Tuesdays with Story

Fifth Tuesday stories
October 30, 2012

The challenge: Write a short short story, poem, essay or a mighty short film script about the supernatural, which must include a ghost, a vampire, a werewolf, a witch, or any combination, or some other unreal critter.

The wolf in me
Rebecca Rettenmund, first-and-third, second-and-fourth

Staring out the restaurant window, I gulped my third Long Island Ice Tea.
“Do you love me?”
My lover put down his fork. “We had an understanding. You date anyone you want and I date anyone I want.”
I stared harder out the window. The full moon just broke through the clouds.
“Yeah. But do you love me?”
My lover said, “No.”
I could feel the anger surge throughout my body. The hair on my back bristled. Right where everyone could see, I was turning into a creature. Something out of a horror movie. I tossed the condiments off the table. People stared in shock. My lover lured me outside, but I tore at his clothes. He grabbed me by the arm and tried to trap me in his truck, but I had the strength of ten men.
I ran rabid in the street, causing cars to swerve. I threw myself at the hood of a Toyota, roaring until the driver let me in. The stranger soothed me with music. I blacked out in the passenger seat.
In the morning I woke up. The beast in me was gone, but I was lost in a place I’ve never been to before. I called the only number I knew. My lover.
He had to cut out of work to go pick me up. And he was mad.
“I don’t think I want to date someone who is bipolar.”
He dropped me off at my apartment. I threw up in the sink.

Later for “Last Tango with the Dark Side, or End of Seances”
Brandy Larson, second-and-fourth group

It was a quiet Sunday morning. I’d just finished writing my 600-word Halloween story for WPR topical flash fiction contest. Amir had just woken up and trudged up our stairs into the dining room. Barely awake, he said, “Is someone here?”
“No,” I replied.
“I heard some heavy footsteps just now on the stairs,” he said.
This was exactly what was in the true story I had just completed. He said he also heard some kind of moaning. This was not part of the story.
At this moment, I was considering whether to submit my story. It was a true encounter with the dark side, witnessed by three people who together all had the same exact experience. Why turn this loose on the airwaves?
Amir drank a quick coffee and took off for the library. I surrounded myself in white light, reciting the Unity Prayer of Protection.
I lit a cedar smudge stick and smudged myself front and back, smudged the whole house – basement, inside all cupboards and closets – with purifying smoke.
The next day I picked up the August 15 & 22nd, 2011, New Yorker magazine at Willy Street Co-op free books. A fiction story called “Gilgul”, by Yosef Hayim Yershlam, was featured. It tells how he was introduced to a fortune teller somewhere in Israel who had his number, so to speak. At the time he didn’t know what to make of the experience, but many years later her prediction came true. He quotes the Bible in the middle of his story: “Turn ye not unto the ghosts, nor unto familiar spirits, seek them not out, to be defiled by them.”
I googled this, since his story made no attribution as to chapter and verse. The result of the search said Leviticus 19, also called the Third Book of Moses, verse 31. I checked my King James Version Reference Bible, School and Library Edition, 1960, John A. Hertel Co. “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, nor seek after wizards, to be defiled by them.”
The Torah and the King James versions apparently differ, but the message is the same.
I just shredded my first story but am wondering, should I burn it?

The end of the line
Judith McNeil, first-and-third

He was standing there facing the line of people, who were anxiously waiting to shake his hand, say a few words of encouragement, attempt a photo moment. I was in the back of the line and I periodically had to stand on tip toes to get a glimpse of him. Each glimpse made a negative impression, and I became more and more nervous as the line progressed. The extreme widow’s peak of his hair nearly reached the level of his eyebrows.
I moved back four places.
There was a mixture of reactions to meeting him. Some people who had met with him, and were on their return to the exit, weren’t smiling, but looked frightened. Others seemed not so much happy, but silly, giddy.
I inched up on tip toes again, to see the large eyes. They definitely had a cold, predatory stare to them.
I moved back five places and started to consider getting out of the line and leaving the building. The line was moving faster now. Why couldn’t I just walk away? Some force was holding me there.
Suddenly, I stood facing him. Timidly, I put out my hand. He pulled me into him, bit my neck, greedily drank my blood and my will power. The action was so fast, it was almost imperceptible.
Feeling limp, I found myself congratulating him on running for the presidency of the country. Although I opposed everything he stood for, I knew I would vote for him.

Halloween magic
Katelin Cummins, second-and-fourth

Viera carved the last scale and scraped more clay from the bat-like ears. Not quite satisfied, she turned the sculpture to the right and examined the way the lizard toes curled to grip the log. The creature’s slim body curved up from the base of its neck, then down near the back legs where the tail coiled at the statue’s base.
That last touch still eluded her, but she had to call it done to meet the distributor’s deadline. The interruptions from trick-or-treaters earlier in the evening put her behind and it was after midnight.
A crash came from the kitchen. Viera stared at the door. No one was home but her. She felt her heart pounding. She grabbed her cell phone and a large metal sculpting tool and stepped toward the door.
When she turned the corner, a familiar lizard-like creature froze mid-step on its way to the kitchen sink. Its long tail hung over the side of the counter top. Glass, flowers and puddles of water covered the kitchen floor.
She gasped, then smiled. It was her creation, alive!
Another thud brought Viera’s attention to the living room where the box containing her finished work lay overturned. Another lizard crawled out. Two more climbed from the couch onto the curtains and shredded them.
The artist collapsed. With one hand on her head, she imagined her other statues coming to life and causing havoc in the stores, in people’s homes…
Trick… or treat?

*Inspired by this Bat-Eared Sap Dragon sculpture by Erin Metcolf (www.eirewolfcreations.com)

Freddy the geek freak
Terry Hoffman, second-and-fourth

Freddy the Geek Freak returned from summer vacation and demanded to be called
Fred-errr-rick, said with a trill.
“Yeah, right.” I told him.
My frat brothers and I only tolerate him because his father was a Lambda Chi. Freddy would never have made it through the hazing we’d planned for him if the dean hadn’t stopped by the house to mention Freddy’s father was an important supporter of the university. Even the dean must have noticed Freddy’s lack of social skills and strange tics. Some kinda shoulder hunch and left eye scrunch combo that makes you wonder if he’s doing it on purpose to startle you. I tell you, three tics in a row would even send Attila the Hun running for the hills. The guy’s a freaking weirdo.
Anyway, we never saw much of him last year. He has the attic room where he’d hunch over his computer, tics escalating with his intensity. Sometimes we’d creep up there and hunker down in the stairwell to catch the show.
Now that the new school year has commenced, at night I hear him pacing overhead, floor squeaking until I’d have to cover my head with a pillow. Lately, Fredrick has been materializing behind me while I studied in my room. I’d feel a chill creep up my back and turn to see Frederick the Geek Freak standing tall, his recently acquired black cape billowing behind him even though there is no breeze.
“Damn it, Freddy, you scared the crap outa me!”
“It’s Frederrrick, Count Frederrrrick, to you.”
“Yeah right, bite me.”
He did.
I’ve come to see Frederick in a new light. After a few drinks, he’s kinda fun.

Ghost story
Spike Pedersen, first-and-third

Natty Brown cursed the lawn that sucked up her Italian heels. She put them in her Gucci and took out her phone. That cost her dearly. She lost Lily and Rachel, and the cemetery tour, too.
A tombstone took her down, and her head went as dark as the night. She woke to cold, damp and scary. Natty sat up. Just the black ink of the night.
“Lily. Rachel!” Not even a whisper.
Then she noticed faint light swirling across the cemetery, and right next to her bare foot. Phone. No texts. “Bitches.”
The distant light sliced again. “You guys!” The words tunneled through the night so hollow and lifeless her heart clinched.
Natty went toward the lights, bumbling around the last stone symbols of the dead toward a hundred-year-old building imitating a church. Built to lay the dead before they were interned in the earth to rot. Faint light flickered through stained-glass windows obstructed by dust and flies. Sounds from within, like rattled voices.
The great bolt slipped aside and the door trembled open. Natty peered inside. “Rachel? Lily?”
She entered expecting to see her friends and ready for the BOO they would shout.
One step, another. The door crashed shut, and her senses cried out. Utter dark closed upon her and fear bubbled in her blood.
She remembered her phone. She trembled, hit the button and light flashed out, and the dark swallowed it. She slowly turned and coffins lined the walls. The phone timed out and went dark.
The tombs of the dead glowed again. And then they opened.

Our sighting of the Highwayman
Millie Mader, first-and-third

“And the highway man came riding, riding, riding
Up to the old inn door”

In the gloom at the edge of the moor we stood
The moon but a silver thread.
Our heartbeats throbbed and our breath was stilled,
As we peered at the ribbon of road ahead
The twisting ribbon of road ahead

A Devonshire lass had accompanied us here
No longer impressed by old lore
But we waited enthralled and expectant,
Enticed by the hauntings of yore.
The Dartmoor specters of yore.

A distant bell chimed at the witching hour,
Adrenaline spiked our veins
Then the clickety-clack of hooves was heard
And the slippity-slap of reins
A skeleton hand-gripped reins.

The horse was dark as the midnight sky,
His eyes glowed bloody red.
The rider’s black cape flowed freely,
But the phantom had no head.
The Highwayman had no head.

Then the ghost went galloping westward,
Down an ancient country mile,
But before he was swallowed up in the mists,
He passed straight through the stile.
A barred and bolted stile.

“And still of a winter’s night, they say, when the wind is in the trees,
When the moon is a ghostly galleon, tossed upon cloudy seas,
When the road is a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor
A highwayman comes riding, riding, riding
A highwayman comes riding up to the old inn door.”

Is Anything Wrong?
Bob Kralapp, first-and-third

It was there and gone.
Alice saw it from the corner of her eye – a flash of movement along the hall outside the bathroom – the figure of a woman, glowing clear and distinct, the dress wide at the base and a line of buttons running from waist to the nape of the neck.
As it passed by, Alice saw through to the plant stand on the other side of the hall. All the while she had this slipping feeling, like a car accident when time slows. Alice could have reached out and touched her as she passed.
Alice almost skipped down the creaking steps and out into the warm evening. Brown leaves swirled on the sidewalk. The driveway was empty. Jerry was attending a meeting at their church. He was the treasurer, which he did not like, but did from a sense of responsibility.
A yellow moon rose in the slate-blue east. It would be full in two days. Tonight, it looked to Alice like a blind eye. She coughed, held her stomach. The corner house was haunted, supposedly. Why not theirs?
She was about to go upstairs when headlights came around the corner. Jerry pulled into the driveway and switched off the motor.
“Hi,” he said, closing the car door. “Have you been waiting long?”
“No, I just care down a few minutes ago.”
Arm in arm, they walked to the door to the upstairs.
“Is anything wrong?”
“No,” she said. “Why should anything be wrong?”

Be a zombie
Amber Boudreau, first-and-third

I was deaf when I woke up this morning. I’d caught the virus. I was one of them now: a departed spirit tethered to a decaying sack of organic matter with a taste for flesh.
In short, a zombie.
Other than a hunger for meat – new for me because I’ve been a vegan – I didn’t feel any different.
Living alone meant there wasn’t anyone fresh about. My inhuman stomach rumbled.
I got dressed and looked in the mirror. Other than a springy tightness in my muscles, I didn’t feel any different, and my skin didn’t look too dead yet. But my eyes glowed a fiery red.
I slipped on sunglasses.
I thought I’d start with my landlady. The old witch had never given me a break on rent or made improvements, even though I paid on time and signed a multi-year lease.
Knocking on her door, I began to salivate. She answered the door and waved me inside.
Something bubbled on the stove. I looked at the old woman, only to twist away and look at the stove.
“What is that?” I asked as I stalked over. I lifted the lid, stuck my face in the heat and inhaled the fragrant steam.
A wooden spoon smacked my knuckles. “If goulash. Sit. Wait to cool or your flesh will rot faster.”
I looked up, startled.
“Yes,” she said, “thank gods you no eat animal flesh while living. Now it will sustain you.”

October Surprise
Clayton Gill, first-and-third

Flames leaped from the gothic hearth, showering sparks across the cavernous room. Firelight burnished the proud horns of the Prince of Darkness.
“My fellow Damned, not for the first time in inhuman history, we have the opportunity to endorse a presidential candidate. Shall we put our choice to a vote?”
A wicked smile flickered across the eternal, evil visage.
“Red?” The spiked tail twitched. “Or Blue?”
Members of the cabal glanced around the gore-stained table. They knew the preference of their chairman. Likewise, the Devil knew his minions.
For Dracula, the critical issue was jobs. The pluto-aristocrat could suck little blood from the unemployed.
But Werewolf would howl, “Save the environment!” Global warming might extinguish his species.
Witch supported equal pay for equal deviltry.
Mummy favored a balanced budget that would keep Social Security solvent for the next three thousand years.
Ghost, too, moaned on and on about the budget deficit, but needed to put some life into her as yet insubstantial talking points.
As for Zombie, his whole body was a pre-existing condition.
Outside, the iron door knocker banged, spooking the cabal.
“Who dares interrupt us?” roared the Prince of Darkness.
Witch waddled to the door, grumbling how it was hell to look like a human, especially on Halloween.
“Yikes!” she gasped.
Two boys stood on the stoop. They wore green coveralls topped with oversized paper-mache fish heads.
“Trick or treat!”
“Your choice,” Witch said, rummaging in the caldron hung near the door. “Eye of newt or toe of frog?”

Advice to the Werelorn
Jerry Peterson, first-and-third

Dear Ann Landers,
I know you’re dead, but because you now work for the Zombiest Journal-Advocate, of which I am an occasional reader, I believe you can help me. Here is my problem. I am an aging werewolf, and I am in love. But she won’t give me the time of day . . . or night. What should I do to win this beautiful creature?
Signed: Hopeless in Madison

Dear Hopeless,
First, you are not hopeless. If you were, you would not have asked for my advice. Here’s what I suggest you do.
One, no doubt you have tell-tale signs of gray in your mane. On one of your moonlight runs, trot by an all-night Walgreens and buy a tube of Just for Werewolves Autostop. It will bring back your mane to its full and glorious color in just five minutes say the instructions. No more gray.
Two, because of your age, doubtless you have damaged fur and split ends. While at the drugstore, also buy a healing fur conditioner. I prefer Clairesse, but there are other excellent brands. Shampoo, rinse, apply the conditioner and rinse again, and she won’t be able to keep her paws off of you.
Finally, show your love that you have style. Get yourself on Prancing With The Stars. Work out and train. Then prance with Oprah and win. Win, Hopeless. Strut your stuff, and she cannot resist you.
Now I must find some brains to nosh, perhaps Glenn Beck’s.
Forever yours – and I really do mean forever – Ann Landers