was like watching a cheap slasher flick. There they went, galloping completely naked in the dark into the lake. I wanted to yell for them, but I figured everything had been calm so they must have gone back to sleep. I started back down the trail when I heard a scream.

    “Stop grabbing my foot and trim your nails!” the girl shrieked.

    The man’s voice carried across the water, “I didn’t grab your feet.”

    He started to scream, but it was interrupted by his head being submerged. She started screaming again and flailed her arms in a flurry of water droplets trying to get to the shore as fast as she could. The man burst through the water’s surface and similarly battled his way sloppily to the beach. I ran down to check on them.  He was oddly calm; she was hysterical, for lack of a better word. His left leg was gone from the knee down. The flesh was tattered, tendons trailed across the beach from it like streamers.

    “Lets get him back to the commune, we can help him better there and get CareFlight out to get him.”

    I looked to the water to make sure we were clear. There they were, those green eyes staring at me as a handful of them tore into the limb like a turkey leg. They were at first taken aback by the sight of me up close. Then I realized I wasn’t warded.

“Lets go!” I barked as I grabbed his shoulders.

She stumbled and helped support his hips. Those things  were crawling and scratching at the shore again, like they were trying to dig out of the water. When we were back within shouting distance of the commune, she collapsed. I nearly dropped him onto her and yelled for help. She had a nasty gash on her leg that’d been bleeding pretty bad, too.

He survived. Neither of them saw the children. Shortly after they arrived at the hospital animal control showed up and searched for the presumed alligator that attacked the two of them. They searched into the afternoon the following day by boat. When they pulled their boat out, they didn’t notice the gashes in the wooden hull.

After animal control was gone, we started hearing a noise around dusk. It was something halfway between a frog’s croak and man yawning. It quickly formed into a melody, with more voices joining in the longer it went. The melody itself was haunting; it seemed to suck us into its rises and falls. The only thing I can relate the tone to is children singing the words to a song they don't actually know.

Something burned inside of me and I shook free of the stupor. I ran out, shaking everyone out of it. They were shambling absentmindedly to the lake. Dharma. I couldn’t find Dharma. I already knew. I knew who the song was for, maybe she was why they had been so active. I ran for the trail; she’d go to the cove with the altar.

She waddled down the trail. I shook her. I yelled her name. I even tried scooping her up, but she just wiggled and slid out of my arms without a minute acknowledgment of my presence. I ran in front of her. There they were on the shore, in the water, everywhere. They grinned with their black and green teeth as they sang louder.

“Cut the shit!” I yelled.

They ignored me, then I realized why. I was unprotected. Dharma was getting close to the shore. I ran up and punched one of them. Wet, squishy. It didn’t even flinch. I ran back again, this time trying to push Dharma back up the gravelly shore. She pushed me towards the water, unphased as the cacophony urged her on.

I looked over my shoulder, and there was a shadow just under the surface. It was something much bigger than a child. Awestruck, I turned around and tried to make out what it was, but it was too far out for me to make out any detail. It inched towards the shore. As it got closer I could see it pushing up against the surface of the water. The sound of glass splintering echoed across the flat surface of the lake.

My body started to panic, my brain couldn’t process what was happening. The thing that surfaced reminded me of a manatee at first. Scarred, with barnacles dug into its flesh. But it had hair on its head, matted and long, tangled with plant matter. Its face was vaguely human, its voice gruff and distorted as it called out from the middle of the cove.

“Come join us, my new child…”

I learned, in that moment, what it meant to have a fire inside of you. I screamed with pure, unadulterated rage. A bright green light washed over the cove, lighting up the water, the shore, and the things that were trying to take my Dharma. They recoiled back, but the big thing in the water stood its ground. I roared again; this time the green light crumbled some of the childish things that were too near me. My reflection in the water told me all I needed to know. The firefly wards burned bright green on my face. A burning V had overtaken my left cheek and ran over my left eye.

“I said *fuck off*!” I wailed, sending a green shockwave that disintegrated more of the singing things. A tree’s trunk cracked behind me from the force.

Then they all went silent and slipped into the water without so much as a splash. I checked my other side. There was Dharma, right at the edge of the water.

Her toes touched the glass like surface. The cold, dark water shocked her into awareness.

I tried to reach for her. I grabbed a handful of her curly locks. I saw those scaley, half-fin, half-human little hands shoot up and grab her ankle. They ripped her from this world.

Not a sound, not a splash. Just gone. Gone into the abyss.

I collapsed, a thick wad of her curls in my hand. The manatee creature still where it was. It gave me a nod of acknowledgment. Then it grinned and gave me a wink before swishing back to the depths of the lake.

I still perform the ritual. I don’t hurry anymore; the runes are there when they need to be. I stay and I watch. I watch little Dharma come up and partake the offering. She isn’t changing into one of them yet. I think it’s because I’m keeping her from being lonely. This V on my cheek hasn’t faded, so I guess it was finally my time.

[mmkelleywrites]

Dear writers, don’t try and protect your readers.

I was raised on Shakespeare and Esop’s Fables and folklore from around the world. I read Dracula when I was ten, knew dozens of obscure Slavic tales and could rattle off any Norse myth if you asked me to. Can I still do that? Not really. Or at least, not like I used to. But does that mean stories are any less important in my life?

No.

I’ve learned more from stories than I ever could from teachers, parents and every other guiding adult in my life. Most people were rather perturbed at the thought of a child being raised on Norse and Greek myths - both had their reputation - but it was the Norse ones that really stuck in people’s craw. The varied mythos of the Norsemen is not somewhere you would go for joy or fun. They’re dark, gritty and full of harrowing adventures. While at least the gods of the Greeks were petty, proud and insatiable, there wasn’t much to alleviate the cold truth in Norse myths. For the people of Northern Europe, the land itself was grown from an act of murder; Odin and his brothers killed Ymir and used his body to make the world.

Of all of them, however, Loki was the greatest teacher. He did terrible things and was often forced into redemption by acts of bloody threat. (I’ll never forget the line “If you do not get her back, Loki, I shall crack your ribcage like the wings of a falcon and flay the flesh from your bones.”). When he wanted to be kind, he was a force of loyalty and love; when he wanted to be petty or cruel, he was the biggest threat that the Asgardians would ever have to reckon with. He fathered the monsters that would one day end the world. He lay with giants and Asgardians alike, and at the end settled for the goddess of fertility and bonds as his wife. The people who breathed Loki’s mythology into being didn’t care whether or not he was problematic, or toxic, or how complex he was - and that made him the best of the Asgardians in my eyes.

We all knew from the very beginning that Loki would be punished for his actions, and we knew that none of it really mattered because whatever happened, fate was inevitable. As a child, I saw the Asgardians presented with this bloody, brutal end that they couldn’t escape, and was amazed by their indifference. The whole point was that good or bad, death came everyone. Ragnarok did not discriminate, and not everyone would be held accountable for their actions.

It was the truth.

All of that has made the basis for the way that I think and go through life. And you know what? The “child-safe” versions would never have had that same impact. If in school we had been taught that Apollo liked both men and women, that sometimes the good are punished for doing the right thing, that the right thing isn’t easy but usually worth it, that pride in your actions is not a sin but hating others for their pride is? Many children would grow up with a healthier view of the world. 

How many of you knew that Arachne was turned into a spider, not because of her pride, but because Athena was too proud herself to accept that Ariachne’s love of her work was justified? Being turned into a spider was an act of mercy after Arachne’s fear of Athena’s wrath caused her to hang herself. “You can create beauty forever now,” read one line of this variation, with Athena torn apart by guilt. That myth taught children that adults are not infallible and that challenging them is okay.

People were given voices or helped to find them by thousands of years of stories, unconcerned by how appropriate they were or what the content was. They trusted one another’s critical skills and held no illusions, and looked to their tales for guidance. Those myths and legends weren’t there to make a point, but to explain the point in the clearest, most unapologetic terms possible.

So tell your story how you want to tell it; not how you feel you should tell it - and I promise you, it will change someone’s life.

[mmkelleywrites]

Hanuš Schwaiger, Long, broad and clear-sighted (Dlouhý, Široký a Bystrozraký), c. 1896.

[mmkelleywrites]

A Priest Saved Me

This is something for the families of those affected. A chain of events that I have bore witness to, and need to leave a record of. It started innocently enough, I was sitting out on the patio with a small fire. The way the flames danced was entrancing, like a belly dancer caught in a strobe light. I knew I shouldn’t touch it, but my hand drew close to the  tips of the flickering flames. My body kicked in and jerked my hand back from the heat.

Something urged my hand back to the tips of the flames. The flames kissed my finger tips. I jerked my hand back intentionally. Red, wrinkled, I could still feel the heat trapped under my skin. I couldn’t put my finger on what made me do it. If I’m being honest, it hurt like hell. Yet, it seemed worth it. Those red and orange hips flicking back and forth in my fire pit.

I put the cage over the top of the pit and went inside. I felt a certain tugging to go back out to it. I fought it and went to bed. That night was rough, I kept waking up with a certain, compulsion, to go check the fire. I finally went to look at the fire pit from my bedroom window. The flames were still burning strong. I forced myself back to bed, when I woke up, the fire was still burning.

The next morning, I found myself back out on the patio. I couldn’t stop watching it. I remember seeing that face for the first time. It was vague, but the eyes and mouth were staring at me, fueled by the hot coals. I checked my watch, somehow I had lost two hours. I rushed to work reeking of smoke. During my lunch break, I watched it rain.

The whole ride home I could smell myself. I considered rolling the window down so the rain would wash the smell away. When I got home, I went to the kitchen window and looked outside. The fire was raging, it had managed to somehow grow even against the pouring rain. The next thing I know, I’m standing out in the rain, holding a mouse over the fire.

The face in the fire looked contempted. Where’d the mouse go? I must have dropped it,I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. I went about my day, nothing else was out of the ordinary. A few days passed, my days were normal, other than the fire that refused to die. I went downstairs to get my morning coffee, the clock on my coffee maker read 6:35 AM. The next thing I remember is pouring the coffee into my favorite mug and seeing 8:26 AM. I hadn’t side tracked.

I looked out the kitchen window, and the flame was considerably larger than it was before. It was higher than the cage on my metal fire pit. The face was getting more defined, it was becoming feminine in it’s curvatures. It stared right through me, and seemed to nod in approval to me. I looked around, the only thing out of the ordinary was a black high heeled shoe sitting in my sink.

My stomach turned. I remembered the mouse hanging there by its tail. Did some poor woman find herself fueling my fire? I threw the shoe in the pit. I called in sick, then sat in a hot shower. My skin crawled. Two hours, gone. Did I murder someone? I can’t recall even seeing another person this morning. A moment of sudden clarity came to me, skin under my fingernails.

I dug through my living room. Insurance pamphlets, sales contracts. 8 AM, my address in her planner. I sat on my couch in awe. No blood, a little tossed up but relatively neat. Where was she? I searched my own house. Attic, basement, closets. No body. The fire couldn’t have possibly consumed a whole person in that short period of time, could it? I had to get out.

I left my house without incident. I wanted help. I’m by no means a man of God, but I would have started going to church right then if it would all stop. I went to the first church I could find. I holed up in the confession booth.

“What would you like to confess, my son?”

I checked my watch. No time loss.

“I uh… I’m not sure, father.”

“Surely there are transgressions which you would like to be absolved of?”

“I think I may have killed an insurance sales woman.” I offered

“You… ‘think?’ do you not know?”

“I really don’t know what happened to her, but I found her shoe in my sink. I guess that’s why I’m here.”

“Son, I don’t know that I can help with those kinds of problems.”

“I think there’s something evil at my house,” I pleaded, “I keep losing hours at a time. I wake up doing things that normally I’d never do.”

The priest was silent. Every breath was burdened by the situation I laid before him. I waited for what seemed like years. I was starting to expect Jesus himself to walk through the doors before he’d give me another word.

He gave a heavy exhale, “When you wake up, what are you doing?”

“Usually putting things into my fire pit.”

“And the fire never goes out, either?”

“So you know what it is?”

I heard the light door to the confessional spring back to the shut position. I raced out after him, he was making a break for his office. I grabbed his arm. He jerked around, his face red like the backside of a baboon.

“Release me, foul thing!” he shouted, grabbing my wrist.

I stared into his eyes. I felt helpless. My legs fell under me. I sobbed on the floor. Where else could I go for help? He knew where I could get help, he even knew what was going on. He locked himself in his office. I crawled to a pew. I waited. Hours. I waited longer. I must have fallen asleep, because suddenly it was sunny again and there was the priest, tapping my shoulder.

He didn’t look at me, he didn’t say a word. He handed me a beat up business card. It was plain white, plain black text. It just had an address.

“Get out, don’t come back.” he said in a tone that warned me not to push my luck.

I got up and went to my car. The address wasn’t too far away, so I decided to see what this suggestion of his was. The building was how I imagined the business card was years ago. Plain, white, clean. It wasn’t a home, but it wasn’t obviously a business either. I approached the door and knocked.

I knocked again. I wanted to leave, but I needed help in a bad way. The door opened quietly by a large older man. His white hair wild, he had to have been well over six feet tall, with the shoulders of a linebacker and the white collar of a priest.

“Can I help you?” he asked nonchalantly.

I handed him the card, “A priest gave me this.”

He gave me a suspicious look up and down, “What kind of trouble are you having?”

“I’m not really sure.” I admitted.

He motioned for me to come in. As I passed me he took a big whiff of me. “You smell like a fireplace.”

We sat in what looked like an old fashioned study. He lit a candle on his desk. It danced quietly, then the tip was sucked in towards the candle. It smashed and squeezed into a little mouth and bit at the air above the wick.

“Ah, the fire ghosts.” he said to himself, pursing his lips in thought, “Those are a pain in the ass.”

“What are they? What are you?”

“I don’t really know what they are, I just try to get rid of them before they try to eat every damn thing. Me? I like to think of myself as a philanthropist. I like to spend my free time helping the less fortunate,” he paused for a moment, “and right now, it looks like you’re less fortunate.”

I couldn’t argue with that. He told me to go home, and tell it to “Get the Hell out of my house.” He seemed reasonably informed on the situation, so I trusted him. He gave me some kind of communion or blessing or something and I departed for my home. Assuming it was still standing. The ride home was short, when I arrived the front porch was lined with lit candles. I didn't own a single candle. I sat in my car, working up the nerve.

“That’s your house!” I yelled at myself with the windows rolled up, “You get your ass in there and tell them!”

I was fired up. I puffed my chest out, threw my shoulders back with my head held high and marched my average frame up the steps. I busted through the door like a ton of dynamite. A faint smell of char, a subtle haze of smoke in the air.

“GET THE FUCK OUT!” I screamed like I was someone, loud enough that I felt the veins in my neck strain against my skin.

The crackle of a fire guffawed through my house. Two letters burned themselves into the wall of my living room. N. O. My blood boiled. I worked my ass off for this. I didn’t ask for shit like this to come into my life.

“GET. OUT. NOW. I bellowed, nearly burping the flames from my belly.

The fire flared from the wall towards me, between angry and stupid I stood steadfast. The flames parted, millimeters from my face. They lashed out over and over, slowly coming closer as if burning through an invisible barrier. I finally came to my senses and ran back to my truck. I went back to the priest and gave him the rundown.

“It's really not safe to leave candles burning while you're gone.” He said dryly.

“I don't even own candles.” I assured him, a chill ran down my spine, “And why the fuck didn’t those flames incinerate me?”

He laughed to himself. He didn't seem surprised, “Son, I blessed you in case it wasn’t a push over. I’m glad you made it.” He smacked me on the shoulder and headed for the door.

“Take me to your place,” he sighed, “This is a job for old men.”

When we got to my place I followed him in. He tried to discourage me, but ultimately I had to see what he could possibly do. He took his clerical collar off, then proceeded to completely disrobe save his tighty whities. He was littered with trophies of battles long past. Burnt skin that never returned to its natural state. Long, dark scars that  traversed his muscular frame like tattoos.

He took a long slow breath and very gently pushed open the unlatched front door. He braced himself, his feet in a broad stance. A blaze of fire ripped through my living room and towards the front door. His broad, battered hands snapped up to chest level and gripped like he’d grabbed a raging bull by the horns. With a grunt, he threw the fire away from him. It was like watching a sumo wrestler. He waddled into the house with the wide legged stance. I couldn’t detect fear or uncertainty.

“He asked you to leave.” he said into the house, loudly but without force, like an elementary teacher.

He stepped to the side, an invisible something slammed into my bookshelf. The shelves cracked and the paperbacks tumbled to the floor. He hit his chest firmly with his right fist. A challenge. Flames spit up around him in a circle. He braced, the flames collapsed in on him like a ring of waves converging on a single point. The father let out a commanding bark and started pushing the flames back with his bare hands. The scars across his body burned bright red like hot steel, his muscles struggled.

Then, everything was silent, all I could hear was my breathing. His breathing. My heart. His. Heart. His grip released and his flat palms stood out against the onslaught of sentient flame. I watched his face twist, his mouth scream silently as the flames sucked into his hands. The scars burned brighter. He dropped to one knee, gasping for air.

I ran to his side and tried to help him up, but burned my hands. His skin was hot enough that I couldn’t stand to be within feet of him. His body cooled and I helped him into his priestly attire. I took him back, but he wouldn’t answer a single question on the ride back. When he climbed from my truck he reminded me.

“No one will believe you. If you send them to me, I’m just a broken old man. Broken from the years I spent at war as a young man.”

He smiled and gave me a friendly nod. I never saw him again. I didn’t even have his name to watch for his obituary, you know, just in case.

[mmkelleywrites]

My neighbor’s think I’m a ghost

My neighborhood has had a lot of supposedly paranormal activity as of late. The police have made announcements that they can’t really respond to ethereal invaders. Complaints started within the book groups. Their contacts were never where they let them. They’d wake up with fresh ice in their drinks or an empty cup on their nightstands. Personally, I always find everything exactly where I leave it. I think they might be hitting the Jesus juice a little aggressively.

Honestly, I think the bigger crime is how often spouses spend the night separate from each other because of their jobs. The husbands miss their wives, the wives miss their husbands. After being single for most of my life, I can sympathize with them. Sleeping alone is terrible. Snuggling up to a warm person, the smell of their hair. It’s just the best.

Another odd thing around here, on top of the ghosts and so many people traveling so often is none of these people lock their deadbolts. Everyone is just a credit card swipe away! I guess when you have to go through gates to get into the community it gives you a lot of security. I still triple check my locks before bed.

So I got a great idea. I ordered a white morph suit off of Amazon, and I watched. My neighbor across the street always seemed so sad that her husband had to travel so often. I waited for her car to be there by itself for a couple of nights. On the third night, I put my morph suit in a backpack and snuck into her yard in the middle of the night. All the lights were off, the back door popped open with one stab of my gas station rewards card.

I switched my clothes for my morph suit in her mudroom, then crept up stairs as quietly as I could. I searched for her bedroom. I didn’t want the kids, or the computers. Sweet little Karen was my target. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, I could just barely see her through the suit and by the star light. She tossed and turned, searching for something that simply wasn’t there.

She looked like she was suffering. I slipped under the covers and sat my hand on her hip. She instantly settled down and snuggled into me, shoving her sweaty hair into my mask covered face. It was like she was personally telling me thank you. I conked out for what felt like a restful ten days, but her alarm clock told me it was only a few hours. I slipped back out, careful not to stir the now peaceful Karen. I changed in the mudroom again, then scurried back to my home under the cover of the night.

The next day at our book club, she seemed… fresh. Rejuvenated. She kept going on and on with such awe about how she hadn’t slept that well alone in her entire life. I wanted to squeal with joy, but I held it in. I'm not crazy, I know she would feel a certain kind of way about this situation. I feel the good outweighs the prudish social expectations. That night, her husband was still absent. I donned the morph suit for another tour of duty.

The third night rolled around, and honestly I’d gotten a little comfortable. That happens when you’re sleeping with someone, right? I took a drink from the glass on her nightstand, borrowed her eye drops and nose spray. My allergies were acting up, and I didn’t want to interfere with her rest. I slept through my phone buzzing, the benedryl I took so I wouldn’t sneeze and hack from mucus must have put me down a little too hard.  

I woke up to the sound of her alarm. She was groggy, and smacked at her alarm clock haphazardly. I stood up as gently as I could, trying not to alert her. I absolutely knew this was it. I was going to get caught. Run, or hide? I would have fit under the bed, but something was screaming run. I bolted through the dark house. She screamed. I was spotted. I pulled off the morph suit as soon as I slipped in my backdoor. I stuffed it between the washing machine and the wall.

Then I waited. I waited quietly on my couch. I was absolutely sure the police would be on their way. Six o’clock rolled around. Seven, eight, nine o’clock all came without anything. By noon I realized that my face was covered, but even better, she must not have had her contacts in. Jim, her husband, was home that night. That was his last business trip for a long time. That was the week the rumors about Karen’s house being haunted started.

I laid low, until a few months later. Sue was in a similar predicament as Karen was. Sue also always wore glasses, giving me some insurance if I was sloppy again. Her deadbolts were locked. But her windows on the deck were unlocked, I slid in. If you consider how its weird to smell someone’s house for the first time, it’s three times as strange when they don’t know you’re there. I rummaged through the mixed nuts on her counter, digging for cashews. I found her bedroom shortly after getting over my disappointment with the lack of cashews.

It presented a possible problem. With how the room was arranged, she would be between me and the door. I bit the bullet and took the risk. The next day, it was like she’d had a coffee drip all night. Frankly, it was the most uneventful week of breaking into a house that you could imagine. Everything was exceptionally smooth. It bolstered my confidence.

The very next week, Jacqui was dragging like she’d been awake for weeks. She had the same story as everyone else. Husband out of town, fishing, hunting or something that was very… Hemingway. To be frank, that was the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever gotten. I honestly quiet dislike Jacqui, and her husband. I find them to be crass, uncivilized things. I almost backed out at the last moment, but I think businesses who discriminate are horrid, and that I should hold myself to a higher standard.

I will admit, I was less than professional. The first night, I took the dirty glasses from her sink and stacked them into a triangle on her kitchen table. While rested, she was shaken up. I squealed like a little girl the next morning when she posted a picture of it online. I jogged by her house around eleven that night. The lights were on, she was shuffling around the house. I waited under a tree in her backyard. Eventually, either exhaustion won out over paranoia, or she decided she didn’t believe in ghosts.

I should have  skipped that night. It was stupid. It was way more risk of getting caught since she was already on edge. I even hated the smell of her shampoo. My disdain grew almost unbearable as I lay there, staring at the back of her head. I should have made myself leave. I never wanted to have blood on my hands. Just thinking about that night makes me shake with some alien mixture of disgust and hate.

Jacqui is fine. I did not hurt a single hair on her head. However, sometime around two o’clock that night, I heard the backdoor click open. Then footsteps, soft, slow,  and deliberate. Break ins non-existent in our neighborhood. Everyone is relatively well off, and we’re gated from outside interference. I froze. My heart pounded in my chest like a mad man trying to escape his cell. The footsteps neared her bedroom. A blacked out figure entered. I feigned sleep and watched it through cracked eyes.

She must have been absolutely dead to the world. He was mere centimeters from her face, as if inspecting her, scrutinizing every last detail. What about me? He could kill us both, he could lead me to be being discovered. He could ruin everything for both of us just based on this one bad decision he’d settled on. The shadow man turned away, looking at her nightstand for a moment. I took my shot. I grabbed a rock with an inspirational quote scrawled on it from the nightstand and slammed it into his head.

The stars must have aligned for me that night. He went to the ground instantly. No scream, just knees, then folded over backwards. Jacqui was out hard, she didn’t even stir. I cracked him in the same spot a few more times to make sure he was finished. I stood there, in the dark, wee hours of the morning, essentially alone. My suit was ruined, nothing was going to get this much blood out. I left his body there. She found him the next morning. They ruled it as an accomplice turning on him in the middle of the invasion.

Not telling anyone was tormenting me. The book club chattered, avoiding the topic completely. No one wanted to admit we were vulnerable here. That there could be a killer lurking among them. I don’t want to be a killer, I just want to help.

[mmkelleywrites]

Call Upon Your God

My best friend growing up was obsessed with God. His family never struck me as particularly Jesus-y, but Art took it hook, line and sinker. He was always reading one of the books of the Bible. Even some more strange books, like Enoch. I remember when I mentioned I'd never heard of them, he just shrugged and said most sects considered them non-canon.

The strangest things about him were, in no particular order, that he was friends with me, and his obsession with meeting God. I've always been a godless heathen, for lack of a better word. He never seemed to care, and honestly I enjoyed the Bible stories he had to tell me. Weird shit, like Jesus banishing a dragon, Angels breeding with humans and making monstrosities. You know, *weird shit.*

Towards the end of highschool, I lost track of Art. I spent some time in and out of mental health facilities. Some of the people I met in those years really liked the stories I remembered from Art. Sometimes because of the absurdity, but some of them found some hope somewhere in there too. When I finally got home, Art was there waiting for me. Bright, full of Christ and with cookies from his mom.

It was like we never parted. He was extremely excited that he’d gotten into Bob Jones University. I laughed at him when he mentioned “B.J.U.” He ignored my crude humor, as always. I guess they have a program that’s very intensive in Bible studies. I asked him about meeting God. He was still as convinced as when we were ten.  After my stint in the facilities, I thought to ask, “Does that mean you want to die?”

“No!” he snapped.

        An awkward silence, then he apologized for being snappy. He calmly explained that if he were to kill himself, or possibly even die purposely, that he’d risk not going to the Pearly Gates. Of course he prayed,  and volunteered, and really anything he could do to emulate people who’d been Saints. He was working soup kitchens, advocating for AIDS patients, donating as much as his little job would let him to the homeless, and with all of that going on still manage to help out at the women’s shelter. He really latched on to the “whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” bit from the big guy.

    Is it any surprise he hadn’t met God? I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but at the same time, I admired the difference he was making in the world. He called me on my lunch break one day. In one of his religion classes at BJU, the discussion apparently shifted to inmates. Someone said they’d heard a lot of death row inmates suddenly find God once their fate is sealed. In typical Art fashion, he wedged visiting inmates into his schedule. He passed those stories onto me, too. Some of them were absolutely proud of their crimes. No remorse, they nearly pissed themselves laughing at the mention of the Lord or salvation. There were those who’d seeked out salvation. Not all of them through religion, but many of them had. He focused on those. Even the ones who seemed to absolutely believe found it laughable that God had actually come to them. Disappointed, but he added “Prison Ministry” to his resume of good deeds and kept that a few days a month, too.

    I don’t really know if it was the same class, but discussion turned towards, “there are no atheists in a fox hole.” It was like he had been sitting on top of the solution the whole time. He dropped everything and joined the service. Three tours. Afghanistan once, Iraq twice. Assignments everyone else thought were crazy, he was the first in line. Every time he came back, he was the exact same Art. I honestly don’t know if he killed anyone over there. I didn’t want to ask, and he never seemed interested in talking about that part of his job. Eventually, he gave that up, and went back to BJU, this time on a GI Bill.

    I got the impression he wasn’t very strict with himself on his attendance this time around. He was digging into more of the “non-canon” books again. I’m not sure where he found it, but he kept talking about doing works in the name of God as a means of transformation. Art said he was still figuring it out, but that he was starting to see all of the work he’d put in trying to meet God as a means of personal transformation. Service as a chrysalis, he said.

    After that, I never knew when we’d talk. He’d call or show up at all hours of day, exhausted, but somehow invigorated at the same time. I kind of figured maybe he’d had some kind of existential crisis that lead into drugs and drinking. I’d seen it in the facilities, and he certainly fit the archetype that I’d seen do that. I just tried to be there for him as best I could. I tried to bring it up, maybe save him like he’d always tried for me. He swore up and down that he wouldn’t touch anything like that.

    This part of the story is where my details get murky. A rash of murders ripped through our city. Art was the final victim.  There were eight victims in total. The first person was an investment broker. He was plastered all over the news for very likely accusations of embezzlement. They came to raid his condo, expecting that he’d skipped town when he failed to meet his court date. No one was prepared for him, boiled in oil in his hottub. The murderer had broken in, put extra heating elements into the tub and refilled it with vegetable oil. They found two rare coins balanced on his eyes.

    The next victim was similarly high profile. A nationally syndicated personality, known for spewing vitriol and outrage. He targeted anyone outside of his political circle. The person responsible caught him early in the morning going into the studio. The aide that usually arrived at the same time was running late that early morning. The sound proof studio made sure no one heard what must have been a horrific racket. He was chopped, limb from limb. It must have been done quickly, because he had still been gasping for his final breaths when the aide found him. He was too far gone to give a description of his assailant. The camera’s only caught a person in all black, like one of those ANTIFA protesters from recently. No forensic data was recovered.

    The third victim is what started suggestions of more than one killer. The local news reported the wife of the second victim had been found dead in their home. They found her inside of a python. The small video clip of their house showed a small wine cellar that was only accessible from the kitchen. The person, or persons, must have broken in during the funeral and dumped a menagerie of snakes into the cellar after removing the ladder back into the kitchen. They’d removed the hatch and put the rug back over it. When she came home, she fell into Indiana Jones’ nightmare. Copperheads, water moccasins, pythons, cobras, an anaconda that came up missing from the zoo. It was a hateful death sentence. An expert from the zoo said that, if they hadn’t found her for awhile, there may have been nothing left in the python, as they digest bones and all.

    Number four was our Congressman. Not a hometown hero, but not a villain either. He had a passion for expensive wines and dinners. Expensive outings, mostly at the expense of corporations buying his votes. He had been nailed down to a chair in his study. The coroner noted small cuts inside of his mouth, that they chalked up to the rats that had apparently been force-fed to him while live. There were also toads and snakes slithering and hopping around the study, and remnants of them in his stomach at the time of the autopsy.

    At this point, people were mortified. Who was doing this? Comments on the local news’ website for these stories ran the gambit between praising someone for taking out the trash and admiration for their creativity in problem to disgust that no one could catch the person responsible for the depravity and being terrified that it would never stop. The fifth killing flew under the radar, but is now believed to be the fifth in the series of killings. An adult entertainment convention happened through town. One of the actresses was found burned alive in the alley along the hotel she was staying in.

    The sixth victim is where these killings started to find their links cemented past speculation. I personally knew this guy. Art did, as well. He was a science teacher we both had in high school, Mr. Fink. A very capable man, but full of himself to a fault. He was convinced he was God’s gift to everyone. If you cornered him being wrong, he simply gaslighted you into thinking that he was right the whole time. They found him strapped to a waterwheel. Official cause of death? Drowning. They think he rotated on the wheel for days before being found. Someone noticed that all of these were the Hell-bond’s punishments for the Capital Sins.

    They found the last two victims together. Art’s neighbor, Jim. He’d always spent so much of his life trying to one up Art’s family. They got a new car? He bought a boat the next week. Art got into BJU? His son was going to MIT. Art always ignored it. He said if you let the envy bother you, you’re just being prideful, and that’s just as bad. His wife found him in their chest freezer. It had been emptied, filled with water and he’d been forced in. The lid was weighed down with cinder blocks to prevent his escape. He was locked in a block of ice.

    Art was there, too. The police haven’t been able to figure out why he was there. His flesh was singed and his torso was split from neck to pelvis. Since we were so close, I got a chance to see his remains. It reminded me of a used cocoon, a spent husk laying on the garage floor. There wasn’t much left, some bone and flesh. The organs were gone. I did some reading, Art’s death wasn’t a punishment for sin, but Jim’s was. I haven’t heard from Art, but I get this feeling in my chest that he’s out there. Maybe he met God, maybe he turned into what he’d been worshiping all this time?

[mmkelleywrites]

Rose’s Whisper

The house seemed like an absolute miracle, the asking price was unbelievably low, the sellers had remodeled most of the house to try to entice buyers and the yard was absolutely enormous, surrounded by vacant, wooded lots on three sides. We were in a tight spot, the seller of the house we were buying backed out at the last minute. The house we were in was in closing. It was the most welcoming vacant house I’d ever seen. Even from the first night, with only boxes and no furniture in place, it was home. There were no nights of unfamiliar noises breaking our slumber.

    Shortly after the move, I started my junior year of highschool. I didn’t know anyone in this sleepy little town yet. The move was sufficiently far away none of my friends were close enough to even visit. It was pretty average, people were too busy with their own business to really notice me. At lunch on the first day a pale girl sat down across from me.

“I’ve never seen you here before.”

“I just moved here a few weeks ago,” I admitted.

She nodded along, pulling her arms into her black TSOL shirt. I watched her squirm in her seat, and try to shake the tuft of auburn that hung from an otherwise shaved head out of her face.

“Why Pinehurst?” she asked with more than a tinge of disgust.

I shrugged, “My parents just really loved the house and happened to find better jobs around here.”

“What house?” she probed, skeptically.

“The big purple house on Garden Row.”

She came to life, her eyes lit up, her flat expression turned to the most infectious smile.

“You’re telling me you live in Rose’s House?” she laughed.

“Rose’s House?” I was lost.

“It’s the haunted house!” she exclaimed before launching into a barrage of questions. “Have you seen the lady in the bright red dress? Has she been calling for her lost lover? When I broke into it back when it was still abandoned, I totally saw her in a mirror behind me!”

“Slow down there, Egon.” I said with a laugh, “I haven’t seen anything like that.”

“Just you wait! You’ll see her!”

She practically dripped with excitement as she climbed over the lunch table, plopped down next to me and flung her arm around me.

“Ghosts aren’t real.” I reminded her, trying to wiggle from her grasp.

“Just. You. Wait.” she shot me finger guns and a wink.

    The lunch bell rang and everyone dispersed to their schedules. I decided not to share my residence with anyone else for awhile. I kept thinking about how sure she was, how she said that she saw the lady in red before. Were those shadows that we see from the corner of our eyes really the lady in red? Had I explained away something terrifying? I was on high alert when I got off the bus. I carefully observed every window in the house, searching for movement, silhouettes, anything that might tell me there was something in the house.

    Our entire house was still as I slipped through the door as quietly as I could. I checked behind me so often I felt like I was spinning. I crept down the hallway, peeking into each room from the edge of the door frame. I winced with each creak of the floor. Then came a sharp snapping sound that echoed through the house. I scrambled into my room and hide behind my bed. Silence swept back through the house.

    It took me a few minutes to get my bearings. I absolutely knew there were no such thing as ghosts and I needed to step up and be an adult about it. I marched back into the hallway with a hair straightener in my hand. The door at the end of the hallway slammed shut. I started to scream, but managed to pull it together and yelled into the house.

“Who the fucks there?!” I bellowed down the hall.

I ran down the hall, breaking the silence with the thuds of my feet. I ripped the door open and swung my implement of destruction wildly for anyone in there to catch. It was our home office, and it was completely empty. Someone had left the window open, the curtain was snapping in the wind, and the wind probably slammed the door. I threw myself into the office chair and sat the hair straightener down.

“Jesus, what’s wrong with you!” I said into my hands with an aggravated growl.

    My stomach sank, now there was the distinct sound of a person coming down the hallway. A strange yet familiar voice called out, “Hey, you alright back there?”

    I grabbed my straightener and peaked out into the hall. I should have known by the clunk of her boots.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I said, holding my chest as my anxiety leveled out for the third time.

“I… uh… “ she stammered, trying to find a reason to be at my home.

“I told you there’s no ghost here.”

    Her face was red, she chewed her bottom lip. “Well, there is,” she said matter of factly, “but that’s not why I came over. You did tell me where you live, I figured you wanted to hang out.”

    She was an odd duck. We sat out on the patio in the back of the house. It was honestly the fastest I’ve ever become friends with someone. The only girl named Johnnie I’d ever met, she hung onto my every word and I hung onto hers. We’d been talking for what felt like minutes but had stretched into hours when she jumped up from the swing.

“Do you smell that?” she asked with a grin.

“I thought it was you.”

    She took off towards the woods and yelled back for me to hurry up. I ran after her. It didn’t take long before I found her in a clearing with an absolutely massive rose bush. The buds were equally disproportionate, some of them as big as dinner plates. Its thorny tendrils stretched across the clearing, it seemed like nothing else wanted to live near it. Johnnie reached out and was stroking one of the large flowers to be.

“Laura?” I heard my mom call from the house.

    I turned to look towards the house, “I’m back here with a friend.”

        The bush shook violently. I jerked around and Johnnie had tripped over one of its sprawling vines and into the thorny bush. I dug her out, but the thorns had done a number on her arms. I helped her back to our bathroom to clean her wounds.

“Ow!” She exclaimed as I dabbed peroxide on her arm.

“Not as tough as you look?” I asked with a laugh.

“Can I ask your parents if they've seen Rose?”

I jabbed one of her cuts with a cotton ball. “You have a problem.”

She stayed for dinner that night. My parents loved her like a second daughter from the first hello. Johnnie was unlike any other person I'd ever met. She treated everyone she ever met like they'd been with her their entire life. My parents basically let her crash at our house as often as she wanted. They wouldn’t have really noticed anyway, the workaholics that they were. I think they liked that I had someone around to keep me company.

After a couple of nights, I caved. “Johns, what exactly is Rose?”

    I thought she was going lay an egg. She squealed with absolute delight. “Did you see her? Is that why you want to know?”

    “No, I just know you’re really into it and wanted to know why.”

        “Well! Let me tell you! This was one of the first houses in Pinehurst. That’s why it seems so much older than most of them. Eventually they sold more and more of the land and people built more homes up around it.”

    “So, the house is haunted because it’s creepy?” I asked flat and unimpressed.

    “I’m getting to it! So! Rose was a resident here after they’d broken up the big land parcel. She was a single woman, no kids. Which was a little strange but not unheard of when she lived her. Unfortunately, she had a very early mental decline.”

    “Like Alzheimerz?” I asked.

    “I don’t know, but at first she was still her friendly self, then she had a little bit where she was just kind of a husk. Out of no where, she started lashing out at the nurses who’d come to take care of her. She’d hit them, she’d scratch them. Most of them didn’t do more than a few shifts in a row with Rose before they’d take a break.”

    “Why didn’t they put her in a home or something?”

    “Do you know where the nearest home or asylum is to Pinehurst?” she asked before continuing, “It all culminated in one of the nurses getting killed. Her fingernails had gotten a little too long and went a little too deep. This was before cellphones, they didn’t have constant contact. Her agency assumed everything was business as normal. Rose was alone with the body for a few days, as that was the nurse who was scheduled for that block. When the next nurse came a couple days later, she found Rose gnawing at the flesh.”

    “SHE FUCKING ATE HER?!” I screamed, clearly too drawn into the story now.

    “Not so loud, she’ll hear you,” she said with a wink, “She attacked the second nurse as she called the police. She fended her off, but Rose fell and hit her head. Ever since, people in Pinehurst say they see her looking out of the windows, watching her neighbors and admiring her garden. If she catches you in her house, tho--”

    “It’s our house! We live here!” I cried.

    “She’ll make you feel every bit of emotion you’ve ever felt. It call comes racing into the forefront of your mind, paralyzing you. Then, she feasts again.” she growled that last part with a grimace.

    “How do they know what happens if she eats you?” I asked, with a jarring clarity.

    “Maybe one kid saw it happen to another and escaped while she was tearing into his friend?” she mused.

    “Why are you so into this stuff?” I asked, honestly curious.

    “Well, I always loved ghosts and scary shit,” she admitted, “but when we were kids, I dared my brother Mikey to break in here.”

    “I haven’t met your brother yet?” I asked, a little hurt.

    “He… uh… well…”

        She was struggling to find the words. It looked like every time she found one, it got caught in her throat and fell back down to her darkest depths. I hugged her and shushed her.

    “You can tell me when it’s time.” I assured her, she nodded into my neck.

Night after night we stayed up into the wee hours of the night, vigilant until dawn broke. I didn’t believe in Rose. Ghosts were for campfire stories. Even still, I was sucked in by the energy that she threw towards trying to show me what she absolutely knew. One night, she was positive we’d found Rose. There was a rustling outside, we charged out like warriors. The raccoon rummaging through the flower beds was more of a warrior than we.

“Laaaauraaaa…” I heard Johnnie’s voice call out to me from the darkness.

    Our wide eyes locked. Johnnie mouthed “What the fuck?” to me.

“Laaauraaaa...” the words drifted through the night air a second time.

It felt like it was coming from the house or the backyard. She gripped my hand with white knuckles as we bolted into the house. She held the door open for me and locked it as soon as we were both inside.

    Once we were inside, Johnnie’s terror had transformed into bliss, she grabbed my arms and gave me a shake with an excited scream. Mine had not.

“She called for you!” she squealed and jumped up and down, “I told you she was real!”

“Why did it sound like you?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“She’s trying to luuuure you!” she cackled.

        I sat there on the couch and stared at the floor.

“C’mon!” she tugged me by the arm, “Let’s go find out who it was. Ghosts, aren’t real, right?”

    I shook myself and jumped up with her, of course she was right. Ghosts aren’t real, they’re just stories to scare kids like Santa or Barbara Streisand. We crept through the house. Just my mom in the office, she assured us it wasn’t her that was calling for me, nor did she hear anyone calling my name. We swept the backyard with a flashlight we keep for walking our dog at night. Nothing. We spent the rest of the night watching movies. I don’t think you could have pried me off of Johnnie with a crowbar that night.

The ghost hunts chilled out, even as fall moved in and Halloween was upon us. No more voices, not even false alarms. We ate lunch every weekend back in our secret grotto. The buds grew bigger, but never blossomed, even into October. I tried a few times to find out what kind of flower it was, but it certainly wasn’t native to North America.

For Halloween we were attending a party at a friend's house. Johnnie had ran home to pick up a few accessories for her costume. I was finishing up my make up, Raggedy Anne to go with my curly red hair, and heard Johnnie call my name from down the hall.

“I'm in the hall bathroom!” I bellowed down the hall.

No one answered for a few minutes. I finished painting my face before I went looking for Johnnie. I called out for her from the top of the steps.

“Johnnie!” echoed back up the staircase.

    I froze, I couldn’t figure register who the voice belonged to. It rang out again, calling for Johnnie. Simply hearing the voice made me queasy, it was so familiar, yet alien.

“Laura? I just got here, what's up?” Johnnie’s voiced called out.

“Oh Jesus.” I said into my hand.

    Frozen at the top of the stairs, I stared down at the landing. Then, Johnnie appeared at the bottom. I pointed to my chest and shook my head. She motioned for me to come with her. I scrambled down to her. She kept her calm and ushered me to the Halloween party. Even under thick make up, more than a few people said I looked like I’d seen a ghost.

“I’ve never *seen* a ghost,” I assured them.

We tried to avoid being in the house after that. We crashed at the Halloween party that night. I felt safer with Johnnie with me. Looking back, the voices were unnerving, but they didn’t feel malicious.

Thanksgiving was coming up fast. Pinehurst was bathed in oranges, browns and gold. Except for the little alcove behind my house. The trees were thick enough to hide it, but that immediate area stayed green. One of the blooms was swollen, the green casing stretched thing with the petals inside pressing outward. I watched it blossom a few days before Thanksgiving. Johnnie had went on a store run and I was still avoiding being in the house by myself. It unfolded delicately in a plume of red, each petal waving into place. The flower itself was a dull beige oval after the first couple of layers of red. Closer inspection revealed another oddity; it had three stamen instead of the usual one. Two on the top semi close to each other, and one farther down, a little larger than the other two.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Johnnie was back. I helped her get the things for Thanksgiving put away. Then, I told her that the bush in the back had bloomed, and about it’s peculiar hue and anatomy. Naturally I took her to see the rarity in our backyard. She loved weird. When we breached the woods into the clearing, her joking stopped when she saw the bloom.

“What the fuck?” she screamed, running to the plant.

The beige petals of the bloom had folded and laid across each other. It was a face. A young boy that looked strikingly like Johnnie. My heart sank. She cradled the bloom in her hand, her eyes were already swollen and red with tears. She looked to me with eyes that crushed my soul. I dropped to my knees next to her, embracing her.

“It looks like Mikey” she she mumbled, “it… it looks like Mikey...”

“Who?”

“It looks like Mikey,” she reiterated, “It. Looks. Like. Mikey.”

“Johnnie, who is Mikey?” I pushed.

“He - My - He went -” she sputtered, “My brother who went missing.”

She’d mentioned a missing brother, but never a name or shown a picture. I always assumed she was too young when he went missing to have remembered much of him. Maybe she had been, and that flower brought it all raging back. The petals wiggled. Writhed? I don’t really know what to call it, but his--it’s? mouth started opening and closing, like a guppy gasping at the water. We both tumbled back into the dirt, Johnnie shaking in my arms. I could scarcely pull my attention from the monstrousity to notice the sunlight being devoured by the encroaching shadows.

“Wuh… wuh…” the flower wheezed.

I started shooting back towards the house, adrenaline giving me the ability to drag a paralyzed and hysterical Johnnie backwards. Until we hit a wall of thicket. I drug us both to our feet and surveyed the area. We were surrounded. I couldn't see the house. The woody vegetation stretched up into the tree tops and tangled until I couldn't see the sun or clouds. Everywhere I looked was obscured by branches and brambles.

“Why… why…?” it moaned.

Johnnie went limp in my arms. I couldn’t hold her dead weight, I couldn’t do much but slow her crumpling to the ground. There was a thorny tendril creeping towards her.

“Why did you let me?” It groaned at her unconscious body.

I stomped and kicked the vine. It wouldn't be dissuaded from it's pursuit. I grabbed it. I yanked and jerked on it, I tried to pull it in the opposite direction, despite the thorns cutting my palms. I screamed her name until I was hoarse. She wouldn't stir no matter how loud I screamed.

Another blossom unfurled in front of me. Johnnie. It was Johnnie staring at me through the brilliantly colored petals. I stood there in awe. Then I felt everything. Literally every thought, every feeling I'd ever had about Johnnie surged through me. It was beautiful, it was horrifying, it left me on my knees with tears streaming down my cheeks. I couldn’t find the strength to move a single muscle.

I forced my eyes shut. I refused to acknowledge it even existed. I knew she was on the other side of the bush. I rose to my feet, I was weak and shaking, but I made it. I looked away from the shrub. The vines had wrapped around her ankles and were inching her through the packed dirt towards its base. I wobbled and stumbled towards her, keeping a wide breadth from that thing.  I tried to snap the vine, but now it was thicker, heavier. It was like trying to sway a steel cable from its anchor.

It felt like everything went black. That moment of struggle made me absolutely know what “drowning in sorrow” felt like. I distinctly remember the ground tearing open, like a little Hollywood earthquake. The roots twisted and writhed, covered in white thorns and hooks. I grabbed a long stick and jammed it into the gnarled mass of roots. It recoiled, just long enough for me to drag Johnnie back away from it. I found a small gap in the twisted wood that had walled us in with it, I managed to squeeze through then pull her through behind me.  

I screamed her name as I inched her limp body down the trail towards the house. I remembered it as just a short walk, but now it was miles. Eventually I had to stop. I couldn’t drag on any further, I propped her up against a tree and sat next to her. It was quiet. No rustling, no voices. She started to come to as I layed in the dirt.

“Mikey?” she mumbled with drowsiness clouding her mind. Then her eyes shot open and she punched my shoulder, “Mikey?! Where the fuck did he go?”

    I shook my head, “That was just the roses, Johnnie. It was trying to drag you into its roots.”

“How did it know?” she started sobbing, “Did it get him?”

“I- I don’t know. It showed me your face.”

    I ushered her back to the house. She wept and wept. I cried with her. What was happening at my backdoor didn’t dawn on me until we were on top of it. The two rose bushes that flanked the door were no longer dormant. Lush and green, their branches were drooping with heavy buds.

“Noo..no no no” I stammered, supporting some of Johnnies weight.

“What now?”

    The plant on the left’s bloom unfurled. A small forehead, slightly pointy nose and thin lips folded out of the delicate petals. The one on the right a strong jawline, wide nose, deep set eyes. Mom. Dad. The petals annealed together, forming perfect replicas of my parents right down to their skin tone.

“Giiiirls,” my mom’s voice cracked, “It’s time for supper!”

    My dad’s voice cackled and carried through our yard. I’d never heard him sound like that before. It was his voice, but it was not my father. I clutched Johnnie close.

“C’mon, girls!” his voice called out, “Help me with the flower beds!”

“Laura! Johnnie!” my mother’s voice followed up, “Come look at these beautiful roses!”

    Johnnie stood on her own. I could see the exhaustion, the same that was starting to weigh me down. Whatever that thing was, it’d taken too much. Too much from me, too much from Johnnie, too much from everyone who’d ever found it. I ran for the shed that my dad put back by the woods. The gas can for the lawn mower was full.

“Girls! We found what you've been hiding!” My father's words mocking, drenched in sarcasm.

“You shouldn't have dared me to go!” a small voice I didn't recognize called out.

Johnnie looked like she'd been punched in the gut. She clenched my arm tight enough to cut off circulation. I shook my head to her. “It’s not him, not anymore, anyway…”

She swallowed it all. We trudged on. It whipped at us with stray vines, the trail was even longer than it was mere moments ago. Each sharp lash drove away Johnnie’s sorrow. We grew more resolute that this had to be solved tonight. I lugged it back to the clearing as fast as I could. The living walls had retreated, the ground was still open, the tangle of roots gnashing in the void of soil.

“Come join us all down here!” a legion of voices echoed from the pit.

    I unscrewed the nozzle and threw the metal gas can in. The hungry roots shredded it into ribbons. Johnnie lit the trail of gas with a lighter she always carried with her. The fire shot into the hole, then erupted out like a volcano. We were surrounded by pained wails, I could see faces hanging from the plant, screaming as they burned. I could hear Mikey’s voice, Mom’s, and Dad’s too amongst the cacophony of the lost. I heard my voice and Johnnies voice distinctly, along with an innumerable mix of others. We watched it burn.

    The path back to the house was short again. There were sirens coming towards us. The house was on fire, plants around the house were also ablaze. They must have been connected through the roots. We met the firemen in the front yard. They heard the painful wails too, but never found the living people they thought they were going to find. Neither us, nor the firemen were prepared for what we found in the tree in the front yard.

    My mom and dad were both in that tree. Crucified by a thick tangle of now burning vines. The vines were bursting through their skin, coming out of their mouths. Terror and confusion were permanently sculpted on their faces. I broke down. Johnnie held it together for me in the moment, and broke down with me again later at her house. The flames burned for days. When everything was done, bones started popping up. In all the places that were previously plants. They identified Johnnie’s brother based on dental records, he’d gotten caught up in the old green house in the backyard.

        I moved in with Johnnie and her parents, I helped them with arrangements, and they helped me. Next year we’ll hopefully be roommates at the same college. I can’t say it’s been easy without my parents. I love Johnnie and her family, but it’s still a void that I know will never be filled. It’s hard to know that my Dad will never have the chance to walk me down the aisle, or that we’ll never get to see Mikey graduate. Johnnie never got a chance to try Mom’s world famous banana bread. The only real solace either of us gets is that maybe, when we burned that thing, we set them all free somehow.

[mmkelleywrites]

The Most Vague, Memorable Smell

I live in a small coal town on the Ohio river. Our community is pretty well crime free. Since we’re on the river, most disappearances are chalked up to people drowning and getting washed downstream. I want to keep track of my research, and this document will serve as a history of what I’ve found. The most recent disappearance from our town was my oldest friend. The official chain of events was something like Jeff was out drinking with friends from out of town, they decided to go fishing, and he drown. They dredged the river but decided the current probably drug him too far out and he would pop up soon enough. Jeff didn’t drink, and he was with me that night. Here’s what I’ve pieced together so far. He was sent out to visit an elderly woman through a volunteer organization he was a member of. Apparently Jeff hit it off with her granddaughter who was also there assisting her. She invited him out that night, the night he went missing. Jeff was ecstatic. He called me right after he left the lady’s house. She was perfect to him, tan, fiery red hair, and loved country music. I’d never seen him get swept off his feet, and I’d never seen him actually get ready for a date before, either. I met him and his date that night with our mutual friend Jen as my date. She introduced herself as Lynn. I found her to be unremarkable, except for two things: the way she smelled and the reddish purple V under her eye. I can’t put an exact description to it, other than just really good. It wasn’t floral, sweet or any other word you would describe scent with, it was just a smell that made you feel content. We had dinner and hit a little dance club the next town over. I think if he had had a ring, he would have been on one knee fast enough to crack concrete. He hung on her every word, he worshipped the ground she walked on. Suddenly, we couldn’t find a single sign of either. I checked my phone and had a text message from Jeff that read, “Headed to the river! ;)” That was the last time anyone heard from him. I’m not Shaggy and Scooby. I gave every bit of this information to the police before I started my own search for the truth. Jen also verified it with them. They never responded to my inquiries on the status of the investigation, or whether or not my information helped. Jeff’s parents were also in the dark, so I decided to look into it myself. My first step was to find the girl. I put out calls for help onto social media, friends and family of both of us shared it as far and wide as we could. We were looking for a short redhead with a V or checkmark shaped mauve mark under her left eye under the guise of Jeff’s family just wanting to meet someone who was instantly important to him. I had a few leads come in, but no one who had actually met Jeff or had the mark under her eye. I decided I should visit her grandmother. I called the organization that Jeff was working with, and kept the guise of trying to find the girl for Jeff’s parents to meet. The woman who handles their scheduling knew my mother, so she gave me an address. It wasn’t far from my parents house, so I took a walk. I purposely walked on the opposite side of the street. There wasn’t a house there. I double checked the address the dispatcher gave me, I checked my phone’s map, and I checked the house numbers around it. Everything matched up, except this house was definitely not habitable. It was boarded up, it looked like it’d been on fire at some point. There was a lone window on what I assume is an attic or maybe a loft that wasn’t boarded up. I saw someone in the window, just for an instant. It occurred to me that people live in all kinds of conditions. I crossed the street and opened the old chain link gate. The front door was covered by a sheet of plywood, so I crept around the back. No door at all, just an empty door frame. I checked around me. All of the yards within view were empty. I climbed up the old concrete steps and poked my head in the door. “Anyone here?” I called out, “I was looking for someone who may have lived here?” The house creaked, but no one answered. I decided that it was probably a squatter and I went back across the street. I called the charity scheduler and confirmed that was the address that Jeff had last went to. I went to the door of the house directly across the street. I knocked on the door. “Hello?” a man looked skeptically at me, keeping his front door mostly closed. “Hi, I was dropping something off for a friend, but the address he gave me is the house that burned down. Do you know where the people who lived there are now?” “Well, I reckon it’s been boarded up for about four years now.” “Oh…” “Ms. Robinson lived there, had since I was just a squirt.” he shook his head, “But she didn’t make it outta that fire. I think the investigators said it was from a space heater she used in her living room.” I thanked him for his time and turned around to head home, I saw some quick movement of something out of that uncovered window again. My entire way home it felt like I was being followed. I called the police, too. I told them that the house Jeff had been sent to had apparently burned years ago. He talked to me like I was a fool and insisted that there was a home there and they had questioned the lady and she had said she didn’t have a granddaughter or any other young lady that would be visiting her. I asked if they’d take me to see the lady. They declined at first, but I pressed them and if I want to be completely honest, they probably thought it’d shut me up. The next evening the squad car picked me up in front of my house. We turned onto the same street I’d been on before. I could vaguely smell something that smelled, well, good. It lulled me into some kind of contentment. We pulled up to the same address, but this time there was a whole house. No fire damage, not even so much as a lawn ornament out of its place. I looked across the street and there was the man I’d spoken with the evening before working in his yard. I quietly composed myself in the squad car. I didn’t want to look like a crazy person, so I held in the flood of emotions that tried to overwhelm me. That house was not like that yesterday. “You good? Let’s head in before I get sent on a call.” I followed the officer up to the porch. Up close, there was something off about the house. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, though. I touched one of the posts supporting the roof over the porch. It looked freshly painted, but felt rough and cracked. The chairs on the porch leaned just a little too far to the side, things like the peephole that should have been circles were just slightly oblong. The officer knocked on the door. When the door swung open, that vague pleasing smell washed over us like like a wave. Everything seemed a little more… right. A tall, broad woman with short grey hair filled the doorway. “Mrs. Robinson, how are you this evening?” the officer asked. “Still kind of sore, Officer Riley.” she said with a still sunny disposition, “How may I help you gentlemen?” “This is Alex, he’d like to ask you about the boy that stopped by to help you and went missing.” “Oh! I’m so sorry about your friend. He was such a help to me.” “Riley tells me there wasn’t a little redheaded girl here?” She gave a little frown and shook her head. It seemed like her whole face drooped with the frown. “No, just him and I were here. Red hair doesn’t even run in my family.” “That’s weird. He kept going on about how glad he was that he volunteered because he met Lynn here while helping you out.” She gave a little shrug with her hands up in the air. I saw genuine sympathy in her eyes. “He also said you were short, and the guy across the street said this house burned down.” I turned to Riley, confused and unsatisfied, “I’m not exactly sure what’s happening, but I think we have the wrong house, Riley.” “No, this is the place, this is the lady, everyone involved has confirmed it.” “Jeff confirmed it? You talked to Lynn? Can I meet her?” “I think we’re done here.” He pulled me out of the house. I looked over my shoulder as we walked down her short front yard. The smell was getting more faint, the house started looking slightly off again. I saw Mrs. Robinson in the doorway, but she looked at least a foot shorter and with greying red hair. I hopped back in the passenger side of Riley’s cruiser. “What the fuck is actually wrong with you, Alex?” he said as he stared me down. “What the fuck was up with that house? It just felt… wrong. What the fuck was that smell? The only time I’ve smelled that is from that Lynn girl that was with Jeff when he disappeared.” “The house isn’t ‘wrong’. It’s old. The shit inside is old. The lady, also, old.” he snapped, “Old shit, including people, seem a little off sometimes.” “What about the smell? It’s not normal, it doesn’t smell like anything, but it makes everything feel just a little better. That house has something to do with Jeff, and that lady knows it.” Riley hit his head against the steering wheel a couple of times and shook his head. “Don’t do anything stupid, Alex. If you’re harassing that lady, I’ll take you in.” I kind of blew it off and he took me home. I called Jen that evening and asked if she remembered anything about Lynn. “She smelled like patchouli.” she immediately answered, “My mom used a lot of patchouli scented incense when I was a kid.” “I thought it was more of a… like… grandma’s cookies kind of smell. Something kind of vague but super comforting. I definitely kept thinking about stuff from when I was a kid most of the time.” “I guess you might be right, it wasn’t exactly like patchouli, but it made me really comfortable.” I told her I had to run some errands still and hopped off the phone. The smell had to have something to do with it. I text Jen and asked her if she remembers seeing anyone else that we knew that night while we were with Jeff and Lynn. She replied with a disappointing “no.” I decided to go check it out again. This time, I would test if the smell had something to do with no one else seeing what was wrong with that house. On the way back there I stopped at the drugstore and picked up a pack of smelling salts. I figured the ammonia smell would overpower anything else I could smell. I approached from a side street so I could see the house from further away. It looked perfectly normal from a block and a half down the street. As I approached, I paid close attention to the smells around me and tried to stay as casual as possible. I stopped before crossing the street to the block that Mrs. Robinson’s house sat on. A short person with long red hair went through the gate and around the side of the house. I ran towards the house and hopped the fence. As soon as I rounded the corner, I saw a flash of red hair go around the back corner. I instinctively busted in the back door after it. There was no one there. I stood in there in the kitchen, the table was set and a pot boiling on the stove. The pot stood out, kind of like how things in the background of old cartoons are a little bit brighter or are styled a little differently. I almost forgot what I was doing. I started smelling that delicate, indistinct smell. I peaked into the boiling water. It looked like just leaves and branches in the rolling boil. It seemed to be coming from the pot. My mind filled with old memories of my grandma, running the streets with Riley and Mike as a kid, and just about anything else that’d make me smile. “Alex? Is that you? I thought I saw you walking down the street.” a soft female voice called through the house. “Hey, Lynn!” I called out, putting porcelian dinner plate over the boiling pot to contain the vapors. I cracked the smelling salts and took a whiff. It ripped me right out of it. The sweet memories shot out of my conciousness immediately. Everything was off. It was still the house I visited with Riley, but it was kind of like an impressionist idea of it. The fine details were rough sketches at best, everything kind of had a slight tilt to it. I cautiously stepped into the living room, and there was a red headed girl sitting on the couch, looking the opposite direction of me. “Have you seen Mike?” she asked. “No one has, I’ve been looking for you to try to see if he mentioned anything odd to you.” She looked up at me, and I wish I could say I saw the tears first. The first thing I saw was her face full of wrinkles. Red hair, red birthmark, even the same voice, but she had the wrinkles of an old lady. “He just up and left me!” she wailed. I stepped in closer, it wasn’t wrinkles. it was bunching up on the sides, like some weird mask. I sat by her, I rubbed her back as she sobbed. Her cries had an odd quality, like it was some kind of recording from years ago. “Where’s your grandma?” I asked. She choked for a split second. “Out with a friend for the afternoon.” I feigned checking my phone, “Oh shit! It’s six, I have a school thing.” I jumped up to hurry out the door. A hand that felt like it was covered in an old dried out latex glove grabbed my wrist. “Alex, please don’t leave me here alone.” “I’ll come back soon!” I promised. I watched my back the whole way home. I couldn’t shake the feeling she was watching me, stalking me through my own town. I never saw her, or her bright red hair. I assumed she’d started doing meth or something. I called Riley, let him know that she was there so he could follow up on their end. He scolded me for going back, but agreed it’d be good if he could actually interview her. I was paranoid for the entire trip, it seemed like bushes were wiggling with unseen bodies inside them. I actually walked up into someone’s yard and dug around in a shrub to make sure I wasn’t being stalked. Then, on the steps up to my house, there was a “cat.” It looked like a cartoon. Dark lines around the major parts, colors a little too vivid for a house cat. I poked it. It hissed at me, scratched my hand and ran off. It felt like a stuffed animal. I looked all around for signs of Lynn. Nothing. My heart pounded and anxiety soared. Was I next? Suddenly I felt like a gazelle being watched by a lion. Was that little girl really capable of disappearing people? What did I breath in that house? A stuffed animal couldn’t scratch me. Fear and shock dug in deep, I stood in shock on the steps. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring at the old cement steps, but it hit me like a ton of bricks. I sent Riley to talk to her. What if he’s next? I called his personal phone, I bounced on my toes so I wouldn’t explode with anxiety. “Pickuppickuppickuppickup…” I chanted to myself in a hushed voice. Voicemail. I ran back to the Robinson house. Maybe I could save Riley myself if I got there fast enough. I got to her street as Riley was knocking on the door. The door opened and he went in. I peeked in his cruiser. His phone was sitting on the dash. I crept up on the porch and peeked in the window. Riley was sitting on the couch, she was sitting across from him. She still looked wrinkly and folded to me, but Riley had a look one his face that he only had when he was ready to do one thing. They never broke eye contact as she stood up and swung her hips back and forth. She swayed her small frame across the living room towards Riley, pulling her shirt off. More bunched up pale skin was hidden under her shirt, Riley seemed to be too entranced to notice. She mounted his lap and draped her arms over his shoulders. Then she opened her mouth and looked up to the ceiling. It looked like she’d paused, but in reality, her mouth kept opening wider and wider. The skin on her face tore and flaked to the floor, revealing a mottled, splotchy skin painted with light browns. The head hidden behind that layer that I knew as Lynn was bulbous. It didn’t have eyes, a nose or even lips. Just a mouth that was practically from where it’s ears should have been to the other ear. A long brown and black tongue flicked across the uneven, sometimes sharp, sometimes flat teeth that filled it’s mouth. She leaned back and twisted her neck. I don’t know how, but she looked at me. She knew I was there, watching. I got a little smile from her, then she rose up slowly and hunched over Riley, he puckered up for a kiss. She sunk her teeth into his head. It… it took most of this face. She struggled, but with a crack loud enough for me to hear through the window, she bit right through his skull. She devoured it like a dog, looking straight up in the air. I scrambled for Riley’s cruiser. I grabbed the car radio and squeezed the button. “Officer down! Officer Riley’s down! Some crazy bitch just ate his goddamn face!” I sobbed into the microphone. The entire department, including off duty swarmed the street in minutes. They saw the house as burned down. The only sign of Riley they found in the house was his badge. I told them exactly what I saw, they sent me to the hospital for evaluation. I was informed that forensics didn’t find any signs of blood or any evidence anyone had been in the burnt house. I was released, now I’m home. I still feel like the gazelle waiting to be pounced on. Whatever the hell that little girl with the V birth mark is, she’s dangerous, and she’s well aware that I know her secret. I’ve started carrying a handgun with me just in case. I don’t know that anyone in my town even remembers what I told the police, or believes it. In the event that I die before I’ve reached a conclusion to this nightmare that satisfies me, I’ve placed this document on a deadman’s switch. Without my attention, it will send it to a few large communities who may take up my crusade or use it as a cautionary tale to maybe save others. Now I’m going to hunt her before she can take me, too.

[mmkelleywrites]

The Unlife of Eliza Lewis

Every state in America has the same legend, most places call them “Cry Baby Bridge.” You stop somewhere, often it’s a covered bridge. You turn off your engine and wait. If it’s dirty there might be tiny hand prints on your car. It almost never works. If you’re really lucky, your car won’t restart. Visiting Crybaby Bridge was the most important thing a couple of bored teenagers could do during Halloween last year.

First came the stories with oddly specific details, they added to the legend first. Suddenly your car doors would lock when you stopped on the bridge. Or they *wouldn’t* lock once you turned your engine off. Some people told me that they heard the ghost of the mother screaming her baby’s name, other people swore the radio would shuffle through stations, despite nothing else in the car working. The most unique detail I picked up was a staticy voice asking where it’s baby went.

Soon after the new additions to the legend started, people started exaggerating their experience. It began with shadowy figures along the walls of the covered bridge, then it escalated into the doors being flung open. I saw a lot of people claiming that foggy black appendages reached in and tried to drag them from their disabled vehicle. Dark figures appearing against the walls of the bridge, skulking around their cars. No one had any evidence past their word.

Until Jon went. His family has since deleted the video and have been declining questions about it for awhile now. I think they just want it to go away. I wish it’d leave my head.

The video starts before Jon and his friends pull onto the bridge. He comes to a dead stop, hits park and kills the engine. His headlights start to flicker in the background, the radio screen flickers too. This woman appears at the far end of the bridge when the lights turn on. Then she’s gone when they turn off. You can hear continuous static from the radio and every time the lights flicker she’s a little closer to the car. When she gets about halfway to the car you can start making out some of her features. She’s kind of twisted up, her skins white as snow except for a deep red mark across her neck. Over the radio something starts to come through, after a few repetitions I easily recognized it as a gruff, yet feminine voice.

“Where’s my baby?” The voice mumbled over and over.

You could hear the car not starting, a brutal grinding sound as he tries the ignition. The passengers urging Jon to move the car. The passengers voices turn into an Old Fashioned of screams and pleas. The voice over the radio is almost drown out by the the passengers, but after watching the video a few times, I could focus on it. It was more and more frantic as it progressed, banging on the windows with her grey-ish hands.

The camera view spins around the car, there’s grey hands banging on all the windows, including the windshield and back window. The hands battering the windows blocked everything outside of the car from view. The windows shattered. One by one, with the hands disappearing into the blizzard of shards. In the chaos, the camera falls to the floor, the video ended with the woman’s voice growling, then shrieking.

They all made it home that night. No cuts or scrapes, bumps or bruises. The video was posted online, but never received many views before it disappeared. First the paper tried to talk to them, then the local people. No one ever had any luck. At school they withdrew from people they were once close with, and shunned anyone who asked about their night on the bridge.

After Halloween passed, everyone’s need to be scared out of their wits went by the wayside. Life went on, but Jon never seemed to be the same. He was suddenly on high alert all the time. In the halls he would constantly check behind him. Jon always looked like he’d come off of a double shift and was headed straight into another one.

I invited him over right before Thanksgiving. He’d been showing up to class less and less over the weeks following his #crybaby bridge video. The more scarce he became, the less they remembered the terrors of the bridge that night. We sat at the fire pit in the backyard and nursed shitty piss-water beers that I snagged from my dad’s stash.

He was still for the longest time, he just stared into the night. He’d lost the paranoia of the previous weeks. The hyper vigilance had worn off. We sat in the quiet, wrapped in the silent air of the night, silent.

“You know,” he said, staring off into the dark of the night, “I don’t think she’s ever stopped searching.”

I sat my beer down. “What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. For awhile, I saw her everywhere.” He chugged from his can. “She crooned to me in the night, stalked me in the day.”

He shook the can side to side, stared into the emptiness of the can. The silence felt like it lasted aeons to me, but he seemed to have shed all worry. I couldn’t see a drop of despair, hopelessness, or sorrow. His face told me a story his tone would compliment, there was defeat lacing his words, but his expressions, his body, his motions all spoke of acceptance.

“What exactly happened after?”

He crunched his can in his hand then ran his hands across his face and through his hair. A frustrated exhalation. “As soon as I got back to my bed, the tapping happened. At first it was like one small hand, slapping the glass every couple of minutes. After a while, another one started coming from a different window, then from my bedroom door, closet door, then finally from my desk drawers.”

Another beer for Jon. He smiled to himself with a self acknowledging nod. “It was kind of chaotic. Every night it started, always just one, then more would join. It was… kind of like a symphony. I’d just kind of stay put. I’d tried to stay in school, but I had to sleep at some point.”

I grunted and nodded in agreement with him.

He shook his head at me, “Haven’t you noticed the hand prints?”

“I, uh, no?” I stammered.

He stood up and started walking towards the the drive way. I jumped up and followed him.

“Check the bumpers, trunks and tailgates.” He bounced on his toes.

Every single one, little hand prints.

“Are you fucking with me? I was just worried about you, dick.”

He smiled, shook his head and wiped some of the dust from one of the bumpers. “I never believed in any of that paranormal bullshit. It was all fun stories when we were kids. Even my parents said they never saw anything at Cry Baby Bridge.”

I shrugged, my parents said they hadn’t experienced anything either. “So the video was real?”

“What kind of fucking person do you think I am? Of course it was real.”

He opened his car door and sat sideway in the driver’s seat. We stood there in an awkward silence again.

“Do you thi–” I stopped mid sentence, he looked terrified. White washed like a cartoon character that saw a ghost.

“Can you hear it?” He searched around frantically from his seat. A dull thump slowly filled the driveway. I looked all around and under the cars. Nothing. Thump. Thump. Thump.

His tires screeched as he whipped out of my driveway in reverse.

“Don’t fucking look at her and get inside!” he yelled from his window before he sped down the dark road.

I kept seeing black, misty amorphous forms in the peripherals of my vision. I ran for my front door. I locked every door and window the house, then closed every curtain and blind and turned one every light in the house. Even lamps when overhead lights were already on. The house was filled with an eerie silence. A noise started, almost unnoticeable from the front door. At first it could have been a cat scratching at it. It had a pattern, but I couldn’t quite make out what made up the pattern. I snuck towards the door as quietly as I could. I pressed my ear to the door to try to make it out. It dawned on me that it was mumbling, the same indistinct thing, over and over slowly.

Then the air conditioner kicked on, and my heart and larynx met. I settled my ear back against the door. The mumbling seemed to be getting closer to the door, it sounded like “gebbe mebebeb” over and over. I jumped back when the mail slot started rattling. The mail slot door shot open and the void was filled with two milky, bloodshot eyes. I slammed the inside flap shut. Whoever it was let out the most guttural, primal scream. A paper white hand burst through the mail slot and gripped the door and started jerking on it. The way the door flexed and creaked you’d think it was Andre The Giant trying to break into my house.

I’m not proud of it, but I called nine one one. I peaked through the peephole while the phone rang. She couldn’t have been much bigger than five nothing, and maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet. I stayed on the line. The operator answered and my phone flew to the ground. The door suddenly stopped. I picked up my phone, told the man on the other end of the line what happened and that she appeared to be gone. He told me he’d send a cruiser my way anyway just to check the area for her.

I hung up and looked in the mirror my mom kept by the entry way as a decoration. One by one the edges gained small little hand prints. Silent and spontaneous it didn’t have a pattern or even a source. Then the hand prints started covering my reflection, they became more and more opaque as they blurred me out.

My blur went from a grease on glass white to black in just a moment, and the mirror crashed to the ground. There she stood. It wasn’t a dope head, it was the woman from Jon’s video. She stared through me, bloodshot eyes twitching, her head cocked slightly back and to the side. She walked towards me, one hand covering her mouth, the other wrapped around her stomach. A thick red welt around her porcelain white neck stood out prominently. I couldn’t see it coming at the time, but she raised her hand from her stomach and touched it to my cheek. Warm, wet, smelled metallic. I jerked backwards. Her hand was covered in blood, her middle was nearly bisected.

Her entire body shook. Her expression slid from sorrowful to scorned. She snarled her lip. I ran from the entry way, up the stairs and into the kitchen. She pursued. When she tried to enter the kitchen, she froze right before the doorway.

She searched the door frame with her eyes. They locked onto something above the door. She laughed. It was hoarse and slow, but she laughed. She pointed up.

“Cleverrrr…” she creaked at me, “you… give… my… baby.”

“I don’t have a baby.” I stuttered.

She vanished. I tried to sleep in the kitchen that night, but the knocking on the windows kept me up. My parents got home late the next morning. After they got home I looked above the doorway. A horseshoe was hanging.

I called Jon. Straight to voicemail. I spent some of the morning hanging horse shoes over my windows and doors. Fortunately my mom has a thing for country western decor. I was sitting in my room, at a loss. Was it over? Would she keep coming back? My phone startled me back to reality. The call came in as “Restricted”

“Josh? Have you seen Jon?” the voice trembled.

“He was here last night. Who is this?”

“I’m his mom, I’ve been calling numbers from his cell bill. They found his car wrecked last night, but he wasn’t there.”

“He hung out for a little, but he left around 10:30.” I answered.

We both sat silently for a moment.

“I tried to call him this morning,” I offered, “but it went straight to voicemail.”

“Me too…”

I told her my mom needed me, and promised to call if I found out anything. I stared out my bedroom window. Hand prints, all around the edges of the windows. My room is on the second floor.

My phone started ringing. It read “OHIO CALL” and a number with my area code.

“Hello?” I answered.

“Josh. Did she come for you?”

“Jon, what the fuck? Your mom said you wrecked your car?”

“Yeah, look, she came for me on my way home. I ran through the trees I wrecked into. I was running across a creek, and I tripped and fell on a little island type shit. For whatever reason, she couldn’t cross the water, so I crashed there.” he sped through. “But what about you?”

“She came through the big mirror in the front door. What the fuck is she?”

“I thought she was a ghost,” Jon grumbled, “But when she reached through the mirror, she smacked me in the face. It felt like a honest-to-God person cracked me upside the head.”

“Do you actually know a goddamn thing about what’s going on?!”

“Fuck you! I’ve made it this far!” Jon snapped back at me.

“By dumb fucking luck, apparently.”

*Boop*

He’d hung up on me. I scoured the internet for more information. I read and read as the sun disappeared into the horizon. There weren’t any results for anyone who died on the bridge. The results for Cry Baby Bridge were also sadly inconclusive. I started looking at things stopped by horseshoes, things stopped by iron.  Two results, consistently.

Ghosts, and witches.

I called the local Historical Society. A lady with a little too much nasal passage answered the phone.

“Historical Society, how may I assist you?”

“I was wondering about anything you knew about the old covered bridge.”

She was silent for a moment, then scoffed.

“That’s just an urban legend, you know.”

“I know, and it’s silly, but it’s been a really popular thing with my friends recently and I wanted to see if I could learn anything to spook them.”

I already knew enough to scare every person in the state into a full blown panic attack or coronary event.

“Call Ruth,” she answered without hesitation, “She knows more about it than anyone.”

“Thanks! Where can I reach her?”

“Wait, wait, wait! I should probably tell you, I think she’s got some dementia going on. So, please take it all with a handful of salt. I personally think she’s on a one way ticket to a ward, but she’s our longest standing member and has always had a fascination with those stories.”

She gave me her number before I hung up

I immediately called Ruth.

“Good afternoon!” she chirped into the phone.

“Hi, The Historical Society said you knew a lot about the old covered bridge on the edge of town.”

She laughed, “What would you like to know?”

“I guess the biggest question is did anyone really die on that bridge?”

“Well of course they have. A few horse drawn carriage incidents, a few automobile accidents…”

“You know that’s not what kind of dying I’m talking about.” I scolded.

“Oh, do you mean Eliza Lewis? She’s the one the kids are talking about lately.”

“What happened to her?”

“It’s all very sad. From what I’ve gathered reading old letters and journals, she was an outcast here. The local children were terrified of her, although it seems it was just because she lived here a lone. Whispers of witchcraft flowed through our little town. All of the accounts from the time say our community just left her be.”

“Then how’d she die?”

“Well, apparently, one of the local young men fell for her. It must have been in secret, because eventually she started showing, and some of the more… brazen residents took notice. They interrogated her, found out which Johnny Appleseed left his appleseed. He adamantly denied it, of course. He got trapped in his lie when a neighbor said they saw him coming and going at odd hours from her home. He played stupid. It was clearly her working some dark juju that brainwashed him into coming to her and performing the service of Venus he told the town.”

Ruth took a moment, she was quiet, but her breathing was heavy.

“They bought it. Hook, line and sinker.” Ruth gave a disappointed chuckle, “She had started to leave town while the meeting was in place. It’d started storming, so she took shelter in the old covered bridge you kids call Crybaby Bridge, now.“

“Oh shit…” I interrupted.

“Oh shit is probably what she said when half of the town came up on her in the middle of a thunderstorm. She would hang that night, in the oak tree that hangs over the river, right there next to the bridge. While she swung in the tree, someone in the mob thought of the baby she carried. While she choked and sputtered, the monsters cut the baby from her abdomen.”

“Did the baby live?” I interrupted again.

“Eh, some of the letters I’ve read say it was thrown down into the river, still screaming, some say an old lady took it home to care for it. I can’t really tell you which is true. They left her hanging there for days, though. The people were so convinced she was a witch that they left her hanging while someone put together a cast iron casket for her. All of the eye witnesses said she was buried vertically, head first in the iron casket. Occasionally, women suspected of witchcraft were buried that way so that they couldn’t dig out as easily, and so that perhaps they would dig in the wrong direction. The iron casket was a special touch some special man thought of. He thought it’d seal her in.”

Ruth laughed to herself.

I was quiet for a moment. “So, did it?”

Ruth exhaled like I’d sucked the fun from her lungs, “She’s dead and witches aren’t real, darling.”

“Where is she buried?”

“In a little cemetery that was abandoned shortly after she was buried there. Everyone essentially refused to have their loved ones buried with a witch.”

“But, where is it?” I pressed.

She huffed, “Don’t do anything stupid, just let the poor lady rest.”

“Oh, I just wanted to see it for myself and maybe leave some flowers…”

She mumbled some deliberation to herself.

“Alright,” she said with an air of confidence, “You seem like a genuinely nice kid, so just promise me you’ll be respectful.”

“Of course!”

“If you go out Deer Trail, turn right after the tree you’ll see a patch of woods between two fields. It’s all the way at the back of that wooded lot.”

“Is it private property?”

“Yep, but the owner doesn’t keep up with it, so it’ll be fine.”

I thanked her, then immediately called Jon. I sat in my bed and fidgeted with a horse shoe, nervously watching my windows.

“Whats up?” he answered.

“They killed her because they thought she was a witch. She was pregnant and they ripped the baby right out of her.”

“Uhh… are you alright?”

“The lady from the bridge, you dumb shit! Get your truck and get over here, we need to check her grave.”

He agreed and was on his way. I’m not sure why I was so adamant about checking her grave. Something kept telling me it would give me some kind of comfort or key to the whole shebang.

We didn’t talk much on the ride there. We could see black fog scattered through the trees along the side of the road. We drove faster. There was a little access road through the lot she had directed me to. It was overgrown with saplings and weeds. The truck pushed through. It felt like the fog closed in around us after we pulled off the main road.

Towards the back there was a little unfenced cemetery. We scoured through the old flat head stones. All the way back in the very corner, there it was. Eliza Lewis. No date, or anything else. The air was still, the black haze was closing in around us. From behind the fog yellow eyes started popping open, all in the tree lines surrounding us.

“Where is she?” an angry voice growled from behind us.

We turned, there she was, standing between us and the truck. The fog and eyes seemed to be closing in around us. There must have been hundreds of pairs of eyes packing the brush and trees around the cemetery.  She took shaky steps towards us.

“Eliza Lewis!” I barked with authority.

She stopped dead in her tracks. Her eyes went wide.

And she laughed a deep belly laugh. The eyes in the woods drew closer to us. As the neared the edge of the woods they were faintly outlined in the shape of children, from toddlers to preteen size. I couldn’t recognize any of them,  but there were dozens.

“Tell me!” she shrieked, pointing at Jon with an emaciated pointer finger.

The surrounding bodies rushed him. I was thrown at least ten feet to his truck with absolutely no effort. They seized both of his arms and lifted him up and back, his chest upward. Eliza swayed towards him.

“Get away from him!” I commanded.

She didn’t respond, she sashayed closer with an exhausted stutter between steps.

“I fucking said let him go!” My voice cracked with rage as I pulled myself up on his truck.

It was silent other than my yelling. Then came the wet squish. She was  wrist deep in his chest. She twisted her hand and he writhed in pain. He choked and gurgled while she started jerking her hand like she was trying to rip something out of him.

I made eye contact with him. He stretched his arm out and pointed at the path out with a shaking hand. I scrambled into the truck. My heart sank, I didn’t have the keys.

My breathing spiraled out of control, I started getting light headed. Eliza turned a partial turn and looked dead at me. She rose her bloody hand from his chest, dragging something blue and hazy out of his chest. Her cold unwavering stare stopped everything, my heart, my head, my panicked shaking.

In a moment of clarity, something inside of me screamed to check the ignition. He left the keys. I hit the ignition, slammed the shifter into reverse and went onto two wheels onto the road. Nothing in my mirrors, nothing on the roads along side me. I checked my rear view mirror again. Fingerprints around the edges, very gradually, very slowly popping up.

I ripped it right off the windshield and threw it out of my window. I blew threw every stop sign and light on my way home. I’m surprised I made it just from the trip home. I holed back up in my room. Then my phone started ringing. I picked it up and was greeted with “Incoming Call: Jon.”

My brain stopped working for a second. I guess the harsh reality of what happened hadn’t really set in yet. I saw him die with my own eyes, but I swiped the green circle anyway with an enormous weight ripped from me.

“Jon! How the fuck did you get out?!”

Silence, save for a little static.

“…Jon?” I asked.

“Jon… will help me… find my… baby…” a raspy woman’s voice whispered.

I dropped my phone. It finally hit me that he died back there. The voice, no longer a whisper cackled through my phone, louder than my phone had ever put out. I grabbed it and ended the call, but the laughter kept booming from my phone. I jerked the back plate off and ripped the battery from it.

My room went silent.

The slow laugh boomed through my room. My windows rattled in their frames, covering my ears offered no relief. I curled up on my bed and clutched my ears. It all went quiet again when something slammed against my window. There was Eliza. Floating, staring in my second story window at me. She pointed at me and smiled a sweet smile.

She slammed something into my window again. It was Jon. Or some weird foggy blue version of Jon that she could fling around by a handful of his hair. He had this big shit eating grin on his face and his eyes were…. empty? To this day I can’t find the words that really describe it. Looking into them made me feel like he was simply a husk. He hung by his hair, his face smashed to my window.

I did what any reasonable teenager would do. I hid under my blanket and cried. It felt like hours passed before I could muster the nerve to peek out from the safety of my cocoon. All clear. I called the police, told them that we were attacked visiting a cemetery for a friend and I was afraid they’d killed Jon, but he told me to run for it. They said they’d send an officer by for a statement, and to keep my doors locked just in case.

I called Ruth, as soon as she answered I blabbered into the phone, “Eliza was there, and she took my friend Jon somehow? I don’t really fucking know what happened, but she came to me and was flinging him at my window or something?”

She exhaled through her mouth in frustration, then silence.

“Did she say anything to you?” she asked nonchalantly.

“I… uh… “ I stammered, “She keeps saying something about a baby?”

“I’m guessing you have a cross or cast iron or something above your window or door that’s keeping her out, too?”

“Y-yeah. How’d you know? What the fucks going on?”

“Give me your address, I’m on my way.”

I gave her my address and stood by my window. I could see wispy blue figures standing barely in sight behind trees, cars, bushes, or whatever cover they could take. They stared straight up into my window, right into my eyes, even from the farthest reaches of my vision. Shortly after I hung up a small grey car zipped into my driveway. The shadow like figures drew near to the car.

A short, stout woman with grey hair appeared out of the car. She walked up the drive with purpose, but also a deep seated confidence. I watched Eliza’s… things start to swarm in on her, then suddenly zip off back to cover like cockroaches when the lights turn on.

“It’s me, Ruth, from the Historical Society!” she yelled as she walked in the door.

I ran into the hallway to meet her at the stairs. We shook hands. She looked like my grandma.

“Let’s step outside.”

I stared at her blankly. “I uh… there’s these things out there…” I swallowed hard and weighed my options for a moment, “And this is going to sound either crazy or plain stupid, but, I’m pretty sure they’re after me.”

“The drones will leave us be, dear.” she assured me and squeezed my shoulder.

She proceeded to pretty much shove me out of the front door. The sky had turned black in the short time that I’d been away from the windows, for as far as I could see in any direction.

“Call her out.”

I gave her the most sincere “what the actual fuck” look I have ever given someone. She motioned for me to get on with it.

I stumbled with my words. I shouted her name out into the darkness.

Nothing.

“Honey… really put yourself into it.” Ruth calmly suggested.

“Eliza Lewis! I have your baby!”

The temperature dropped like a lead balloon. I could see my breath when it had been unseasonably warm just seconds before. Lightning struck from the clouds to the ground,

“Where?!” She boomed from the air.

She was floating at least ten feet in the air, her eyes were angry. I could see her flayed open stomach, I could see the bruises on her neck. I started backing away to run back to the protection of my room. Ruth was in the way.

“Those little horse shoes might not keep her out right now,” she warned in a delicate grandmotherly voice, “She’s pissed.”

“I knew you had my baby!” she screeched.

The car and house windows rattled violently. Some of them cracked. Ruth approached her, and reached out to her with her right hand.

“It’s time for you to rest, Eliza.”

She shrieked again, and pointed to Ruth. The drones swarmed towards her. Ruth looked up to Eliza. Stared right into her eyes and quietly said “No.”

The drones blew away like dust in the wind. Eliza became angrier and dropped to the ground. She appeared behind Ruth with no warning, and tried to shove her hand through her like how she took Jon.

“I. said. No.” Ruth reiterated.

Eliza emitted a painful scream, her hand jammed against Ruth’s back. She turned to face Eliza.

“Look in my eyes.”

Suddenly the air wasn’t so heavy,  the clouds lightened just a single shade.

“You have it…” Eliza said in shock, “You have the mark… are you?”

I hadn’t noticed it before, but Ruth had the same birthmark under her eye as Eliza.

“I am, but I can’t allow you to take anymore living people, dear.

Ruth made a fist and extend her arm back to Eliza. She broke down into a smoky black substance and then was sucked into Ruth’s ring. She turned to me and squeezed my hands.

“Don’t you mention this to a single person. Not his family, not yours.”

“But, his mom should–”

“No. No one will believe you and if I find out you spilled the beans, I’ll send her for you.”

I don’t know if she’ll ever see this. I don’t know if Jon’s mom will ever see this. But if they do, hope for mercy. If you visit a Cry Baby Bridge in southern Ohio, maybe you know why nothing happens when you shut your car off at night now.

[mmkelleywrites]

Second Chances Are Hell

All of my life I’ve tried as hard as I could to be successful. I worked for my goals, and for the most part I have always been satisfied with my results. I can’t really be sure exactly what first caused my problem. My parent’s never really supported my ambitions of being a botanist. They thought I would be better off as a medical doctor. I never wanted to deal with patients or their drips. Frankly, I’m not a people person. It all started around my 17th birthday. I’ve replayed every event I can remember in my head. The only thing that stands out was my gift from my parents. A small statue of a short and stout man wearing a mask with half of his mouth in a cartoonish grin, and the other half in a frown. I still have him sitting on my desk, he’s still watching me while I type this. I don’t know exactly how to say what’s happening, so I guess I’ll just start from the first time it happened. It was around midnight, I changed my browser over to “incognito mode” to find some “romance videos.” I popped open my pants to get down to business, and, well, my pants were closed and my browser was back to normal. I was confused, but determined. I tried a different website, got myself ready and, again, everything back to normal. I went accapella. The moment there was a stiff wind in my sails, back to pants up. I screamed into my pillow. I gave up. It took me forever to get to sleep that night. The next morning, I chalked it up to a rough night and maybe some weird half dream thing. I went downstairs for breakfast. My mom and dad were already at the table. Dad might as well have been out of a movie. Dress shirt, tie, cup of coffee, newspaper. He’s like a checklist. Mom’s the same, maybe that’s why they’ve been together for so long. Dress, pearls, big diamond on her finger. I’m surprised she never wore the apron I bought her as a joke a few years ago. I took my usual seat. “Any new acceptance letters?” My dad peered at me over his newspaper. “Not yet, just Berkley and Ohio State.” “I wonder what’s taking Harvard so long?” My mother pondered aloud, poking at eggs on the stove. I rummaged through the cabinet for a poptart. “Oh honey, just wait for the eggs, I almost have them finished.” “That’s alright, I need to get going.” I ripped the package open, and went to take a bite. Foil. It was wrapped. Wide awake, in front of my parents. It’d just happened again. I ripped it open and went for a bite. Again. And again. And again. And again. “You have to unwrap it first, son.” My father said without looking up from the sports page, shaking his head subtly. My heart pounded, I was so angry I was lightheaded. I ripped the wrapper off and threw it into the trash. I took another bite. I was back in my seat. No pop tart in my hand, no poptart to be seen. “How do you want your eggs this morning Sweetie?” “I want them to be poptarts!” I ripped through the trash can, throwing my family’s trash around the kitchen. Not a single pop tart wrapper. I looked through the mess twice. They were right back in the cabinet. I sat there on the floor, dumbfounded, trash scattered everywhere. My dad was looming over me. He didn’t look mad, or confused. “Get it cleaned up, guy.” He left the room, shaking his head. Mom stared at me like I belonged in an asylum. “Eggs are fine.” I relented, lazily picking up all of the trash I threw around the kitchen. Back in my room, I plopped down in my bed and stared at the ceiling. My head was spinning with possibilities. A curse wasn’t logical. Crazy was plausible, but didn’t make sense because I was cognisant of what was happening. I checked for new messages on my computer. A little red envelope offered the possibility of relief. *Hey, we’re meeting at the park at 11 for the usual.* Relief had arrived! A night out with my friends is what I needed. I waited for 10:30 to swing around. The house was still, mom asleep, dad deep into a glass of old scotch. I opened my window, climbed out onto the trellis and climbed down. I guess I was kind of like a teenager in a movie as much as my parents. I stepped out onto the sidewalk. Still there. I started to walk down the street. I screamed, then I sobbed. I threw the little statue my parents gave me at the window. It bounced off, and deflected into my forehead. Maybe I hadn’t been sleeping and I was having some weird recurring dream, I thought in a moment after being hit with a statuette. It was comforting. I opened my window, descended back down the trellis. I started to step out onto the sidewalk, I tried to be vigilant. There had to be an explanation. I was definitely awake. Concrete under my foot. I exhaled deeply and started to walk down the street. Street lights on, windows dark. Everything was exactly like it had been every other time I slipped out into the night. I stopped at the end of the block. I bounced in place like a boxer. I started huffing. I charged into the street at full bore. I was abruptly stopped by the window in my room. Testosterone is one hell of a motivator. I charged the window and jumped  with my shoulder forward. I remember the glass breaking against my skin, the thud on the front lawn, opening my eyes, sore and laying on my bedroom floor. I gave up. I laid there for at least fifteen minutes. I drug myself to my computer, opened the message about the park and replied. *Sorry I couldn’t make it. I’m feeling like shit. Next time, guys.* I looked at the clock on my taskbar. 10:40 PM. I wrote down estimates of how much time my ordeal took. I added them up. It should have at least been 11:00 PM, even by my most conservative estimates. I holed up in my room for a few days. I still went to class, but then straight home and to my room. Everything stayed… normal. Monday rolled back around, I’d been in my hermitage for about a week. I went through the motions again, it’d been the most boring week of my life. Any attempts at relaxing like I usually do were met with a prompt opportunity to try again. School was quiet, I avoided my friends so I wouldn’t have to answer questions. When I got home, I checked the mail. I had letters from a few schools. I ripped through the envelopes. They all read the same, “Welcome to our Pre-medicine program!” I didn’t apply to any schools under the pre-med programs. Maybe one misclick in the application, but definitely not the same error in all of them. My parents. They had to be behind it. I waited in the living room like a crazed wife waiting on a cheating husband. Two hours I waited. I thought I’d settle down waiting, but all I did was get angrier. They both happened to stroll in at the same time. “What the fuck did you do?!” They were taken aback, but I could see through it all. They knew. I knew. They knew that I knew. They weren’t shocked at my anger, they didn’t try to apologize. Dad said seven little words that I can still hear to this day. “Don’t you take that tone with me.” Gasoline to the fire. Water into acid. “Don’t you fucking take that decision from me!” That’s what I wanted to say, and started to tell him. I got about half way through my sentence before I was quiet and hearing, “Don’t you take that tone with me.” in the calmest, clearest voice my dad had ever used. He had a confidence about it. I hadn’t noticed it the first time, or the second time, but by the fourth time I’d tried to convey my message, it rung in my ears. “Why did you change my degree program?” I grumbled, my heart trying furiously to escape my chest. “I just think it’s for the best. You can go try to change it to Beauty or Art History or whatever nonsense if you insist.” My heart hit the ground. Something washed over me. It felt like sadness, but looking back, it was futility. The word “try” stood out to me, he said it differently, it was condescending. I walked away, for some reason he won what I shouldn’t have been able to lose. I paced in my room. I stared out the window. I tried to send e-mails to admissions for the schools I’d recieved letters from. Every time the message was almost “sent,” it was back to sitting, written on my monitor. He knew. That night I heard an argument start. I sat on the staircase and listened. “What the fuck do you mean we shouldn’t use it anymore? Diane, it was expensive, and he’s on the straight and narrow, and by God he’ll be a damn doctor in a few years!” “Is that all you care about? You were a delinquent when you were a kid!” There was an awkward silence. Then a crash, and mom screaming. I tried to run down the stairs. Back to sitting at the top. I ran down faster. Back to the top. I dove down, tears running down my cheeks. Back to the top. I kept trying until I couldn’t breath between the running and the sobbing. Every time, back to the top of the stairs. Dad kept yelling. “I should have gotten one for you! Why cant he just have a nice life? Why do you have to bring my past into this?!” Mom was quiet as far as I could tell. Suddenly, dad was quiet. After a moment, I could hear the soft sound of feet shuffling through the house towards the stairs. Mom’s right arm was covered in blood. I ran down the stairs. Straight to the bottom. I hugged her. Black eye, some bruises, but she was in one piece. “Where’s dad?” “In the storage room.” I went to check on him. There he was, sewing scissors sticking from his chest, blood ruining the rug. The police ruled it self defense, given mom’s physical state. I’ve never been able to get her to tell me exactly what they were fighting about, but I haven’t had any more blips in my life.

[mmkelleywrites]

Annd I'll never trust a sundae again.

Why I Don’t Eat Ice Cream Anymore

by reddit user bearsbeetsbella

This story was posted in r/LetsNotMeet which is a subreddit where users write about real terrifying things that have happened to them. They are usually creeper stories. You can check my Top 10 LetsNotMeet stories here.

Trigger Warning for Pedophilia 

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[mmkelleywrites]

if you’re ever feeling bad about your writing please remember that in 50 shades of grey the author literally refers to ana’s butthole as a “chocolate starfish” 

[mmkelleywrites]

The Candy Shop by Nikolai Lockertsen (His Website). Examine this entire picture.

[mmkelleywrites]

I think the hand bothers me more than the face

Closet by jhuertajr

[mmkelleywrites]

I always think it's odd that this post never mentions putting your hand over the dogs nose to feel it's breath, or that local lore has the dog as one of the common apparitions in the cemetery.

In the 1860s there was a boy, Johnny Morehouse, the youngest son of John and Mory, who lived with them in the back of his father’s shoe repair shop. One day the 5 year old was playing near his home by the edge of the Miami & Erie Canal.

Johnny accidentally fell into the canal water. His dog, playing by him, jumped into the water and tried to save him. He pulled the boy out, but not in time to save his life. Johnny drowned and was buried in Woodland Cemetery. Legend has it that, several days after the burial, the dog appeared next to the Johnny’s grave staying by it morning, noon, and night. Visitors to the cemetery saw him and began to worry about his health.

Some began leaving him bits of food. Passersby still bring small toys and other trinkets to decorate the grave marker to express their sympathy. (Source)

[mmkelleywrites]

From a 14 second short horror film called See You Soon. (Watch It Here) (Masterpost of Short Horror Films)