thesecrookedbones-blog

[thesecrookedbones-blog]

#TWOTB10WINNER: Jolene

You take the before photograph with your three closest friends, all smiling and bubbly after the morning pancakes and mimosas. All six eyes appear a bit blurred with happiness and overstimulation. “You have sixty minutes to escape the room. Please do not touch the actors. Destruction of any property within the escape room will be punishable by law. Have fun!” You are the brave soul that creeps in first. Adventure flows through your veins and the champagne adds a layer of armor to your courage. Friends find clues along the walls to solve the murder. The escape room advertises find the murderer or be their next victim. You laughed at the cheesiness of the ambiance, telling everyone how you would do it differently to make it more realistic. Some of your ideas don’t make entire sense, but the mimosas fuel the laughter. Forty minutes tick by like they’re nothing until your friend finds a secret switch. Beneath the switch, words scribbled in blood-colored ink are found. One body only, the line reads. You’re excited so you flick the switch. Behind you, a small cavernous door opens. It’s barely two-feet by two-feet. Liquid courage volunteers you first. “Does that mean the killer only killed one person? Or-” her eyes flicker to the hole in the wall. “I think it just wants one person in there. Maybe it’s part of how we solve this thing. One person goes and solves something and we have to stay behind. Maybe something changes, like one of those big puzzle riddles. Like you step on a button and some other door appears.” She rambling and you don’t have time for this. You’re excited to solve this and be done. The carbohydrates and heavy sugar are lulling you into a crash and you’re starting to crave caffeine. You get down on hands and knees and slowly stretch yourself through the hole. You cannot make it in a crawl so you must lay on your stomach. Bright painted words are etched on the inside, illuminated as if glow-in-the-dark. “It says ‘close the hatch’,” you read, then realize what that means. You immediately regret reading it aloud. You’d be happy to take the loss, but one of your friends obliges from the opposite side of the wall and the hatch closes, leaving you in a tiny cramped space, still lying on your stomach. “Nothing is happening,” you report, teeth clenched with pure terror. Something feels wrong, and you kick the small cavern door. “Let me out,” you say softly, unsure if you believe the words. At this point, it’d be easier to find the escape. The space feel damp suddenly, humidity causing your clothes to cling to your skin. A strobe of light flashes and you try to strain your neck to look above or behind you. The limited space hinders that. Suddenly, a loud rumble sounds overhead. The roar of a chainsaw. “Okay guys,” you say with a sarcastic drawl. You think this is ridiculous now. Or you’re trying to convince yourself it is. Your body’s reaction suggest otherwise, inner thighs suddenly warm with urine. The chain sounds closer and the strobe starts flickering steadily. It’s inching closer, you swear, so you churn your neck. It feels like ligaments strain and nearly pop but you see it. It is a chain. It must be a prop you tell yourself, but the fear feels authentic. The metal teeth look real. Your friends, you realize, are screaming panicked on the other end of the wall. Sweat bubbles on your upper lip. There must be an escape. This is a fucking escape room. You see it. It’s straight ahead. A metal switch with a red grip, like an electrocutioner’s final lever. Your fingertips buck against it and even as you strain, it’s out of range. How is that possible? You stretch on the tip of your toes, plugging into the hatch you stupidly closed behind you. The saw screams louder, taunting you with your life. With your failure. All you have to do is escape. Your sneakers slip but then catch and all at once, you measure your strength and launch tippy-toed from the door. You gain an inch. An inch is enough for your first knuckle of your middle finger to wrap the lever and you tug but it doesn’t budge. The saw is right above you. You can feel the wind of the blade against the trail of sweat on your back. “Fuck,” you scream and muster all of your strength for a final push. You only need a few centimeters for leverage on the handle. Your hands are strong. You’re a painter. A creative. Your hands are your lifeline. They’ll save you today. With one big scream, you propel forward just short of another inch, snagging a harder grip on the switch. You pull and it budges. A wall-length door opens, but as you wiggle forward, heat snags your upper buttock. You inch again and feel it immediately. The heat is your own. It’s your life source. The saw jags into you and slices through fat, muscles, tendons. You’re paralyzed, mouth open with muted screams. The pain, the panic. Your body seizes and you feel tears broil your face until your legs leave your body. Transfixed on the open door - the freedom - you take one final gurgling breath as the last of your life drains from your halved corpse. The after photo is gruesome, a sign chalked up near the dull buttons of eyeballs. Jolene: 51 minutes.

[thesecrookedbones-blog]

#TWOTB10WINNER: Callan

It’s all over the news. Missing teens found bound and murdered deep in woods.You know them. Not well. But you know of them. The four girls attend your high school. You passed them in the hallways and exchanged looks with them. The school is smaller and kids get bullied but not as often. Fathers own guns in these parts, after all. They never ran in the same circle as you, but you still know them. You still aged up with them. They’re in your elementary school photos with matching toothless grins just like you. The local papers have been careful not to release too many details. The Pacific Northwest is notorious for being breeding grounds for serial killers and they suspect this killer will strike again. Too many indicators that the bloodlust is strong. These girls were tortured after death, held with bounds of duct tape, covered only with a hood over each head. Everyone is talking about it. No one makes it between classes without hearing the murmur of “did you hear-?” followed by new scrutinization and churned thoughts soaring through the rumor mill. You don’t know what to think. No one does. A cloud of safety concerns bogs the city. There’s a curfew in effect. You think this is straight out of a horror movie. How does this happen here? Day five, you wake up with bandages lining your forearm. When you pry up the gauze, you see a thick slice of flesh gone. As is the memory of how it happened. The next day, you wake up to find the white shirt you fell asleep in torn at the neck, tiny red droplets along the torso. You don’t know how it happened. Day seven, the sheriff’s office find two more bodies. They’re found caught along the river bank, bits of flesh already decomposing. Each body is nearly grated, flesh unsewn by so many stab wounds. Day eleven, you awaken to a houseguest. He plays tuba in the marching band. His thick black-rimmed glasses are smudged with red paint. Except, when he wakes up, he tells you it isn’t paint. His smile is sinister and he breathes with a low rasp. Asthma,” he tells you, sucking on his inhaler, before you ask him why he’s there. You’ve never hung out with him outside of school before. “You don’t remember?” he laughs, another puff gone from the inhaler. “Boy, we’re in trouble.” He tells you about the last five, but says you have accomplished so much worse. You think he’s crazy and tell him to go home, but he insists that he needs to stay. You two begin wrestling and he digs his fingers into the barely-healed wound on your forearm. “This one fought back. Jasmine, with the braces. She pinned your arm back and slashed you with your own knife. Rookie mistake. Check the back of your closet. You have piles of blood-stained clothes. Don’t you ever wonder where those bruises and scratches come from? For some stupid reason, people like to fight for their lives. Makes the whole thing more thrilling, if you ask me.” You punch him right there, but wince. Your knuckles are already swollen, cracked, and fissured. Immediately, you crumple back. You don’t remember. Don’t. Remember. How. Day fourteen, you start remembering snippets of nightmares that you’ve repressed. How you slip out of bed and end up at another classmate’s house, always with a different method for murder. Always with a different way to dispose. Each nightmare feels more and more like a normal dream. The more you remember, the more the night bleeds to day. The more reality distorts. These aren’t nightmares. You are the nightmare. And damn, you’re thriving.

[thesecrookedbones-blog]

#TWOTB10WINNER: Mattie

Hey honey, you say as you enter, leaving totes of fresh market vegetables along the countertop as you walk further into the kitchen. Your husband is knelt in the great room, a huddle of children around him. They giggle in unison and he smiles up at you before his attention is pulled by a tug on his sleeve and request for again, again! The journey to the market has left you glistening in sweat so you enter your bedroom to peel off a layer. Chilled hands wrap around your torso from behind, a body pressing into your back. You know it by feel and lean into the embrace. You snuck away fast, you say and swivel into your husband’s arms, capturing his lips in a kiss he reciprocates. But then you feel it. Something cooler than his hands, a sheen caught in the bedroom mirror’s reflection. Your eyes question him immediately and his wandering hands stop. I’ve been waiting for the perfect moment,he says. History always repeats itself. Your breath hitches in your throat, wadding up there with a kind of panic you’ve never felt. He is your safehouse. He is the one who can comfort you no matter what. He is the one you trust. ...You trusted. The trust twists with the knife and distorts like your facial features, winding out of you with each chilling breath as you exhale your life into his hands. Again. Again. Again. He pierces skin with the blade like it’s nothing. Worthless flesh meant to be fileted. You, you start, tears dropping as your weight crumbles beneath you. He doesn’t catch you, letting you fall at his feet like a worthless heap. He leaves you there without batting his eyes, left in a circular pool of your life’s curdling paint. You last sucking breath is clogged with diced internal organs and blood you asphyxiate on, but your cause of death feels like betrayal. You’ll never know it wasn’t him. You’ll never know his life’s work: an artificial extension of life, is what kills you both. He was so good the tech deep-learned itself into its own AI robotic creation - a reflection of its owner. A true replica. And while the AI will spare his unsuspecting master, the man will remain a servant of his mind for the rest of his life, spiraling into the madness of being a murderer by extension.

[thesecrookedbones-blog]

#TWOTB10WINNER: Kerri

You’ve never been a gun enthusiast. You’re distraught over the consistent stream of headlines about another crazed gunman at another school, killing mercilessly for a few minutes of fame. You wouldn’t want a gun in your house, locked in a safe or not. Which makes it really odd when you look up to see the brass bell ring overhead. The smell of gun oil and hot lead fills your nostrils, but you don’t seem out of place or the least bit uncomfortable. You chose to walk in. You chose to be here, just as you’re choosing to step down the aisles, gaze flickering about until you find what you seem to be looking for. Though you don’t know nor understand why. Your sneakers squeak on the freshly mopped floor right in front of the automatic assault rifles. You reach like you’ve been waiting to pick this out of a line-up for years and press the bright red “request assistance” button. Something twitches behind your mind and you wonder what you’re doing. Why am I here? Why would I want a gun? A steady stream of consciousness ripples between your ears and the uneasiness brings your fingers to your forearm. Between your index finger and thumb, you press deep indents into your skin and cinch them together as tears poke through the edges of your eyes. You squeeze harder, eyes squeezing shut. You’re willing yourself now.. Just wake up. Please wake up. The pain seers to the bone and when your eyelashes flutter apart, you realize something as stark as the blood trickling from the self-torturous pinch. You’re wide awake. An old man with a wiry beard and a barrel-legged walk meets you mid-aisle, and asks if you want to see the gun. You tell him no, I want to purchase it. He looks as surprised as you feel, but after a once-over, he draws the keys dangling from his belt and opens the case, withdrawing the gun you feel was destined for the job. A blip of you questions, what job? You purchase the assault rifle and three boxes of cartridges without any question, but not without a few snide smiles from behind the counter. Assumptions that it’s a gift for a husband or a dad. Surely not you, their eyes say. But they don’t know what we’re capable of. What you’re capable of. It feels like nothing more than a blink and you’re at the far end of a hallway that resembles your alma mater. This hallway stretches on like an endless tunnel with rows of doors on each side. You’re disoriented and confused. How did I get here? What is this place? Then you feel it. The cold steel pressed into your palms, barrel protruding outward from your body. You wear boas of ammunition around your neck. It feels unworldly, yet just exactly as it should. The doors intrigue you immediately and you’re drawn to the first one on your right. Each door appears individually the same. It’s painted black, strips peeling away as the wood ages in this cavernous hallway. Spiderwebs hang from the corner and separate as you turn the knob and push. With a deep groan, the door opens. It sparks a chain reaction. One by one, each door along the corridor clicks and opens, swinging wide with a deep creak. Each door reveals someone who has had a positive impact in your life, whether they created you, or cared for you when you were sick as a child, or mentored you in your studies or sports. Every door opens to someone incrementally closer to you, leading to the door at the very end of the hall. As your eyes dance there, the lights overhead flicker. You feel your hands grip the rifle tighter, shoulders squaring. Fear grips your stare, tears rimming your bottom rung of lashes. You know you don’t walk into a hallway with a fully loaded automatic assault rifle without bad intentions. You know you would never be that person. But here you are. Your limbs erupt into miniature earthquakes as liquified legs carry you to the front door. You stand there in front of a citizen who held the door open for you when your hands were full of grocery bags. Without hesitation, you raise the gun to shoulder-level and squeeze the trigger. The body erupts with gurgling screams then collapses, choking on their own life as it seizes up in their throat. One after one, you fight the urge to pull the trigger. But you do it anyway. Knowing you don’t want to. Knowing it’s not you. Close to the end of the hallway, the body on the other end of the rifle is your own mother. Flesh and blood. You feel yourself shrivel inside, tears staining your cheek. You scream out, but the only one that seems to hear you is the one you’re destined to kill. She pleads with you, calling you loving nicknames of your childhood. Reminding you of who you are. This is not me, you begin to repeat in unison with her. This is not me. This is not me. This is not me. This is not- Your finger squeezes, draining half of a clip into her. You shriek with pain, collapsing to your knees. The sizzling barrel of the gun singes your knee and you realize you’ve painted yourself in their blood. You wear the life of anyone that mattered to you like a coat. Something prompts you to stand up. Curiosity, maybe? You reach the end of the hallway. The other doors where friendly faces one stood are cleared, showered in crimson and death. Your blood stained fingers curl around the knob and push the door open. David stands on the other side, eyes red with tears. The sight of you drains the blood from his face and he begins to stammer, collecting himself to penetrate your thoughts. This is not me feels so far away now. Internal conflict tears at your internal organs, squeezing and straining until you scream out in pain. The darkness is eating you alive. Gag him, it tells you and you listen. You watch him shake his head, tears staining the bandana around his mouth, jarring his teeth apart. He means everything to you, but you don’t understand why. Then he gives you that look. The look that said it all. The look that made you want to punch him from the get-go, only to strangle fists into his suit and push him against a wall in the stairwell. That look reminds you of who you are. Who you were. For one second. For the hardest second of your life. You cry out, sob, and hit your knees, willing yourself to put the gun down. Put the gun down. PUT THE GUN DOWN. Your index finger shakes against the trigger, an extension of shaking limbs that want to rip themselves from the socket rather than go through with this execution. Pull the trigger. Kill kill kill, the voice inside says. The dark voice. You do. His blood spills around your white sneakers and stains them. As you walk from the hallway, you leave crimson footprints as clear as day. Your footprints. Their blood. But as you turn to leave the building, you cast one last glance backward and see that the footprints have altered. They’re tri-toed and certainly not human. You turn back toward your path at hand and smile. The transformation is complete. As the sun hits you from its high perch, your pupils blacken to match your soul’s conversion. The possession is finished.

[thesecrookedbones-blog]

the collection.

“I think yer book’s makin’ it worse out there, y’know? Girls’re disappearin’ faster than ever. What’re ya even doin’ about it? You think ya can come here with yer fancy education and yer fictional little books. This’s real life, slim. Emily’s a good girl. Comes in all the time gettin’ supplies to keep the neighborhood strays well fed. What’re you gonna do when her body shows up like the rest of ‘em?” Buck’s tenure in Chilling is measured by the way his teeth sit ground deep toward his gum line. His brows sit low against his eyes, like anchors dragging along rebellious eyes that no longer wish to see the pain around him. I know from what city hall records I could find, that Buck has owned this general store since 1983, inheriting it from his father before him. Southern hospitality is only known to the locals, like some kind of localized slang. There was never any welcome wagon for Nora and I. Any words of encouragement actually sound like a shotgun shell being loaded into a sawed off chamber. Or the coarse friction of a knotted noose. “Just the lightbulbs today, Buck. It’ll probably cost me extra for the lecture and I’m short today.” “You think yer so funny, Mr. Typewriter? You come into town an’ just look what you’ve done.” His words hiss past stained yellow teeth, syllables clicking like a slow trotting horse. The teeth were appropriately reminiscent of a horse too - in their prime. Back before the Copenhagen dips and malt liquor sips before sunrise. Behind the halitosis breath is a venom Buck has never spoke to me; something I have been too afraid to mention. His daughter was one of the names on a growing list of the missing, and later deceased. The Collector had left her in a deer carcass bag after collecting his trophy. It was her tattoo from her right shoulder blade, memorializing her mother with bumblebees and sunflowers. Two of her most favorite things. Layla Carpenter. She got inked underage at 17 after her mother lost her battle with breast cancer. It’d been a badge of honor. I could tell it from the way she showed it off in off-shoulder dresses and floppy tank tops. She smiled wider for Polaroids when the tattoo was in the photo with her, like she’d mastered the ‘glance over the shoulder and smile’ pose just to honor her late mom. She’d been missing since 2000. She was The Collector’s first. He kept her the longest. Her body was discovered exactly one week after Nora and I moved in; lakeside nearest our property. Her body melded with the burlap carcass bag, decomposing so harshly that the medical examiner couldn’t tell flesh from bag. Often even after severe decomposition, special wavelengths of light and photographs can enhance ink in any remaining tissue. There was nothing to enhance - but everyone knew The Collector’s calling card. Her tattoo was in his possession. A token of his kill. “Just ring him up, Buck. Fer Pete’s fuckin’ sake.” I nod my appreciation to Todd. He’s one of the few neutrals I have in this town. His eyes betray him in hiding the spark of curiosity I know he feels. He has no pawns; no one on the growing list. Hell, Todd lives alone in the home his parents expired in. He has no one to look after him as he expires and no one to lace his grave with flowers once he’s gone. He has nothing to lose. “Thanks,” I say, tucking the paper bag against my shoulder, though my eyes lock with Todd - the only person who deserves my gratitude. Back at the house, I leave the bag beneath the flood light fixtures that seem to have shoddy wiring. The fixture eats through bulbs at least once a week, somehow feeding too much power while still causing the ominous orb to flicker in and out. I check my watch. School will let out soon and Nora will be home. She’s been bugging me about this light. Any kind of darkness makes her feel uneasy. I can see it in the way every layer of her spine pricks as she rounds a dark corner, helplessly reaching for a lightswitch. Plugging the six-foot wood-runged ladder down beneath the flood light fixture, my shoe centers the rung and haphazardly trusts my weight to it. It flexes but the screws snar and it holds. Gravel sounds behind my back as I twist a fresh bulb in. I’m in a pissing contest with the rest of this town, careful not to show fear or cowardice, so I don’t turn my head. Fingers yo-yo the lightbulb to a tightened position and the footsteps behind me still. I finally sneak a glance.“Yer so fucked.” I don't know him by name, but he's recognizable as one of the local meth addicts. What about him? I try to paint a mental picture of his face and I’m lost in non-distinctive identifiers. Bugged eyes, a toothless grin, sunken cheeks, and clothes that loosely swing off of his bony structure. Is he a suspect? He laughs at me, his hollow soul echoing behind him as he continued on. He's probably hallucinating, I tell myself and finish with the second bulb. The ladder gets returned to the corner filled with dust bunnies in the garage and I discard yet another bulb box. The basement of the home is bunkered beneath ground; a safe haven from tornadoes. It is the only place I trusted my work, given the lack of any natural daylight. It’s the space I get lost in, drawn in like a moth to lamplight. As I descend on creaky, wooden steps, I decide - it’s time to start Emily Marx’s chapter. The latest missing girl. Keys gallop against paper freely, a brainwave on a stroke of genius. The latest victim is fresh in my mind. Bright eyed with a bright future, given the academic records her parents’ failed to share with me. They slammed the door in my face, blaming me for opening this can of demons again. They thought my soul needed saving. They hoped to see me in church on Sunday morning. Her body hasn’t been recovered, but it’s nearing two weeks. I expected her to be the next ink to his collection after 48 hours. Death is the sole consumer in this barren land, its hunger accelerated by demons sworn off by bible verses Sunday morning and ill-will cast against family and friends after a few swigs of whiskey post-service. Blasphemy pulled straight from the bottle. Hours wash away outside without notice. The south has a way of filling your pores with heavy heat and slugging you down, zapping Father Time until seconds rock by slower or the mind’s ability to be conscious of it slips away. Each chapter takes its toll. Another life vanished into the thick air, often in stark daylight. The moment they encounter The Collector, they become another ghost; a wisp of heavy wind to remind us all that Chilling is haunted by a living being. I find myself in the position I often end up in with this book, face curtained with my hands as I count the breaths it takes to make me feel better about it all. I still haven’t found the number. Then it dawns on me. The silence overhead. Usually the kitchen floorboards would creak as Nora dances around the kitchen, preparing another meal without company while I try to figure out the great mystery of Chilling, Missouri. No creaks have sounded above to distract me from proper sentence structure or finding the perfect word that’s just hibernating at my fingertips. No, it’s been oddly silent. I feel uneasy all at once, but disallow panic as I jog up the straining basement stairs. The kitchen is dark, as is the living room, and entryway hall. Upstairs sounds just as quiet, but I run up nonetheless. Nora perfects stability in my schedule, trying to make my life look somewhat normal. She never falters - but I’m the inconsistent one. Maybe I didn’t listen or didn’t remember. She could have parent-teacher conferences. Maybe some kind of after-school tutoring session. Maybe some other after-school activity. I pretend I don’t hear the stress battering through ragged breaths. Where would she be, where could she be? Tires squeal into the school parking lot. It’s empty. Her car is nowhere to be seen, but I still run toward the front doors, truck barely stuck in park. It’s dark inside. Not a soul to be seen. There I stand, in a pained shred of reality. I didn’t even notice she didn’t come home. I check all of the possible spots, and Chilling has a limited selection. The diner, the gas station, the library, the post office, the general store. No sign of her car. I stop outside of the old run-down drive-in that has only been used as vandal grounds for the last decade and find my hands shaky as I dial the sheriff’s department. “My wife - fiancee - is missing.” It’s better not to go to the office in person, I decide. They’ll waste precious minutes vetting me, seeing only an unfriendly face they already suspect to be all kinds of evil. “She - school gets out at 2:30 and she’s usually home by 4 at the latest, depending on what kind of students need help after-school. ...Eleanor Coulson. Yeah. Middle is Winona. She’s - her birthday is June 29, 1986. Look, can you just - I am being calm.” My lip quivers and heat streaks down my cheeks. The speedometer ticks to 65, the big truck’s steering wheel quaking within my palms. "She’s like...5’6” or 5’7” and can’t weigh much more than 100 pounds. She’s small, but she’s mighty.” The sorrow touches the back of my throat and I cough to cover the emotional choke. “No, no scars or tattoos.” It's an identification question, but it feels pointed and my answer washes gooseflesh down my neck. The female voice on the other end of my call drifts into a cavernous hole as my right foot shifts from gas pedal to brake, tires crying against warm pavement. I can hear my heart rattle my skull, vision blurred with thoughts lashing against positivity. The previous girls with their mangled bodies, tattoos sliced from their skin, torture evident in their demise - it all bleeds forward until the female’s voice rises, “hello?” “I - her, her car. I just found it on Highway 26 near milepost 17.” A long pause. “He’s got her.” 6 hours later, I return home after police interrogation. I’m the prime suspect in the tragic story I’ve supposedly created. I sit there in the driver’s seat, hands folded beneath my nose and listen to the waves of fear wash over my knuckles. Within eye line, the flood light surges and flickers, faltering between a vivacious glow and the absorption of death. I watch intently, hoping the light will stay lit. Lightness in the dark - a symbol of hope. But the light hisses and with a dull gurgle, it flickers to black. A tear rims my lower lid. He’s got her. Her life will burn out just like that bulb. Hot air fills the truck, my throat rattling with rage as a low growl precedes the words I will die by if I must: “The collection ends now, you motherfucker.”

[thesecrookedbones-blog]

anxiety.

The heat feels thick against my face; in my beard. Facial hair seems to sprout from pores and suffocate me with pressure. It clings just as tightly as the sinking feeling that I’m underdeveloped and all-consumed in this isolated world. I realize I’m panting, fingernails scraping through tendrils of freshly oiled beard and I tug, aggravated and helpless. I beat for air in windless wails, opening my lungs for air that only feels heavier. The front porch step with loose nails groans beneath my weight as I hurry inside; desperate for air, for vitality, for the noose to be cut away from my neck. Unsteady limbs crash into the bathroom and I eye myself in the mirror; pallor complexion with a beet red neck. I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t pick up and move from Boston to a remote land tattered with blood, scorn, and mystery for the sake of a story. Except I did. I’ve painted a target on my back - and stand alone in a house fit for at least two - to view the ghosts I have been chasing. A hundredth viewing for the day; refusing to add her face. Eleanor Coulson: missing. Missing. The word paints bile down my throat as thick tears trickle into the blanket of my beard. Shaking hands reach for a pair of antique scissors I hardly recognize. They must have come along with the house just like the rest of this curse. On a single rusty hinge, the scissors squeal in agony with each ungreased close, tugging angrily at hair I want gone; need gone. Need. Air. Lightheadedness bucks at my knees. I sway like the trees lining the woods. Don’t go in there, one local sign had read. I laughed it off. As if this was all a joke. Tears batter ashen painted cheeks as nuggets of hair line the drain. It isn’t happening fast enough. I want to howl against the cool moon like a mourning coyote missing his pack, but I know it would only satisfy the beast hunting me. The beast who took her from me. Distracted mind lends to distracted fingers and the dull blade slices skin, blood curling into the maze of jagged hair. I fail to flinch. When the scissors refuse to cut, I rake through the medicine cabinet for my razor, sending ointments and rattling prescriptions in abounding spirals. It silences me, chest stilling, mind freezing. Her pills. Her Anxiety. Xanax. I laugh suddenly and without thought; fear, loss, and sheer hatred rattle my voice box. I brought her here. The little girl who survived a nightmare and heard her parents gurgling death’s song on their own liquid matter; I brought her here. To live another nightmare.

[thesecrookedbones-blog]

chilling, missouri.

I would have never known she was behind me had it not been for the shadow cast in my lamplight. Lips purse, word-ready, but the concentration hooks deeper into my brow and I can’t find the energy to divert to her. It’s been hard to find any energy to divert anywhere else since I started digging deeper into the mysteries of Chilling, Missouri. I feel her fingers twist in the ends of neck overgrowth and feel my lips twitch, but my gaze remains glued. I distantly sense her leave just as quickly as she came; as quickly as females of Chilling, Missouri disappeared from their entire existence. Taps of Google searches to library archived requests to mapped photographs and string lines to tie it together as if I’m perched behind a badge. Heavily into the cycle of my own mind’s prison, I feel stagnant joints hinge, strain, then pop as I extend my feet beneath my desk then rise. Aromas slowly skitter down the hall through ravenous orifices and I raise hands overhead for a much needed stretch, skipping spine pops down the hallway with each step. “Lasagna?” I ask, a boyish happiness stretching my lips. My favorite. “I could bring you a plate.” “I need some interaction with the living,” I muse, dotting her temple with a peck before reaching over her head with the giraffe arms she knows and loves to gather plates from the top shelf. “So the girls aren’t missing?” The plates swivel to their resting place at the table and I sit, measuring eyes on her. “There’s only one way to find out.” The steaming piece of lasagna - a little slice of heaven - hovers mid air over my plate and a gentle inhale snips in before I ask the million dollar question. “What are your thoughts on Missouri? Living there, specifically.” The smile isn’t 100%, but it’s there in its supporting inverted arch and even for a writer, I often find myself speechlessly in love with her.

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