Bath Haus ~ A Capsule Book Review

Bath Haus book cover
Bath Haus
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

Oliver Park and Nathan Klein are two gay men living together in a six-million-dollar home in the ritzy Georgetown section of Washington D.C. Oliver is a recovering addict from a small town in Indiana. Nathan is a successful surgeon from a wealthy family. Nathan has been Oliver’s savior, rescuing him from a life of addiction.

Oliver is always painfully aware that he and Nathan are of two different social classes. It’s Nathan’s family’s house he and Nathan are living in. He feels he doesn’t belong there. Nathan’s family, especially his mother, doesn’t like Oliver and feels that he is beneath Nathan.

Oliver is always struggling with his past, and most especially with his drug addiction. As much as he has benefited from Nathan’s kindness and generosity, he isn’t happy. When Nathan is out of town, he decides to seek some action on his own. He goes to a gay male bathhouse, called, oddly enough, Bath Haus. He finds some action, sure enough, but of a kind he would have been better off without.

In the dark and steamy confines of a gay male bathhouse, he meets up with a man who calls himself Kristian. He’s Scandinavian, or something, and devilishly attractive. When Kristian gets Oliver alone in a private room, he tries to strangle him with his bare hands, and there is no one who might help him. The only way he can get out of Kristian’s stranglehold is to slash at this face with a key.

Oliver has visible marks on his throat. He can’t pretend the attack never happened. He must think of a convincing cover story to keep Nathan from knowing where he was and what he was doing. This circumstance sets up the story to follow, a story of lies, deception, confusion and fear. Did Kristian choose Oliver at random, or is there something more sinister afoot?

Oliver knows that, with his visit to Bath Haus, he is jeopardizing everything he has, including his relationship with Nathan. The price he will pay is going to be a steep one.

Bath Haus, by P. J. Vernon, frequently veers into melodrama, but it’s an engaging and tightly plotted mystery with many surprising twists. It will keep you guessing right up to the end.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Haunt, Part 2 (All the Spirits in the Place) ~ A Short Story

The Spirits in the Hotel image 3
Haunt, Part 2 (All the Spirits in the Place)
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

I always liked staying in a good hotel, even one that was falling apart and hadn’t seen a paying guest in fifty years. The Hotel Argyle was on the riverfront, in a cluster of other derelict buildings. It was twenty stories tall and could be seen from a long way off because the hotel name had been painted in huge letters on the side of the building. It stood as a symbol of urban blight. There’s nothing spirits love more than urban blight.

I walked into the lobby of the Argyle and was surprised to see a ghostly apparition at the registration desk. He seemed to be made of purple-and-green smoke. He gestured to the registration book and I knew what to do. It must have been somebody’s idea of a joke because spirits don’t use the names they had when they were alive. I made a little mark on the book. That seemed to satisfy him because he smiled his grotesque smile and gestured for me to take the stairs.

There were many vacancies at the Argyle. I would venture to guess that I could pick almost any room, on any floor, and it would be vacant. I went all the way to the top floor, the twentieth, and found the room I wanted at the end of the hall. It showed no signs of occupancy, so I took it as my own.

I was a tired old spook. I had traveled a long way to get here. I needed a rest, so I was happy for that reason that the hotel was quiet. The other spirits in residence were probably sleeping, since it was the middle of the day and the sun was shining brightly. If there’s anything a spirit hates, it’s bright sunlight.

I stared out the window at the skyline of the city for a while and then, hovering near the ceiling, I went into a trancelike state, which was as near as I ever came to sleeping. As long as I’m not disturbed, I can stay in this state for years at a time, but, of course, when you’re a spirit, a year means nothing. We think in terms of eternity. Time has no meaning.

In this trancelike state, I thought of—dreamed of—many things. I had been in the spirit world now for eighty years. I was only thirty-five when I crossed over. I had two wives when I was alive. I regret that I wasn’t very kind to either of them. I had a drinking problem. Luckily there were no children. I would have been a terrible father.

After my divorce, I had no job and no money, so I went back home to live with my mother. She and I never understood each other. We fought constantly. I should have known better, even if she didn’t. She nagged me about my drinking; she thought I could stop if I only tried. She wanted me to go to church with her the way I did as a child. She thought if I just read my Bible I’d be the kind of man God wanted me to be.

I got a part-time job driving a truck. I was never that keen on driving. I hated it. All my organs were pickled in alcohol. One hot July afternoon, my hundred-proof heart stopped when I was parked on a street downtown. I took off my shoes, put them side by side, laid down on the seat, and died. I knew I was dying and I didn’t care. I thought it was the best thing that could happen to me.

When I found myself in the spirit world, I was surprised there was any kind of existence after death. I thought it was punishment for all the bad things I had done. Everybody else went to heaven, I thought, but not me. That, of course, wasn’t true. The spirit world is teeming with spirits who never made it to heaven.

That night I met two of them. I was going out for a little city night life when I met them in the lobby of the hotel. I remembered them from before, a long time ago, in another incarnation. They went by the names Jocko and Howdy. They recognized me immediately and I them.

“We heard you were here,” Jocko said. “When did you get in?”

“A few days ago. I’ve been resting up in my room on the top floor.”

“We were just going out to do the town,” Howdy said. “Why don’t you join us for old time’s sake?”

“I’ll go if you promise not to scare me too much,” I said.

“Hah-hah-hah!”

On our way downtown, Jocko, Howdy and I walked side by side, as if we were living instead of dead.  Howdy made a show of knocking people out of the way but, of course, they didn’t know he was there because he was invisible to them and, also, they were solid and he wasn’t. It’s only fair to mention that we met a few other spirits, but they were mostly in haughty groups and didn’t pay any attention to us. Howdy would get into a brawl with some of them if he could. He was a brawler and a mischief-maker.

On the way downtown, I asked Jocko and Howdy if the Hotel Argyle was a good place for a spook to live.

“It’s dead most of the time,” Jocko said.

“What do you mean?”

“Not much action there, man,” Howdy said.

“It seems perfect to me,” I said. “An abandoned hotel on the riverfront of a major city. Doesn’t it abound with ghosts?”

“Yeah, but ghosts are boring if they’re not doing anything,” Jocko said.

“So, you’re saying the ghosts in the hotel are all retired?”

“Well, something like that.”

“Don’t they like to scare little girls? Make them scream?”

“Yeah, but that’s the point. There aren’t any little girls to scare. What’s the fun of having the ability to scare people if there aren’t any people to scare?”

“You have to find out where the people are and scare them where they live,” I said.

“The people who own the hotel should turn it into a haunted-house attraction for Halloween,” Jocko said. “A lot of people would pay good money to tour a vintage hotel full of real ghosts instead of fake ones.”

“The people who own the hotel are dead,” Howdy said.

“The city owns the hotel,” Jocko said. “They’re just waiting for the right time to bring in the wrecking balls.”

“If they tear it down, they’re going to put a lot of ghosts out of a home,” I said.

“Not so many. Most of the spirits moved on a long time ago. Only losers stay at the Argyle now.”

“I was just beginning to like the atmosphere,” I said. “I had to leave my last home because a vengeful witch started throwing fireballs and burned the place down.”

“You have to watch out for those fireball-throwing witches!” Howdy said.

“The best way to deal with them is to cut off their heads and then burn their bodies,” Jocko said. “You have to be sure to remember to burn their bodies because some of them can go on living without a head.”

“Here, now!” Howdy said. “Let’s stop talking about witches and have some fun!”

Howdy was one of those spirits who engage in mayhem. He caused two cars to collide and then doubled over with laughter. When I asked him how he did it, he said it was a secret he learned during the war.

“What war was that?” I asked, but he didn’t answer me.

We couldn’t go to a bar or a restaurant and sit at a table the way other fellows do, so we walked all over downtown. We went into a movie theatre and watched part of the movie that was playing.

“I don’t like this movie!” Jocko said after a while. He then caused the projection equipment to break down when the movie was halfway through.

“That’s the way it’s done,” he said, laughing hysterically.

We entered a library and did some moaning and then we pulled down some shelves of books. Pretty tame stuff, but spirits have to make their own kind of fun.

Next we went to a dance hall where men buy tickets and use them to dance with weary-looking dames. It was a sorry-looking spectacle. I don’t know which was worse, the men or the women. What fools these mortals be.

We stood apart from the crowd against the wall. Knowing we were watching him, Howdy made as if to cut in on certain dancing couples, but he only brushed up against the ladies. They could feel it, of course, but not see it, so they were confused about what was happening to them. Some of them thought somebody was playing a trick on them. Maybe some of them knew it was spirits, but I doubt if any of them were smart enough to figure that out.

After the dance hall, we went to the oldest and biggest cemetery in the city. There were some really old corpses there—Civil War and before. The place needed some livening up. We built a small fire and joined hands and danced around it. We moaned and sang and chanted. Soon we had a couple of dozen spirits gathered around. They were delighted  we were there. They were happy to join in any kind of foolishness. They danced and sang and were happy.

Howdy, always the smooth operator, found himself a lady spirit. She was wearing a long, flowing white dress and a tiara on her head. She looked like a queen. She made eyes at Howdy, he made eyes at her, and then they joined hands and went off together into the darkness.

“How will we find him when it’s time to go?” I said to Jocko.

“Don’t worry about Howdy. He’ll make short work of her.”

We made merry in the cemetery until the first traces of dawn began to light up the eastern sky. Then the spirits reluctantly began to drift back to wherever they came from. Surprised that the night had passed so quickly, Jocko, Howdy, and I went back to the Argyle. It had been a most enjoyable evening.

We returned often to the cemetery, where we made some good friends. The spirits there were always happy to see us. We brought the good times with us. I had never had so much fun before.

I began spending all my evenings with Jocko and Howdy, resting in my room at the Argyle during the daylight hours. We took in all the attractions that the city had to offer. We spooked people left and right, sometimes causing them to doubt their own sanity. Howdy was a spirit who enjoyed mayhem, such as causing traffic lights to malfunction or streets to flood for no reason. Because we were with him, Jocko and I were more often than not willing to go along with him.

In the winter we had some excitement at the humdrum Argyle. A team of paranormal investigators set up shop in the old ballroom on the tenth floor. They were investigating the existence of life after death. It gave us all a good laugh.

All the spirits in the hotel were excited at the prospect of proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they had lived and that they went right on living after they died.

The psychic investigators (or ghost-hunters as they came to be called) had ultra-sensitive sound-recording equipment that would pick up the sound of a mouse breathing. They all left to go home at night but left their sound-recording equipment running to pick up every infinitesimal (ghostly) sound. In the mornings when they returned, they listened to what had been recorded during the night.

From the first night, all the spirits went to the ballroom with messages for the ghost-hunters. Some of them sang songs or recited poetry. Others laughed, moaned, or gave out with nonsense words of their own devising. Some of the spirits swore or made farting sounds. It was a lot of fun for everybody and a way to express our disdain for the living.

Regardless of what they said about the Argyle, I was beginning to like to and to think of it as home. And then something bad happened, and it wasn’t the wrecking balls, either. A fire started on one of the lower floors and soon spread to every floor. When all the spirits in the place realized what was happening, they all escaped out the windows. We all gathered outside and watched the place burn like a torch and collapse in on itself, all twenty stories. Whatever the cause of the fire, it saved the city a lot of trouble.

Jocko, Howdy and I bucked up the other spirits and urged them not to be downhearted. We had a plan.

We took them all, a procession of two hundred spirits or more (like a parade of the dead), to the cemetery, where we had been made to feel welcome before. All the spirits in the cemetery were delighted we had returned and had brought along lots of new friends. Everybody was welcome. The old cemetery had everything a spirit could want, and more.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Haunt ~ A Short Story

Haunted House 4
Haunt
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

A spirit needs a house to haunt. I’ve haunted a church, a theatre, a department store and a graveyard, but there’s nothing like a house. A house is where people have lived. Where things have happened. Where tears have been shed. Where people have been born and people have died. A spirit can feel all of it and more.

After looking at thirty or forty houses, I found one I liked. It was large, with many rooms, three floors, built in the old style. It was abandoned, in an advanced state of neglect, but still plenty sturdy. The cellar was like a dungeon with chains hanging from the beams. Behind the house was an old cemetery. All in all, the house had much to recommend it.

As a spirit, all I needed to do to claim a house as my own was to move in and take possession. If anybody else was haunting it, all I had to do was kick them out.

I soon discovered other spirits in residence. There was a woman who committed suicide every night at midnight, with piercing shrieks, by hanging herself from the upstairs banister. I don’t know why she did it every night since she was already dead, but I suppose she enjoyed the drama. One night, just before midnight, I grabbed her by the throat and threw her out of the house. She didn’t see me, not knowing of the existence of other spirits, and didn’t know what had happened to her. She wandered around on the outside of the house, not knowing how to get back in. Finally she flew up into the trees, and as far as I know she’s still there.

Then I found an eight-year-old female spirit haunting the attic. When she was alive, her cruel mother locked her in the attic with the mice and spiders to punish her. She was deathly afraid of the dark. While locked in the attic and unable to free herself, her mother was stabbed to death in a quarrel with her young lover. The girl never knew what happened to her mother. She starved to death, waiting for her dinner.

The girl in the attic wasn’t as annoying as the woman who hanged herself every night. I didn’t know what to do about her. I didn’t think it was right to just throw her out. I opened the attic door so she could come out if she wanted to, but she stayed where she was. She had been in the attic so long it was all she knew.

The spirit of a very old man haunted the cellar. He owned the house when he was alive. After he died, he didn’t want anybody else living in the house. He rattled chains and moaned at night to try to keep anybody away, living or dead. He didn’t scare anybody except maybe himself. He was the kind of spirit other spirits laughed at.

There were two boys, twins, who haunted the whole house but most especially the upstairs rooms. They had both died there of scarlet fever. They didn’t know yet that they were dead, even though it had been over a hundred years. They were constantly playing tricks, trying to scare each other. I heard them laughing all the time. Anytime they saw me, they ran as if we were playing a game. I wanted to grab one of them in each hand and throw them out of the house.

I was an old spirit; I had been in the spirit world for eighty years or more. I had seen everything and done everything a spirit could do. Now I longed for the quiet, pastoral life, and I didn’t want a lot of other spirits around me. I came to this house hoping to escape the clamor of the spirit world, hoping to be alone.

At night when I tried to rest instead of haunt, I could hear the old spirit in the cellar kicking up a fuss. He knew there were other spirits in the house besides himself and he wanted to scare them away. He thought the louder he became, the scarier he would be. He didn’t scare me, though. He did annoy me, however, and I wanted him gone.

Through most of the night, I could hear the twins laughing and running up and down the stairs. I wondered why they never slept. Then I realized they slept during the daylight hours. That would be the best time to catch them and run them out of the house, but first I’d have to find out where they slept. Even though they were children, they had been in the spirit world longer than I had and they knew all the ways to protect themselves.

Then I started finding dead, rotting bodies all over the house. Some were only skeletons and others still wore part of their human bodies. All were long dead. I knew right away they were from the graveyard behind the house. Many of them still wore remnants of the fine clothes they had been buried in: men in white-tie-and-tails and women in ball gowns or wedding dresses. Oh, what a world!

First there were one or two bodies and then eight or ten and then dozens and then hundreds. Finally they filled the downstairs parlor from floor to ceiling. I was past the point of pretending they weren’t there. Even though I was a spirit myself, I didn’t like dead bodies. They were part of the physical world that I left behind long ago. A rotting body was an affront to me. Hundreds of rotting bodies were an abomination!

After two or three days of observation, I discovered the twins sleeping during the daylight hours in a barely noticeable niche in the wall of their bedroom. I stormed in on them, waking them from a stupor, and was able to grab each of them by the neck. Before they knew what was happening, I clapped their heads together like cymbals. While they were stunned and nearly immobile, I threw them out of the house.

While I was brushing my hands off and congratulating myself on a job well done, I realized somebody was standing on the stairs looking at me. It was the little starveling girl from the attic. Her face was a glowing white and her eyes completely engulfed in black circles. She surprised me by speaking.

“It wasn’t them,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

“They weren’t the ones who brought the bodies from the graveyard into the house.”

“Who was it, then?”

She mimed hanging herself, and I knew right away what she meant.

Every night there were more bodies in the downstairs rooms. I could hardly go into any of these rooms without becoming ill. I had seen many vile things during my existence, but now I had seen the worst.

I waited until the middle of the night, three hours past midnight and three hours before sunup. I went quietly downstairs at this unholy hour and, standing on the stairs about halfway down, I saw her come in from outside, dragging her burden of dead bodies, as many as she could manage at one time. It was the hanging woman. I wanted to throttle her. I wanted to finish her off. I wanted to make sure she was gone for good and would never come back.

“Just what do you think you’re doing?” I said, although it was obvious.

“It’s you!” she said. “What do I have to do to get you to leave my house?”

“Leave it yourself! It’s my house now! And make sure you clean up this mess before you go!”

She came at me then, teeth bared, but I was able to sidestep her. She hit her head on the banister with a crack that split the wood, but, without missing a beat, she got up and came at me again. Again I sidestepped her.

“You’re wasting your time!” I said. “I’m younger than you, stronger and smarter. You’re just a worn-out old hag of a spook. I think you were in your prime about the time of the Revolutionary War!”

“I’ll show you!” she said.

She hurled an unexpected fireball at me. I hadn’t counted on her being a witch, in addition to everything else.

The fireball was directed at my face and chest, but I was able to get out of the way just in time. It hit the wall behind me and set fire to it.

“You’re going to have to do better than that!” I said.

Next came a barrage of fireballs, more fireballs than I could count. Soon the wall and stairway behind me were a wall of fire. With her out-of-control emotions, she had set fire to the entire house in just a few seconds. All I could do was get out.

“Now look what you’ve done, you horrible old witch!” I said as I ran past her for the front door. “Now it’s nobody’s house!”

I went out to the road and watched the house as it burned all the way down to the foundation. I figured the hanging woman burned up in the house because I didn’t see her come out. Nobody can blame that one on me.

I stayed and haunted the cemetery for a few days, not knowing what else to do. Then I went to the city again and took up residence in a waterfront hotel. I had some friends there that I had known before. It was a good time for me.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Without Sin ~ A Short Story

Without Sin image 3

Without Sin
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in Paranormal Horror Anthology.) 

The service ended. All the mourners departed, and the caretaker, whose name was Lemon, was left alone. He stood beside the open grave, his hands in his pockets, looking off into the distance. He was waiting for the two grave diggers to come and finish the job.

He approached the coffin. The lid had not yet been secured; he lifted it and looked inside. The deceased was a woman with artificial-looking red hair, about fifty years old. He wondered, as he always did, what had taken her. She looked healthy enough. He had heard of many suicides—something inexplicable in the air, perhaps, that made people melancholy and want to do away with themselves. Maybe she was one of those.

She was wearing a necklace with one fairly large red stone, apparently a ruby, and several smaller ones. It could be a real ruby or it could be colored glass. Her family looked prosperous enough. They wouldn’t want her to go to her eternal glory wearing fake stones. She was also wearing a wedding ring with a medium-sized diamond and some smallish earrings, no doubt worth a lot of money. He shook his head in amazement, as he had many times before, at the foolishness of people. Burying precious jewelry forever in the ground where it will never do anybody any good.

He heard someone coming and closed the lid. He looked up and saw the two gravediggers coming toward him. Drexel was the older of the two and out in front. He walked with a swagger wherever he was, even when no one was around. He thought he was cock of the walk and wasn’t bothered one bit that he displaced dirt and buried dead people for a living. The profession, for him, had certain advantages. He had few rules and could always do the job no matter how drunk he was.

The other gravedigger was as much a boy as a man. His name was Lanier. He lived with his mother in town. People believed him simple-minded but he was a good worker and never complained or caused trouble. He was happy to work as a gravedigger and looked up to Drexel, who was his third or fourth cousin. The two of them got along well because Drexel didn’t mistreat Lanier and Lanier always did as he was told without question.

“Where the hell have you been?” Lemon asked.

“Around,” Drexel said. “We’re here now.”

“I could have you fired in a flash for not being here when you’re supposed to be.”

“Well, we’re here now,” Lanier said in the cheeky tone he used only when he was backing up Drexel.

“What have we got here?” Drexel asked, pointing toward the coffin.

“A good lady, waiting for you to send her off to her eternal slumber,” Lemon said.

Drexel raised the lid and looked inside. “Looks like she’s already started on that,” he said with a little laugh.

Lanier looked away when the lid was opened. He didn’t like looking at dead people.

“That’s a ruby necklace she’s wearing around her neck,” Drexel said. “Must be worth something, if I know my jewelry.”

“Not this time,” Lemon said.

“What do you mean ‘not this time’?”

“I mean the good lady keeps her jewelry.”

“How is it that you get to say? You’re not the only one here.”

“Every living thing on earth is part of a hierarchy,” Lemon said.

“Part of a what?”

“In the hierarchy of things, the caretaker of the cemetery is above the gravedigger in all matters.”

“That’s crazy talk.”

“Nevertheless, it seems this woman is a distant relative of my mother’s. I don’t want to defile her person at a time when she is most unable to prevent it.”

“You haven’t got a mother.”

 “Very well, then. We’ll let a coin toss decide the matter.” He reached into his pocket and took out a coin. “Call it,” he said.

“Tails,” Drexel said.

“Very well. If the coin lands on its tail, we take the goods, bury the lady, and nobody is any the wiser. If, however, the coin lands on its head, the lady goes to her eternal slumber fully equipped.”

He flipped the coin into the air and made no attempt to catch it when it came down. It landed at his feet.

“Hah!” Drexel said. “It’s tails! I want the ruby necklace. I have a dear friend that it would look very good on.”

“I saw it first!” Lemon said. “The necklace is mine. And I’m not so stupid as to give it to somebody who might wear it in public and have it recognized.”

“Oh, and what are you going to do with it?”

“I’ll sell it to the acquaintance of mine in the faraway city who pays a good price and doesn’t ask questions, as with the other stuff. You see, there’s a way to remount a stone like that so the lady herself would never recognize it.”

“Says you!”

“A worthy rejoinder, if I ever heard one!”

“You talk like a damn fool. Let’s get the goods before somebody comes and get the old dame in the ground and get it over with.”

Lemon opened the coffin again and took hold of the necklace and gave it a tug. He couldn’t see how to get it off and didn’t want to break it, so he slipped it off over the dead woman’s head. Once he had the necklace in his hands, he held it up to his own neck, waggled his hips and took a few mincing steps.

“Oh, what a lovely girl!” Drexel said with a sneer.

Lanier had turned his back on Drexel and Lemon and didn’t want to think about what they were doing. He knew they were doing something bad and he wanted no part of it, although he did nothing to stop it.

“I’m going over there,” he said and walked quickly away out of sight.

“That boy is without sin,” Lemon said, “rather like those three little monkeys: Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil.”

Drexel removed the woman’s wedding ring with a devilish chortle and put it in his pocket. When he tried to remove the earrings, though, he couldn’t see how to get them off.

“There’s a little thing in back that releases them,” Lemon said.

He helped Drexel turn the woman partway over so they could see the backs of her ears. She was as stiff as a pillar of salt and didn’t bend at the joints.

“She’s really truly dead,” Lemon said.

“I think I hear someone coming,” Drexel said.

He let the woman fall back into place and took out the pruning shears. He cut off the woman’s earlobes neatly and wrapped them, earrings and all, in a rag and put it in his pocket along with the wedding ring.

“The good woman will arrive at the gates of heaven with her earlobes missing,” Lemon said. “St. Peter will take one look at her and believe she has met with an accident.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Drexel said. “When you’re dead, nothing matters.”

“Nevertheless, she shall be welcomed with open arms!”

Drexel whistled for Lanier to come back and began to secure the lid of the coffin.

“One moment!” Lemon said. “I wish to bid the good lady the fond farewell that she so richly deserves.”

He bent over and kissed the dead woman full on the lips. Drexel did the same and, not to be outdone, licked her lips and squeezed her breast.

“Ah-ah-ah!” Lemon said. “There’ll be no necrophilia in my presence.”

“As if you yourself don’t engage in the practice every chance you get!”

Lanier returned and they secured the lid and lowered the coffin into the grave. Before they were finished replacing all the dirt, another service began in another part of the cemetery. They tidied up the gravesite, cleared away their tools and left unnoticed.

Two days later Lemon and Drexel were both dead.

When Lemon failed to appear to perform his duties as caretaker, the cemetery owner and his assistant went looking for him, expecting to find him in a drunken stupor. Instead they found him in the caretaker’s cottage, lying on the bed in full woman’s rigging, including dress, stockings, shoes and curly red wig. Around his neck was the ruby necklace he filched from the dead woman. They thought to revive him but on closer inspection discovered he had been dead long enough to stiffen. His tongue was swollen out if his mouth and his eyes and ears were seeping old blood.

As for Drexel, an old farmer saw him standing in the middle of an empty field with his arms outraised. When the farmer went to him to find out who he was and what he was doing, Drexel was babbling and insensate. While the farmer was asking Drexel useless questions, he fell dead at the farmer’s feet. The farmer looked through Drexel’s clothing to try to find some clue to his identity and discovered the handkerchief containing the earlobes with the diamond earrings attached and the wedding ring.

The woman with the ruby necklace had sickened and died with alarming suddenness. Her doctors didn’t know how to treat her illness because they didn’t know what the illness was. How or where she contracted it was never known. It was obviously an illness that came about through contact with one infected, rather than through the air. Had the lady led a secret life of some kind?

Lanier never touched the woman or her jewelry, so he escaped the illness. His mother forced him to abandon his profession as grave digger, however, as she suspected that Lemon’s and Drexel’s deaths had something or other to do with acts they performed on a dead body when nobody was around. The thought sickened her.

When Lanier was asked what Lemon and Drexel were doing on that last day in the cemetery that might have made them sick, he shrugged his shoulders and smiled his benign smile. They were always doing and saying things that didn’t interest him, he said. He was in another part of the cemetery tending to some flowers he had planted, minding his own business while other people minded theirs.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

As Long As I Live ~ A Short Story

As Long As I Live image 3
As Long as I Live
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

The precious, leaden moments slipped away. Time was running out. He had five more days. He could see a clock on the wall but tried not to look—he could go mad looking at the clock! And though he was alone, he had nothing resembling privacy; someone was watching him all the time. They thought he might try a do-it-yourself job, which could make you laugh if you thought about it long enough.

They brought him magazines, but he didn’t open them. They offered him tranquilizers (handed through the bars one at a time, of course) to calm his nerves, but he declined them. They brought him cigarettes, candy and chewing gum, but they lay untouched. They brought him writing paper to write any farewell letters, but he had none to write. They offered to bring in a TV to brighten his final hours, but a TV would only remind him of the things he was trying to forget, and he declined it. When asked what he wanted for his final meal, he said he wanted only the Last Rites administered by the prison chaplain.

He had had many confidential conversations with the prison chaplain and had been absolved of his sins. He signed the papers to have his body donated to medical research. He said all the goodbyes he needed to say. Nothing was left undone.

The guard, the one named Finch, told him the best thing he could do for himself in preparation for the Big Day was to clear his mind—let go of guilt, remorse, painful memories—anything that was gnawing away at his mind. It was the best advice he had received in prison—or in life, for that matter.

Five more days; nothing to do but wait. It was all downhill now. He was ready to go, ready for his sentence to be carried out. (I’m ready for my execution, Mr. DeMille!) His whole life, from the very beginning, had been leading up to this moment.

He regarded his reflection in the mirror and thought how soon he would be only a shadow, a shade, a memory to anybody who might have any reason at all to remember him. When he was gone, it would be as if he never existed; he would leave nothing behind.

He lay on his bunk and looked at the ceiling. He turned on his side and looked at the wall. He thought about his body that would soon be a nameless, faceless laboratory specimen. (If there’s anything you can use that might help somebody else, welcome to it!) He thought about the oxygen that kept him alive, no matter how unworthy, and the heart that miraculously pumped blood to every part of his body.

On Wednesday morning, two days before the Big Day, the guards bound his hands and feet and ushered him into a small room in a part of the prison he had never seen before. They set him down at a table with his back to the wall and left.

Four other men were in the room; they were all on the other side of the table, facing him. He knew that one was the prison warden but he didn’t know who the others were. He relaxed in the chair and took a deep breath. He had nothing more to fear.

“How are you holding up?” the warden asked.

“I’m all right.”

“Do you need anything? Anything we can do for you?”

“Nothing.”

“I see from your records that you have no family. You’re forty-two years old, married twice but divorced both times, no children.”

“That’s right. Family all dead. A couple of ex-wives who would love to pull the switch.”

“Your health is good. No diseases, no addictions.”

“You know what they say: health is wealth.”

“Your psych report looks good.”

“That’s because I’m so stupid.”

“That’s not what it says here. Your intelligence is far above average.”

“I’m a good faker.”

“You took a wrong turn somewhere.”

“Many wrong turns.”

The warden set aside the papers, folded his hands and cleared his throat. “I’m going to make you a proposition,” he said.

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Do you believe the earth has been visited by alien beings?”

“Is this a joke?”

“No, it’s not a joke. Do I need to repeat the question?”

“No, I got it. It’s just not the kind of question I expected to be asked. Do I believe the earth has been visited by alien beings? I’ve never really thought about it, but I suppose I would have to say yes, I believe the earth has been visited by alien beings.”

“Would you believe me if I told you the United States government has been in contact with an alien race, an alien intelligence, for thirty years or more?”

“Sure, I’d believe it. Why not?”

“They want a small number of men from earth.”

“Who does?”

“The alien race.”

“What do they want them for?”

“That’s the thing. We can only speculate.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we don’t know.”

“They’re from another planet?”

“Let’s just say they exist in another world.”

“I honestly don’t know what you’re trying to say to me.”

“As a model prisoner, you qualify for a special program.”

“Yeah? What program is that?”

“You can go and live among this alien race for the rest of your life, if you so choose.”

“What?”

“It’s entirely your choice. You get to choose. Only you, nobody else. If you choose not to participate, your sentence will be carried out on Friday night.”

“I’m not sure I’m hearing this right. I can do what?”

“Your death sentence will be commuted if you choose to go live in another world with an alien race.”

“I must be dreaming. I’ll wake up any minute.”

“It’s no dream.”

“This is for real?”

“Absolutely for real!”

“This is not just another psychological test where you gauge my reaction?”

“It’s not a test.”

“All right. When do I go?”

“Day after tomorrow. Friday.”

“And what will those aliens do to me? Will they cut me up in little pieces? Will they eat me for dinner? Will they make me a slave?”

“They promise humane treatment. That’s all I know.”

“Well, that sounds good enough for me. Where do I sign?”

“You don’t need time to think about it?”

“No. I’ll do it.”

“Once you’ve decided, you can’t change your mind.”

“I don’t want to change my mind. I’ll go. Anything is better than the forty thousand volts.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

They removed him to an isolation cell so he couldn’t talk to anybody. No guards, no chaplain, no fellow prisoners, nothing. Complete isolation. Food and drink would be given to him through a little compartment in the door, without any human contact.

He still believed they might be playing a trick on him, but as the hours went by he began to have a different view of midnight Friday night. Instead of darkness and oblivion, he now saw something different, a tiny light at the end of a long tunnel. He wasn’t going to be fooled, though. The world had a way of dashing his brains out at every turn.

In his different cell, he could no longer see the clock, but he knew from the light coming in at the window that it was Wednesday night. Then it was Thursday morning. His breakfast was handed in at the little opening in the door and then, hours later, lunch.

Thursday afternoon and evening seemed interminable. He lay on the bunk, paced the floor, counted the tiles in the floor, counted his breaths. When the evening meal was delivered, he called through the opening that he needed to speak to the warden, but there was no response. He wanted some questions answered before he was going to climb on any old spaceship to the stars.

Finally it was Friday morning, his last day in prison, his last day on earth. He felt brave and almost happy and then his insides quaked with terror. He had changed his mind. He didn’t want to go. What had he signed on for? He wasn’t going to be the plaything of hideous aliens on a faraway planet. There was no way of knowing what kind of tortures they might subject him to. Maybe he wouldn’t even be able to breathe when he got there. He wanted to put a stop to this thing. He wanted to die as scheduled at midnight and let that be the end of it.

He wasn’t able to touch his breakfast, but when lunch was delivered he felt calm again, his hands had stopped shaking, his heart was no longer hammering in his chest and his breaths didn’t choke him. He ate everything on his lunch tray and then he took a restful nap.

He was awakened by the opening of the door to his cell. It was the warden, the doctor and the chaplain. The warden had some “release forms” for him to sign; he signed them without even looking at them. The doctor gave him shots in both arms, checked his blood pressure and listened to his heart. When he was finished, he nodded to the warden to indicate that everything was all right. The chaplain then stepped forward to administer the Last Rites. He spoke a few lines of Latin, made a few sweeping gestures with his hands, and then he was finished.

“Just a few more hours now and you’ll be on your way,” the warden said, smiling encouragingly and touching him on the upper arm. “You have my very best wishes for a safe journey.”

As soon as the warden and the others left, he received his dinner tray. He ate all the food and drank the tea. When he was finished, he lay down on his bunk with his hands behind his head to wait for what was going to happen next.

The next time the door opened, he jumped up expectantly. “Is it time?” he asked. It was two men he had never seen before. They escorted him to the shower room, told him to strip down, wash thoroughly with a special soap they gave him, take care of any personal needs he might have, and when he was finished to dress in a heavy nylon jumpsuit that encompassed his body like a cocoon.

He was then put in a “holding cell.” On his way to the cell, he caught a glimpse of a clock; it was ten minutes after eleven. He had less than an hour.

A short time later, two mysterious “attendants,” faces covered, came to the holding cell and, without speaking a word, escorted him up three flights to the roof of  the prison.

On the prison roof was a wooden structure about twenty feet high, not unlike a gallows. He was taken to the top of the structure and placed on his back on a low platform. A helmet was placed on his head and his arms and legs strapped down. Then, still without speaking, the attendants placed a cover over his body, like the lid of a coffin, blocking out the starry sky. Then the attendants were gone, having completed their job.

He lay still and waited. He hated the feeling of being helplessly tied down and unable to move. His heart pounded and he was sweating. Was he going to suffocate? How long would he have to wait before something happened?

Ten minutes passed and then fifteen and then thirty. He wanted to call for the attendants to come and let him out, but he was sure nobody would hear him. He was scared and ready to call the whole deal off. He didn’t want to go to…wherever it was. He’d rather face the electric chair and have it over and done with. Clean and quick.

It started with a gentle vibration like the rocking of a rowboat, followed by bright lights all around that he could see even with the helmet over his head and the cover over his body. The vibrating intensified, becoming a shaking that he felt in his gut the way he felt a carnival ride when he was ten years old. A low rumbling sound like a car with a hole in its muffler became louder and louder, a gradually rising crescendo, until it was so loud he wanted to cover his ears if only he could lift his arms.

He felt himself being lifted up then—up, up, up into the sky—gently at first and then faster. His fear was replaced by a sense of well-being, a feeling of joy that he hadn’t felt in a long time and maybe never. It was the last thing he knew before he lost consciousness.

He was in the land of oblivion for what might have been a minute, a day, a month, a lifetime, or a thousand years. When he regained himself, he was lying in a brightly lighted white room. He was aware at once of another person standing nearby.

“Where am I?” he asked. “Am I on a Mars?”

“Not Mars,” a male voice said. “You wouldn’t be able to breathe on Mars.”

“Where am I, then?”

“The land where the bong tree grows.”

“How did I get here? Am I dead?”

“We’ll keep you here for a couple of days to make sure you’re not having any serious side effects.”

“Side effects from what?”

“Are you hungry? I can get you some food.”

He lifted his head to see the person he was speaking to. “Are you a doctor?” he asked.

“Enough of a doctor for you.”

After two days of “medical evaluation,” he was taken to his own house, a low structure built into the side of a hill. Two young attendants brought him food, clothes to wear, and anything else he might need. When he tried to speak to the attendants, they looked away and wouldn’t answer.

The house contained every comfort. There were thousands of books (in English and other languages) arranged neatly in bookcases, American magazines dating from the 1940s and ‘50s, a record player with a collection of records, a bed, chairs, couch, table, piano, prints on the walls. Much better than his prison cell. Nothing to complain about.

After five days of being left alone, the first “tissue sample” was taken from his arm by a silent attendant.

“What is this for?” he asked.

“I don’t understand your language,” the attendant said.

The next day he was given pills with his food.

“What are the pills for?” he asked.

“To keep you healthy,” was the reply.

It took him a while to figure out the attendants weren’t human. They were human-like machines.

Left on his own as he was, he began taking long walks. There were trees, hills, flowers (profuse and enormous), birds, and small scurrying animals in the underbrush, much like on earth. Unlike earth, though, the sky was more violet than blue. Trees grew to the astonishing height of hundreds of feet. Water in streams sparkled like liquid diamonds, as if the water contained some quality that water on earth was lacking.

And in all his long walks, he never met another human. Had he ever been any place on earth where dozens or hundreds of people weren’t clamoring to be seen and heard? He was convinced at times that he was dead and what he was experiencing was the afterlife.

Far off in the distance from his house, he could see a high wall or fortress, but it was too far away to tell what it was. In the opposite direction, equally far off, was a similar fortress. If he watched long enough, he saw strange silver streaks in the sky going to—or away from—the fortresses. If he looked at the silver streaks long enough, they disappeared.

The next time an attendant came to take a tissue sample from his body, he asked what the fortresses were.

“It’s the Walled Cities where they live,” the attendant said.

“Where who lives?”

“The Sylphs.”

“Who are they?”

“They created all this.”

“All what?”

“I’m afraid I’ve said too much.”

Attendants came regularly and collected tissue samples, to which he readily submitted. Every day they brought pills with his food, which he took obediently; he didn’t want to consider the consequences of not taking the pills. He had the idea that if he rebelled against anything that was asked of him, he might be sent back to prison and the electric chair.

In a dream, on a hill not far from his house, he met an old man dressed in shabby evening attire. The old man offered him a smoke, which he declined.

“Sit down and rest for a while,” the old man said. They both sat on a rock projecting out of the hillside.

“None of this is real, is it?” he asked the old man.

“As real as you are,” the old man said.

“I think I might be dead.”

“A man can think too much, you know.”

“What are those huge walls?” he asked. “Over there and over there?”

The old man laughed and took a draw on his pipe. “It’s where they live,” he said.

“The Sylphs?”

“Yes, you’ve heard about them?”

“Yes. Who are they, anyway?”

“They created all this. They’re the reason you’re here.”

“Why do I never see them?”

“They don’t want you to see them. All they want from you is your DNA.”

“My what?”

“They take tissue samples from you, don’t they?”

“Why, yes. How did you know?”

“They’re making clones.”

“Clones?”

“Yes, they’re very capable. They can do anything, except fight their own wars.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Western Sylphs are at war with the Eastern Sylphs. It’s a war that never ends. The Sylphs are unable to fight on their own, so they use clones. The tissue samples they take from you are used in making the clones to fight the wars. When they’re killed in battle, it’s just so much trash.”

“What’s wrong with the Sylphs? Why can’t they fight their own wars?”

“You haven’t seen them. As smart as they are, they’re very weak. They’re all white and only about four feet tall. They have huge heads and faces like hideous frogs.”

“If I go to the Walled City, will I see them?”

“They’d never let you in.”

“But you’ve seen them?”

“Yes, I’ve seen them.”

And then, after a significant silence, he asked the old man the question that most troubled him: “What is this place?”

The old man looked at him, smiled, and shook his head. “It’s probably not what you think.”

“A planet far from earth?”

“That’s what people think, but that’s not what it is.”

“What is it, then?”

“It’s what you call a parallel world. It exists right alongside earth, but, of course, people on earth are not aware of it, because they’re not supposed to be. There are many parallel worlds. Probably thousands. Maybe millions.”

“I’ve never heard of a parallel world! Why me?”

“You are fulfilling your destiny, that’s all.”

He was going to ask the old man who he was and why he knew so much, but the strange call of a bird distracted him. He turned his head to look at the bird and when he turned back, the old man was gone.

Later, he thought of the dream as a “vision.” He didn’t know who the old man was and never saw him again but believed he was a manifestation of God.

The pills he took every day kept him from being older. After fifty years or a hundred years, he still looked the same as when he first arrived. Tissue samples continued to be taken on a regular basis. It was the only requirement made of him. The rest of the time he was left alone.

After two hundred years and more, in the natural order of things, he began to change. His body thickened; he became stooped. His skin lost its color and became white. His hair came out and soon it was as if he had never had any hair at all. His hands and feet became webbed; his nails lengthened and became talon-like. At first he was alarmed by these changes, but then he stopped bothering to look at himself in the mirror and stopped thinking about the way he looked. If he ever had any vanity or pride, it was gone.

His physical transformation complete, he began receiving telepathic communications. Go to the Walled City of the Western Sylphs, he was told.

The trip took two days; he moved slowly and had to make his way through swamps and undergrowth. Large birds constantly circled overhead to help him find the way. When he finally reached the Walled City, a gate opened for him as if by magic and he entered.

The Sylphs received him as one of their own and assimilated him into their millions. He was revered because he came from another realm and was hundreds of years old.

After he had lived among the Sylphs for a time and had absorbed their ways and customs, he forgot he had ever been anything other than a Sylph. He had no recollection of ever being a human man, of ever existing on earth. This too was part of his inescapable destiny.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Five-Finger Discount ~ A Short Story


Five-Finger Discount
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in Superstition Review.)

Dot loved her binoculars. Through them she looked at anything and everything. She looked at the sky and the clouds, the moon and the stars. If she saw a bird in flight, she followed it until it flew out of sight. She looked at herself in the mirror and at her feet as she walked; at her sister as she ate tuna fish from the can and as she put on lipstick; at squirrels as they played underneath the trees and the tom cat as he walked slowly from the shed to the house and back again; her mother as she slept in the bed and as she stirred soup on the stove; Toots as he cracked walnuts or pushed a wheelbarrow full of fertilizer from one side of the yard to the other; cars on the road, coming toward her with startling clarity; the dog as it scratched its fleas; trains going by on the tracks behind the house.

A few days after acquiring the binoculars (she stole them from a parked car at the fairgrounds), Dot was lying on her stomach in the back yard watching a pair of identical starlings drinking from the dog’s water pan. They sat on the edge of the pan about six inches apart and took turns drinking. When they weren’t drinking, they were looking around to make sure they were safe. They didn’t know it yet, but the gray striped cat known as Dutch was stalking them from behind the trunk of a tree about fifteen feet away. He was crouched down, his back legs quivering, ready to pounce when the time was right. Just then, and far too noisily, somebody came up behind Dot from the house. The starlings flew off and the cat jumped into the bushes. Dot didn’t have to turn around to know it was her sister Lennie.

“Don’t you ever get tired of looking through those spy glasses?” Lennie asked.

“No,” Dot said. “Look what you did.”

“I want you to go to town with me,” Lennie said. “Put your jacket on.” She dropped the jacket over Dot’s shoulder.

“I don’t want to go to town,” Dot said. “I’m busy.”

“Come on. Get up off the ground. Toots is giving us a ride.”

“Oh, all right. Do you have any money?”

“A little,” Lennie said.

“Will you buy me a goldfish?”

“What do you want with a goldfish?”

“For a pet. What else?”

“The cats will eat it. You know cats.”

“I don’t care. I want one anyway.”

“What’s the use of spending money on a goldfish if it’s going to end up in a cat’s stomach?”

“Come on!” Toots yelled from the porch. “I haven’t got all day!”

Dot stood up and put the binoculars on their string around her neck. She slipped into her jacket and she and Lennie went and got into the truck. Dot, since she was the youngest, sat next to Toots and Lennie sat next to the window. Toots started the engine and headed out for the highway into town.

“I think I’ll fix my hair in a French roll,” Lennie said.  “What do you think?”

“It doesn’t matter to me,” Dot said. She was watching oncoming cars through the binoculars.

“I want to get some new panties and some lipstick and some emery boards and some conditioner for my hair,” Lennie said.

“I want to get a goldfish,” Dot said. “I think I’ll get two. A boy and a girl.”

“You two are never satisfied, are you?” Toots said. “Always wanting things you can’t have.”

“Who says I can’t have them?” Lennie asked.

Toots let Dot and Lennie out at the intersection where the bank and the used car lot were. “You’ll have to walk back home,” he said, “or hitch a ride with somebody, because I’m not going to be back until tonight.”

“Where’s he going?” Dot asked Lennie as he drove away.

Lennie shrugged and opened her purse and took out some cigarettes. She took one out of the pack for herself and one for Dot. They lit up and headed down the street to where the good stores were.

They went first to the cut-rate department store known as Dunlap’s. They threw their cigarettes into the gutter in front of the store and went inside and found their way to the ladies’ department on the second floor. A fat saleslady with a round face and little pinched-up eyes went over to them as soon as she saw them and asked if they needed any help. Lennie looked at the woman and shook her head and walked on.

She found a round table full of ladies’ underpants and picked up a pair of pink ones and a pair of yellow ones and handed them to Dot. Dot slipped them inside her jacket and they walked on to the swimsuits.

Lennie picked up a brightly colored two-piece swimsuit. She held the two pieces of the swimsuit up against her body to see how it was going to look on her. “How do I look?” she asked.

Dot stood back a few feet and looked at Lennie through the binoculars.  “You look like you should be arrested,” she said.

Lennie put the swimsuit back and they walked on to a table of ladies’ rubber swim caps; there were many laid out on the table in a lot of different colors and styles. Lennie picked up a yellow one with green scallops that looked like flowers. She looked at it inside and out and then set it back down and looked at Dot and nodded her head. Dot went over to it and picked it up and hid it inside her jacket along with the underpants.

They were headed toward the stairs to go back down to the first floor, when the same saleslady as before came out of nowhere and held her hand out to stop them. Her face was hard and sour. She leaned over toward Dot to keep anybody else from hearing. “Did I just see you put something inside your jacket?” she asked.

“No,” Dot said, shaking her head emphatically.

“Well, I’m pretty sure you did, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. I just want to warn you, though, if I ever see you in this store stealing things or trying to steal things, I will call the law. Do you understand me? Shoplifting is a very serious crime.”

Lennie smiled coolly at the woman and took Dot’s hand protectively and the two of them started down the stairs.

“I’ll be keeping my eye out for you!” the woman said. “I wasn’t born yesterday!”

“Imagine that,” Lennie said when they were outside the store.

“What does ‘born yesterday’ mean?” Dot asked.

“It’s just something grownups say to make them think they’re smarter than you are,” Lennie said.

“I didn’t like her. She scared me.”

“I didn’t like her either.”

“Do you think she’ll tell on us?”

“I don’t know how she could. She doesn’t know who we are.”

They went down the street to the variety store and went inside. Lennie went to the cosmetics counter and Dot to the back part of the store where they kept the pet supplies. She found the goldfish tank and stood in front of it looking at the myriads of goldfish swimming around inside. Some were black, some white, some gold, and others were combinations of spotted and speckled colors. Some were no more than three-quarters of an inch long, while others seemed very big in comparison. A few of them had long tails that seemed to drag them down as they swam. Dot watched with fascination.

A high school girl named Freda Stamm worked in the pet department. She was a big girl with a fuzzy head of hair growing down almost to her eyebrows, causing her to have the nickname “werewolf.” When she saw Dot looking at the fish, she went over to her and asked if she could be of assistance.

“I’d like two goldfish,” Dot said. “A boy and a girl.”

“Do you know which two, or just any two?” Freda asked. She picked up a little net with a long handle on it and started to stick it into the tank.

“Oh, I guess I’m just looking today,” Dot said. “I’m with my sister and I don’t have any money.”

“Well, you’ll have to come back when you have some money, then, won’t you?” Freda said.

“If I buy a boy and a girl, will they have babies?”

“Under the right conditions they would. We’ve got a little book that tells all about them.”

“How much is the book?”

“It’s included in the price of the fish.”

Lennie came up behind Dot and tapped her on the shoulder. “I knew right where you’d be,” she said. “Looking at those silly old goldfish.”

“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?”

“Well, yes, I believe I have.”

“I want one that’s all different colors.”

Lennie handed Dot some things she had picked up, a comb and a little package of emery boards and a bottle of nail polish and a pack of gum. Dot took them and hid them inside her jacket.

“While we’re here, don’t you want to get anything for yourself?” Lennie asked.

“No,” Dot said. “The fish is all I want.”

They left the variety store and when they were outside again on the sidewalk, Dot took the swim cap out of her jacket and tugged it onto her head. “How do I look?” she asked, pushing her hair up inside.

“You look like a crazy person,” Lennie said.

“How about if you give me this?” Dot asked. She stopped to admire her reflection in a window, turning her head from side to side.

“I’m not giving it to you, but I’ll let you wear it sometime.”

“Oh, what do you need a swimming cap for?”

“Well, I guess I need it about as much as you do!”

They headed down the street in the direction of the drug store. Lennie, when she saw a boy she recognized from high school coming toward her on the sidewalk, hurried to get a cigarette out of her purse. She wanted the boy to see her smoking and think she was sophisticated. She got the cigarette lit and gave him a breezy little smile just in time before he passed by, but he didn’t even look at her.

When they went inside the drugstore, a woman in a tight skirt up on a ladder behind the counter turned and looked at them. Lennie saw right away that the woman had her hair arranged in a French roll. She tugged Dot’s arm to get her attention.

“That’s how I want my hair to look,” Lennie said. “Isn’t it stunning?”

“Oh, what’s so hot about that?” Dot said. She was bored already. She went over to look at the magazines.

Lennie went to the cosmetics counter and began looking at the display of lipsticks. She picked up a tube and took the cap off to get a better look. The woman got down off the ladder and stood behind the counter in front of Lennie.

“What color would you recommend for my complexion?” Lennie asked her.

“Something dark,” the woman said. She looked much worse up close than she had from a distance. She had pockmarks on her face and an ugly misshapen nose like a prizefighter. She reached over and plucked a tube off the display and handed it to Lennie. It was something called flaming orange. “Go ahead and try it if you want,” she said.

Lennie tilted the oval mirror on the counter so she could get a better look at herself. She coated her lips with the flaming orange and blotted them on a piece of tissue the woman gave her.

“How does it look?” she asked.

“Oh, I think it’s just the appropriate shade for your coloring,” the woman said.

“It makes you look like a clown,” Dot said. She had come up behind Lennie carrying a couple of comic books she wanted to buy.

“Oh, who asked you?” Lennie said.  “I’m sure you don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Would you like to try a different color?” the woman asked.

“No, I’ll take this one,” Lennie said.

“Will that be all today?”

“I want these,” Dot said. She laid the comic books on the counter. One was Submariner and the other was The Invincible Iron Man.

“Oh, all right,” Lennie said. “I want a pack of Pall-Malls, too.”

“I thought you smoked Luckys,” Dot said.

“Well, today I’m smoking Pall-Malls.”

Lennie paid for the things out of the scant stash of money in her purse, and she and Dot went back out to the glaring sunshine of the street.

“I bet you could have got that lipstick without paying for it,” Dot said.

“With that woman looking at me the whole time?”

“You could have pretended to have a fit and when the woman went to get a doctor you could have slipped the lipstick inside your underwear.”

“Don’t you think that’s a lot of trouble to go to for a tube of lipstick?”

“Well, it depends on how much you want it, I guess.”

They walked around aimlessly for a while, looking at window displays, until they found themselves in front of the Blue Note Café, where they could smell hamburgers cooking.

“I’m hungry,” Dot said. “Can we get something to eat?”

“Why not?” Lennie said. “You only live once.”

“What does that mean?”

They went inside and sat at a booth near the front. A waitress in a pink uniform brought them each a glass of water and waited for them to say what they wanted so she could write it down.

“I want a hamburger,” Dot said, looking at the waitress through the binoculars, “a Coke and a hot-fudge sundae for dessert.”

The waitress wrote that down and turned to Lennie.

“I just want a grilled cheese sandwich,” Lennie said. “I’m watching my figure.”

“Anything else?”

“You can get me an ashtray, honey, if you don’t mind.”

The waitress went to a nearby table and picked up an ashtray and set it down in front of Lennie.

“I know you,” Lennie said to the waitress.

“What?”

“Don’t you go to Calvin High?”

“I used to. I graduated.”

“I used to see you every day at school.”

“Funny,” the waitress said, “I don’t think I’ve ever noticed you before.”

“Do you think they’d hire me here? As a waitress?”

“Well, I don’t know. You could talk to the manager about it. I think they only want girls with experience, though.”

“I’ve got lots of experience,” Lennie said.

After the waitress went away to place their order with the cook, Lennie said, “That snooty bitch! We used to be good friends in school, and now she pretends to not even know who I am.”

“Maybe she doesn’t recognize you with that orange lipstick,” Dot said. “And why did you tell her you have experience? You know that’s a lie.”

“Well, I do have experience, but I didn’t say what kind of experience. You haven’t learned yet how you can bend the truth a little without ever telling a lie. You’ll learn that as you get older.”

“Lurlene is right,” Dot said. “You are a bad influence on me.”

“Well, we do what we must,” Lennie said, checking her reflection in the window and lighting a cigarette.

After they finished their lunch and the waitress brought the check, Lennie discovered she didn’t have enough money to pay since buying the things in the drugstore.

“Don’t worry,” Dot said. “We’ll just make a run for it.”

The lunch rush was over, and most of the people who were in the café earlier had left. There were just four or five old ladies sitting at a table toward the back, drinking coffee and gossiping. Only one waitress was behind the counter, and the cashier had stepped out back for a moment to have a cigarette. When a clatter of dishes erupted from the kitchen, obviously signaling an accident of some kind, the waitress disappeared through the swinging doors in the back.

“Now!” Dot said.

She bent over from the waist, as though that would make her less noticeable, and made for the door, with Lennie right behind her. When they were outside, they ran down to the next block and turned the corner, in case somebody from the café was coming after them.

“I think we just had a free lunch,” Dot said with a laugh.

“I hope that waitress has to pay for it herself,” Lennie said. “That would just about serve her right for pretending she didn’t know me.”

They went down to the end of the street to where the dance hall and casino used to be before they burned down. They turned the corner and there, up ahead at the next intersection, they saw where a crowd of people had gathered.

An old man in a blue sedan had swerved to avoid hitting a small boy on a bicycle and ran his car up on the sidewalk and smashed into a light pole. The old man was waving his arms and berating the boy while a policeman tried to calm him down. The boy stood behind the policeman and smirked at the old man, ready to run if need be.

Lennie didn’t want to go too near the crowd but Dot wanted to go see what was going on. She left Lennie standing underneath an awning while she pushed her way forward to get a good look. Bored with the whole scene, Lennie took a cigarette out of her purse and was lighting it when she felt a tap on the shoulder. She turned and saw Newton Milbank looking at her with his strange orange eyes.

“Hello, sweetness!” Newton said.

“Newton, what are you doing here?” Lennie asked, genuinely surprised to see him.

She knew Newton from high school. She never liked him very much. He wasn’t very good-looking and he always had a funny smell. His ears stuck out and he was from one of the notoriously poor families in town with at least a dozen brothers and sisters. He looked better to her now, though, somehow. His complexion had cleared up and his hair looked clean. She didn’t mind flirting with him a little bit. She looked up at him and blew smoke in his face. She hoped he would notice the orange lipstick.

“I just met with my parole officer,” Newton said.

“Oh, my goodness!” Lennie said. “Are you some kind of a big-time hoodlum? Do I need to be afraid?”

“You would never need to be afraid of me,” Newton said. “I was always hoping to meet up with you again, ever since high school. I’ve thought about calling you up.”

“Well, why didn’t you just do it, then? I’m in the book.”

“Would you like to go someplace and have a drink with me?”

“Do you mean right now?”

“What better time?”

“I’ve got my little sister with me and we were just about to go home.”

“We can drop her someplace and go on from there. Wait a minute. There’s somebody I want you to meet.”

He walked a few feet away and came back pulling a dark-haired young man by the arm. “Lennie,” he said, “this is my friend, Stegg Lucy. Stegg, this is Lennie Miggles. I’ve known her since high school.”

“Hello,” Stegg said, looking past Lennie’s shoulder.

“How do you do?” Lennie said.

As Stegg shook Lennie’s hand, a kind of electrical charge went through her, from the top off her head to the tip of her toes. She was immediately taken with him, from his sullen eyes and his pouty mouth to the black stubble on his face.

“Lennie has her sister with her,” Newton said to Stegg. “I was just telling her we could swing by and take the sister home and then go on to the party from there.”

“The sister can come, too, if she wants,” Stegg said.

“I’m afraid she’s still quite a child,” Lennie said, happy to have a reason to speak directly to Stegg.

“Oh,” Stegg said, turning away with disinterest.

“You didn’t say anything about a party,” Lennie said.

“Well, we hadn’t definitely decided on going,” Newton said. “We didn’t want to go unless we had dates.”

“Ask her if she’s got a friend,” Stegg said to Newton.

The incident involving the old man and the boy on the bicycle was coming to a conclusion and the crowd beginning to disperse. Dot saw where Lennie was standing talking to Newton and went over to her.

“That was great!” she said. “I thought that old man was going to kill that kid.”

“I want you to meet some friends of mine,” Lennie said to Dot, “Newton and Stegg.”

“Hi there!” Newton said.

“I’m ready to go home now,” Dot said, ignoring Newton.

“She is kind of young,” Stegg said speculatively. “Why does she wear that thing on her head?”

Lennie laughed a little too loud. “Oh, you know kids,” she said. “She always likes to do that which is odd and unexpected.”

“I like it,” Dot said. “I’m going to sleep with it on tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to stick my head under water with it on and see if it keeps my hair dry.”

“She’s just at that age, you know,” Lennie said.

“When are we going home?” Dot asked.

“Well, there’s been a change of plan,” Lennie said. “You’re going home, but I’m not.”

“What do you mean? Where are you going?”

“I’m going to a party with these two gentlemen.”

“What kind of a party?”

“A social gathering of friends. Isn’t that what a party is?”

“Lurlene won’t like it.”

“Oh, she won’t mind,” Lennie said. “She’s always saying she wished I would get out of the house more often.”

“Who’s Lurlene?” Newton asked.

“She’s our mother,” Dot said, looking down at the ground.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Stegg said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Newton’s car was parked a couple of blocks away. As they were walking toward it, Dot pulled on Lennie’s arm.

“I don’t want to go with them,” she said.

“You can walk home, then,” Lennie said. “You know the way. You’re not a baby.”

“I don’t want you to go with them, either.”

“Well, now, isn’t that just too bad?”

When they came to Newton’s car, Lennie, Stegg and Newton piled into the front seat while Dot got into the back. Newton started the car with a roar and a satisfied grin and they were off.

“Just where is this party?” Lennie asked.

“It’s at a friend’s house,” Newton said. “You don’t know him. We’ll introduce you.”

“Will there be lots of people there?”

“I think it will be kind of intimate,” Stegg said.

“Now, wait a minute,” Lennie said. “Who will be there besides you two and this friend?”

“There’ll be other people there,” Newton said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Will there be other girls there besides me?” Lennie asked with a laugh.

“Well, of course there will be,” Newton said. “What do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you should go,” Dot said from the back seat. “You’ve got things to do at home.”

“What things?” Lennie asked.

“You’re supposed to wash your hair tonight.”

“I can do that anytime, silly.”

Lennie gave Newton directions, and in just a few minutes he came to her house and pulled up at the front gate. He put the car in gear and revved the engine and he and Stegg laughed for some unknown reason.

“I’ll be home after while,” Lennie said to Dot to let her know she was supposed to get out.

“What do you want me to tell Lurlene?”

“Tell her whatever you want,” Lennie said. “Tell her not to wait up.”

Newton and Stegg laughed again.

“Something about this just doesn’t seem right,” Dot said as she got out of the car and closed the door, but Lennie didn’t hear her because Newton was saying something funny about the shock absorbers on his car.

For the moment Dot had forgotten about the binoculars but, when she remembered them on the string around her neck, she raised them and watched Newton’s car as it receded into the distance. She saw the three heads, Lennie’s head between Newton’s and Stegg’s. She saw Stegg put his arm around Lennie and Lennie turn toward him. Then she saw Stegg and Lennie kissing on the lips, just as plain as day, exactly as it was done in the movies.

“They were just waiting for me to get out of the car so they could do that,” Dot said to Dutch, who went to meet her when he saw her getting out of Newton’s car.

When she went into the house, Lurlene was making a pitcher of martinis.

“Where’s Toots?” she asked, a glass in one hand and the pitcher in the other.

“I don’t know,” Dot said. “He doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Where’s Lennie?”

“Don’t ask me.”

She went into her bedroom as fast as she could and closed the door before Lurlene had a chance to ask any more questions. She knew the next question was going to be about the swim cap and she didn’t want to have to explain.

 She kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed and looked up at the ceiling and took a few deep breaths. She was feeling tired after her afternoon in town and it felt good to be at home, in her own room, by herself at last.

She heard Lurlene singing to herself in the other room. She closed her eyes and imagined Lurlene sitting down on the couch with her drink and putting her feet up and lighting a cigarette. After a couple of minutes, she opened her eyes and picked up her new comic book, The Invincible Iron Man, and opened it. She turned to page one and began reading from the beginning. By suppertime she would have read nearly the whole thing. She was not going to be able to resist it.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

When He Saw They Were Dead ~ a Short Story

When He Saw They Were Dead image 1
When He Saw They Were Dead
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in Grey Wolf Publishing Company’s Horror Anthology.)

His name was Edgar Delong and in 1921 he was fifteen years old. He had an accident in his sleep and they wouldn’t stop laughing at him. They called him “baby” and said he ought to be ashamed of himself. They kept it up all day. Finally, he went and got a shotgun they didn’t know he had and, at seven minutes after four in the afternoon, he shot both of them in the chest, his mother first and then his father. When he saw that they were dead, he went up the stairs in the old house to the attic. He found a rope, climbed up on a table and tied one end of the rope to a rafter and the other end around his own neck. After pulling on the rope to make sure it would hold at both ends, he stepped off the table into the void. As he strangled to death he said, “This is the thing I’ve always wanted.”

It was written up in all the newspapers. People loved talking about it, recounting and embellishing all the details. The house where it happened stood vacant for years and was said to be haunted. Weeds grew up in the yard. Small boys threw rocks at the windows. The front porch began to sag. People claimed to hear demonic laughing coming from the house, gunshots and screams.          

Finally, a man bought the house and fixed the sagging porch, the broken windows, the missing shingles and the peeling paint. He lived with his large family in the house for more than twenty years. Then there were other families after that to put their imprint on the character of the house. The day would come when the only people who remembered Edgar Delong and what he had done were the superannuated.  

Edgar Delong still existed, though, in the world the living cannot see. Every day in the house his mother and father laughed at him and every day he went and got the shotgun they didn’t know he had and, at seven minutes after four in the afternoon, shot both of them to death, first his mother and then his father. Every day he heard the startled cry from his mother right before he shot her and the strangled shout from his father. Every day he climbed the creaking old stairs to the attic, tied a rope around his neck and hanged himself. Every day he relived the whole thing, even though he was dead. Every day the same, the days unending.

More than eighty years after the death of Edgar Delong, a writer named Charles Delong rented the house for the summer. He was the grandson of Edgar Delong’s father’s brother and, so, a cousin of Edgar Delong. He had grown up hearing the stories and, when he began researching and writing a book about sensational murders, he knew he had to include a chapter in the book on the Delong double murder and suicide. He believed that by living in the house, if just for a few weeks, he would feel close to Edgar Delong and would understand him a way that no other living person could.

The house proved a wonderful inspiration to Charles Delong. While he didn’t believe in ghosts, he did believe that something of Edgar Delong remained behind in the house. Using newspaper accounts and photos of the day, along with family reminiscences and his own grandfather’s diary, he wrote an inspired and chilling account of the crime, to which he added a personal slant. “I am related by blood to the murderer,” he wrote, “and am writing about his crime in the house in which it occurred.”

He finished his book ahead of schedule and was sure it would be a success. He sent it off to his publisher and began working on his next book, a novel and a complete departure from crime. He still had a couple of weeks on his lease in the Delong house—which technically hadn’t been the Delong house for decades, although he still thought of it in those terms. He stocked up on groceries and planned to spend a quiet time alone.    

Except that he wasn’t alone. Edgar Delong, his murderous young cousin, was there in the house with him, watching him, standing behind him, sometimes touching him on the shoulder or the back of the head. Edgar Delong would make himself known to Charles Delong when he believed the time was right. 

The house had a soporific effect on Charles Delong. He took to taking naps on the couch in the afternoon, hearing only the ticking of the clock, the wind outside rustling the trees or the faraway barking of a dog. One afternoon during one of these naps he was made to see the thing that happened every day at seven minutes after four. He thought he was dreaming as he saw Edgar Delong emerge from the back of the house bearing a shotgun and walk with it toward his parents as they sat in the room they called the parlor. His mother drew back instinctively and gave a startled cry when Edgar shot her. His father began to stand up and emitted a strangled shout as the bullet entered his chest.

After he had killed them both, Edgar Delong turned to his cousin Charles Delong and said, “It’s always the same.”

Still believing he was dreaming, Charles Delong said, “I don’t understand.”

“Every day the same. They laugh at me and I keep killing them but I can’t make them stop.”

“None of this is real,” Charles Delong said. “You’re a figment. You don’t exit.”

“Maybe it’s a figment to you. To me it’s real and I can’t stop. I want to stop. I want you to help me to stop.”

“How can I do that?”

“Let me come into your body so I can have the means to leave this house.”

“No, I would never do that! It’s impossible!”

“I can make you see it every day. Live it every day. As I do.”

“No, it’s out of the question!”

“You wanted to know what it was like to be me.”

“You’re a murderer. I don’t want to be you.”

“We’re cousins. We’re the same blood.”

“No!”

“I’m going up to the attic now and hang myself, as I have thousands of times before. I want you to come along and watch.”

“No!”

“I think we’ve reached the point where there’s no longer a choice,” Edgar Delong said and raised the gun and shot his cousin Charles Delong squarely in the chest.

The body of Charles Delong wasn’t found for five days. When the police were called in to investigate and were unable to find a murder weapon or a motive, they deduced that the murderer was somebody that Charles Delong knew and had willingly admitted into the house.

And so it continued. Every day at seven minutes after four in the afternoon, Edgar Delong shot and killed first his mother and then his father, after which he climbed the stairs to the attic and hanged himself from a rafter. The only difference now was that he had his cousin Charles Delong there to experience the whole thing with him. Without end and ad infinitum.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

 

by allen0997