June the Tenth (Not a Cloud in the Sky) ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

The Day Belongs to the Rain image 6

June the Tenth (Not a Cloud in the Sky)
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

Mother was sitting at the kitchen table working on her deviled eggs, nails red against the white of the eggs. Lex walked past her on his way to the sink to get a drink of water but she didn’t look up. He drank half a glass full and turned to face her.

“I don’t want to go on the picnic,” he said.

She laid down her knife and took a drag on her menthol cigarette. “Why not?”

“I’ve got a stomach ache.”

“What you need is a good bowel movement.”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “What I need is to stay home from the picnic.”

“By yourself?”

“I don’t mind.”

“I do mind,” she said.

“But why?” he whined, hating whining but not being able to help himself.

“Don’t you want to see your great-grandma turn ninety?”

“She can turn ninety without me.”

“No, you can’t stay home. I want you at the picnic with the rest of us like a normal person.”

“What difference does it make if I’m there or not?”

“Because it’s a family gathering and you’re a part of the family. If you’re not with us, everybody will wonder where you are.”

“Can’t you just tell them I’m sick?”

“Now, Lex,” she said, pointing the knife at him, “this discussion is at an end. You are thirteen years old and that’s old enough to understand the importance of attending family gatherings, especially since some in the family are getting older and won’t be around forever.”

“Oh, I hate family gatherings.”

“Now, I don’t want to hear any more complaining. Go get your swim trunks and wrap them in that big towel with the fish on it and brush your teeth and get ready to go in about fifteen minutes. As soon as I can finish these stupid eggs.”

“I don’t need to take my swim trunks,” he said. “I’m not going in swimming.”

“Why not?”

“I said I have a stomach ache. You’re not supposed to go in swimming with a stomach ache. You can drown.”

“That’s silly,” she said. “Nobody’s going to drown. And, anyway, your cousins will be disappointed if you don’t go in swimming with them.”

“No, they won’t. They don’t care about me.”

“Why are you being so negative today?”

“Because I’m sick and I don’t want to go on any stupid picnic.”

“It’ll be fun. You’ll enjoy it.”

“No, I won’t.”

“When you get with your cousins, you’ll feel much better and you’ll want to race them to see who gets to the pool first.”

“Nobody does that, mother.”

Mother sat on the front seat next to father, the Tupperware container of deviled eggs on her lap. While driving, father smoked one Chesterfield after another, searching for the ballgame on the radio and not being able to find it.

“What in the hell did they do with it?” he said, turning red in the face.

“I wanted you to wear the blue plaid shirt today,” mother said. “I laid it out on the bed for you.”

“What difference does it make what I wear?”

“I just want you to look nice, is all.”

“For your family? Why would I want to look nice for them? I’d rather have Chinese water torture than to spend the day with your family!”

“It won’t kill you to be nice.”

“It might. And why does everything have to be ‘nice’ all the time? I think it might be ‘nice’ for you to try to expand your vocabulary a little.”

“You don’t need to trouble yourself about my vocabulary.”

Lex sat in the back seat with Birdie and tried not to look at her. She was already wearing her swimsuit. It was yellow with big pads in front to hold up her nonexistent breasts. She looked like a stick-thin child in a lady’s swimsuit.

“You look so silly,” Lex said.

“Not any sillier than you do, you big baby!” Birdie said.

“Mother, did you know she’s wearing lipstick?”

“Hey!” father said, turning around to look at Birdie. “You’re fifteen years old! Who do you think you are? Jane Russell?”

“I thought a little bit of lipstick wouldn’t hurt,” mother said. “She’s so pale.”

“Well, she can stay pale! She’s not wearing any makeup until she’s considerably older.”

“It’ll come right off in the pool, anyway,” Birdie said.

“When people see you in that hideous bathing suit and with lipstick,” Lex said, “they’ll laugh themselves silly. Who do you think you are? Jane Russell?”

“Oh, shut up!” Birdie said. “You make me sick!”

A traffic jam slowed them down for about ten minutes, but when they got to the park they found the place easily enough where mother’s family was gathered. Father parked the car and turned off the engine.

“Let’s see if we can all get along today without any complaining or negative emotions,” mother said.

“That would be nice!” father said.

Father, mother, Lex and Birdie all got out of the car and greeted the family with kisses, handshakes, and clichéd greetings. Mother handed the deviled eggs to aunt Vivian, who always took charge of the food. Somebody gave father a beer and he sat on a camp stool ten feet away from everybody else and lit a cigarette.

“Did you have trouble getting here?” mother’s sister, Peggy, asked her.

“No,” mother said. “Why would we?”

“Everybody was here before you were.”

“How’s my favorite grandma?” mother screamed, brushing past Peggy.

Grandma Pearl was the guest of honor. It was her ninetieth birthday and she was the center of attention. She had her hair done the day before and had slept sitting up all night to keep from mashing down her cotton-candy curls. She was dressed in a new lavender pantsuit and slippers to match.

“I’d never believe she’s ninety years old,” uncle Mervyn said. “She don’t look a day over eighty-nine!”

Everybody laughed except grandma. She didn’t understand the joke at all and wasn’t sure she hadn’t been insulted.

“Pooh to you!” she said.

“He was just kidding you, grandma,” aunt Vivian said.

“We need to get this nonsense wrapped up and get back indoors,” grandma said. “It’s going to rain.”

“But there’s not a cloud in the sky, honey!”

“Well, the rain is coming, just over there, and I don’t want to get caught in it. It’s going to be a bad one.”

“Just relax and try to enjoy yourself and don’t worry about a thing.”

“I want some hot coffee!”

“We didn’t bring any coffee, honey. It’s too hot for coffee. How about some iced tea or some lemonade?”

“No, I want coffee!”

“One of us is going to have to go find some coffee and bring it to her,” aunt Vivian said.

“No!” aunt Linda said. “She’ll be as tyrannical as you allow her to be. Just give her some iced tea and tell her it’s coffee.”

“You all are going to try to kill me afterwards,” grandma said. “I know you are.”

“Sounds like grandma’s havin’ a good time,” uncle Lyle said.

The uncles focused their attention on Lex. He knew it was coming and dreaded it.

“How has the world been a-treatin’ you?” uncle Herm asked.

“All right,” Lex said.

“What are you a-gonna be when you grow up?”

“I don’t know. A circus clown, I guess.”

“Have you got a girlfriend?” uncle Mervyn asked.

“No.”

“Why not? You’re comin’ up to that age.”

“I stay away from them and they stay away from me.”

“Aw, you’ll change your mind, boy, after a couple years of puba-tery!” Haw-haw-haw!”

“What grade are you in now?” uncle Lyle asked.

“Eighth.”

“What sports are you going out for?”

“None.”

“None? Why the hell not?”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“All the boys in our family are good at sports. Just look at your cousin Virgil there! He’s on the track team and the basketball team. I think he’s even going to try out for the swim team.”

Lex looked over at Virgil to be polite. Virgil smirked back at him in a superior way. Virgil’s younger brother Vernon whispered something in Virgil’s ear and they both laughed.

“I think you should seriously consider going out for some sport,” uncle Lyle said. “It just don’t seem normal otherwise.”

“Other things are more important to him,” mother said.

“Like what?”

“Raising his grade-point average so he can get into a good college.”

“Oh, one of those! A college man who can look down on all the rest of us!”

Everybody laughed and Lex wished he had been able to vomit before he left home.

After the uncles were finished with Lex, they turned their attention to Birdie.

“How’s little Birdie girl?” uncle Herm asked.

“Fine.”

“When you gettin’ married?”

“After she finishes high school and college,” mother said.

“You got a boyfriend?” uncle Mervyn asked.

“Oh, no!” Birdie said. She giggled and blushed and her breast cups moved in the wind, showing there was nothing in them.

“Now that’s no way to be!” uncle Lyle said. “I’ll bet you’re a real heartbreaker!”

“There is one boy I kind of like, but he goes to Catholic school and he doesn’t even know I exist.”

“Uh-oh! A Catholic! You have to watch out for them Catholics!”

“I don’t see anything wrong with being a Catholic,” Birdie said, and the uncles laughed uproariously.

Grim-faced, Birdie stood up and went to join the girl cousins—Carline, Sharonda, Bertine and Maude—who were giggling and passing around a cigarette in a circle.

When it was time to eat, aunt Vivian and aunt Peggy sat on either side of grandma and after they filled up her plate with food, they began feeding her little bird bites. When they fed her too fast, she choked and turned red in the face.

“I can feed myself, damnit!” grandma said. “I’m not a helpless baby!”

“We don’t want you to spill anything on your beautiful new outfit,” aunt Peggy said.

“Oh, screw you!”

Father ate in silence, wincing when any of the uncles clapped him on the back or spoke to him.

“How’s work going, Theodore?” uncle Lyle asked him.

“Fine,” father said.

“How’s the fishin’ been for you this spring?”

“I never fish.”

“Read any good books lately?”

“Not that I care to discuss.”

He finished eating and pushed his plate away, lit a Chesterfield and stared off into the distance.

The girl cousins didn’t eat much because they were excited about going into the pool and believed they might die in the water if they overate. After a few bites, they each got up from the table, one at a time, and got into the back of uncle Herm’s roomy van and changed into their swimsuits, giggling all the time. When they were all changed, they stood around awkwardly, feeling exposed, not knowing what to do with themselves, their bone-white arms and legs on view for all to see. The boy cousins—Virgil, Vernon, Monte and Dickie—gaped at them and snickered. Vernon made howling sounds like a wolf baying at the moon, while pimply faced Dickie made pig snorts. Lex took one glance at them and looked away, finding the sight of them more than he could bear.

All the cousins were ready to go to the pool, but aunt Vivian wouldn’t let anybody go until after grandma’s cake had been cut. She brought the cake forward from the trunk of her car where she had been keeping it to keep the bugs off and set it on the table in front of grandma. There were nine candles, one for every decade of grandma’s life, but aunt Vivian was afraid to light them because the wind had suddenly become gusty and she was afraid that grandma might catch her hair on fire.

Uncle Herm went and got his camera. The four granddaughters stood beside grandma’s chair, two on each side, with grandma looking down at the blue-and-white cake with a look on her face that could only be described as one of horror.

After the picture was taken, aunt Vivian sliced the cake, putting the pieces on paper plates with a plastic fork on each plate. Vernon picked up a piece in his hand and stuffed it all into his mouth at once, causing the other boy cousins to do the same.

The girl cousins declined any cake. They had eaten too much already and were afraid of looking fat in their swimsuits. Aunt Vivian gave them all the go-ahead and they were all off to the pool.

Lex sat at the table, eating his cake methodically, watching the trees blowing, wishing he was at home by himself.

“Aren’t you going swimming with the other kids?” aunt Linda asked, giving him her fish-eyed stare.

“I didn’t bring my swim trunks,” he said.

“Oh, yes, you did!” mother said. “They’re in the car. Don’t you remember?”

“You’d better hurry up and catch up with the other kids,” aunt Linda said. “Kids love the pool.”

“Not all do,” Lex said, but aunt Linda didn’t hear him because a car was passing by and she was looking to see if the people in it were noticing her.

The wind picked up and the paper plates and napkins left on the table began to scatter. Mother and the aunts had to scramble to keep everything from blowing away. The uncles sat and laughed at them and drank their beer and smoked their cigarettes.

“It started out such a beautiful day and now it’s going to rain and spoil grandma’s birthday party,” mother said.

“I don’t mind!” grandma said. “You can take me back home any time!”

Dark clouds rolled in, blotting out the sun, with faraway flashes of lightning. The rain started light like fairy kisses but gradually grew in intensity.

“Not a good time for the kids to be in the pool,” aunt Vivian said.

Watching the sky, Lex smiled. He loved a good thunderstorm, the present one especially, because it reinforced his belief that the picnic was a bad idea in the first place. He was glad the day was spoiled. Even grandma was glad and the whole thing had been for her.

When the rain became a drenching downpour and the lightning became closer with every strike, aunt Vivian, with the help of uncle Herm, got grandma into the back of the van. She screamed with every lightning strike and pretended to be so scared, but Lex knew her and he knew she was enjoying every minute of it. She’d have something to tell her friends—her dramatic escape from a terrifying storm.

With grandma safely in the van, everybody else got into their cars to wait it out. With any luck, they said, it would only be five minutes or so.

“Do you think they’re safe in the pool?” mother asked.

“They’ll be all right,” father said.

“Lex, go get your sister and tell her we want to leave,” mother said.

“No! Do you think I want to get struck by lightning?”

Three lightning strikes in quick succession caused mother to yelp and duck.

“I’m going to get Birdie at the pool!” she said. “Lex, you come with me!”

She took Lex by the hand and they ran toward the pool. In a matter of seconds, they were drenched through to their skin. The rain now was an opaque curtain.

When they were close enough to the pool to see it, they saw people running toward them. Out of the crowd emerged Birdie. When she saw mother, she ran to her, sobbing and gasping.

“What’s the matter?” mother asked. “Are you all right?”

“Oh, mother, it’s awful!” Birdie said.

“What is it? Are you hurt?”

“Sharonda was struck by the lightning. I think she’s dead.”

Mother and Lex got Birdie back to the car. When father saw them coming, he jumped out and opened the door. Mother pushed Birdie into the back seat and got in behind her.

“Tell me what happened,” mother said, trying to wipe the water out of Birdie’s face.

“When the storm started,” Birdie said, “the lifeguards told everybody to get out of the pool, but a few stayed. They thought it was a lot of fun. Sharonda was one that stayed. There were about six others. She had just come up out of the water and was standing at the edge of the pool. I didn’t see the lightning that hit her but I saw the flash. After she was hit, she fell into the water. The lifeguard blew his whistle really loud to get everybody’s attention. A couple of boys got Sharonda out of the water and they started working over her, trying to resuscitate her, but I knew she wasn’t breathing. Somebody called an ambulance, but it hadn’t come yet. That’s when I left.”

“Do Lyle and Linda know?”

“I don’t think so. Nobody has told them yet.”

“I have to go tell them what’s happened.”

The ambulance came and loaded Sharonda into the back with hundreds of people standing in the rain watching. Uncle Lyle and aunt Linda followed behind in their own car to the hospital, where Sharonda, their only child, was pronounced dead.

On the way home, the rain continued unabated. Father drove with the headlights on, leaning forward, his face only a few inches from the windshield.

“This has been quite a storm!” he said. “The rivers are going to flood tonight.”

“Today of all days,” mother said. “Wouldn’t you just know it? On poor old grandma’s ninetieth birthday!”

“I knew somebody was going to die today,” Lex said. “Grandma knew it too.”

“Now we’ll have a funeral to go to,” mother said. “I hope you can still wear your blue suit.”

“No more family picnics for me,” father said.

Birdie sat on the seat beside Lex, sobbing quietly. It was going to take her a while to get over seeing Sharonda die. Lex would have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t looked so silly in her yellow lady’s swimsuit.

He turned away and put his fingertips on the window, the water only a scant fraction of an inch away—he could almost feel it. As the car moved slowly and cautiously through the deluge, it gave one the impression of traveling underwater in a tiny submarine. When the rain finally stopped, it was going to be a terrible disappointment.

Copyright 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

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 naivete, he had experienced all the spirit world had to offer. He had traveled all over the world. He had been at the forefront of memorable hauntings. He had had sterling friends both male and female. 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 carefully poured the bottle of amber liquid into the water. He stirred it with his finger then and held it up to get a better look.

When he took the bottle back into the bedroom, Reginald was sitting on the side of the bed, waiting. He took the glass out of Wexler’s hand.

“Are you scared?” Wexler asked.

“No.”

“Do you want me to get into bed with you?”

“If you want to.”

Reginald drank the amber liquid in the glass and when he was finished, he handed the glass back into Wexler’s hand.

“I guess this is it,” he said.

“Don’t worry about a thing,” Wexler said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

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