by A. R. Braun
Devon didn’t seem to know what to say.
Stacey wheeled on Marie, who bawled in the doorway. “What the fuck happened?” she screamed. “I told you not to let anything happen to them.”
The triplets crept in, holding cotton candy and stuffed animals. Wide-eyed, they shuffled by Stacey and into the living room.
Marie trembled so badly it was a wonder she kept on her feet. “Please don’t kill me! I was buying cotton candy for the triplets—and Sam, Devon, and Therese said they wanted a snow cone. I told them to wait till I bought the cotton candy. Then I… I… turned around… and they were… gone.”
“And you didn’t have the carnival staff call them on the intercom?”
“I did. Therese and Devon came out of the bleachers, after the concerts had ended, and… I found Therese like… that.”
“Didn’t anyone call the police?”
Marie nodded again, wiping tears from her eyes with her sausage fingers. “I did. They… couldn’t find him.”
Stacey lost it, black fury possessing her. She lunged at Marie and pushed her toward the door, inch by inch. “Get the fuck out of my house and don’t ever come back! If you do, I’ll have you arrested, you truck-sized, apathetic cow!”
Marie stumbled back more and more as Stacey pushed. What a “shame.” Stacey didn’t give a fuck if the humungous woman fell and split her head open.
“Oh! Oh! No!” Marie said. She lost her balance and went flying backward out of the screen door, tumbling onto the porch. Stacey looked to make sure she wasn’t dead, hardly a chance with the carpeting on the porch floor. Marie lay weeping. She keened in that irritating high-pitched voice old women had. Stacey looked up at the moon, and it seemed to mock her with its silvery eye. She slammed the door so hard the walls shook.
Now having the panic attack, Stacey ran for the bathroom.
Oh, my god, not again! What the hell is this, some generational curse? Why, god? You worthless moron that’s always on vacation! Why, fucking why?
She opened the door and Therese lay crying in the long, marble tub under the bubbles while Devon sat on the toilet and Sam sat at the edge of the tub, gingerly washing Therese’s eyelids.
Therese opened her eyes and looked at Stacey with a fearful gaze. “It still hurts,” she shrieked. “No matter how much I soak, it still hurts!”
Devon had her face in her hands. Sam was sobbing.
Stacey felt she’d loose her mind. Her brain lurched. She opened the medicine cabinet and put two one-milligram tablets of Ativan under her tongue. Her hand had shaken so badly she’d thought she’d drop them. Then she took a few deep breaths. When she came to herself, Stacey walked toward the tub, gesturing for Sam to get up, which she did. She took her place.
Stacey smoothed Therese’s hair, which looked dark when wet. Shampoo bubbles from Therese’s mane clung to her hand like dishwashing liquid. “Oh, my god, my baby, I’m so sorry.”
Therese stared ahead, taking a few deep breaths herself.
“How did it happen?” Stacey asked the other two. “Was it… Marie’s fault?”
“No Mom,” Devon said. Her voice was low and serious.
Therese bawled, her body shaking under the bubbles. “We—Devon and I—saw a couple of cute boys staring at us… and we said we wanted snow cones while Grandma bought cotton candy. Then we… snuck off and followed them.”
So it was as Marie had said.
Therese heaved a few more deep breaths. “They wanted us to go under the bleachers with them,” she sobbed.
“What?!” Stacey snapped.
Devon’s voice from behind her: “They got fresh. The skinny one, with me. I kicked him in the nuts, then I tried to help her. But Therese had a big boy. I couldn’t get him off her… so I ran. I went looking for a carnival cop, found one as they called us on the intercom, met up with Marie and the other four, and we raced over to the bleachers. She came out bruised and black-eyed like when you saw her at the front door.”
Therese wept, putting her soapy face in her hands. It broke Stacey’s heart.
Stacey turned to glare at Devon. “You two leave the room. And Devon, you’re grounded.”
Devon sighed and rose from the toilet. “Yes Mother.” Her voice was filled with sadness.
“You shouldn’t have snuck off like that,” Sam whispered.
The door shut.
Stacey heaved a heavy sigh and turned back to Therese. She didn’t know what to say, but she knew what she wanted to say. You’re grounded for life! She counted to ten before she spoke.
“You did a bad thing, running off like that. You can’t trust boys these days.”
Therese nodded, her face in her hands. She bawled.
Stacey put her hand to her mouth, trying to stop the sobs, trying to be strong. A couple of tears slid out of her eyes. “I know what you’re going through. Believe me, I do.” She sighed. “You’re going to be all right. But I don’t want you around a boy until you meet a nice one at school, and I don’t want you dating until you’re sixteen. Hear?”
Therese nodded again, taking her eyeliner-stained face out of her hands. Sobbing, she washed her wounded arms.
Stacey stroked Therese’s hair again. “What happened wasn’t your fault. That boy had no right to demand sex, then beat you when you wouldn’t give it to him.” Stacey was deep in thought. “What did he look like?”
Therese shook her head. “Like every other wigger in the city. Short hair… cap on backwards… ta-ha-hanned.”
“First thing tomorrow, we’re going to the police station, and I want you to give a description of that boy, or did you do that at the carnival?”
Therese nodded. The tears and sobs had stopped.
“Well, we’re going down there anyway and demand they do a computer composite of how he looked.”
“He said I’d better put out or he’d kick my ass,” Therese sobbed. “I didn’t think he was serious. I laughed.”
Stacy continued as if she hadn’t heard her. “I’m not letting you kids be around Grandma anymore. I don’t want you out of my sight until you go to college. I… I…”
Stacey could stand no more. She broke down crying.
It’s happening all over again. My hell is now my daughter’s hell. God, why do you hate us? Why? We don’t deserve to get our asses beat over and over again.
Stacey helped Therese out of the bathtub and dried her off, then called the police. When they told her they’d already talked to Marie, Therese, and Devon, Stacey screamed at them for their incompetence. Next, she slammed the phone in its cradle.
Therese slept in Stacey’s bed that night, trembling and holding her mother until she fell asleep. All Stacey could think about was her semi-precognitive nightmare and how her real-life nightmare had now passed to her child.
What am I, psychic? First the dream about the butler warning me, then the nightmare with Dick and Marie, and now this; I’ve got to start paying attention to my dreams. They’re warnings.
Stacey thought about her violent, undeserved legacy. She wanted to run and puke in the toilet, her stomach lurched that badly.
I guess some things never change. We’ll always live in hell, no matter where we go.
Although Therese had finally relaxed and went unconscious, her chest gingerly heaving up and down, Stacey didn’t sleep that night. She silently cried into Therese’s hair, the latter’s head lying on her mother’s shoulder. With radical acceptance, Stacey wondered if her wide-awake nightmare would, or ever could, end.
EPILOGUE
A year and three quarters later
Kevin, out early for good behavior, grinned ear-to-ear—which brought out his crow’s feet—as he sat with his new family at the end of the dinner table at Stacey’s house. Therese, now sixteen, sat with her boyfriend Rodney, a pasty boy with long hair, huge muscles, and a huge heart. He had a heavy metal concert shirt on and a sleeveless jean jacket over that. The teen lovers held hands. Across the table from them, Stacey, also with a shit-eating grin, h
eld hands with Kevin. She refused to sit at the other head of the table.
Stacey and Kevin wore matching wedding bands.
The roaring fireplace on Christmas cast a picturesque glow on Kevin’s face, and Stacey felt toasty warm with the expensive heating system blaring. Huge boxes of presents crowded the tray that caught the sap of the Christmas tree.
It was a white Christmas.
Therese had become a goth. She’d colored her hair black, wore black lipstick and black dresses, and refused to tan anymore. The newest Marilyn Manson mp3—which wasn’t that new—roared in the background. Her boyfriend played for a gothic band called Under Black Wings. Therese hated rap music now; she’d obviously been traumatized by the beating, and it broke Stacey’s heart.
Across the table to Therese and Rodney’s left, Devon, now fourteen and filled out, sat with her friends Kami and Rochelle—cheerleader types—the former blonde and the latter an African-American who tried to look white with long black hair, both girls stunningly gorgeous. Devon was more of a smartass than ever. Kami and Rochelle’s parents neglected them, and Stacey was only too glad to take them in for the holidays, always looking to help a fellow female in trouble.
Next to Stacey sat Sam, now thirteen. Stacey had turned them on to organic food, and Sam had lost the weight. She could eat whatever she wanted and not gain pounds. Her breasts were budding and her curves were barely visible. Next to her sat the triplets, now nine and no longer talking in munchkin voices, but in high-pitched irritating voices that bitched when they didn’t get what they wanted.
And Stacey loved them all as much as she ever had.
Kevin raised his glass of eggnog. “A toast!” he said with a wrinkly, shit-eating grin.
Everyone raised their eggnog, the girls giggling.
“To the sweetest, most wonderful family in the world,” he continued. “I’m the happiest man on the face of the earth!”
“Cheers,” everybody cried, clinking their glasses together.
Stacey tapped her glass with her butter knife. When she had their attention, she raised her glass. “And to the most wonderful husband on the planet!”
Kevin looked at her with love in his eyes. “It’s so hard to be humble and all that jazz. I’ll drink to that.”
They clinked their glasses again and drained them, and Butler Jones ran around refilling their eggnog, for Stacey had driven over to Marie’s house and offered him a better salary. He’d taken it without a moment’s hesitation. She had a lot to talk to him about, mostly her precognitive dreams and how to use them to her advantage. Stacey had become a strong, independent woman, working for the Department of Children and Family Services, and was now careful about who she trusted. Her telling dreams helped her with that.
Stacey’s heart beat frenetically when Kevin gave her a passionate kiss.
He grinned ear-to-ear again. “Honey, are you happy?”
She shook her head because she couldn’t believe how wonderful he was. “You know I am, you wonderful, crazy man.”
Everyone laughed.
Stacey had purchased a gun and, in addition to her martial arts and boxing training, she’d become one rough mama bear with whom not to fuck. If a prophetic dream warned her that Therese, Devon, Sam, or the triplets were in trouble, she’d arrive on the scene posthaste.
Next time, I’ll be ready for you, hell.
Stacey smirked.
You’d better stay in the shadows.
A. R. BRAUN is the author of the short-story collections Insanity and Horrorbook: Twenty-Two Tales of Terror. He has ten short-story publications. His tales have appeared in the D.O.A. anthology; Downstate Story ‘zine; the Vermin anthology; the Heavy Metal Horror anthology; and the Bonded by Blood 2: a Romance in Red anthology. The Horror Writer’s Association is glad to call him a member. He completed Bram Stoker Award nominee Jeremy Shipp’s Writer Boot Camp. A. R. blogs on his Website at http://arbraun.com.