The Last of Reginald ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

The Last of Reginald image 2

The Last of Reginald
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Wexler Deal had been dead a long time. Since he died while still a child, his spirit-self would always be a child. Despite his apparent youth, he had experienced all the spirit world had to offer. Now he was lonely. Now he wanted a home.

He went back to the city of his birth, thinking that was as good a place as any to look for a home, but nothing looked the same. The hospital where he was born had been torn down and an office building stood in its place. The cemetery where he was buried was overgrown and unkempt, with a new highway built uncomfortably close. In the neighborhood where he had lived before he died, all the houses had been torn down and a shopping center built in their place.

Nothing was the same. There were no streetcars anymore. The little shops along Main Street were all gone. He didn’t see any horses anywhere, but there were lots of trucks. There were also lots of annoying people and much noise. He didn’t like the modern world.

“Just how long have you been dead, anyway?” he asked himself.

He sat in the park on a bench, watching living people go by and thinking how he didn’t belong and how he should find someplace else to go. If he was looking for happiness, he wouldn’t find it here.

He was watching a swan glide toward an island in the center of the lake when two people crossed his field of vision, a woman and a boy. The woman, smartly dressed, had soft-looking hair the color of straw. She was leading the boy by the hand. They stopped at the water fountain. The boy felt the fountain with both hands. She turned it on for him while he drank.

Wexler watched them as long as they were in the park and when they left he followed them.

They went home to a two-story brick house with a spacious yard. Wexler was fascinated by the boy who had to feel the water fountain with hands before he took a drink. He was a smart-looking boy just about Wexler’s age. He would make a good brother. The woman would make a good mother. He was sure of it.

The next day, he went back just as the boy and the woman were emerging from the house. He let them go ahead of him and then followed them.

This time they went to the library. The woman sat at a table and pulled a chair close to her for the boy to sit on. She began looking at newspapers. Whenever she went to the rack to get another newspaper, the boy sat quietly with his hands folded across his stomach and lowered his head. He closed his eyes as though he were asleep.

Wexler sat on the other side of the boy. Of course, the boy didn’t see him and didn’t know he was there. This gave Wexler a chance to look closely at the boy. Wexler saw how far the boy’s eyelashes extended from his eyes. His hair was exactly the same color as Wexler’s and, in fact, they looked enough alike to be brothers. The only difference was that Wexler had been dead for decades, but when he died he was about the same age that the boy was now, so, for all intents and purposes, they were the same age.

When they left the library, they stopped on the way home at a restaurant to eat lunch. They sat at a red-upholstered booth and ate tuna-salad sandwiches and drank malteds. Wexler sat beside the boy and watched him eat, mimicking him and imagining what it would be like to take food into his mouth and swallow it. He hadn’t eaten in decades, but he remembered what it was like.

Soon they were back home again. Instead of turning ar0und and walking away when the woman and the boy went inside, Wexler slipped inside with them. The woman closed the door, blissfully unaware that Wexler was there. Being a spirit certainly has its advantages.

The boy went upstairs, while the woman went into the kitchen. Wexler was going to go along with the boy to get better acquainted with him, but instead he wanted to spend some time exploring the house.

It was a big house. The rooms were splendidly furnished and there were a lot of them. These people must certainly have a lot of money, thought Wexler. I wouldn’t mind living in a place like this.

In a little while the woman went into the front room and laid down on the couch. Wexler watched her as she took off her shoes and made herself comfortable. She didn’t have to fix dinner or do any other work, Wexler was soon to discover, because she had a black maid named Ethel to do everything.

When dinner was ready, Ethel brought the food in from the kitchen and put it on the dining room table. The woman rose from the couch, and the boy came down from upstairs. They sat across from each other at the table. The woman put the food on the boy’s plate, and then on her own, and they began eating. Wexler hovered over the table and watched them as they ate. Finally he sat down beside the boy and listened to their conversation.

“Did you straighten your room?” the woman asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you hang up your clothes and put your underwear in the wash?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You’re not helpless, you know.”

“I never said I was.”

“Do you like the roast beef?

“Sure.”

After dinner, the boy went to his room and read a book that was little dots on a page. The woman watched TV while Wexler continued to explore the house, including the basement and attic.

At bedtime, the woman and the boy said their good nights, and the boy went into his room and changed into his pajamas. After he got into bed and was settling down to sleep, Wexler sat in a chair beside the bed and whistled an old tune.

“Who’s there?” the boy asked.

Wexler continued to whistle.

“I know there’s somebody there.”

“Yes, I’m here.”

“How long have you been following me?”

“Just for a couple of days.”

“I knew it! I could feel it!”

“Just between you and me.”

“What?”

“Is that woman your mother?”

“Of course not. She’s my guardian.”

“What happened to your mother?”

“She abandoned me when I was a baby.”

“Why did she do that?”

“Because I was born blind.”

“That’s terrible!”

“As you can see, I get along all right. Now, you’d better tell me who you are and what you want.”

“If I told you my name, it wouldn’t mean anything.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“My name is Wexler Deal.”

“That’s a funny name.”

“What’s yours?”

“Reginald Flinders.”

“I’d shake your hand, but I don’t have a hand.”

“Why not? Have you been in a terrible accident?”

“No, I…That’s a story for another time.”

“Why ‘for another time’?”

“I don’t think you’re ready for the truth about me right now.”

“Why not?”

“Just take my word for it.”

“All right. Now, tell me what you’re doing in my house.”

“I’ve been looking for a brother. When I saw you in the park, I thought you might be him.”

“That sounds suspicious. I think I should tell Grace the whole thing.”

“Who’s Grace?”

“She’s my guardian. She’ll want to know what you’re doing here. She’ll call the police.”

“No need for that.”

“I want to know how you got in without Grace or the maid seeing you.”

“Nobody sees me.”

“Why is that?”

“I’m not really there. Or here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been dead for a long time. I’m a spirit.”

“Yeah, that’s a good one!”

“It’s the absolute truth. The reason Grace and the maid didn’t see me is because I’m not really there. Nobody sees me.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you believe me?”

“Of course I believe you.”

They talked for hours. They both realized how good it was to have somebody to talk to. Before the night was over, they both ended up asleep, side by side, in Reginald’s bed. In the morning they woke up and began talking again.

Reginald went to a school for the blind. In the morning some people came and picked him up and kept him at school all day, and in the afternoon they brought him back home again. When he wasn’t at school, he spent almost all his time with Wexler. They spoke on every subject imaginable. Reginald told him how he wondered about colors and what a cow looked like, or a chicken.

“One day you’ll see everything,” Wexler said.

“I don’t think so. I’ve always been this way.”

“I’d help you to see if I knew how.”

Another time, Reginald said, “Tell me what you look like. Describe yourself to me.”

“I don’t look like anything,” Wexler said. “I’m not here.”

“If you were here and I could see you, what would you look like?”

“When I had a body and a face, I looked just the way you look now.”

“I’ve never seen myself.”

“My hair is halfway between brown and blond. My nose is large but not too large.  My eyes are blue and very handsome. My mouth is in the usual place.”

Despite Wexler’s discomfort, he let Reginald “see” him with his hands: head, ears, eyes, forehead, nose, mouth, chin, neck. When he was finished, he put his arms down and said, “So, that’s what I look like!”

“We’re just like twins,” Wexler said with a laugh.

Time went by quickly. The weeks became months, and it was winter again. Still Wexler stayed by Reginald’s side, with Grace, the guardian, and Ethel, the maid, never knowing there was another person in the house.

Wexler began to think that helping Reginald see was the best thing he could do in the world. He wanted Reginald to see everything he himself had seen all over the world. Unforgettable things like an octopus, a tall mountain, a full moon, a tropical rain forest, a desert, a waterfall, a polar ice cap. The list goes on and on.

He knew a doctor, a man named Gottschalk, currently living in New York. Dr. Gottschalk was a ghoul, hundreds of years old. He wasn’t really alive but was kept alive by artificial means. Wexler had met him socially on several occasions and had sat in on some of his lectures at the University of Vienna.

Wexler flew to New York and called Dr. Gottschalk and made an appointment to see him later in the day. Dr. Gottschalk remembered Wexler fondly.

Dr. Gottschalk hadn’t changed a bit. He was still frightening-looking with his white skin, long face and big teeth, but he was receptive and, as always, willing to help.

“Reginald is my best friend,” Wexler said to Dr. Gottschalk. “He’s alive, not a spirit like me. The problem is he can’t see. He was born that way. I want him to see all the wonders in the world that I’ve seen. I want to show him these things, as a friend.”

“I think I have just the thing,” Dr. Gottschalk said.

He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a little bottle and handed it to Wexler.

“This should do the trick,” he said.

“What is it?” Wexler asked.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t know what I was talking about.”

“Okay.”

“Mix this in with a glass of water and have your little friend drink it before bedtime. Right before.”

“I’ll tell him.”

“In the morning, there’ll be a drastic change for the better.”

“Are you certain?”

“It’s never failed yet.”

Wexler tried to pay Dr. Gottschalk, but he wouldn’t accept any payment.

“I already have all the money in the world,” Dr. Gottschalk said. “I like helping my friends!”

“I can’t thank you enough!” Wexler said.

Wexler held onto the bottle for a few days. He didn’t want to administer it before the time was right. He waited until late Friday night. It was snowing out.

He waited until Reginald was snugly in bed. “I have something for you,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s something that will make you see.”

“What is it?”

“I have a doctor friend. His name is Dr. Gottschalk. He’s a ghoul, but that doesn’t matter.”

“A ghoul? I like it already!”

“It’s a little bottle of liquid. I’ll mix it in some water and then you’ll drink it.”

“What are we waiting for?”

“It’ll make you see everything, but there’s just one bad thing.”

“What could be bad about seeing everything?”

“Your life as Reginald will end.”

“What are you saying?”

“You’ll die and you’ll be a spirit like me.”

“Oh.”

“No more guardians and no more school for the blind.”

“Will you stay with me? I mean, while I die?”

“Sure, I will.”

“Will it hurt?”

“I don’t think so, but if it does, it will only be for a minute.”

Wexler gave Reginald the chance to postpone the drinking of the liquid for a few days—or indefinitely—but Reginald wanted to go ahead with it. More than anything in the world, he wanted to see with his own eyes.

Wexler went into the bathroom and drew a glass of cold water from the faucet. He set the glass on the sink and watched as he poured the bottle of amber liquid into the water. Then he held it up to his eyes to get a better look at it.

When he took the bottle back into the bedroom, Reginald had propped himself up in bed and was ready to drink. When he took the glass from Wexler, his hands were steady and in his eyes were tears of unalloyed joy.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Brother ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Brother

Brother
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

(This is a repost. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Patricia Crippen, age three, stood beside the bed and looked down at her three-week-old brother. He waved his arms and legs like a bug upside down on its back. He was all pink and already beautiful, with abundant blond hair and full, rosy cheeks. He made little gurgling sounds with his mouth; his eyes were roving but expressionless.

His name was Benjamin; they would call him Ben for short. Mother chose the name out of a book. Patricia hoped to be able to persuade mother to give him back to the hospital where he came from. What did they need him for? They had her, after all, and wasn’t that enough? She absolutely did not want or need a brother, or a sister for that matter, but it’s funny how nobody asked her.

She had seen people killing other people on TV. She didn’t exactly want to kill Ben or even hurt him, but she did want him to go away, to disappear, to no longer exist. Maybe they could find a family that would take him and pretend he belonged to them from the start. Nobody would ever know. It would be as if he had never happened. Everybody would be happy, including him.

But Ben didn’t go anywhere. He stayed and stayed. By his first birthday, he was walking and even running. He spoke in complete sentences. He sang songs and recited poems. He could change channels on the TV and bathe himself. He could get the cookies out of the upper kitchen cabinet without help from anybody. He put himself to bed at night and got himself up in the morning.

And he was blond-haired, blue-eyed perfection. His body and head were perfectly proportioned. People would stop mother in the grocery store and tell her, “That is the most beautiful boy I have ever seen.” “You can have him if you want him,” mother would say, and they’d all laugh.

When he started to school, he was teacher’s favorite. He was smart and bright and no trouble at all. He took to reading and writing almost faster than anybody else and when he was in second grade he was reading at fifth-grade level. At the end of third grade, the school recommended that he skip the fourth grade and go on to fifth. He was the school’s champion speller and got his picture in the paper. He started learning the trumpet and could sight-read almost any piece of music that was put in front of him. When it came to athletics, he could score more baskets, run faster and jump higher than anybody else. And, on top of everything else, people liked him. He was polite, considerate, humble, helpful, kind, the righter of wrongs. Even the most vicious bully in school was diminished in his presence.

You might say that everybody loved Ben except his sister Patricia. She didn’t hate him but she didn’t love him, either. More than anything else she was jealous of him. He was always the favored one, always the one people noticed and admired, while she was the little brown mouse over in the corner that nobody cared about or looked at, except maybe to throw a shoe at when it suited them.

And when the gifts of beauty and intelligence were being distributed, she clearly had been left far behind Ben. Her hair, no matter what beauty treatment was applied, always managed to look lusterless and chewed-off. Pimples took up residence on her long nose and sad face when she was eleven years old and seemed reluctant to leave, despite all the most up-to-date pimple treatments.

In first and second grade, she had trouble learning to read and had to spend a whole hour several evenings a week with a tutor, a retired schoolteacher with bad breath and a wooden leg named Miss Eye. Patricia was sure that Miss Eye was a bonafide witch but was never able to prove it. Miss Eye would pinch Patricia on the arm for being lazy and not trying hard enough.

Instead of being able to skip fourth grade and move on to fifth as Ben did, Patricia failed fourth grade and had to do it all over again. So, when people always asked the inevitable question, “What grade are you in?”, she was forced to admit, two years running, that she was in the fourth grade. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” they’d asked. “I’m going to be a garbage collector,” she’d answer.

At Christmastime, half the presents under the tree were for Ben. Patricia was sure the most elaborate packages, the ones with the prettiest bows, were for Ben. His presents were taking up the space where her presents should be. If he had never been born at all, all the presents under the tree would be hers. Why did life have to be so unfair?

Patricia took Ben’s little white underpants out of the dryer and folded them with the rest of the laundry, the way mother showed her, and when she was finished and had a neat little stack of ten or twelve pairs, she took them up to Ben’s perfectly ordered bedroom and put them in his neat-as-a-pin underwear drawer. Before she left the room, she always had the impulse to mess up the books on his desk or take a few shirts out of the closet and scatter them on the floor. The only trouble with that was there was no one else she would be able to blame it on.

When Patricia’s girlfriends gushed about how gorgeous Ben was and what an interesting older boy he was sure to be, Patricia always wanted to slap them in the face and twist their arms out of their sockets. It was a sign of incivility and disloyalty for anybody to praise Ben in front of her. After all, hadn’t she been hearing it all her life and wasn’t she awfully tired of it?

So, in the fall, Ben was ten and in the sixth grade, the youngest and most precocious person of either gender in his class. Patricia was thirteen and in the seventh grade, only one grade ahead of Ben. If she wasn’t careful, she might fail another grade, and if that happened she and Ben would be in the same grade, even though she was three years older. She was sure she would never survive the humiliation if that came to pass.

On a crisp Saturday morning in October, Patricia wanted to go downtown on the bus to do some shopping. She still had some birthday money and wanted to spend it. Mother would only allow Patricia to go if Ben went along, too; it was no longer safe for children to ride the bus alone, she said. Ben was looking for new shoes and readily agreed to go along with Patricia. After breakfast the two of them set out to catch the fifteen-minute downtown bus.

Ben and Patricia had different ideas about how to have fun downtown. After Ben bought his new shoes, they couldn’t agree on where to go next, so Patricia said they should split up and meet later in a designated spot. Then they’d have a hamburger and a milkshake and go back home on the bus.

They parted on a busy street corner and agreed to meet at the same spot in an hour and a half or so. Whoever got there first would wait for the other. Ben went off to do his boy things and Patricia to do her girl things.

Fur collars were all the rage that fall. Patricia went to three different stores but wasn’t able to find one she liked. She bought herself a romance magazine (which she’d have to keep hidden), a pair of shoelaces, a half-pound of English toffee, a pair of toenail scissors, some stretchy gloves and paperback novel that she had to read for English class.

When she went back to the corner an hour-and-a half later to meet Ben, there were people everywhere. It was the busiest time of the day. She saw Ben standing near the stoplight, surrounded by other people, and then she saw he was with someone, or, rather, someone was with him. It was a grown man who had his hand on Ben’s shoulder. Patricia didn’t know who the man was but thought he might be one of one of Ben’s teachers or maybe the swimming coach from school.

She was about thirty feet away, walking toward Ben, when she saw another man.  He had hold of Ben’s other arm, lightly, not forcefully, by the elbow as if he were leading him. A green car stopped at the corner and the back door opened. The first man got into the back seat of the car, followed by Ben and then by the second man. The door closed and the car sped away. It all happened in just a few seconds.

Patricia stood on the corner for a few minutes, wondering what to do. Maybe the green car just went around the block for a spin and would be back in a minute or two. Should she wait?

Wait a minute, she thought. Why should I worry about Ben? Isn’t he the smart one? Isn’t he the resourceful one? Isn’t he the problem solver? He’s gone, isn’t he? Isn’t that what I’ve wanted every day and night of my life from the moment he was born?

She waited on the corner for about fifteen more minutes but still saw no sign of Ben or the green car. She was getting cold. All she could think to do was take the bus back home, tell mother what happened, and be absolved of all responsibility. Mother would yell at her, of course, but really, how was she to be blamed if Ben wanted to leave with somebody else? She wasn’t going to lose any sleep over it.

While she was waiting for the bus, she happened to run into two friends from school, Janey Jones and Helen Whitney. They asked Patricia if she was in any hurry to get home and when she said she wasn’t, they suggested they do a little shopping and find some high school boys to stare at and giggle over.

They walked around in the stores for a while, pretending to be grownup women out on the town. They tried on some lipsticks at the cosmetics counter in Pascale’s Department Store until the woman behind the counter came and stared at them and made them feel uncomfortable, so they left. They went to the dress department, where Helen Whitney tried on clothes while Janey Jones and Patricia waited impatiently for her.

After they split a pizza three ways and after many rounds of Coca-Colas, Patricia told her friends she’d better get home, as it was getting late and mother would begin to wonder what had happened to her. The whole time she was with Janey Jones and Helen Whitney, she never once mentioned Ben’s name.

When she got home, it was nearly five o’clock. Mother was waiting at the door.

“Where’s Ben?” mother said.

“Isn’t he here?” Patricia asked.

“No, he isn’t here. Why isn’t he with you?”

“We got separated. He wanted to do some shopping on his own. I figured he came back by himself.”

“Well, he didn’t.”

“Well, isn’t that funny?”

“Yes, it’s hilarious. When did you last see him?”

“I told you we were together and then decided to split up. He went his way and I went mine. I met some friends and then I guess I just forgot about him.”

“What friends?”

“You don’t know them.”

“I think we’d better get in the car and go downtown and try to find him,” father said.

“I’m not going to bother with that,” mother said. “I’m calling the police. Do you think he could have got lost somehow?”

It was so typical of them, Patricia thought. They only thought of Ben. It was just further proof, if she needed it, that they preferred Ben over her. After they found out what they wanted to know about Ben, they left her standing in the middle of the room as if she no longer existed.

She went up to her room and locked herself in, sat down on the bed and looked at herself in the dresser mirror, not failing to notice how ugly and sad she looked, with a new pimple right on the end of her nose. It had been a good day, until she came home and there was this big uproar over Ben. His highness Ben. Everything was always about Ben.

Her feelings were terribly wounded. She could work herself up into a good cry if she let herself go. And wouldn’t it be just like them not to notice, when she sat down at the dinner table, how red her eyes were?

They were sure to find silly old Ben, with or without her help. He was probably on his way home now. Nothing bad would ever happen to precious Ben.

She had seen this awfully cute coat in Patterson’s window downtown with a real fur collar and fur trim. She had already given up on the coat because mother would say it was too expensive. And it was expensive, a hundred and forty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents, but what difference does money make when you find the coat of your dreams?

If they took her downtown and bought her that coat, right now, it might go a long way toward refreshing her memory. If they threw in the hat and gloves that went with the coat, she might even be able to remember the license number of the green car. Wouldn’t it just be too fabulous if she ended up with all three—the coat, the hat and the gloves? She’d look like a movie star. Her friends at school would simply die with jealousy!

After dawdling in her room for what seemed like an hour or so, she went back downstairs to see if there was any news of Ben. Two men from the police department were sitting with mother and father in the living room. They all turned and looked at her as she walked into the room.

“Did they find Ben?” she asked mother.

“Sit down, Patricia,” mother said.

She sat down and folded her hands in her lap.

“We were just telling these two gentlemen everything we could think of about Ben,” mother said. “I wasn’t sure if I remembered right, but I thought he was wearing his green corduroy pants and his brown coat with the hood.”

“That’s right, mother,” Patricia said.

“You were with him?” the older policeman in the suit asked.

“I had been with him, but we didn’t stay together. We had different stores we wanted to go to.”

“Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

“Like what?”

“Did you see anybody talking to him? Did you see anybody trying to force him to do anything he didn’t want to do?”

“There were lots of people around. I can’t be sure of anything. I did see…”

They were all looking intently at her, the two policemen and mother and father. They hoped she would say something that would help them know what happened to Ben, but she developed a bad case of shyness and couldn’t go on.

She was about to make a blunder. The beautiful coat with the fur collar hung in the balance. If she said the wrong thing, they’d be mad at her and she could kiss the coat goodbye.

“I want you to tell me everything you saw,” the policeman said.

“In Patterson’s window I saw the coat I’ve always wanted. It was light brown with a fur collar and fur trim. I’m not sure what the fur was made out of it; it wasn’t mink or anything like that, but I don’t think it was dog or monkey.”

The policeman wrote down every word. When she stopped talking, they all looked at her, waiting for her to continue. The policeman held the pen in his hand, poised over the paper. She blushed to the roots of her hair and thought she was going to cry. They would think, of course, that she was crying over Ben.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

In the Shape of a Man ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

In the Shape of a Man image

In the Shape of a Man
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This is a repost. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Alexander comes to Marceline in the night, undresses in the dark, and gets into bed beside her. She smells his clean man smell and is aware of the mere animal presence of him: a torso, a head and shoulders, two arms and two legs. The mattress sags under his weight and she sinks closer to him, huddling beside him under the blankets. Timidly she runs her finger along his pectoral muscles and when he seems annoyed she stops.

She can’t, of course, do all the things she longs to do, but it is enough to just have him there in the bed beside her, to watch his handsome profile in the dark. She is reminded of the phrase from the Bible: My cup runneth over. She is too happy, too fulfilled, to sleep well, but it doesn’t matter. She can work on very little sleep or no sleep at all and nobody will notice her heavy eyelids or how sloppily she is dressed or the mistakes she will make in her typing.

When she wakes in the morning he is gone. She sees at once that she is going to be late, but she doesn’t care. She places her hand on the bed where his body has lain and she believes she can still feel his warmth. When she feels herself starting to drift off to sleep again, she throws back the cover and jumps up with alarm.

After performing the necessary ablutions in the bathroom, Marceline dresses hurriedly and goes into the kitchen. Mother is sitting at the table underneath the chicken clock with her back to the wall. She still holds her cards from the gin rummy game the night before. Her glasses glint and her fingernails glisten in the morning light coming from the window.

“Good morning, mother,” Marceline says as she sets about making her morning cup of tea. “I didn’t get much sleep last night. Alexander was with me last night. He’s very passionate, such a wonderful lover. I’m a lucky woman.”

A quick look at the chicken clock tells her she doesn’t have time for breakfast, only her scalding cup of tea. Oh, well, she isn’t hungry, anyway. She can get something out of the vending machine at work.

Before she goes out the door, she takes a quick look at her mother and blows her a kiss. “I’ll be home at the usual time!” she calls cheerily. “God willing, of course!”

She misses the early downtown bus and has to wait fifteen minutes for the second one and when she gets on the bus she doesn’t get a seat and has to stand the whole way. When she walks into the office, half-an-hour late, Mr. Frizzell frowns at her and points at his watch. She smiles and goes on to her desk, ignoring the inquisitive glances of her co-workers.

“Late night last night?” Miss Arlette asks archly.

Marceline ignores her, hangs up her coat and sits down at her desk and begins working.

She despises Ivan-Bello (she has worked there for twelve long years) and the people in it. Her days are routine and uneventful. Her real life seems at times like a prison sentence from which there is no reprieve. The building she works in is old, dreary and dilapidated. Rats run along pipes hanging from ceilings. Plaster and paint rain down on people’s heads. Elevators are permanently out of order. And the people in the company are well-suited to their environment; they are unimaginative, unoriginal, colorless and not worthy of interest. Marceline knows, however, that in describing them in this way, she is also describing herself.

Some of her co-workers, especially the younger women, look upon Marceline with suspicion because they know nothing about her and they think there is something fishy about somebody who isn’t friendly with them. They make jokes behind her back about her sack-like dresses, unflattering hairstyle, and lack of makeup. Knowing she isn’t married, they speculate about whether or not she is a virgin or even if she is a woman. They play little tricks on her, like breaking the lead points off all her pencils or putting a rubber spider on her shoulder while she’s sitting at her desk.

At lunch she buys a sandwich and a bottle of pop in the employees’ lunchroom and takes them to the mannequin storage room. It is cool and quiet in the mannequin room—only the mannequins—and she can have a little time to herself away from ringing phones, clacking typewriters and the self-important voices of those around her.

She goes to the back of the room where the mannequins are closest together, hip to hip and shoulder to shoulder. Some of them are clothed but most are unclothed. Even with no clothes, their painted-on faces are always the same. The men are handsome and the women are beautiful. Some of them have brilliant, life-like eyes and mouths showing pearl-like teeth. They’re lifelike (but not in the way of real people), agreeable and pleasant to be near. They make her feel happy in her life and less alone. Sometimes she kisses one of the more appealing male mannequins full on the lips; she enjoys the sensation and never thinks how peculiar such an action might appear to the casual observer.

She finds a place to sit on a display case where a mannequin has recently been removed and eats her sandwich slowly and when it is gone she finishes her bottle of pop. The empty bottle makes a convenient ash repository, so she lights up a cigarette and blows the smoke out luxuriously. People in the mannequin factory are desperately afraid of fire and she would probably be fired if management knew she was smoking in the highly combustible mannequin room, but that doesn’t keep her from smoking. She is not careless the way some people are; if there’s ever a fire it will be through no fault of her own.

As she leaves the mannequin room, she conceals the pop bottle with her ashes and cigarette butt in it in the folds of her dress. On the way back to her desk she throws the bottle away in one of the tall trash cans, hiding it underneath a mound of papers. Nobody can ever claim she isn’t careful.

In the half-hour or so that she has been away, Mr. Frizzell or somebody else has piled more work on her desk that has to be finished by the end of the day. She never hurries herself because she knows in the world of business everything is always urgent. They’ll have the completed work when they have it and if that doesn’t suit them, well, they’ll just have to go up to the roof and take a sixty-foot dive into the trash cans in the alley.

When the day is finally over and Marceline goes back home, mother is still sitting at the kitchen table holding her cards. She lifts mother up—so light!—and carries her into the living room and sets her on the couch and turns on the TV. Mother enjoys the chatter, the endless commercials, the applause and the mindlessness, of late-afternoon TV fare.

She cooks a modest dinner for herself and mother and when it’s ready she carries mother into the kitchen again and slides her up to the table in her customary chair. She has a full place setting for mother—knife, fork, spoon, folded napkin beside the plate—but the truth is mother doesn’t eat much because she isn’t real. She weighs fifteen pounds. She is a life-size doll; that is, she is one of the mannequins from Ivan-Bello, wearing her real mother’s clothes, wig and glasses. Marceline brought her home from work on the bus one day, paying the fare for her as if she were a real person. People on the bus looked at her if she was a crazy person, but nobody said anything and she just smiled to herself at her little joke.

Her real mother, not the mannequin, has been dead for a year and a half. All that remains of her on this earth is an urnful of ashes on the dresser in her bedroom. She died in her bed, in her sleep, not knowing anything, at age seventy-six. For the last twenty years of her life, she had been in what might modestly be described as “poor health.”

Mother was Marceline’s only friend and companion. They never fussed or quarreled in the way of other mothers and daughters. They were together always, each an extension of the other, and when mother died Marceline couldn’t bear coming home every day to an empty house.

Not long after mother’s death, when Marceline was eating lunch and smoking her Camel cigarette in the mannequin storage room, she noted the resemblance between mother and one of the  female mannequins. They each possessed the same small, pointed nose, the same high cheekbones and the tiny dimple in the chin. When she looked at the mannequin for long enough and squinted, she saw her mother and heard her voice. That’s when she decided to claim the mannequin for her own after office hours and take it (her) home with her on the bus.

When dinner is over, Marceline returns mother to her TV in the living room and washes the dishes. She lets mother watch her favorite programs throughout the evening. When it’s time to go to bed, she undresses her, puts her nighty on over her head and tucks her comfortably under the covers.

The man who comes to her that night is Tab. He isn’t beefy and muscular like Alexander but tall and thin, with blue eyes and flaxen blond hair. He whispers Marceline’s name when they are in the throes of passion and she is embarrassed to think that mother might hear them through the thin wall. When it is all over, Tab leaves and Marceline falls, with the help of a pill, into a blissful sleep that is broken only by the harsh buzz of the alarm clock at six-thirty in the morning. It is time to begin another day.

Another lunchtime in the mannequin storage room (nobody has a clue where she is or what she is doing), she spots a male mannequin she has never seen before. He has dark-red hair and long-lashed, amber eyes. He has broad shoulders (but not too broad), a narrow waist, and stands about five feet, ten inches tall. He is in almost every way the perfect man, except, of course, that he isn’t a real man but a facsimile of a man. Marceline knows at the moment she sees him that she must—she simply must—have him. Sensibly or not, she names him Finch.

The next day she brings to work in a shopping bag an old tweed suit that belonged to her deceased father, as well as shirt, bow tie, belt, old-fashioned union suit, overcoat and hat. After five o’clock that day, when everybody else has gone home, she goes up to the mannequin storage room and dresses Finch up in the clothes she has brought, takes him down to street level by way of the fire stairs and home with her on the bus. People look at her and snigger but she doesn’t care.

At home once again, she puts Finch in her bedroom and closes the door. She isn’t ready just yet for mother to meet him. She expects a honeymoon period with him before he and mother become acquainted.

She enjoys undressing Finch at bedtime and putting him to bed and getting in beside him. All night long, she tricks her mind into believing she is not alone in the bed but with a man. And while he may not exactly be a real man, he has dimension. He possess the bodily proportions of a real man—meaning, of course, that he is made up of more than air. She finds that Finch is more satisfying than either Alexander or Tab.

In the middle of the morning Mr. Frizzell summons Marceline to his office and gestures for her to sit in the chair in front of her desk.

“I’m going to ask you a question,” Mr. Frizzell says, “and I want you to tell me the truth.”

She smiles, wishing she could stub out her cigarette on his veiny nose.

“Have you been stealing property belonging to Ivan-Bello?”

“Why would I do that?” she asks.

He sighs, folding his pudgy hands on the desk in front of him. “Somebody saw you leaving the building with one of our mannequins.”

“Who was it?”

“It doesn’t matter who it was.”

“I’ll bet it was Miss Arlette, wasn’t it?”

“I doesn’t matter who. Did you steal one of our mannequins?”

“No, I didn’t steal it.”

“But you took it?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“I wanted it.”

“To sell?”

“No, not to sell.”

“For what, then?”

“I wanted it.”

“It’s company property. We can’t have people stealing from the company. It’s grounds for immediate dismissal.”

“You’re firing me?”

“You have the rest of the day to say your goodbyes.”

It’s a little early for lunch, but she goes immediately to the employee lunchroom and buys a sandwich and a bottle of pop and takes them up to the mannequin storage room.

She knows she will not be seeing the mannequins again, so she says goodbye to as many of them as she can. She tenders an apology to the room in general and then smokes the last cigarette she will ever be smoking in the place.

All the way in back of the huge storage room are some old barrels containing papers, books, cloth samples and mannequin clothing. She picks up a little wedge of wood and lights the end of it with her cigarette lighter and throws it into one of the barrels. She isn’t sure if the fire will take hold or not, but after she leaves the building and goes home for the last time she doesn’t give it much thought.

The next morning she gets out of bed and dresses for work at the usual time, careful not to disturb Finch in the bed. She has her cup of scalding tea, gives mother a tiny goodbye peck on the cheek and walks the three short blocks to catch the downtown bus.

The bus can only go so far. It’s four blocks or so from her destination when it becomes snarled in traffic. Rather than waiting for the traffic problem to resolve it, she gets off the bus and walks the rest of the way.

Right away she notices the stench of burning.

Ivan-Bello has been burning all night long and has just about burned itself out. While the outside walls still mostly stand, all the floors, from six on down, appear to have collapsed in on each other. Police keep onlookers back at a safe distance.

As Marceline stands with dozens of other people and watches the fire, she is thankful for many things, not the least of which is that Ivan-Bello is a thing of the past. More importantly, however, mother and Finch are safe at home. She’ll see them again in just a little while and the three of them will be together forever.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Spring He Built the Garage ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

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The Spring He Built the Garage
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This is a repost. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Richard Eddington served in the navy in World War II. When the war ended and he received his discharge in 1945, he didn’t have much reason for wanting to go home. His mother and brother were both dead. His father moved to Texas to marry a woman he hardly knew. There was no other family. To make a fresh start for himself, Richard moved to a new town in a different state.

He had been a radio man in the navy. Radios were the big thing after the war. There was at least one radio in every home and the damn things were always breaking. People would pay good money to a repairman who could keep them in working order.

While readjusting to civilian life, Richard rented a room in a boarding house and landed a job in a shoe-company warehouse. It wasn’t much of a job, but it would keep him afloat while he took night classes in radio repair.

After a year of classes, he received his diploma. It meant more to him than his high school diploma because he put a lot more effort into it. When he went for his first job interview in a radio-repair shop, the old man who owned the place gave him a broken radio and told him to do what he could with it. He fixed the radio in just a few minutes and the old man offered him a job as counter man, meaning he had to wait on customers in addition to the repairs he did.

Business picked up at the radio shop. The old man increased Richard’s pay two times in a year. When the old man broke his hip and could no longer work and had to give up the business, he offered to sell the shop to Richard for three thousand dollars. Richard went to the bank and, because of his steady employment record and his honorable service in the navy, got a loan for enough money to buy the shop and also to buy a small, five-room, frame house on a pleasant street in town. He bought a used car with money from the nickel-and-dime bank account he had had since he was twelve years old, and soon he was a regular tax-paying, going-to-work-every-day, small-business-owner living in his own home.

He modernized the business, buying new fixtures, painting the walls and adding a line of big and small radios for sale. Business doubled and then tripled. Richard hired a full-time salesman, another repairman, and a girl to do the books and handle invoices. For the first time in his life he was somebody instead of nobody.

The girl was one Delores O’Dare. She smoked a lot of cigarettes and was quietly efficient, keeping to her work until time to go home. When any of the fellows around the shop tried to flirt with her, she gave them the brush-off.

Richard was shy and had never been much of a ladies’ man. He had a girlfriend or two in high school but could never be serious about them. They only wanted to get married and have babies, and that kind of responsibility scared him off. When he asked Delores O’Dare out to have a hamburger with him after work, he was surprised when she not only accepted but seemed pleased to be asked.

He told her about his time in the war, his family and his plans for the radio shop. She listened politely to everything he said without seeming bored or impatient. He found himself opening up to her in a way he had never done before with another person. Before he knew it, three hours had gone by. When it was time to leave, he offered to take her home, but she said she was fine on her own.

Richard and Delores began seeing each other regularly. She told him her secrets just as he had told her his. She was married at seventeen and divorced at eighteen. Her two brothers were both killed in the war; the younger brother was still missing in action and presumed dead. She lived with her parents to keep from living alone, but it wasn’t a happy situation. Her mother wasn’t right in the head and never had been. Her father was disabled and never stopped complaining because that’s about all he felt like doing. When Delores saved a little money, she planned on getting herself a little apartment and getting off by herself where she could have some peace and quiet.

After three months, Richard asked Delores to marry him and she surprised him by accepting. They obtained their license and were married by a justice of the peace a hundred miles away from home and spent a three-day honeymoon in a cabin at a lake resort. Neither of them fished or swam, so after they admired the scenery they were ready to go back home.

Delores brought with her to the little five-room house a double-bed, a dresser, a couch and a kitchen table and chairs. She hung curtains in every room, including the bathroom, and in a little while it seemed like a real home. Richard expected they would wait a few months and have a baby, but Delores told him she had had an infection when she was younger and was unable to bear children. He was a little disappointed that he would never be a father, but he thought they might consider adoption a little later on when they were more settled.

Richard and Delores went to work together every day and were together all day long in the shop. They went home together, ate dinner and slept together in the same bed. They were together every minute of every day and night. Richard accepted this as the natural order of things, but after a year Delores began to show signs of restlessness and moodiness. She began drinking to excess; she told Richard she didn’t like working in the shop anymore and wanted to quit. He’d need to hire himself another girl to keep the books.

He thought it best to indulge her, at least for the short term. Every morning when he left for work, she was still sleeping, having stayed up half the night sitting at the kitchen table, reading magazines, smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio. He would give her a month or so of doing what she wanted at home and then he was sure she would want to return to the shop.

The drinking became worse. On Saturday when they went to the store to buy food for the week, she loaded up the cart with beer, wine and whiskey. When he asked her why she drank so much, she said drinking was the only thing that calmed her nerves and made her feel like getting out of bed and putting one foot in front of the other.

“A person who drinks every day is an alcoholic,” he said.

“What of it?” she said. “I come from a long line of them.”

“I want you to see the doctor and tell him what’s going on with you.”

“I don’t need a doctor. I’m not sick. Maybe you’re the one that needs the doctor.”

“I didn’t know I was marrying a drunk.”

“There’s nothing wrong with drinking. If you weren’t such an old stick, you’d drink too. To keep me company.”

She began going out at night. After a hurried supper, she’d go into the bedroom and put on one of her best dresses, spend an hour or so in front of the mirror doing up her face and hair, and leave without a word. He never knew if she’d be back by morning. Some nights he had the feeling he’d never seen her again.

During one of her sober periods, he talked to her about adopting a baby, or maybe two, but she laughed and said it was the worst idea she ever heard. The last thing in the world she wanted was to raise somebody else’s brats.

He stopped sharing the bed with her and started sleeping in the back bedroom. He moved his clothes out of the closet and the drawers and lived as separate from her as he could in such a small house. He tried not to notice her comings and goings. When he heard her come in in the middle of the night or toward morning, he would refuse to look at the clock. He didn’t want to know what time it was. He told himself he didn’t care.

He thought about seeing a lawyer to file for divorce, but he could see she was on a downward spiral to her own destruction and he knew that he was the only person in the world who might help her, if only he knew how.

One Sunday morning after a late Saturday night, she cooked breakfast for him and sat down opposite him at the table while he ate it. The kitchen was full of her cigarette smoke and he could smell what she had been drinking the night before.

“I’m in love with someone else,” she said. “I want a divorce.”

“I don’t even know you,” he said.

“We need money so we can go away together.”

“If you leave, I want you to promise me you’ll never come back,” he said.

He gave her seventeen hundred dollars, which was all the money he had on hand. “That’s the last you’ll ever get from me,” he said.

He expected every day that she would leave, and would have been glad to see her go, but she didn’t go. Two weeks later she was still sleeping all day and staying away all night. One day when he came home from work in the middle of the afternoon, he heard her crying behind the closed bedroom door. He pushed open the door without knocking.

She was lying on the bed on her back in her slip. There was blood all over the bed and the floor.

“What’s this?” he said. “What’s happened?”

 “Sit down,” she said.

“I don’t want to sit down! I want to know why you’re covered in blood!”

“I had an abortion.”

“You had a…”

“Something went wrong.”

“You’re bleeding to death! I’m calling an ambulance!”

“No! I don’t want anybody to know what I did!”

“I can’t just let you lie there and bleed to death!”

“No, it’s what I want. It’s what I’ve wanted for a long time.”

“To bleed to death?”

“Just sit and hold my hand.”

He sat down on the bed; she took his hand in hers and wouldn’t let go.

“I know I’ve been a terrible wife to you,” she said. “I’ve been so awful. So mean and unfair. I hope someday you’ll forgive me.”

“I don’t care about that,” he said. “I’m going to get some help.”

“No! I don’t want you to leave me!”

She drifted in and out of consciousness. Her breathing slowed and then stopped altogether. She died at ten o’clock that night in the middle of a thunderstorm.

Richard called the radio shop the next morning and told Vic, the salesman, that he was going to take the rest of the week off and they would have to manage the best they could without him.

“Everything here under control,” Vic said.

Richard wrapped Delores’s body in sheets and canvas and put it, temporarily,  underneath the stairs in the cellar. The official story, if anybody asked, was that she went away to pursue a different kind of life. He didn’t know where she went or how to reach her. She didn’t want to be reached but wanted only to be left alone.

He called the police and filed a missing person’s report. A couple of officers came to the house and asked some questions. Was it a happy marriage? Did the wife show signs of discontent? Had she ever talked about leaving? Was there any reason to suspect foul play? The officers seemed satisfied with the answers they received and went on their way.

Richard had always wanted to build a garage in back of his house and now was the time. He went to city hall and got the building permit and then ordered the materials, which were promptly delivered. Doing all the work himself, he built a handsome brick garage with a thick concrete floor in about six weeks.

More than sixty years later, the little five-room house where Richard lived was torn down, as were all the surrounding houses, to make way for a new highway extension. While Richard’s garage was being dismantled, the skeletal remains of a female were found interred in the concrete floor. The police, naturally, wanted to know who the female was and how she came to be there. As the property owner, Richard would, of course, have been the person to answer these questions, but he had moved on to a happier existence and was no longer available for comment.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Mrs. Biederhof ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

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Mrs. Biederhof
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This is a repost. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

In 1945, my friend Maggie Biederhof didn’t mind going around with a married man as long as his marriage was in the trash heap anyway. It was all pretty innocent with Burt, although to the casual observer it might not seem that way. He came over in the evening, she’d fix him a sandwich or a salad, and they’d have a few drinks and a few laughs and maybe play some gin rummy, but mostly they talked. He talked about his wife, whose name was Mildred, his job as a real estate agent (things weren’t going so great at the time), and his two daughters, Veda and Kay.

The way Burt talked about Veda, she sounded like the real debutante type. She was pretty and she knew it and, already, at the age of sixteen, was a real snob. Veda saw her father as a failure because he wasn’t rich and she knew he’d never be rich and could never give her the things she thought she deserved, like a limousine and servants. She wanted to be a rich girl but the sad truth was her family had to struggle to live from day to day, from week to week. With the real estate market in the shape it was in, Burt barely brought in enough money to make a living for four people. His wife, brave struggling soul that she was, baked pies and cakes in her own little kitchen and sold them to the neighbors for a dollar here and a dollar there. She made enough extra money to buy Veda an occasional new dress and to pay for Kay to have piano lessons with an old woman down the street. Kay didn’t really care for the piano—she’d rather be playing baseball with the boys in the neighborhood—but Mildred wanted both her daughters to have some culture, which was something she’d missed out on entirely.

Mrs. Biederhof was fond of Burt. She liked entertaining him in her home and liked spending time with him. He was a few years younger than she was, but what did that matter? When he moved out on his wife, she told him he could move in with her. She knew the neighbors would talk, but they had talked before and she didn’t care. Because of his daughters, though, because of Veda and Kay, he didn’t think it was a good idea for him to live in the same house with a woman he wasn’t married to, even if it was all perfectly innocent. That was one of the things Mrs. Biederhof liked about Burt. He was a good man and she hadn’t known many of those in her life. She hoped to marry him after his divorce with Mildred went through, although neither one of them ever talked about it.

She knew Burt’s wife, Mildred, or at least knew of her. She recognized her when she saw her. She was a straitlaced, noble thing, long-suffering, a martyr for the cause. Just what the cause was, nobody quite knew. She was pretty enough but didn’t seem to care so much about herself. She lived for the two daughters, Veda and Kay. She wanted them to have all she things she missed out in when she was growing up in Kansas City. Her mother scrubbed floors and her father, well, he was a drunk and spent most of his time in jail and was of no use to anybody, himself included. Mildred left Kansas City as fast as she could and moved West, where she took a job as a salesgirl and met Burt. He was modestly good-looking, moderately ambitious, and she saw right away he would make a decent husband. They’d never be rich, but there are a lot of people like that. They married six months after they met and a year after they were married, the little bundle known as Veda arrived.

Right away Veda was the spoiled child. Mildred doted on her. Burt was only human, though, meaning he was a little jealous of Veda. Mildred lavished so much love and attention on Veda that there wasn’t much left over for him. All day long, from sun-up to sleepy-bye time, there was nothing but Veda, Veda, Veda. Burt knew a little about child psychology and he knew that Veda was one day going to be an uncontrollable monster. When the second child, Kay, came along, he thought it would be a good thing for Veda to have a little competition and for Mildred to have another person besides Veda to think about.

Mildred spoiled Kay, too, but nothing like Veda. With two children to take care of and still baking her cakes and pies to bring in some money, she was busy all the time, but Veda was still uppermost in her thoughts. Mildred would never admit it, of course, but she preferred Veda over Kay. Kay just wasn’t as pretty and feminine as Veda. When she started to grow up and be something other than a baby, she showed a tomboyish side that Mildred didn’t care for. She liked rough-and-tumble games, the kind of games that boys played, and she didn’t care much for dolls and frilly dresses. It’s not that Mildred neglected Kay, but Veda was always the apple of her eye.

Mrs. Biederhof happened to meet Veda on a Saturday morning in spring, and not under very happy circumstances. She had been out with some friends the night before celebrating somebody’s birthday and she was nursing a hangover. It was about eleven in the morning and she hadn’t found the will to get all the way out of bed yet. When she heard someone knocking, she thought it might be Burt, but when she went to the door and opened it she saw a pretty, dark-haired, girl standing there with a petulant smirk on her face. She had never seen the girl before but she knew who it was before she even opened her mouth.

“Yes?” Mrs. Biederhof said. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want any.”

Veda didn’t speak for a minute. She seemed to be taking in the sight of slightly overweight, middle-aged, bleach-blonde Maggie Biederhof, slightly the worse for wear and in her none-too-clean dressing gown.

“I just wanted to see what you look like up close,” Veda said.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Not that it could possibly mean anything to you, but I’m Veda Pierce, Burt Pierce’s daughter.”

“Oh, yes. I’ve heard all about you, Veda. Would you like to come in?”

“It won’t be necessary. I just wanted to inform you that my mother and I know all about you.”

“I’m so happy for you,” Mrs. Biederhof said, putting her hand on the door to close it.

“You’ve been seeing my father, I believe, for quite a long time.”

“I don’t think it’s any secret that Burt and I have become friends. We’re both adults.”

“Yes, but he’s still married to my mother.”

“Only because the divorce hasn’t gone through, yet.”

“Don’t think for one minute that he’s ever going to marry you.”

“I don’t think that’s any of your business, Veda. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have something on the stove.”

“He would never marry a cheap, common woman like you.”

“Excuse me?”

“How many times have you been married, Mrs. Biederhof?”

“Now, wait a minute!”

“Oh, yes. We know all about you. My mother is a lady and I’m sure that’s something you would know nothing about.”

“Now, look here, you! I’ll give you about five seconds to get away from my door. I keep a gun in the house and I don’t mind using it.”

“I also have a gun,” Veda said. “It’s right here in my bag. Would you like to see it?”

“So, you came here to threaten me? You want to kill me?”

“No, I don’t think that will be necessary. I’m just telling you I don’t mind killing you if it comes to that. Some people can kill and others can’t. I’m one who can.”

“Well, thank you for that insight into your character, Veda, but I don’t know how it could possibly interest me.”

“You’ve had your cheap, tawdry, little love affair with my father and I think it’s time for you to drop out of the picture and leave him alone.”

Mrs. Biederhof laughed in spite of herself. “You make it sound as if I’ve been pursuing him the whole time. He comes over here of his accord. We laugh and talk and have a good time. We have become very dear companions.”

“If all he needs is a drinking companion and cheap sex,” Veda said, “I’m sure he could do much better than you.”

“Now I wish you had come in,” Mrs. Biederhof said, “so I could have the pleasure of throwing you out!”

She slammed the door in Veda’s face, locked it, and, for good measure, closed the curtains and blinds. She was so angry she wanted to kill someone and the someone she wanted to kill was Veda. The nerve of that little tootsie, she thought, coming here and talking to me that way. I’d like to wipe up the floor with her pretty little debutante face.

By the time Burt came over that evening after work, she had calmed down and decided not to tell him about Veda’s little visit. Somebody had to be the grownup and it would be her if it had to be. She cooked him a steak and after they ate she turned on some music and they just sat on the couch and smoked and talked. He put his head in her lap and before long he went to sleep. Poor dear, she thought, he’s exhausted from his miserable life at home. We could be so happy together if it wasn’t for Mildred and that little witch Veda!

A few days later there was some good news about Mildred. She opened a restaurant and it was certain to be a big success, pulling in the customers day and night. Not only that, but she had a new boyfriend, a man named Monte Beragon. He was plenty good-looking and from a rich family, Burt said. He didn’t do much of anything except go yachting, swimming, riding and to dances at the country club. A real society boy. He seemed better suited to Veda than to Mildred, but Mrs. Biederhof pretended to be happy for Mildred.

She was thinking, of course, of Mildred marrying Monte Beragon and leaving Burt entirely free to marry her.

It wasn’t long, though, before disaster struck and life took one of its ugly little turns. Mildred was spending the weekend with Monte Beragon at his beach house, and Veda and Kay were staying with Burt in his new bachelor apartment. He was going to take them to the lake for an overnight camping trip, but Kay complained of a sore throat and pains all through her body. As the day progressed, she became more and more sick. Not being used to taking care of kids on his own, Burt panicked and, not knowing what else to do, took her to Mrs. Biederhof’s house.

Right away Mrs. Biederhof saw that Kay was plenty sick and put her to bed in her spare bedroom. She wanted to get her to the hospital, but Burt said the hospital would only scare her and make her worse, so he called a doctor friend of his. The doctor came over with a private nurse and began ministering to the sick child.

When Burt saw how sick Kay was, he put in an emergency call to Mildred at Monte Beragon’s beach house and arranged to meet her and take her to Mrs. Biederhof’s. Mildred ran to Kay’s side, but the doctor made her stay back. Veda was also there with Mildred. When Mrs. Biederhof looked at Veda, she didn’t look back. Nobody would ever know that just a week earlier they had been on the verge of a gun battle at Mrs. Biederhof’s front door.

Kay died within a couple of hours. The doctor said it was meningitis and it was contagious. Mildred, Veda and Burt were all terribly broken up about it. Mrs. Biederhof remained in the background, offering help where it was needed, feeling utterly helpless. When it came time for the funeral, she thought she should go, but Burt told her it wasn’t a good idea. She sent an arrangement of snapdragons instead.

To heal her broken heart, Mildred threw herself into her business. Her restaurant had done well so she opened a second one and was considering a third. Now that she and Burt were successfully un-married, she married Monte Beragon in a small church ceremony with three hundred guests (mostly Monte’s friends and family) in attendance. Burt bought a new suit and went to the wedding alone.

The marriage was written up in all the society columns, Monte being a bonafide member of the social register. It was his fifth marriage and Mildred’s second. After a week-long honeymoon in Acapulco, they took up residence in Monte’s family’s estate, which was badly in need of renovation. Monte let Mildred take charge of all the repairs and remodeling, seeing as she would be paying all the bills.

Veda, of course, lived with Mildred and Monte and she was flying high. Finally she had all she had ever dreamed of: A beautiful, palatial home; servants to satisfy her every whim; plenty of money to spend on clothes and trips; endless country club dances, weekend parties, swimming and riding. Mildred bought her an expensive convertible and wondered how long it would be before she smashed it up.

All principal parties were happy and satisfied for a few months, but then the inevitable happened. Veda fell in love with her stepfather, Monte Beragon, or thought she did. She always wanted the thing she couldn’t have and would do anything to get it. Monte played along, flattered as he was by the adoration of a pretty young girl half his age. He didn’t see—or didn’t want to see—how serious Veda was and how dangerous she could be if didn’t get the thing she wanted. Mildred also refused to see it until she was confronted firsthand with the proof: she walked in on Monte and Veda when they were naked together in bed. (This scene was relayed to Mrs. Biederhof by way of Burt by way of Mildred.)

“I’m glad you know,” Veda said, getting out of the bed and putting on a dressing gown. “Finally the truth comes out!”

“Veda, how could you!” Mildred said. “He’s your stepfather!”

“I think that makes him even more desirable, don’t you?”

“Veda, you’re a very sick person and I don’t know what ever made you the way you are!”

“Well, we could stand here all day and all night and analyze the situation, but the truth is that Monte and I love each other. He wants you to divorce him so he can marry me!”

“What’s this?” Monte said, pulling on his pants. “I never at any time said I’d marry you, Veda!”

“What?”

“Your mother is a perfect wife for me. She’s a fount of ready cash and she always looks the other way and doesn’t ask any questions.”

“I can’t look the other way this time, Monte!” Mildred said. “If a divorce is what you want, I’ll accommodate you!”

“What do you mean you don’t want to marry me?” Veda shrieked.

“Very simple,” Monte said. “I’d rather be dead than married to a spoiled, selfish little brat like you! You’re a dime a dozen, kid!”

Monte continued to get dressed. He put on his shirt and put his necktie around his neck before tying it, trying to avoid Mildred’s gaze. Feeling faint, Mildred sat down on the edge of the bed and put her head forward.

Unnoticed by either Mildred or Monte, Veda went to the dresser and opened the drawer and took out a small object. When Mildred saw the object was a gun, she stood up from the bed and was about to speak when Veda pointed the gun at Monte and fired, once in the chest and two times in the abdomen. He pitched forward and before he fell to the floor, he spoke one word: “Mildred.”

“Veda!” Mildred screamed.

Veda looked coolly from Monte to Mildred and back to Monte and when she seemed to suddenly be aware that she was holding a gun, she threw it on the floor.

“You’ve killed him!” Mildred said.

“I don’t think I meant to kill him, mother!” Veda said.

Mildred went to the phone and picked up the receiver.

“Mother, what are you going to do?” Veda said.

“I’m calling the police.”

“Oh, no! You can’t do that!”

“You’ve killed a man! You can’t just walk away and pretend it didn’t happen!”

“Mother, we need to talk about this first. You don’t have to tell them I killed Monte. Tell them the gun just went off. Or tell them you killed him. Accidentally, I mean.”

“Veda, you have to be an adult for once and take responsibility for your actions.”

“They’ll put me in jail!”

“We’ll get the best lawyer we can find.”

“Oh, no, no, no, I can’t let you call the police. You’ve got to give me all the cash you have in the house and let me get away. I’ll go to Mexico and you’ll never see me again. I promise!”

“I can’t get you out of this, Veda.”

The police came and took Veda away and later that night she made a complete confession. There would be no sensational trial. Her lawyer promised to try to get her off with a manslaughter charge. If she was lucky, she’d spend ten years behind bars.

The murder was all over the front pages: Society Girl Kills Stepfather. The public ate it up: Sex, money, infidelity, a love triangle involving an older man and a younger woman, and the fact that she was his stepdaughter made it even spicier.

Mildred went into hiding to keep reporters from hounding her, making herself available only to the police. Veda was in the county jail and would be transferred to women’s state prison after sentencing. She called Mildred every chance she got and berated her and blamed her for Monte’s death. “You’re the one that should be in jail!” she said. “Not me!”

Mrs. Biederhof didn’t hear from Burt for five days and when he came over again, looking tired and grim, he told her that he was going back to Mildred. He still loved her and believed she loved him and, with both Kay and Veda gone, he was all she had left in the world. The two of them would spend every dime they had to get Veda’s sentence reduced.

Mrs. Biederhof had been in California for twenty-five years. She was sure she had had enough sunshine to last her a lifetime. She had a sister living back East and planned to go stay with her for a while, maybe for the rest of her life. She sold her house, put her furniture in storage, packed her bags and got on the train for the long trip that would take her to the other end of the continent. She didn’t even bother to tell Burt goodbye. In time she would forget him, as she had all the others.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997