by Susan May
The question of how I would get her out of my room quickly replaced the confusion I felt that she was even there. What this blackened, orange-headed creature would do I didn’t know. All I knew was she hadn’t come in peace. She was hideous and frightening, and I had no idea if the thing on her skin was a contagious disease and if that wasn’t her plan. To infect me.
“I’m sorry … Yes … yes, you’re right … I should have left you alone.”
She turned from the screen and fixed her mottled red eyes upon me. Now that I looked at her, it was as if she were rotting from the inside. I thought, God, whatever disease she has, please don’t give it to me.
I made a mental note that as soon as she was gone, I would post the disease idea on my page. Cabbage mold. Yuk! If I could get a picture, it would be perfect.
“You—are—a—bully.” She began slowly advancing toward me.
Given the look on her face, I wondered if she planned to spit at me. If she did, would big black globs of yuck, instead of normal clear spit, be ejected to land on the floor? On me? I shivered at the thought. Disgusting.
I wanted to point to the screen and say as you can see, everyone agrees with me, but something sucked the air out of me, and my legs started to shake. Then my hands joined in.
My victims didn’t usually fight back. They definitely didn’t come to my house and break in. Emma Carter frightened me, and my reply came out of my mouth in an explosion of disjointed words.
“Sorry. I am… really, so, so… sorry. I’ll take the page down. Right now. Please… we’ll be your friends at school.”
Her face didn’t move; didn’t show any expression that my words meant anything to her. In answer, she twisted her arms, her palms facing upward. Then she looked down at them, expectantly, her chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
As she did, an oily black film oozed slowly from the ridges and folds of her skin to pool in the cups of her hands. As her palms filled, big black drops ran under her hands and began to drip to the carpet in a steady stream, like oil leaking from a damaged engine.
“What are you doing?” I screamed. “That is gross. You need to leave. Just go, and I won’t tell. I promise to leave you alone.”
Then she held her hands toward me, just as a three-year-old might do after a finger-painting session. Look Mom, I’m having fun! Her face had begun to turn a mottled black, as if she were decomposing before me. A line of black trailed down from her nose and collected under her chin, before continuing in a stream onward to the floor.
Bile rose in my throat. I swallowed in an attempt to avoid losing the donuts and milkshake I’d consumed after school. The stinking smell of putrid water waste and rotting flesh was so overpowering I knew I’d shortly lose that battle.
“Don’t you recognize this?” she said, wiping a thread of the black from beneath her nose.
“I don’t know what you mean. I don’t understand.”
“You should recognize it,” she said, as her swollen, misshapen tongue flicked some of the black, slimy droplets toward me. Several found their mark and clung to my T-shirt. A few specks spattered my face. Immediately I felt a scorching irritation, as if the blackness were acid or hot wax.
“It’s hatred. Hatred is black and ugly. You shouldn’t hate people, Angela. It blackens your soul.”
Now my face was really burning and itching, and I started pulling at it, raking the skin with my nails. When I looked down at my hands, I saw pieces of flesh, charred black, hanging from my fingers.
As I began to scream, Emma flung more of the black stuff at me. Some of it hit me in the mouth. Now there was a sizzling burn eating into my skull. Even my teeth felt as if they would explode. The nerves were on fire with a pain that was overwhelming my brain.
I instinctively swallowed, and with horror realized it was now inside me, traveling down my throat to my stomach. In seconds, I felt the blackness rushing through my veins, swallowing me from the inside. The cloying rotten cabbage smell filled the room.
When I recognized that the smell was coming from me, I began to vomit. Black and red chunks of spew erupted from my mouth, landing at my feet, running down my chin. My knees buckled, and I fell forward, landing before Emma.
I wanted to look up and beg for mercy, but all my strength had wilted under this red-hot, screaming pain.
Then from above, she said, “You know, Angela, sometimes those who are bullied build defenses.”
Summoning every bit of strength still left in my body, I looked up at her, and managed to choke out one word: “Sorry.”
Through the black film moving across my vision, blurring and darkening my view, I saw she was smiling.
That was good, wasn’t it?
The blackness was fading from her eyes and arms, like sand draining from an hourglass.
“Sorry,” I repeated, and then the pain infesting me erupted into agony, causing me to lose control of my body and give the best Simon Berry trying to breathe impression ever. Would there be anything left to burn in me? Would I become just a black, oily puddle on the floor?
A vague sense of movement, of Emma turning to leave, and I looked up. She walked to the door in a casual way. It was as if I meant nothing more to her than some piece of trash lying upon the floor.
She paused at the door, and her final words slapped against my head like a hollow echo in a vacuum.
“Angela, nothing good comes of hating. If you let it, hate will eat you alive.”
The words crawled inside my head. They kept repeating, and repeating, until the burning overwhelmed everything, and it was just me, and the blackness, and its insatiable hunger.
© 2012 Susan May
From the Imagination Vault
A celebrity in the news annoyed me, and I actually found myself saying out loud, “I hate blah-blah blah-blah.” When I said it, I suddenly realized I really liked the rhythm of the sentence. Of course, I didn’t like the sentiment. It’s not good to waste energy on hating anybody.
Wouldn’t it be fun, I thought, to come up with a story with that line but using a different name, one that still kept the sentence rhythm? Thus was born I Hate Emma Carter.
The last line from Emma Carter was all the character’s doing. I didn’t understand what the black marks appearing on Emma’s skin until she actually said those words.
I almost felt sorry for Angela, too. Although, like most bullies, she just didn’t get it, and she never once regretted what she did, even in her dying breath. She remained true to her character until the end.
I had no idea until halfway through it would become a story about cyber-bullying. That must have been on my mind as a parent. Every time I read about a young person committing suicide my heart breaks.
It’s never okay to marginalize anyone. You never know the consequences for those who are bullied or for the bullies themselves. Bullying never ends well—for anyone.
It’s In The Genes
It's another morning of Helen yet again struggling to motivate her teenage son to get up and out the door on time for school. Ever since Brandon joined his father on his late night fishing trips he's changed from her happy-go-lucky son. Today, Helen will discover why.
Helen stared at her empty coffee cup. She’d decided to wait until she’d drunk it all before confronting him again–but on mornings like this, the coffee tasted bitter no matter how much sugar she added.
If Brandon wasn’t out of bed in the next five minutes, he would be late for school and Helen late for work. Stress soured her stomach at the thought of the traffic facing her because her son couldn’t haul his ass out of bed.
Timeliness was next to Godliness in her mind. Unfortunately, Brandon had not inherited her way of thinking.
Helen bounded up the stairs, flinging Brandon’s door open as hard as she could so it banged loudly.
“Brandon, for the last time: Get. Up.”
The mass that was Brandon rolled over, scratching its head. Sleep hung over it like a shroud.
“Move i
t. We’re late.” Helen glared from the door. “I’m speaking to your father tonight. This is the last time you’re going on one of your father-son jaunts mid-week. With exams coming… It’s ridiculous.”
This was Karl’s fault, really. Two months ago, on Brandon’s sixteenth birthday he’d suddenly decided that he was going to initiate Brandon into his “hobby.” Karl was a passionate fisherman.
He couldn’t fish at normal times. No. The best fish were biting at night. 11pm to be exact. So, at 10:30 pm every Tuesday and every Saturday, he and his fishing gear skipped out the door. Now Brandon went with them.
“Normal people fish at dawn,” she’d said once.
“But we’re not normal people.”
That first night she’d waited up. She was accustomed to Karl’s nocturnal adventures, but both of them out of the house at once left her feeling empty. Around one, Brandon trundled back, murmuring only an offhand “Good” when she asked how it went.
Karl, grinning like a crazy bat, had tousled their son’s black hair before reaching into their battered cooler and withdrawing two large, gray fish. “He’s a natural. It’s genetic. My father was a fisherman—his father a fisherman.” To her, they were just stinking fish. If it helped them bond, who was she to complain?
She watched in concern, as a red-eyed Brandon slipped into the kitchen, plunked himself down on a stool, and methodically funneled cereal from bowl to mouth in a superb robotic imitation. Helen wondered how just a few short months could have transformed her enthusiastic sixteen-year-old into this sloth-like creature. As an only child, Brandon needed this quality time with his father, but surely there was a way to get that, which didn’t involve exhausting midnight excursions. Bonding or no bonding, she decided she wouldn’t mince her words with Karl tonight.
“Brandon, eat faster.”
When he didn’t react, she grabbed her bag. “Actually—forget it. Bring it with you.”
Brandon picked up the bowl and slouched towards the door. Helen shuffled behind him, silently encouraging him forward. That was what her life had become since the expeditions began: a daily routine of encouraging speed, encouraging talk, encouraging her son to do something more than just sit around waiting for these damn fishing trips. Nothing else seemed to interest him now.
As she pushed her key into the car’s ignition, a sudden realization dawned on Helen. She stopped, leaned into the steering wheel, and sighed.
“You’ve forgotten your sports bag. Again,” she said, springing from the car. No point telling him to get it; she’d be waiting a week.
Helen took the stairs two at a time, stress propelling her like a steam engine. She entered his walk-in closet with trepidation. That was the other thing that’d slipped. He was a tidy kid before—not perfect, but no slob. Now his room resembled a carelessly thrown-together garage sale.
Inside the closet a frenzy of clothes greeted her. Clean, unclean, how could you tell? She spied the red sports bag jutting out as if attempting to escape the clutter. As she yanked it free, a shoebox tumbled from atop the pile and fell open, spilling its contents.
She’d half-turned away before the realization struck her that something was wrong. Turning back, she bent down to examine the scattered contents—photos and a knife with a big, gleaming blade.
The sports bag fell from her hand as she reached for the knife and scooped up a handful of pictures. Sudden confusion flooded her mind, just like that time she’d witnessed their dog killed by a car. You’re seeing it, but your brain isn’t computing it.
In the pictures were Brandon and Karl and … women. For a sickening moment she imagined that the floor had collapsed, and any second now her body would splatter onto the tiles below. Of course, the floor was solid; it was her world that had just fractured.
Helen pulled a photo up to her nose, studying it as if examining a map. So much blood. The woman was collapsed against a wall like a broken puppet, her head lolling sideways. Her empty, lifeless eyes stared back at Helen. A thick dark line ran across her neck. Big patches of red drenched her green pajamas.
Brandon held her head up to face the camera, pushing the knife—which Helen now suddenly dropped—against the woman’s face. The last time Helen had seen him smile that big, Brandon had come in third in the regional cross-country.
Helen slid the picture behind the others and stared at another. A half-dressed woman was posed standing against a tree. Brandon and Karl, standing on either side, looked smug. Brandon flattened a knife across her chest and Karl held an angry-looking blade across the front of her neck. Karl’s other arm was hooked around the woman’s head, angling her face to look straight at the camera.
Helen forced the back of her hand into her mouth to stifle the nausea swirling in her throat. Carefully she placed the photos and knife back in the box, concealing it under the clothes. Then she picked up the sports bag and walked slowly back down the stairs. With each jarring step, tiny particles of something cold and hard wound around her heart.
Slipping back into the driver’s seat, she stared straight ahead and turned the key.
“Brandon,” she said, her voice controlled despite the tremor invading her hands. “I’ve made a decision. From here on in, we’re buying our fish. You and Dad need a new hobby.”
© 2013 Susan May
From the Imagination Vault
Bloomsbury publishing in Australia ran a competition in February 2013. The winner would be published in an anthology alongside a well-known author from their stable. The specifications were the story must be in the crime genre, be 1,000 words, and fit the theme Deception.
I love the idea of writing to a word count and a theme. Since 2010, when I began writing seriously again at fifty—the age of wisdom and gray hair—I’ve often chosen to enter competitions or anthologies in order to stretch my writing. If you want to hone your writing and editing skills, I highly recommend trying this.
Many of my stories have been rejected, including this one—it didn’t win. However, quite a few have gone on to win awards and enjoy publication. Those wins, publications, and short-listings certainly gave me the confidence I was on the right track. They also toughened me up to rejection.
This story simply wrote itself, and I didn’t realize until half way through I was dealing with serial killers. It just began with a fed up mother. Certainly, I could understand her feelings. The first part of the story is true for me some mornings, and the second half I pray will never ever come true.
The War Veteran
For seventy years, World War II veteran Jack Baker has endured vivid flashbacks to that horrific June day on Omaha Beach. But tonight, the flashback will be terrifyingly different. Tonight it becomes real. Tonight, Jack's seventy-year-old secret will come back to claim him.
Chapter 1
When I close my eyes, I can still hear the sound of it. Then the vibrations follow, like a dozen trees felled and fallen at the exact same time, landing only feet from my head.
It was always hard to tell whether the flashes of light—red, orange, and blinding white—came before or after the sound; a kaleidoscope of color, which if it had been fireworks would have brought delight instead of chaos and fear.
I recognized the sound immediately.
It was 2:23 a.m.
I was never asleep between two and three.
Never asleep at four. Or six.
I barely slept at all these days. When I did, the nightmares came. Always. I would awaken with my bed wet with cold sweat and my chest aching as I struggled for breath. In the short moments before I opened my eyes, I’d feel myself clawing at some unknown assailant, his hands twisting around my neck.
Then, fully awake, I would realize it was just a nightmare; it was the night, and the life I now led, that was asphyxiating me. I was safe and alive.
But only half-alive.
When the sound buffeted my consciousness, I presumed, as I always did, this was just another one of those “flashes” where I was back there on that beach among the oth
er soldiers. Knowing I was about to die. If I did survive, the human being who’d entered the torrid waters that morning would not survive, even if I were still breathing when the sun set.
So when I heard the sound, I merely turned my head toward the window and counted to fifty. If it came again, I would get up and take a look. It was rare I needed to count beyond thirty. On a bad night, it would take the whole fifty.
Tonight was different from other nights. Nearly seventy years of what I called “my flashes,” often visited upon me when the guilt became overwhelming.
I waited and counted, watching the blur of the television, the sound muted because I didn’t need to hear the details of whatever they were selling at 2:30 in the morning.
I lay there, the pain in my right hip feeling as if someone were playing “dig the dagger in and twist.” Osteoporosis. Doctors informed me my milk intake when I was younger was inadequate—as if we worried about milk and aging when the chances of keeping your legs were pretty much against you. Getting old wasn’t a problem. Living with getting old was the problem, especially when you hadn’t expected to live.
When the familiar sound came again, I seriously considered whether it was worth my while to pull my complaining body off the couch and shuffle it to the window.
At eighty-eight years, this small movement was akin to sprinting a mile. Since I knew what I would find when I peered out the window, there wasn’t much incentive to move.
Oh, it beckoned vaguely. Sometimes I enjoyed looking at them. If you weren’t in the middle of the shit-fight; if, around you, your buddies and strangers (still kindreds) weren’t dropping like flies—their lives’ value only the claiming of a few inches of beach—then it was actually quite entertaining.