Literary Fictions

Never Mix, Never Worry (I Was Dancing and I Was Ridiculous)
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~  

They were out all night and didn’t get home until after dawn. Honey was sick from too much to drink and went right to bed. Nick slept on the couch in the living room, slept the morning away, and didn’t wake up until the middle of the afternoon. When he awoke, he had a terrible headache that he hadn’t been aware of while he slept. He wasn’t sure if his body was going to allow him to get up, but after a while he pulled himself to a standing position, head reeling, and went into the kitchen.

Honey was sitting at the table reading a book. She had a cup of tea beside her; she always said tea with lemon settled her stomach. When Nick came into the room, she didn’t look at him but concentrated on her book.

“Hello, Honey,” Nick said, going up behind her and affectionately putting his hands on her shoulders close to her neck. She flinched and leaned forward; he took his hands away as from a hot stove.

“What a night!” he said with a little laugh. “Whew! I feel like eating something but when I think about what I might eat I think I’m going to puke.”

She marked her place in the book, closed it, and laid it aside. “Want me to fix you scrambled eggs?” she asked.

Nick groaned. “I can’t stand the thought of eggs.” He went to the refrigerator and opened the door. “Don’t we have any bacon?”

“I haven’t been to the market yet. I was planning on going today but I don’t think I’m up to it.”

He poured himself a glass of orange juice and sat down at the table across from her. “Can somebody please tell me what happened last night?” he said.

“You haven’t asked me how I feel,” she said.

“How do you feel?”

“Lousy. I feel lousy.”

“Were you able to stop the vomiting?” he asked, pulling downward on his face with both hands as if trying to pull it into shape.

“Yes, a person can only vomit so much. I’ve stopped for now, but I don’t dare eat anything. I think it’s going to take several days for me to feel right again.”

“Do you want me to fix you some toast? Do we even have any bread?”

“No, if I eat anything, I’ll vomit again.”

“All right.”

“We need to talk about last night,” she said.

“Not now, Honey,” he said. “I don’t really feel like a serious discussion at the moment. And, really, I think it’s better if we don’t talk about last night at all. Don’t you agree?”

“Better for you, you mean,” she said.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said, standing up. “If you feel better later, we’ll go out and get some chicken or something.”

“Maybe I need to talk now!” she said in an insistent voice that made him stop in his tracks.

“Talk about what, Honey?”

“I humiliated myself last night.”

“You didn’t! You didn’t do anything the rest of us didn’t do.”

“I was dancing and I was ridiculous.”

“We were all dancing. It was all in good fun.”

“Then why do I feel so humiliated today?”

“You’re tired and you’re overly sensitive.”

“Don’t talk down to me!”

“I don’t mean to…”

“I’m humiliated. I drank bourbon and scotch. Not together, but one after the other.”

“That isn’t anything to be humiliated about. We were all drinking. It was a drinking party. We’re all grownups. Grownups get to drink as much as they want. That’s what it means to be a grownup.”

“Yes, but you know my one steadfast rule: Never mix, never worry. Well, I mixed and I’m paying the price.”

“Honey, nobody’s perfect,” he said. “We all have little lapses.”

“Stop treating me as if I were a child!”

“Why don’t you go back to bed? You can stay there all day and I’ll wait on you. How will that be? If there’s anything you’d like to have to eat, I’ll go and buy it.”

“The faculty party was bad enough, but after that was over we couldn’t just go home and go to bed and quit while we were ahead the way any two normal people would. No, we had to go to an after-party party.”

“Yeah, I admit it was a mistake,” he said. “I wish we had never gone.”

“Then why did we?”

“She’s the daughter of the president of the college and he’s a senior professor in the English department.”

“The history department.”

“It never hurts to cozy up to the entrenched people. They’ve both been around a long time. They’re part of the landscape. She’s daughter of the president of the college, for Christ’s sake!”

“You’re thinking of your career, of course.”

“Well, one does what one can to get ahead.”

“Just once I wish you would give the same consideration to me that you give your career.”

“Honey, that’s absurd,” he said. “There’s no comparison.”

“Well, I’m glad you admit it!”

“That isn’t what I meant!”

“A night like last night causes me to question my entire existence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Are we going to spend our lives hobnobbing with disgusting people just so you can get ahead in your career?”

“No!”

“Because I’m telling you, Nick, I don’t want to live that way.”

“It was just one party.”

“You can find out a lot from one party.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“If those people, that George and his wife Martha, are representative of the life in this college, then I don’t want any part of it. The way they tear each other apart is indecent. And when they’re finished attacking each other they go after whoever happens to be present at the moment. Just being in their presence makes you feel degraded.”

“You’ve been reading too many books.”

“Did you know he called me ‘angel boobs’?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I think I heard that,” he said.

“And ‘monkey nipples’.”

“He really called you ‘monkey nipples’? I didn’t hear that. When did he call you that?”

“When you were doing your provocative dance with that horrible woman.”

 “He was making a joke! You ought to be able to take a joke! You’re not a child!”

 “How can you stand by and do nothing when a strange man calls your wife filthy names?”

 She began to cry. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. “You take things too seriously, Honey.”

 “How would you like it if he called you those names?”

 “I think I might have punched him in the nose!”

 “But it’s all right when it’s me?”

 “That’s not what I meant!”

 “I can never face those two again,” she said. “I vomited all over their bathroom. It was as if they saw me without my clothes.”

 “You were just being human, Honey. It happens to the best of us.”

 “How can we live here and you teach here when I feel so uncomfortable?”

 “It’s just something you’re going to have to get over.”

 “I don’t think I can. I want you to start looking for another position right away. If not today, then tomorrow.”

“But, Honey, we just got here! Do you know how hard it was for me to get this job?”

“I don’t care! If you have as much regard for me as you do for your career, we’ll leave right away!”

“Honey, that’s so unreasonable! You can’t be serious!”

“I have never been more serious in my life.”

“We’re not going anywhere,” he said. “We’re here and we’re going to stay.” He picked her book up off the table and threw it hard against the far wall, not because he was so angry but because he wanted to make a point.

“I can always leave on my own,” she said. “I don’t necessarily need you.”

“Fine. Go home to your mother. Tell her what a mistake it was to marry me.”

“I want to know what happened between you and that woman, that Martha, while I was passed out.”

“Nothing happened! What do you mean?”

“I’m not as stupid as you obviously think I am. I heard them talking about it afterwards.”

“Heard who talking?”

“George and Martha. They thought I was still passed out, but I was just lying there, fully awake, with my eyes closed. I heard the words stud and houseboy. They were talking about you! Were you a stud or were you a houseboy?”

“I didn’t hear any such thing, so I don’t know what you mean.”

“How are you going to face them again?”

“I don’t think I’ll see them again until the next faculty party and that probably won’t be for several months. Everything that happened last night will be forgotten by then.”

“Well, I can tell you right now I’m not going to any more faculty parties.”

“What do I say when people ask me where my wife is? She’s too squeamish for university life? She throws up a lot and can’t stand to be teased a little bit?”

“I don’t care what you tell people. It’s your career, not mine.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m going away tonight.”

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll think of something.”

She stood up from the table and went upstairs.

“I’m hungry,” he said to the empty chair where Honey had sat. “I’m going to see what I can find to eat.”

A little bit of humoring would bring Honey around. She would never leave him. She was too dependent on him. He’d finesse her, just the way he finessed everybody. He’d cajole her, buy her a new coat or a piece of jewelry and everything would be fine. She needed to get out more and meet more people. If she happened to meet a young fellow, a handsome athletic type, who wouldn’t mind romancing her, so much the better. Nick would encourage it. Casual infidelity was all part of the game. The sooner she realized it, the better off she’d be.

And as for Martha, she wasn’t half-bad. A little bit gone to seed, but obviously with a few good years left in her. If she really liked Nick—and he would give her every reason to like him—she could help him in ways he hadn’t yet imagined. Of all the pertinent wives he might plow to further his career, the daughter of the university president had to be the most pertinent. And what could he do for her? He could make her feel good, make her feel young again. Remind her, if she had been inclined to forget, what it’s like to be with a real man.

He started to make himself a sandwich but then stopped what he was doing and went to the phone and picked up the receiver. He looked over his shoulder to make sure Honey wasn’t in earshot and then he dialed Martha’s number, which he had committed to memory. He let it ring twelve times and was about to hang up when she answered.

“Hello,” she said.

“Martha?” he said.

“Yeah, who is this?”

“It’s Nick.”

“Nick? I don’t know any Nick.”

“Nick from last night?

“Oh, yeah! You woke me up, you bastard!”

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you are! Tell that little slim-hipped wife of yours she vomited all over my downstairs bathroom last night. Nobody can stand to go in there today. I ought to make the little twit get her ass over here and get down on her hands and knees and clean it all up.”

“She’s not feeling very well today.”

“Got a hangover, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, what can I do for you, lover boy? It’s Sunday, you know.”

“Is your husband at home?”

“No, he’s at school. Even on Sunday the old bastard goes to the old salt mines, just to get away from little old me.”

“I was wondering if we might get together today. You know, just the two of us.”

“My goodness! You are an eager beaver, aren’t you?”

“I had a really nice time last night.”

“So did I, lover boy. What did you say your name is again?”

“Nick. The stud. Remember.”

“Sure, baby, I remember! Who could forget?”

“So what time can I come over?”

“Make it about an hour.”

“Perfect!”

“And when you get here, you can clean up the vomit in the downstairs bathroom.”

“What about my wife?”

“You can drop her down a well as far as I’m concerned.”

After he hung up the phone, he had the distinct impression that Honey had been listening in on the upstairs extension. He was sure she took down every word in her secretarial shorthand. She would use it in a court of law during the divorce proceeding.

He crept to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. Not a sound came from Honey’s bedroom. He went halfway up the stairs and stopped, as if afraid to go the rest of the way.

“Honey!” he called. “I just remembered some work I have to get done today in my office at school! I’m going to be gone for a couple of hours. When I come home, I’ll bring you a cheeseburger and a milkshake. How does that sound? Okay, then, dear! Bye-bye!”

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Mein Fuehrer is Sleeping
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

Albrecht Fennerman was, in every literal and figurative sense, a ghoul. He was over a hundred-and-thirty years old and should have been dead long ago, by any reasonable reckoning. If you were to meet him, the first thing you would note about him was that his skin was the color of ivory. Instead of blood coursing through his veins, he had a secret, powerful, life-giving, milkfish fluid invented by the brilliant Dr. Mengele.

Herr Fennerman’s eyes were as yellow agates, his teeth and fingernails honed and at the ready for tearing flesh. Although his body was elongated and his leather-like skin stretched almost to the breaking point over his skeletal frame, he was always elegantly dressed in the finest evening attire made (decades earlier) by the best tailors in Berlin, completed and complemented by top hat, monocle, elegant walking stick and distinguished service cross presented to him by the Fuehrer.

He resided with what remained of his family in his remote castle on an undisclosed mountaintop. He had been, at one time, married to a bloodless witch named Rafaela who was torn to shreds by a rival witch in a violent disagreement. From Herr Fennerman’s unholy union with Rafaela had been born two daughters, Regina and Theodosia.

These daughters were, of course, half-witch and half-ghoul, but neither camp claimed them, so they were always at odds with the world, never fitting in, filled with rancor, bitterness and jealousy. Through their many decades of childhood, they resided with their papa in his castle and looked upon him to protect them from harm and to lock them away in the dungeon belowstairs when such an action was warranted, as when Theodosia got it into her head that she was fervently in love with God and wanted to join a religious order or when Regina wanted to become a tango dancer and brought in an Italian gigolo with patent-leather hair to teach her the steps. (The gigolo unwisely laughed at her clumsiness on the ballroom floor and she ripped his head off and drank his blood in front of dozens of guests.)

In appearance, Regina and Theodosia were quite different. Regina possessed hulking enormity. She kept her face whitened with bone dust and her lips and talon-like fingernails painted a blood-red. She always wore black to accentuate the whiteness of her skin. She was easily frightened, though she herself was frightening to look upon; whenever she felt particularly vulnerable and felt like retreating, she spoke French if she spoke at all and covered her face with a heavy black veil, which gave her the feeling of being in the room but not in the room at the same time. She was, by all accounts, an odd person. When people met her, they were rarely able to forget the singular experience. That which has been seen cannot be unseen.

Her younger sister Theodosia was diminutive but none the less deadly. She walked hunched over, indicating fragility and old age, but this was a ruse to trick anyone foolish enough to challenge her into believing she was weak and vulnerable and could be easily foiled. When an adversary least expected it, she would rise up and strike with deadly force that was all the more effective because it was unexpected.

Regina and Theodosia were both known for their unabashed cruelty and love of spiteful tricks. If an itinerate wanderer happened to stumble on the grounds of the castle, they would lock him in the dungeon and then spend several days torturing him with the mediaeval torture devices at their disposal. They would feed him a pig’s-knuckle sandwich and give him a drink of water and revive him to the point of consciousness and then begin the torture all over again when his only crime was to be where he should not have been.

On a lovely spring day Theodosia blindfolded her lady’s maid and booted her off a cliff for the sole pleasure of seeing her dashed on the rocks below. Afterwards she told her papa the lady’s maid had run off with the baker and every time she said it her sister Regina screamed with laughter. (Afterward the phrase “run off with the baker” became code for “booted off the cliff.”) When a crow deposited a finger bone on the windowsill, Theodosia claimed it belonged to the lady’s maid and believed it was a sign of great things to come, particularly a great love.

Both Theodosia and Regina had been disappointed in love many times. In the game of romance, they didn’t seem to be able to get a decent hand. Men generally fled from them in fright. And then there were the misguided men who were only interested in them for their money. These they dealt with in their own special way, that is, to play with them the way a cat would play with a mouse. They had spells at their disposal and might, depending on the whim of the moment, turn a man into a statue, an ugly woman or a permanent carrier of the plague. Others they just killed outright in one way or another, as we have already seen with Theodosia and her Italian gigolo.

When one of the sisters became interested in a man, the other sister usually set her sights on the same man. When this happened, the two of them became deadly rivals. They would fight each other to the death for the sake of the man they believed they loved; exhaust themselves with fighting until the man in question would escape (if they hadn’t thought to lock him up in the dungeon), and when they came to a cessation in the warfare and looked around them, they’d forget about him and why they loved him in the first place.

One summer Herr Fennerman went away and was gone for months. He was gone so long, in fact, that Theodosia and Regina began to think he had been killed by one of his rivals and might never come back. Then, in the midst of a blinding mountain snowstorm, he pulled up in what appeared to be an absolutely new touring car.

Theodosia and Regina were watching from an upstairs window as Herr Fennerman stepped out of the stunning car and went around to the other side and opened the door for another person, who turned out to be a regal lady. Laughing, Herr Fennerman and the regal lady entered the castle, and Theodosia and Regina turned to each other in bafflement.

Herr Fennerman was showing the regal lady around the castle when Theodosia and Regina went timidly down the stairs.

“Who is this?” Theodosia asked, forcing Herr Fennerman to turn and look at her.

“Ah, my darling girls!” he said, kissing both on the cheek. “I want to you to come and meet someone very special!”

The regal lady he introduced as Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna.

“Enchanté,” she said, lifting the veil of her plumed hat.

“Enchanté,” Regina said with a simper, bending a knee to give a small curtsey.

“How long are you planning on staying with us?” Theodosia asked with a smile that was more a grimace.

At this question, Herr Fennerman and the regal lady looked at each other and laughed.

“This is going to be her home from now on,” Herr Fennerman said. “We were married in Switzerland five days ago. She is to be your new mama.”

“I hope we shall all be great friends,” the regal lady said as if holding court.

“You might call her mama if you wish,” Herr Fennerman said.

“Or just call me Maria,” the regal lady said. “We don’t need to choke ourselves with formality here. Hah!”

With the introductions out of the way, Maria went upstairs to freshen up and rest for a while before dinner, while Theodosia and Regina descended on Herr Fennerman.

“What’s the idea of bringing her here?” Theodosia asked.

Herr Fennerman smiled his wry smile as he placed a cigarette in a holder and lit it. “I didn’t think it necessary to ask your permission,” he said.

“I don’t like her!” Theodosia said.

“Nonsense!” Herr Fennerman said. “You don’t even know her.”

“Oh, dear!” Regina whimpered. “Mon Dieu!”

“You’ve got a lot of nerve marrying her without consulting us first,” Theodosia said.

“I don’t have to consult with you about anything,” Herr Fennerman said. “You are to me as nothing.”

“Well, that’s a fine thing to say, I must say!”

“And I want to warn both of you. If you think you’re going to indulge in any of your nasty tricks to try to get rid of her, I will dispense with you so fast you won’t even see it coming. And please believe me when I tell you I can do it with one wave of my little finger.”

“Oh, you are despicable!”

“Why, thank you, my dear!”

The dinner gong was rung and the four of them seated themselves around the large table in the dining room. Herr Fennerman and Maria laughed and made eyes at each other, as they partook of the pigs’ brains smothered in blood sauce and dinosaur eggs, a rare and enormously expensive delicacy. Regina was feeling vulnerable and so covered her face with her black veil and lifted little bits of food up underneath the veil and fed them into her mouth. Theodosia glared at Herr Fennerman and stabbed with a knife and fork at her food as though she were murdering it.

“I wish you girls could have seen our bridal suite at the hotel in Switzerland,” Herr Fennerman said. “It was quite the loveliest of love nests. There were little cupids everywhere. The bed was heart-shaped with a red canopy over it.”

“It was so sweet!” Maria gushed. “A little slice of heaven!”

“Why didn’t you stay longer?” Theodosia asked archly.

“I told darling Maria about our glorious secret waiting back here at the castle and we couldn’t wait to get back.”

“You told her about the Fuehrer?” Theodosia asked, aghast.

“Why, yes, why wouldn’t I? She’s my wife now, my consort. Every possession I have in the world also belongs to her.”

“I thought it was to be our secret, always!”

“It is our secret!” Herr Fennerman said emphatically. “The only difference now is that the our includes Maria.”

“I was so excited to hear of your plans regarding the Fuehrer,” Maria said, “And I pray that they come to fruition!”

“Who do you pray to, Maria! King Satan? Isn’t he the one you would bow down to?”

“That’s enough, Theodosia!” Herr Fennerman said. “How do you dare to speak to your step-mama in that fashion on her first day home!”

“It’s all right, dearest,” Maria said. “I understand that she is feeling a little jealous now. A little threatened.”

“Oh, oh, oh, oh!” Regina said from underneath her veil.

“Let me ask you one question, Maria,” Theodosia said. “Why do you wear that ruff around your neck?”

“I have a painful scar that I try to keep hidden. You can forgive a woman her vanity, I’m sure.”

“I think it’s more than vanity,” Theodosia said. “I think at one time in your glorious past your head was severed from your body.”

“Theodosia, that’s quite enough!” Herr Fennerman. “I’m just on the point of banishing you from the castle!”

“Weren’t you at one time married to a man named Louie?” Theodosia asked.

“Why, yes!” Maria said. “How did you know? Dear Louie died in a rather grisly fashion.”

“Your husband was King Louie the Sixteenth of France, wasn’t he? And you were his infamous and despised Queen, the one they called Marie Antoinette?”

Herr Fennerman stood up and threw his napkin down on the table. He was just on the point of striking Theodosia in the face if his arm had been long enough to reach across the table.

“That will do!” Herr Fennerman shrieked. “One more word out of you and I shall call down all the fires of heaven upon your head!”

Maria took hold of his arm and pulled him back to a sitting position. “It’s all right, dearest!” she said. “Your little daughter has guessed my secret. There is no point in denying the truth now that the secret is out.”

“How did you know?” Herr Fennerman asked Theodosia, all his fire dissipated.

“I recognized her picture from the picture books.”

“It’s not something I want everybody to know,” Maria said, “so I do hope you will respect my right to keep the matter quite private.”

“Tell us how it happened,” Theodosia said with a satisfied smile.

“My husband, the king, had already been executed and his body thrown to the wolves. My children had been taken from me and I didn’t know whether they were alive or dead. I was kept prisoner in a filthy cell, awaiting my fate. Finally the day arrived when I was thrown into the back of a horse cart and taken, before tens of thousands of screaming Parisians, to a public square to be executed. I was so frightened I could hardly stand on my feet, but they made me get out of the cart I was riding in and mount the steps to the guillotine. I don’t remember anything after that until I was waking up, not knowing where I was.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” Regina whimpered from underneath her veil. “Quelle horreur!”

“There has to be more to it than that,” Theodosia said.

“As much as people hated me,” Maria continued, “there were those few loyal friends who wanted me to live to wreak vengeance on those who had wronged me and my family. Those dear souls collected my body and my head when nobody was looking and took me to the secluded mountain laboratory of a pair of doctors—mad scientists, really—who were known for their unlawful work in restoring the dead to life.”

“And the rest, as they say, is history,” Herr Fennerman said.

“When your dear papa told me of his secret, your secret, here at the castle, I saw it as my chance to vindicate myself, redeem my reputation, and restore myself to the queendom that was so cruelly taken from me.”

“What are you saying?” Theodosia asked.

Herr Fennerman giggled like a schoolboy and covered his mouth with his napkin.

“I don’t follow your line of reasoning,” Theodosia said.

Herr Fennerman reached over and took Maria’s hand in his own. “Maria is to be Queen of the Fourth Reich, the royal consort of the resurrected Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler. Think of the amazement around the world as, not only the Fuehrer is resurrected and returned to his rightful place of power, but at his side will be one of the most infamous women in history, the lovely Marie Antoinette, Queen of the French.”

“Except that now I’ll be Queen of the Germans,” Maria said.

“And eventually Queen of the Entire World if our plans for the Fuehrer come about the way we expect them to!” Herr Fennerman said.

“I can hardly believe what I’m hearing!” Theodosia said.

“Maybe you need a hearing aid,” Herr Fennerman said.

“Do you think I’m going to stand by and do nothing while you make this interloper, this usurper, this whore, the Fuehrer’s Queen?”

“What are you raving about now?” Herr Fennerman asked.

“I thought we agreed that I would be first in line to be the Fuehrer’s Queen and that Regina would be second.”

“Qui!” Regina said. “Je devais être le deuxième!”

“You aren’t a Queen!” Maria said. “I am a true Queen! You are a nothing! You are half-ghoul and half-witch, which makes you half-nothing!”

“Now, now!” Herr Fennerman. “We can’t accomplish anything as long as we are each other’s throats. We must all take a deep breath and calm ourselves and try to be friends.”

“He’s right!” Maria said. “We will not engage in petty quarrels. We are as nothing to the destiny that awaits us!”

“Hear, hear!” Herr Fennerman said. “Long live the Fuehrer!”

“He lies in a peaceful slumber within these very walls,” Maria said. “All we have to do is return him to life and he will rise up and become Emperor of all the World!”

“Comme c’est excitant!” Regina said.

“Have you decided on a date yet to bring the old boy back to life?” Theodosia asked.

“The glorious day will be October thirty-first, All Hallow’s Eve. It will come as the finale to our annual Ghouls’ Ball.”

“We thought that most appropriate!” Maria said. “It will be the date that will forever be remembered and celebrated!”

Theodosia could stand no more. She picked up a sharp knife used for cutting meat and hurled it at Maria’s head. When the knife missed and clattered harmlessly to the floor, Theodosia catapulted her body across the table and grabbed Maria by the throat with both hands.

“What in the world do you think you’re doing?” Herr Fennerman shouted.

“I will kill her!” Theodosia said.

Theodosia wasn’t able to get a good hold on Maria’s throat. She fell to the floor as one being struck out of the air by an invisible enemy. Maria had done it with only a small movement of her index finger.

“I still remember a little trick or two!” she said with a laugh to show she wasn’t hurt.

“Oh, my dear, my dear!” Herr Fennerman said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that you should be treated in this way on your first day home.”

“Don’t be sorry for me,” Maria said. “Be sorry for this daughter of yours, the one who cannot control herself and who must act out her jealousy and frustration in the ugliest of ways.”

Theodosia stood up from the floor, as though coming out of a daze. When she saw everyone looking at her, she sprang again for Maria, talon-like fingers extended like the claws of a vengeful bird.

Maria stood back, raised both arms over her head, made a motion with her arms and turned Theodosia into a blackbird.

“Mon Dieu!” Regina said. “Qu’avez-vous fait?”

Theodosia hopped around among the dishes on the table and looked in amazement at the others.

“How appropriate!” Maria said. “The half-witch is now all crow!

“No less than she deserves!” Herr Fennerman said.

“I’m not sure if I remember how to change her back, though.”

“Not to worry. Let her remain a crow for a while and see how she likes it. Maybe she will learn a lesson in humility.”

“What do we do with her in the meantime?” Maria asked. “We can’t just let her fly around from room to room. She’ll need to be fed.”

“Quite right,” Herr Fennerman said. “We’ll let Regina take care of her until we change her back or until she dies of a crow disease.”

“I don’t want to take care of her!” Regina said, managing a simple declarative sentence in English for once.

“You can make yourself useful for a change. In the cellar is a large birdcage. Go down there and get it and bring it upstairs and keep her in that for the time being.”

“I can’t go to the cellar by myself,” Regina whimpered. “J’ai peur!”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Herr Fennerman raged. “Be a grownup person for once and take care of your sister!”

“I don’t want to, and you can’t make me!”

“Do you want me to turn you into a toad or something even worse? How about a spider? You know that crows eat spiders, don’t you?”

“She would do it for you, darling,” Maria said with a sympathetic smile.

“And feed her some corn or dead bugs or whatever crows eat,” Herr Fennerman said. “We can’t just let her starve inside that cage. She might be useful later.”

“I have nothing to feed a bird!” Regina whimpered. “Que devrais-je faire?”

“You’ll think of something, I’m sure,” Herr Fennerman said.

“I think she would enjoy some dead flesh,” Maria said as she sat back down at the table and resumed her interrupted dinner.

The evening of the Ghouls’ Ball on the last day of October arrived with much fanfare and anticipation. Herr Fennerman invited over a hundred of his best friends and confidantes, some of the most ghoulish fiends the world has ever known.

As official hostess, the lovely Marie Antoinette made everyone feel welcome. Herr Fennerman, as host, never left her side. Regina lurked somewhere in the shadows, afraid for anyone to see her. Her constant companion now was a large birdcage with a lonely black bird inside. She guarded the birdcage with her life.

Champagne flowed freely. The guests danced, ate and drank. Talking and laughter were loud and raucous, the air abuzz with excitement. The Fuehrer’s name was on everyone’s lips. It was no less than a miracle, after so many  believed him lost to them forever, that he would soon be in the room with them again, that the world would once again belong to him and his devoted followers who always knew in their hearts that National Socialism was not dead but would flourish on every continent, in every country, and every corner of the globe. The mistakes of the past would not be repeated. It was the time of new beginnings.

The dancing ended. The musicians finished playing and put away their instruments. Food and drink were cleared away. Everyone held their breath with anticipation.

At the end of a ballroom was a stage with a black curtain, illuminated by dim lights rising up from the floor. Everybody in the room knew what was going on behind that curtain. The actual Fuehrer himself was being readied to step forth and re-assume the mantle of leadership that had been torn asunder by the enemy.

Everyone stood looking at the curtain. Talking and laughter had subsided. People were attentive to the point of reverence.

The curtain opened. A small man stepped forward, but the stage was very dark, so no one knew yet if it was really the Fuehrer or some other man. He came to the middle of the stage and stopped, an attendant on either side of him. A spotlight came on above his head, illuminating him for all to see.

Everybody in the room gasped. It was a revelation to once again look upon the mustachioed face of the Fuehrer. There were tears of joy. Many held their breath with delight and astonishment.

The Fuehrer looked out over the heads of the assembled, as though seeing something that nobody else could see. He raised his right hand in the Nazi salute and let it fall. When he opened his mouth to speak, everybody was ready for a rousing, roaring speech, given as only he could give it.

But these were the disappointing words that came out of his mouth: “Where is my Bondi?”

There was a slight murmur. People looked around to see if anybody else had understood the words and knew what they meant.

When nobody answered his question, the Fuehrer took a couple of hesitant steps forward, cast his blank eyes left and right and then up and down, and when he didn’t see what he was looking for he turned and exited stage right.

After a few moments of stunned silence, the ghouls and their ladies, the musicians, the servants and waiters, Herr Fennerman, Marie Antoinette, and everybody else in the place, erupted into the most enthusiastic applause and cheers of adulation that might have brought down the house if it hadn’t been so firmly in place.

Lurking in the shadows where she couldn’t be seen—that is, performing her trick of being in the room while at the same time being not in the room—was Regina. She let the veil fall from her face and looked down at the blackbird in the cage and stuck the tip of her finger in between the bars and stroked the bird’s  head. The bird looked at her knowingly and spit out a bloody gob of the Fuehrer’s brain matter that had been lodged in its throat.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

You May Know Him as a Ghoul
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

Blaise DeBeulah awoke to the rising of the sun and switched on the radio beside his bed. Dark Eyes by the Vincent Lopez Orchestra was playing. The beautiful melody brought a smile to his face, making him forget for the moment that had to get out of bed, get dressed, and face another distasteful day. He was just drifting off to a warm, intoxicating dreamland awash in saxophones and violins, when Bertha DeBeulah came bursting into the room.

“Get out of that bed, you lazy slug!” she commanded. “Do you think the world owes you a life of comfort and ease?”

“No, mother. The world doesn’t owe me anything. I’m getting up now.”

“Your brothers and sisters are hungry! They want fresh meat! Now!”

“I’m doing the best I can, mother. I’m not feeling very well.”

“Well, isn’t that just too bad?

“I was out last night until dawn. Fresh meat isn’t so easy to come by anymore.”

“I don’t want to hear any of your feeble excuses! And when I say fresh meat, I mean fresh! The longer a body has been buried, the worse it tastes! After a body has been dead three or four days, the embalming fluid ruins the taste! The ones you’ve been dragging home have been anything but fresh!”

“I know mother. I’m doing the best I can. I hang around the cemetery all day long, waiting for a funeral, but they have been few and far between.”

“I told you I don’t want to hear any lame excuses! If there haven’t been any funerals, you have to do the killing yourself! How about some nice, juicy, muscular gravediggers?”

“Would those be for you to eat, or for the brothers and sisters, mother?”

“Don’t you get fresh with me! I’ll tell your papa, Benedictus DeBeulah, you smarted out to me and he’ll knock your block off!”

“Yes, I know, mother. I know. He has knocked my block off so many times that my head no longer sits straight on my shoulders.”

“Well, it serves you right! And if you don’t bring home some fresh meat—and I mean fresh—I’ll let the brothers and sisters eat you!”

“I’m not exactly fresh, mother. I’m two hundred and thirty-seven years old.”

“You don’t have to tell me how old you are, Mr. Smarty Britches! I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it any time I choose!”

“Yes, mother, I know. You’d be doing me a blessing.”

“What was that?”

“I said I’ll be on my way as soon as I find my shoes.”

Though he was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, Blaise DeBeulah could pass for nineteen whenever he wanted to. He wrapped himself in a long trench coat and a scarf that, thanks to the icy wind, allowed him to cover the lower part of his face. He topped off the invisible man look with a broad-brimmed hat worn low over the eyes. Dressed in this way, he could pass for anybody, anywhere, without attracting any particular kind of attention.

To get to the cemetery, he had to pass through downtown. Since it was a college town, there were always lots of interesting people around his own age (not two hundred and thirty-seven, but nineteen), and he enjoyed seeing them and walking among them. He might even pass for one of them: a tall, well-dressed, rather stately young man, dignified and poised, aloof and intriguing.

He liked to linger outside a malt shop where people his age gathered. It had a red-and-white awning and exuded attractive smells such as cinnamon, chocolate and peppermint. The thing that attracted him most, though, was the music that was piped out to the sidewalk: the romantic dance bands and orchestras, the velvet-voiced crooners, the bouncy girl singers, the snappy dance numbers. It was like nothing he had heard before in his two hundred and thirty-seven years of a ghoul’s life.

He longed to go inside the malt shop, to sit at the counter and order a drink, maybe strike up a conversation with someone and end up slow-dancing on the dance floor with everyone watching. It was not going to happen, though. He had a ghoul’s hands and a ghoul’s legs. When people saw his face, they would know it was a ghoul’s face and they would run screaming from the place in terror. He would be more embarrassed than he could possibly imagine. Somebody would call the police and they would come and take him away and lock him up. He couldn’t let that happen.

With a lump of regret in his throat, he passed on to the cemetery, the music sounding in his head long after he could still hear it.

One small, poor-looking funeral was in progress on a hillside. A dozen or so black-garbed mourners gathered around an open grave. A priest said a prayer and when he was finished the mourners dispersed and a man standing by with a shovel began filling in the grave.

Blaise moved on. He wasn’t going to dig in the dirt with his hands just to get a freshly buried body. It would taste like embalming fluid, anyway, he was sure, and the brothers and sisters would gag. They could always tell a body that had been embalmed from one that hadn’t. He’d have to look elsewhere.

He knew that if he didn’t find a really fresh corpse he’d have to kill a man or a woman, or maybe a child, on his own. He hated the killing; he didn’t even like killing animals. He’d almost rather die himself.

He came to another funeral, a much larger one this time. A prominent man, a person of some fame, had died. There were maybe two hundred mourners on their feet around a dark-wood casket that gleamed in the sun. Some of the mourners cried and some smiled and laughed as if they were at a cocktail party. A holy man gestured over the casket with his arms and when the service was finished the people let out a gasp of relief like children released from school. They moved away quickly, some of them lighting cigarettes, toward cars dispersed along a scenic hillside.

Blaise stood behind a tree and watched. After a few minutes, all the mourners were gone and the casket was left unattended in the sun. The gravediggers hadn’t appeared yet to finish their job. The funeral director was nowhere to be seen; he was off someplace, probably having a cigarette or a nip from a bottle.

Without thinking what he was doing, Blaise approached the casket and lifted the lid. The deceased was an old man with a mottled face and a bald head. He appeared to have been ninety years old or older.

He scooped the old man up in his arms and, balancing the body against his right shoulder, managed to reclose the lid with his left hand. If all went well, the gravediggers would come and bury the empty casket, never suspecting that the body inside had been purloined.

He couldn’t exactly walk back through the streets of the town carrying a dead body, so he took it to the designated hiding place, a scooped-out trench along the north wall, hidden behind some bushes. He covered the body with dead leaves as an extra precaution and when he was finished he left the cemetery.

From a payphone downtown he called Daedalus, Bertha DeBeulah’s factotum, with his usual message in code: Some lovely peaches are to be had at the north wall. Daedalus would go and collect the body as soon as it was safe, take it back to the house and drop it down the meat chute in the kitchen wall, to the brothers and sisters who dwelt below.

Blaise walked the rest of the way home, then, relieved that he had delivered a body without having to kill it on his own and relieved, also, that he wouldn’t have another confrontation with Bertha DeBeulah at least for a day or two. Maybe something cataclysmic would happen in the meantime, such as a meteor colliding with earth.

He spent the rest of the day locked in his room, catching up on his sleep and dreaming about what his life might have been like if he had been born into a real family instead of a family of ghouls. He might have been one of those sleek college boys popping up soda pop rickeys to his heart’s delight. He might have driven a car and carried books under his arm.

About nine o’clock that night, he was listening to music on the radio when he heard a terrible commotion downstairs. He went to the top of the banister and looked down. Bertha DeBeulah and Benedictus DeBeulah were fighting, yelling at each other, throwing objects across the room. It was nothing new. He went back to his room and shut the door.

The fighting was not to be ignored, though. Bertha DeBeulah and Benedictus DeBeulah were engaged in all-out war, causing the old house to quake on its foundations. Blaise went downstairs, thinking to separate them and get them to stop fighting, but he could see it was no use. They were mad with rage. When he tried to get between them to pull them apart, Benedictus DeBeulah pushed him so hard against the wall that he went through to the next room.

“Stop it!” Blaise cried. “If you don’t stop it, I’m going to call the people from the insane asylum to come and get you and lock you up, where you belong! Then where would the brothers and sisters be?”

“I’m sick and tired of her!” Benedictus DeBeulah roared. “I’m going to kill the evil old bitch once and for all! Satan will be happy when she finally arrives in hell!”

“Kill me?” Bertha DeBeulah screeched. “I don’t think so! Not if I kill you first!”

Blaise could see they meant to do each other seriously bodily harm. He was going to run to the neighbors for help, but then he remembered they lived in a swamp and there weren’t any neighbors for miles.

Bertha DeBeulah and Benedictus DeBeulah had each other around the neck. There is nothing on earth like two old ghouls fighting to the death. They may destroy the earth, but one of them will live and the other one die.

Benedictus DeBeulah’s strength proved superior in the end, however. He pried Bertha DeBeulah’s fingers from around his neck and reared back and knocked her block off with so much force that her head flew off her shoulders and hit the wall like a bloody cabbage.

Bertha DeBeulah wasn’t finished yet, though. Her headless body rose up from the floor and produced from the air a ball of flame, a gift from her beloved Satan. She directed the ball squarely at the midsection of Benedictus DeBeulah and he became the ball of flame. He ran through the house, arms flailing, but he wasn’t able to extinguish the flames that engulfed him. He grabbed the dining room curtains and pulled them down on top of him. The curtains helped to extinguish the flames and keep the rest of the house from catching on fire, but they were of no use to Benedictus DeBeulah. He was not only clearly dead, but really most sincerely dead.

When it was all over, Blaise gathered up the charred remains of Benedictus DeBeulah and the headless remains of Bertha DeBeulah and dragged them into the kitchen and threw them down the meat chute. The brothers and sisters wouldn’t know that they were eating their own mother and father, but if they did know they wouldn’t care. Fresh meat is fresh meat.

After Blaise rested and had a cooling drink of water and some onions and herbs (he was trying to take up a vegetarian diet), he became fully aware of his good fortune. For the first time in his life, he was free of family exigencies, free to do as he pleased rather than as he was told.

He would buy a phonograph and all the latest recordings. He would buy a car and learn to drive and find the best tailor in town and have some stylish suits made to order. He would get to know some of those young college students and invite them to parties. He would tell them of his experiences in some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. They would love him. They would find him fascinating.

Just as he was contemplating his life to be, he heard the brothers and sisters howling below-stairs like the wild animals they were. They were well-fed, so what was wrong with them now? He would just ignore them and tomorrow, or maybe the next day, he would have a special treat for them.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

 

It’s Not My Fault She Wasn’t Dead
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

It was eleven o’clock Saturday night. I had spent a strenuous day doing next to nothing, laying around my apartment reading Dostoevsky, and was ready to go to sleep, when the telephone rang. I was going to let it ring, but I figured it had to be Mr. Ludwig. Nobody else would call at that hour.

 “Got a little job for you,” the voice on the telephone said.

“Mr. Ludwig!” I said. “How happy I am to hear from you!”

 “You alone?”

 “Yes, I am. I was about to go to bed, though.”

“I can always get somebody else if you’re indisposed.”

“Just kidding! I would never pass up the chance to do you a service!”

“A doctor had somebody die in his office. A woman. He wants her removed before morning.”

“What did he do to her?”

“Never mind. The doctor has a problem and is paying us plenty to remove it for him.”

“I’ll wear my Boris Karloff disguise.”

“I don’t care what you wear. Just get the job done.”

He gave me the address and I wrote it down on the inside of a match book.

“There’s a dead-end alley that runs behind the doctor’s building,” he said. “Pull in there. The doctor will be waiting for you.”

“Sounds like a cakewalk.”

“Put the deceased in your car and bring her to me.”

“I won’t exactly be taking her out for a night on the town.”

“And make sure nobody sees you!”

I found the address easily enough. As expected, the doctor was waiting. Dressed all in white, he looked like a ghost.

“You the man Ludwig sent?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Turn off those headlights!”

“No need to be so jittery,” I said.

“Did anybody see you?”

“There’s nobody around this time of night.”

“Nobody but the police,” he said.

He pulled the door back and pointed down. He had the woman in a body bag right inside the door.

“You sure she’s dead?” I asked.

“I strangled her.”

“Charming.”

She was so light I thought she must only be a child. I was glad I didn’t have to see her face. I put her in the trunk and turned to bid the doctor farewell.

“You have a wonderful evening, now,” I said.

“You were never here!” he said, slamming the door.

Mr. Ludwig lived twelve miles outside of town in a hundred-year-old house. He probably built it himself, he was so old. He was a doctor but I didn’t know what kind. I didn’t ask questions.

The road to Mr. Ludwig’s house was hilly, curvy, and dark with that special kind of lonely darkness that exists only in the country. I hardly ever met any other cars out there and if I did I figured they were driven by lost souls who couldn’t find their way.

I made sure I didn’t exceed the speed limit—I couldn’t afford to be stopped with a corpse in my trunk—and I got to Mr. Ludwig’s place a little before one o’clock. The big iron gate opened for me as if by magic and I drove through, up to the big house and around to the back.

I stopped the car and got out. I stood there beside the car, looking up at the silent hulk of the house and listening to the crickets. In a couple of minutes Mr. Ludwig came out the door with one of his goons, a muscle boy named Kurt.

“Any problems?” Mr. Ludwig asked.

“No,” I said.

“Nobody saw you turn in here?”

“Only a couple of owls.”

“Well, bring her on inside then.”

I opened the trunk and Kurt lifted the bundle like a sack of feathers and carried it inside. Mr. Ludwig motioned for me to follow him so we could sit down in his study and complete the transaction and, I hoped, call it a night.

 “Would you like a drink?” he asked as I sat down on his expensive leather sofa.

“No, thanks,” I said. “It’s late and I just want my money.”

“Stay and have a drink with me,” he said. “I hardly ever have a chance for intelligent conversation.”

“What makes you think you’ll get it from me?”

“I know you. How long have you been working for me now?”

“About a year, I guess.”

“Just have one little drink to be friendly,” he said.

“All right. Just one.”

He poured some scotch, which I hated, into a glass and handed it to me. He was a tall man, slightly stooped in the shoulders, wearing an expensive-looking robe of some soft material like cashmere. It made him look like an enormous brown bear.

“How has the world been treating you?” he asked.

I sighed, in no mood for small talk. “I can’t complain,” I said.

“You like working for me, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“You like working at night.”

“I guess so.”

“Everything is more interesting at night, don’t you agree?”

I would have agreed to anything that would bring the conversation to an end. “Yes, sir,” I said.

“There are infinite possibilities lurking in the dark.”

“If you say so.”

“Of course, the kind of work we do has to be done at night.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I thought I’d give you a little extra this time for your trouble, since it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Say six-fifty instead of the usual five hundred.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I appreciate that.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Dr. Broyles. He’ll be picking up the tab.”

“I don’t want to know his name.”

“You met him when you picked up the girl?”

“Yeah,” I said. “He was a very charming fellow.”

“Did he say she bled to death, or what?”

“He said he strangled her.”

Mr. Ludwig laughed so that his jowls quivered like jelly. “That’s a good one!” he said. “An odd choice of words but, then, he’s an odd character.”

“He a friend of yours?” I asked.

“I’ve known him all of thirty years.”

I looked over at the clock and cleared my throat. I was tired and had a headache. “Well, Mr. Ludwig,” I said. “If you don’t mind, sir, I’d like to get my money and go home now.”

Kurt came into the room and Mr. Ludwig and I both turned and looked at him.

“What is it now?” Mr. Ludwig asked.

“I think you need to see this,” Kurt said.

“What is it?”

“It’s the girl in the bag.”

Mr. Ludwig left with Kurt and in a couple of minutes he came back into the room. His jovial manner had vanished. The corners of his mouth turned down as if his face was made of dough.

“Anything the matter?” I asked.

“She’s not dead,” Mr. Ludwig said.

“What?”

“I said she isn’t dead.”

“What are you going to do now?” I asked.

“You’ll have to kill her.”

“What? I’ll have to kill her?”

“Do you want her identifying you to the police?”

“She hasn’t seen me.”

He took a gun out of his desk and pushed it toward me.

“I’m not going to kill her,” I said. “Get Kurt to do it. I think he’d enjoy killing a woman.”

“Kurt’s no killer.”

“Neither am I.”

“I thought you were courageous.”

“Up to a point I am, but nobody said anything about killing a dame.”

“You were hired to bring a dead body to me,” he said. “You brought me a live one. It’s not quite the same thing, is it? Your job isn’t finished until you give me what I’m paying you for.”

“Why should I do it? You’re a doctor. Can’t you just chloroform her or something?”

He smiled as if we were talking about pulling a kite out of a tree. “All you have to do is take the gun, point it at her head and pull the trigger. It’s all so simple.”

“I’ve never killed anybody before!” I said, and I hoped the logic of that statement would carry me through.

“Once you’ve done it, you’ll see how easy it is.”

“How about if I take her back to town and drop her off at the nearest hospital? An anonymous drop-off. No questions asked and none answered. She hasn’t seen you or Kurt. She hasn’t seen me. She hasn’t seen any of us. She doesn’t know where she is. She was in my trunk inside a bag all the way out here.”

“When they see the state she’s in, they’ll call the police and the first thing she’ll do is put the finger on Dr. Broyles. I must do what I can to protect my old friend.”

“Maybe I can talk to her and make her promise not to say a word to anybody.”

“My goodness, you are naïve, aren’t you?” he laughed.

“Killing is not in my line,” I said. “I’ll bet you have half a dozen others on your payroll who specialize in that sort of thing.”

“None of them are here, though. You are.”

He stood up, walked around the desk and placed the gun in my hand.

“I don’t want to shoot her,” I said. “Maybe I’ll hold a pillow over face until she stops breathing.”

He took a three-foot length of rope out of his desk and tossed it to me. “Use whatever method you prefer. Just do it.”

“And what will you do with her after I kill her?” I asked.

“You don’t have to worry about that. I know how to make dead bodies disappear.”

“Sounds delightful.”

“You’re a doer, not a thinker. Just do it and don’t think so much about it.”

“Yeah, I’m a doer,” I said.

He held the door for me to go into the room where the girl was who was supposed to be dead but wasn’t and closed the door behind me. There was just enough light in the room for me to see the light switch. I couldn’t kill anybody that I couldn’t see, so I turned on the light.

The empty body bag was on the table but the girl was gone.

I opened the door again and said to Mr. Ludwig, sitting at his desk, “What’s the gag? There’s nobody here.”

Mr. Ludwig came rushing into the room and when he saw the girl wasn’t there he yelled for Kurt, who immediately appeared from another part of the house.

“She’s gone, you idiot!” Mr. Ludwig said. “Why didn’t you watch her?”

“She was here just a minute ago!” Kurt said.

“Find her!”

The two of them seemed to forget about me while they looked behind the curtains, in the closet, in the bathroom—any place a person might hide.

“Maybe she went upstairs,” I said, pointing up the dark staircase with the gun.

“Go check and see if she’s upstairs!” Mr. Ludwig said to Kurt.

Mr. Ludwig was red in the face. I thought he might pop a blood vessel right before my eyes.

While Mr. Ludwig and Kurt were searching frantically for the girl, upstairs and down, I thought of the simple expedient of checking the back door.

The door was partly open and a rug in front of the door was kicked up, so I figured the girl had run out into the night. There was no place for her to run to out there, but at least she could get away.

I sat down on the sofa and took a deep breath, listening to the sounds of Mr. Ludwig and Kurt scrambling around upstairs. When Mr. Ludwig came down again, I smiled.

“She flew the coop!” I said.

“She what?”

“She ran out the back door.”

“Don’t just sit there, you idiot! Go find her!”

“It’s not my job to find her,” I said, “and I’d be careful who you’re calling an idiot, if I were you.”

He went straight to the phone and called “some people” to come out from town and comb the woods and the grounds surrounding the house to try to find her.

When he hung up the phone, he rubbed his forehead as if he was kneading bread. “They’ll be here as quick as they can,” he said, “but in the meantime, I want you and Kurt to go outside and see if you can find her.”

I was on the point of refusing when he handed me a flashlight and another one to Kurt and hustled us out of the house.

“You’d better not let her get away again!” he said threateningly as he slammed the door.

Kurt and I stood there in the dark at the back of the house, listening to the crickets. He was smoking a cigarette and didn’t seem in any hurry.

“He’s crazy, you know,” he said.

“I suspected it,” I said. “Why do you work for him?”

“He likes to have a well-built young man around.”

“Are you saying Mr. Ludwig is queer?”

He shrugged. “Call it whatever you want.”

“What do you get out of it?”

“He pays me plenty.”

I looked up at the moonless sky. “It’s too dark tonight to see anything.”

“Yeah, I know, but we can go through the motions, can’t we?”

“You look on that side of the house and I’ll look on this side,” I said.

There were twelve acres surrounding the house. The carefully tended lawn ended where the woods began. I figured the girl, if she had any sense at all, would hide herself in the woods until morning and then try to find somebody to help her.

I spent an hour or more going over the lawn with the flashlight. I saw a possum and a couple raccoons but that’s all. I was about to go back inside and tell Mr. Ludwig it was hopeless, when I heard a snap over to my left beyond the boundary of the lawn.

I shone my light where the sound came from. All I saw were trees and brush, but then a person materialized out of the dark.

“Don’t shoot me!” a female voice said.

“Who’s there?” I said.

She stood up then out of the brush, her hands in the air. She wasn’t more than twenty years old. “Please don’t shoot me!” she said.

“I’m not going to shoot you!” I said.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“It’s the home of a mad scientist, twelve miles from town on a very lonely road.”

“How did I get here?”

“Never mind that now. If you value your life, you’d better get away from this place as quick as you can. There are people coming out to look for you and they mean business.”

“Can you help me?”

“No. I’m supposed to find you and take you to him.”

“Take me to who?”

“It wouldn’t help you if I told you his name.”

“I’m so scared!” she said, starting to cry. “I don’t remember anything that happened.”

“Do you remember a doctor? Being in his office?”

“Oh, yeah. Him.”

“He thought he strangled you. He thought you were dead.”

“Oh, yeah.” She touched her throat and winced.

“Parked behind the house is a black car,” I said. “That’s my car. After Kurt and I go back inside the house, go around to the side of the car away from the house and get in on the floor in the back seat. Close the door as quietly as you can. There’s an old army blanket on the floor in the back that you can use to cover up with. I’ll be going back to town as soon as I can get away from here and I’ll drop you off and then I’m finished with this whole thing.”

“Who’s Kurt?”

“You don’t want to know. If you want to go on living, just do as I say. And if they find you in my car, I had nothing to do with it.”

“Okay.”

I circled around the front and met up with Kurt on the other side of the house.

“Any luck?” I asked.

“No. I didn’t see anything.”

“Me either.”

“The boss is not going to like it,” he said.

“Maybe his people will find her.”

When we went back inside, Mr. Ludwig had settled himself down with a bottle of whiskey. He smiled when he saw us.

“Did you find her?” he asked.

“No,” Kurt said. “She’s nowhere around the house.”

“Did you look everywhere?”

“As well as we could in the dark.”

“She probably went out to the road and flagged down a car,” I said. “Somebody to give her a ride to town.”

“She’d better keep her big trap shut,” Mr. Ludwig said, “or she won’t live long.”

“If she has any sense at all, she’ll know that,” I said.

“With people like that, you can never be sure of anything.”

“People like what?” I asked.

“She’s a doper. A heroin addict. So is the doctor. He was giving her what she needed. Something went wrong, I imagine, and then he had to strangle her.”

“Maybe she refused to pay him,” Kurt said helpfully. “Drug dealers get awfully touchy about that.”

“Shut up, Kurt!” Mr. Ludwig said. “Go on and go to bed now!”

After Kurt was gone and I was left alone with Mr. Ludwig, I asked him again for the money he owed me.

He looked at me sadly and shook his head. “I don’t pay for sloppy work,” he said.

I couldn’t keep from laughing. “It’s not my fault she wasn’t dead. If there’s any blame to be allocated, I think it belongs to the doctor.”

“He won’t see it that way. When he finds out she wasn’t dead, he won’t pay me and I can’t pay you. That’s the way the world of business works.”

“I have no appreciation for the world of business,” I said.

“You can go now,” Mr. Ludwig said. “You’ll be hearing from me soon. Good night.”

“It’s almost four o’clock. It’s good morning now instead of good night.”

When I went out to get into my car to go home, Mr. Ludwig’s people were out in full force looking for the girl. I was sure some of them weren’t happy at being yanked out of bed in the middle of the night, but I knew they were being well paid for their efforts.

 The girl didn’t make a sound all the way back to town. I dropped her off at the hospital but wouldn’t let her get out of the car until I gave her some advice.

“You don’t know anything,” I said. “You don’t know how you got here. You don’t know where you’ve been. You’ve been with some bad people, that’s all. If you’re thinking of getting revenge on that doctor, he’ll kill you. If he doesn’t, somebody else will.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“I’m not fooling, now. This is serious business. Do not say a word about anything that happened if you want to go on living.”

“I got it.”

She got out of the car and began walking across the parking lot toward the emergency-room door. Before going inside, she turned and gave me a little wave.

The sun was just starting to come up when I got home, but for me the day was ending instead of beginning. I had a hot shower, closed the curtains and fell into bed. Before I went to sleep, though, I took the phone off the hook. I figured I deserved that, at least.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Everybody Else Went On Ahead
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

I had known Weston Bicket since we were both five years old, in kindergarten. If I had anything like a best friend, he was it. Some people didn’t like him because he was different from everybody else and he had a bad leg that made him limp and kept him from playing basketball and other stupid games we were made to play. I sometimes envied him because he wasn’t made to take P.E. (For those unfamiliar with the term, “P.E.” means “physical education.”) He had an extra study hall while the rest of us were being humiliated in front of the whole class by our lack of athletic ability.

Weston lived in a big house that had seen better days on the edge of town, behind the railroad depot. (The town wasn’t big enough for a “train station,” so we just had a tiny railroad depot that looked unused and haunted.) He had no brothers and sisters; his parents went off and left him on his own a lot. His father ran around with other women (according to the gossip that my own mother was all too willing to spread), and his mother was an unrepentant floozy who spent a lot of time drinking beer and smoking cigarettes in taverns and bowling alleys. (Weston’s parents’ philosophy of parenting seemed to be: “Let the child raise himself. That’s what we did and look at us!”)

Weston didn’t like to talk about his bum leg, but one Friday evening during summer vacation when we were alone at his house, I asked him how it came to be the way it was.

“I was a breached birth,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“I came out feet first.”

“Came out where?”

“You know. You saw the pictures in the biology book.”

“Oh, yeah!” I said. “Disgusting!”

“Yes, it’s disgusting. The whole thing is disgusting.”

“So what happened with your leg?”

“I was stuck in there. The doctor pulled too hard on my leg and broke it and dislocated it.”

“Didn’t that hurt?”

“They thought I might never walk, so I guess I’m lucky to be walking at all.”

“You’re lucky in other ways, too. You don’t have to take P.E.”

“Yes, I am blessed in that regard.”

About nine o’clock that night a big thunderstorm blew up out of the southwest, which was where most scary storms came from. Weston’s parents were gone for the weekend and he didn’t know when they’d be back. He asked me if I’d spend the night. I never knew before that he was scared of thunder and lightning.  I thought it would be fun to spend the night in his upstairs bedroom with just the two of us, with plenty of cookies and potato chips, but when I called my mother and asked for permission to spend the night, she told me to shag my cowboy ass home without further delay, storm or no storm. She always knew how to spoil a good time; she did it effortlessly.

We were thirteen and in the eighth grade. While most of us were growing taller and “filling out,” Weston remained tiny. The eighth grade wasn’t kind to Weston. One day he fell on the stairs going from one class to another and broke his ankle. He had to stay at home for two weeks “recuperating,” and when he came back to school he had a heavy cast on his leg and a pair of crutches. “I was the class lame-o before!” he said proudly. “Now I’m the lame-o for the whole school!”

Not long after his cast was removed, Weston was caught smoking a cigarette in the boys’ restroom with two other boys and all three of them were suspended for three days. Getting suspended from school was about the worst thing that could happen to any of us. To be readmitted, he had to have his mother bring him for a closed-door meeting with the principal in his office. His mother wasn’t exactly the comforting or motherly type. She was a large woman with a deep voice, always smoking a cigarette, always scowling. She scared me just by looking at me without saying anything.

And that wasn’t all. When we got our once-in-a-lifetime smallpox vaccinations, Weston had a “bad reaction.” His arm swelled up to twice its normal size and he became sick and had to see a doctor. The doctor said it was a “very rare” and “most unusual” side-effect of the smallpox vaccine that occurred in about one in a million people. “Did you ever see anybody so damn lucky?” Weston exclaimed. Everybody wanted Weston to roll up his sleeve and show them his arm, which looked like something out of a horror movie. I knew he was pleased by the attention.

Because he was so small, Weston was often the target of bullies. One Saturday afternoon when the two of us were on our way downtown, we met the ugly, sadistic goon, Freddy Sharples, on East Main.

“Well, look who’s here!” Freddy sneered, showing his rotting teeth. “I thought I smelled turds!”

Our plan was just to ignore Freddy; we were going to go around him, but he blocked our way.

“Just where do you two little bitches think you’re going?” Freddy said.

“None of your business!” Weston said.

“I’ll bet you’re going to the store to buy some emergency feminine napkins, aren’t you?”

“That’s stupid,” Weston said, “because we know you already bought them all!”

“Oh, funny!” Freddy said. “You ought to be on TV!”

“We just met a big gorilla up the street. She was looking for you. I think she was your mother.”

“You know what happens to little bitches with smart mouths? They get their teeth knocked out!”

“I dare you to knock my teeth out!” Weston said. “I’ll call the police and they’ll come and pick you up and drop you off at the monkey house at the zoo with the rest of your family, where you belong!”

“If you don’t shut your mouth, you little creep, and show some respect, I’ll shut it for you!”

“I’d rather be a creep than a psycho, Freddy! That’s what you are! You might as well face it. Nobody likes you! People are afraid of you!”

Freddy jumped at Weston then and got him in a headlock. Weston struggled but couldn’t get loose.

“Let me go!” Weston said. “You’re hurting me!”

“That’s the point, shit-face!” Freddy said.

“Leave him alone, Freddy!” I said.

“Oh, you want some too, mama’s boy?”

He let go of Weston and came toward me and raised his dirt-encrusted knuckles in my face as if to hit me. I didn’t flinch.

“We’re not bothering you!” I said. “Just let us pass.”

“And miss all the fun?”No fun here,” I said.

“No?” Freddy asked. “I always think it’s fun beating the shit out of little kids.”

“If you want to beat the shit out of somebody, why don’t you beat the shit out of somebody your own size?”

“Well, that’s just no fun at all!”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Freddy,” Weston said. “Just how many years did you spend in third grade?”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Freddy said. “What’s it like to be a cripple?”

“I’m not a cripple,” Weston said.

“You look like a cripple! You walk like a cripple! Yes, I’d definitely say you’re a cripple!”

“You’re a no-good, smelly, cootie-infested piece of retarded shit!” Weston shrieked. “Your whole family is shit! You live in a junkyard! You have so many brothers and sisters you don’t know how many there are! Your brother went to prison for knocking an old lady in the head and nearly killing her! Your sister had a baby when she was fourteen!”

“You leave my family out of it!” Freddy said.

He hit Weston on the side of the head with his fist. The blow knocked Weston all the way off the sidewalk into the street. I could see right away that his eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. I thought he was dead.

“Look what you did!” I yelled at Freddy.

“Serves him right for disrespecting my family!”

Freddy ran off up the street, like the coward he was. He was trying to laugh, but I could tell he was scared.

I couldn’t leave Weston lying there in the street. He really was knocked out. I had never seen anybody knocked out before. He wasn’t faking it, either. When they got him to the hospital, they found he had a brain concussion and a fractured jaw.

I went to visit him in his room at the hospital one day after school. I had never seen him look so bad. He wasn’t supposed to get out of bed. He couldn’t move around much because he was dizzy.

He wanted to hear what was going on at school. I didn’t have any good gossip to tell him except that we had the Constitution test in American history and Tallulah Midget, a seventh-grade girl, had hepatitis.

“Is it catching?” he asked.

“I think so, if you drink from the water fountain after her.”

“I’ll probably get it then.”

Finally the conversation came around to Freddy Sharples.

“Did you tell everybody how that son-of-a-bitch hit me in the head with his fist, just like Popeye?” Weston asked.

“I told them everything,” I said. “A policeman came by my house and wanted me to tell him what happened and then the next day at school the principal and the school nurse asked me a lot of questions. I just told them what I saw.”

“And that it was all Freddy’s fault?”

“Sure.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“They know that.”

“Are they going to put Freddy in jail for practically killing me?”

“There’s a rumor going around that he’s on his way to reform school.”

“Good! I want to be there when they come and take him away. I bet he’ll scream and cry like a little baby.”

“He’s headed for the pen. You can be sure of that. One day they’ll fry his ass in the electric chair.”

“I’d give a million dollars to see him burn!”

Weston was out of school for three weeks with his concussion. When he came back, he couldn’t remember anything. He couldn’t even remember what classes he was supposed to go to. He wanted to quit school but everybody told him he’d be a bum all his life, so his pride made him change his mind. He wouldn’t be able to quit, anyway, until he was sixteen. The law said so.

When the school year finally ended, Weston wasn’t passed on to the ninth grade. He was going to have to start over in the eighth grade again when the new school term started. He would start back at square one. It would be as if his bad year never happened.

I was little sad that Weston and I would no longer be in the same grade and have all our classes together. We would still see each other every day and could always eat lunch together, but it would never be the same. He’d find a new best friend and so would I. He’d have a whole bunch of younger children to choose from, whereas I would be with the same old bunch I had always known.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

The Errant Husband
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~  

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

Verna Donlen was forty-four but when she looked in the mirror she saw the face of a much younger, still-attractive woman. It’s true she was overweight and she had genetically thinning hair, but she had bought two expensive mail-order wigs—one ash blonde and the other henna—and they looked just as good as her real hair.

She always believed in fixing herself up when she went out. She wore good clothes and when she saw women dressed in what looked like ugly castoffs, she felt sorry for them and was glad she wasn’t that sort. She believed in dignity, if nobody else did, and she thought that appropriateness in attire was more important than comfort. When you’re at home, you can be comfortable. When you’re out among people, you need to look as good as you can.

Her husband always looked good because he was a salesman; looking his best was part of the job. He had a whole closet full of sports jackets, suits, shirts, ties and expensive shoes. He had all these things, that is, before he moved out and took everything with him. She hadn’t seen him for six months, going on a year. Sometimes she went into his bedroom and looked in the empty closet and at the blankness where his bed and dresser used to be and she wondered where he was and what he was doing.

He had thinning hair too, but when he was in his late thirties he spent a lot of money on a toupee. After he had worn the toupee for a while, he found it satisfactory enough to buy another one in a different style, and then another one. It was the toupees, Verna speculated, that made him irresistible to women and led to his finding the “other woman” that he wanted to spend his old age with. Her name was Linda and she had two teen boys and very large breasts.

It was Thursday afternoon and Verna was going downtown to do some shopping. She wore a two-piece, heather-green wool suit and brown, low-heeled, dressy shoes that were comfortable for walking, and carried the purse to match. She also wore the henna-colored wig, which she always wore in the daytime, saving the ash blonde wig for more formal, nighttime occasions.

The first stop was the supermarket. The parking lot was crowded, as usual, but she found a good spot close to the front that somebody had just vacated. She went inside, feeling a little intimidated, as always, by the vastness of the store and the number of people, but she took a deep breath, got her shopping cart and forged ahead.

Since she only had herself to shop for now, she was never sure what to buy. She was a little too fond of bread and desserts for her own good, so she veered away from them, toward the canned vegetables, meat and fresh produce. She bought a few fresh vegetables and a small cut of beef for a stew, a pound of bacon, some cans of corn and beets, and before she was finished she stopped by the bakery department and bought a half-dozen donuts and a loaf of wheat bread for toast.

When she finished shopping, she took her place in line behind all the other people at the checkout, and that’s when she saw them come into the supermarket: her husband, Gerald, and his big-breasted girlfriend, Linda. They had their arms around each other’s waists. They were smiling and looked happy. Gerald was wearing the slick toupee that made him look ten years younger. He looked slimmer, somehow, and healthy. Linda was good for him.

They took a cart and melded into the crowd.

Verna felt her heart give a lurch at seeing the two of them together and looking good. She thought she was completely over Gerald, but her hands were shaking and her mouth dry. She hoped she would be able to get out of the store before Gerald and Linda saw her. She was the spurned wife, the laughable fool, the fodder for jokes and innuendo. She felt exposed, vulnerable, as if she might start crying uncontrollably.

One comforting thought came to her while she waited in line to pay, and that was that Gerald and Linda wouldn’t be able to marry as long as Gerald was married to her. Gerald had never asked her for a divorce. He had never attempted to contact her since they had separated. She didn’t matter, she supposed. Gerald and Linda had both decided she was completely inconsequential. They could go ahead with their plans, whatever they might be, despite her.

Finally her turn came at the cash register. She moved her items from the cart to the conveyor belt without any sensation in her arms. She wondered if she would be able to pay and get out of the store before she was sick or before she passed out on the floor. She looked behind her nervously to see if she could spot Gerald and Linda in line. If they were there, she would pretend she hadn’t seen them and would get out of the store as fast as she could.

She was glad to see that her favorite bagboy, the one named Jeffrey, was working. He had the sweetest smile and was never sullen the way some of the young ones were. He seemed to genuinely like his job, which in itself was unusual.

He bagged up her groceries expertly and put the bags in the cart.

“How are you today, Jeffrey?” she asked, not certain if her voice sounded the way it was supposed to.

“I’m just fine, Mrs. Donlen! How are you?”

She knew his name from his name tag, but she didn’t know how he knew hers.

“I’m fine, too,” she said.

She walked behind him, out of the store to the parking lot, admiring his straight, youthful body and his rounded, high buttocks and broad shoulders.

She came to her car and unlocked the trunk and stood back and watched as he transferred the bags from the shopping cart to her car.

“Do you have an exciting weekend planned, Jeffrey?” she asked.

“Oh, no. I have to work Saturday and Sunday, but I’ll have the next weekend off. We live for those days off, don’t we?”

She laughed appreciatively. “I’ll bet you have lots of friends, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“Still live with your parents?”

“Oh, no. I’m twenty-two now. Time to be out on my own. I have my own apartment in the city.”

“Good for you!”

“Well, if there’s nothing else, Mrs. Donlen, I have to get back inside.” He swung the shopping cart around deftly with one hand.

“Just a minute, Jeffrey.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a five-dollar-bill and handed it to him.

“Oh, no, ma’am!” he said. “I can’t take that! I’m only doing my job.”

“But you do it so well I want to give you a tip.”

“Well, I do thank you, ma’am, but it’s not necessary.”

He blushed becomingly and hurried back inside.

As Verna left the supermarket parking lot and entered the heavy flow of traffic on the street, her hands shook and she felt weak and disoriented. She wasn’t sure if she remembered how to get home. She wasn’t sure if she had her purse with her or if she had left it in the store.

While she was wondering whether she should go back and look for her purse, she ran through a red light at a busy intersection. Her car was struck by a pickup truck on the left front side; it went spinning around in the intersection and came to rest on the sidewalk. She never saw the truck that collided with her car.

She was unconscious for two days and when she regained consciousness in the hospital, she couldn’t remember the collision. She had neck and head injuries and her left arm was broken, but the doctors believed she would make a full recovery.

She lay on her back in her hospital bed, heavily medicated, barely able to move. It was morning, she could tell, from the light that came in at the window. There was usually a nurse or an attendant in the room with her, but she was aware of being alone when the door opened and two people came in, a man and a woman. She squinted toward them but they were just a blur.

When the man spoke to ask how she was feeling, she knew from his voice that it was Gerald. If it was Gerald, the woman with him had to be Linda As they came closer to the bed, she could see their inquiring eyes and the teeth in their smiling mouths. They had come to torment her and make trouble for her. They were devilish imps encircling her bed.

She turned her face away from them and closed her eyes and groaned.

“For God’s sake, go away and leave me alone!” she said. “I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it!”

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

It’s Not the Pale Moon That Excites Me
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This story was published in The Literary Hatchet.)

They sat on the front porch to catch the cooling breezes. Mrs. Llewellyn fanned herself with a cardboard fan courtesy of Benoist Funeral Home and took pulls on a bottle of “medicinal” whiskey she kept in her apron pocket. Miss Clemson, the nearest neighbor, sat on the steps close to Mrs. Llewellyn, holding her hands demurely around her ankles to keep her skirt in place.

“Gets mighty lonely over at my place sometimes,” Miss Clemson said. “Especially of an evening.”

“You should have found yourself a man to marry,” Mrs. Llewellyn said.

“I still might.”

“At your age?”

“I’m only fifty-four,” Miss Clemson said. “And, anyway, the world don’t revolve around no man. I know plenty of women manage just fine without a man orderin’ ‘em about the place.”

“Well, I’ve had four husbands and I can’t say I’d recommend it,” Mrs. Llewellyn said.

“There’s a rumor going around that you just received a proposal of marriage from a Mr. Chin. Is that right?”

“Yes, a Mr. Chin asked me to marry him,” Mrs. Llewellyn said, “but I turned him down.”

“Is he a Chinaman?”

“No, why would he be a Chinaman?”

“Well, that’s what the name sounds like.”

“No, he ain’t a Chinaman.”

“Well, what then?”

“I don’t know what he is, but he ain’t no Chinaman.”

“Why don’t you marry him if he wants to marry you?”

“Well, for one thing, he’s covered with scales.”

“You mean like a snake?”

“Exactly like a snake.”

“I guess a woman could get used to a few snake scales if the man was a good man,” Miss Clemson said.

“I don’t think I ever could. I’d have to turn away when he was gettin’ dressed, or at least turn the light off.”

“Maybe he’ll just shed them scales in the woods during moltin’ season and not have them anymore.”

“Why are you so interested in Mr. Chin’s scales?”

“Well, if he’s marriage-minded, maybe the two of us ought to meet. We might strike up a real lively friendship.”

“The next time I see him I’ll send him over your way,” Mrs. Llewellyn said.
“Will you really?”

“When you see them scales, you might change your mind.”

“Well, I really don’t think I’d mind the scales all that much as long as he keeps them hidden during the daytime when he’s dressed. The scales are not on his face, are they?”

“Not yet.”

“As long as they’re not on his face, I think we’d be all right, then.”

“The scales is not the only reason I don’t want to marry Mr. Chin,” Mrs. Llewellyn confided.

“What, then?”

“I don’t want him moonin’ around over my granddaughter Laura Louise all the time.”

“Oh, yes. I almost forgot about Laura Louise.”

“She lives with me, you know. I’m all the family she’s got left since her maw killed herself in the river.”

“Do you think Mr. Chin might be particularly drawn to her?”

“I think he’d never stop starin’ at her.”

“Well, if staring’s all he done, that wouldn’t be so bad.”

“Yeah, but the starin’ would lead to pawin’ and the pawin’ would lead to other things.”

“I think I see what you mean. She has turned into a right pretty little thing.”

“She’s got her womanly wiles. It’ll just take the right man to bring it out in her.”

“Do you think Mr. Chin might be the one to do that?”

“I think any man might do it, even one covered in scales.”

“Does she still go swimmin’ naked in the river?”

“I don’t think she swims naked no more, no. Not since she accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her personal savior.”

“The Lord certainly works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”

“Don’t He, though?”

“There for a while she seemed headed down the road to damnation.”

“Most of that was rumor. You know what nasty tongues people have.”

“They said she was havin’ an affair with I-don’t-know-who-all, even Dr. Birke in town.”

“She went to him for a bladder infection. He treated her and she came home and that’s all there was to it.”

“That’s not what people says.”

“Do you think I care what people says?”

“No, I know you don’t care.”

“But, I’ll tell you on the other hand. I didn’t definitely turn Mr. Chin down.”

“What? You think you still might marry him?”

“If that’s the way the chips fall.”

“What do you mean? What chips?”

“Well, since Laura Louise has got herself so keen on religion, she thinks she might want to dedicate her life to the spreading of the Gospel.”

“You mean as a lady preacher?”

“Well, something like that. She’s got it into her head that she wants to go to Darkest Africa and become a missionary.”

“Darkest Africa? What would she do there?”

“She’d teach them headhunters to put down their spears and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal savior, same as she done.”

“Lord, I wouldn’t want to go to Darkest Africa!” Miss Clemson said. “I’d be scared out of my wits every minute!”

“That’s because you’re an ignorant woman. Them missionaries get training before they go. They learn how to deal with them natives and make their sit down and read the Bible and listen to hymns.”

“Well, it might be right for some people, but I don’t think I would ever choose that kind of life for myself.”

“Laura Louise is all the family I got left. All my children and grandchildren has died or run off and left me. Laura Louise is the only one left to sweep out the house and fetch me what I need and cook me a little supper of an evening. She’s the only one left to keep me company in my old age. And she’s the only one to see that I’m put into the ground proper when my time comes.”

“Oh, I think I see what you’re sayin’,” Miss Clemson said. “If Laura Louise goes off to Darkest Africa, you could still marry Mr. Chin and he could do all them things for you that Laura Louise does now.”

“You catch on quick.”

“But you’d only marry Mr. Chin if you don’t still have Laura Louise at home?”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sure the Lord will work it all out for you. He’ll come up with the solution that’s right for all parties concerned.”

“I guess so,” Mrs. Llewellyn said.

“I think I see somebody comin’ up the road now,” Miss Clemson said.

“That’ll be Laura Louise, come from service.”

“Good evening, Laura Louise, dear!” Miss Clemson said in a loud voice. “How are you? There’s going to be a lovely full moon tonight, did you know that? It kind of puts you in mind of romance, don’t it?”

“Hello,” Laura Louise said.

“Them services are gettin’ longer and longer, ain’t they?” Mrs. Llewellyn said. “I’ve been waitin’ for my supper.”

“Your supper will just have to wait, gran,” Laura Louise said. “I just got some good news at the end of service and I’ve just got to tell you what it is!”

“Whatever could it be?” Miss Clemson asked.

“I’ve been accepted in missionary school in Memphis, Tennessee! School starts in two weeks. It’ll last for two months and after that I’ll go over to Darkest Africa to do the Lord’s work!”

“My goodness!” Miss Clemson said. “That is excitin’ news, ain’t it?”

“How long will you be gone?” Mrs. Llewellyn asked.

“Oh, I don’t know! Years and years, I guess! Isn’t it wonderful? Brother Rabbit arranged the whole thing over the telephone. He told the people in Memphis what a good worker I am and how dedicated I am to the Lord. They told him to send me on up. They can’t wait for me to get started.”

“That’s fine,” Mrs. Llewellyn said, “but who’s goin’ to do your work around here while you’re gone?”

“What work?” Laura Louise asked.

“You would say that, wouldn’t you? That’s because you’re so selfish! What work do you suppose? Cleanin’ and cookin’ and washin’ and all the rest of the housework waitin’ to be done, that’s what work!”

“Why, I don’t know, gran. I guess you’ll have to get yourself a hired girl to help out, won’t you?”

“And just where am I goin’ to get the money for that?”

“The Lord will provide.”

“I think it’s just wonderful!” Miss Clemson said. “You were turnin’ out to be such a tramp around these parts, takin’ up with any man that would give you the time of day—including Dr. Birke in town—and now just look at you! The Lord has taken a-holt of you and turned you around into the kind of girl He always wanted you to be! Praise the Lord!”

“I’m just so excited about it I’m about to burst! I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep a wink tonight!”

“Well, just go on in now and get started on my supper now,” Mrs. Llewellyn said. “There’ll be plenty of time later to be excited.”

“Do you want to stay and eat supper with us, Miss Clemson?” Laura Louise asked.

“I don’t think so, honey, but thanks for askin’. I need to get myself on home.”

After Laura Louise went into the house to start cooking supper, Miss Clemson turned to Mrs. Llewellyn and said, “I think I hear wedding bells!”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“Well, now that Laura Louise is goin’ off to Darkest Africa to be a missionary, you’ll want to marry Mr. Chin as fast as you can so he can do all your work for you, won’t you?”

“Not so fast! She thinks right now that she’s goin’ to Darkest Africa to be a missionary, but what if I say she’s not?”

“You mean you gonna try to stop her?”

“I think I’m goin’ to pay a call on Brother Rabbit at the church tomorrow and tell him to stop meddlin’ in my affairs. Laura Louise ain’t nothin’ but a child and she’s almost feeble-minded to boot. She needs her grandma, her only living family, to look after her and keep her safe. She can’t be goin’ off on her own to no Darkest Africa to be no missionary. She’d be a babe in the woods. Why, they’d eat her alive!”

“Well, I don’t know,” Miss Clemson said. “It certainly seems the Lord is pointin’ her in that direction and if He’s decided it’s the right thing for her to do, then He’ll make it happen, no matter what.”

“Well, we’ll see about that.”

“Are you really goin’ to see Brother Rabbit tomorrow at the church?”

“I said I am, didn’t I?”

“Do you want me to go with you?”

“No, I’d rather go alone.”

“Well, good luck, but I don’t think you should go pokin’ your nose in. Laura Louise is a grown woman and if she’s decided she wants to go to Darkest Africa to be missionary, then I think you should just let it alone.”

“Do you have a granddaughter?”

“You know I ain’t. I ain’t ever even been married.”

“Well, until you have your own granddaughter, you can’t know what it’s like to have her leave you and go off to Darkest Africa to be a missionary.”

“Well, all right, then, honey. I won’t say another word about it.”

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think my supper is about ready and I’m hungry. I don’t like to be kept waitin’.”

“All right, honey. I’ll go on home now and eat my own lonely supper. And after I’m finished and all the dishes are washed up and put away, I’ll get into bed and look out the window at the big old sad yellow moon. It’ll remind me of all the things that might have been and never were.”

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Good Fortune Comes Your Way
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

This morning I gave my seat on the bus to a lady midget without one. A seat, I mean. She was only about half as tall as anybody else and I felt sorry for her because people were ignoring her and she looked as if she might be crushed. When I caught her attention, I pointed to my seat to let her know that since I was sitting on it I owned it for the moment and I would gladly relinquish it to her if she wanted it.

She squeezed past the assholes over to where I was sitting and smiled up at me.  She had an oval head the shape of an enormous potato and what I think they call a beehive hairdo the color of honey. She wore a little yellow-and-white waitress’s uniform that looked like it might have been taken off a doll. The nametag on her chest told me that her name was Marlene. Marlene the Midget. I liked that.

After making sure that Marlene was ready to grab the seat as soon as I stood up, I lunged for the nearest unoccupied pole and grabbed onto it. I couldn’t keep from smiling to myself as I hung precariously onto my greasy pole because I had a done a “good thing” for someone less fortunate than myself. I looked over my shoulder at her one time with proprietary interest to make sure she was comfortable. Her eyes were closed and she was clutching her handbag to her chest like a life preserver. She got off in two stops and somebody else took the seat.

As soon as I got to the office, any happy feeling I might have derived from my good deed had vanished. I made my way to my desk, head down, trying not to attract attention. I didn’t want to give anybody the bright idea that I had just arrived at work and needed something to do. I took off my coat and hung it on the rack behind my desk, thinking about how many hours I had to get through before I could put it on again and leave.

I sat down at my desk and took out my yellow legal pad and a handful of pens and red pencils. I took out some papers and covered the desk with them to give the impression that I was working, when, in fact, I planned on doing nothing at all. I could usually go the entire day without doing anything, while giving the impression that I was deeply immersed in an important project for Mr. Junius “Groucho” Wexler, the business genius who started the company from nothing and turned it into the colossus it is today. The  best thing I could say about Mr. Wexler was that I hardly ever saw him.

I picked up my pen and made a few notes on the yellow legal pad. Sometimes when I was pretending to be busy, I wrote a couple paragraphs of my novel that would bring me literary fame and would make it possible for me to quit my job and never have to spend another day of my life cooped up in an office. (They want to turn my book into a movie? How thrilling!)

After a few minutes of pretending to be busy, I became terrifically sleepy. I might toss and turn in my bed half the night, but as soon as I arrive at work I feel like I’ve taken a powerful, sleep-inducing drug. I might try to lean my head on my hand and close my eyes and snatch a few seconds of sleep in the upright position, ever wary of approaching footsteps, but I’ve tried this and it doesn’t help. It somehow makes the desire for sleep even more powerful.

Besides being sleepy, I was also hungry, having skipped breakfast altogether. I went to the break room to see if anybody had brought in any donuts. There were no donuts but there was a pack of chocolate chip cookies on the table. I ate one and when I saw it wasn’t too stale I took two others and put them in my pants pocket before anybody saw me. (I had to remember to take them out of my pocket before I sat down again.) I wasn’t a coffee drinker so I fixed myself a cup of tea and stood looking out the window while the water heated.

With my tea and cookies, I returned to my desk, prepared to stay put until lunchtime, pretending to work, while my mind, every second, was on anything other than work.

Once when I was about five years old somebody gave me a helium balloon on a string. It was a novelty for me. I had never even seen a helium balloon before, let along being lucky enough to own one. While I was outside in the yard, admiring my balloon on the string, it somehow got away from me in a gust of wind. I stood there, watching it, feeling helpless that it was gone and I couldn’t get it back, no matter what I did. I watched the balloon rise in the air until it was just a tiny speck and then could no longer be seen at all. I had a hard time holding back the tears. I still think that balloon is somewhere up there in the sky waiting for me and I might one day get it back.

My mind was aswirl with these and other memories when I heard footsteps approaching my desk. I began to write furiously on my pad, copying meaningless phrases from an open book in front of me.

The footsteps belonged to Freda Himmler, general office manager.

“What are you working on, Elliott?” she asked.

“This. I’m working on this.” I leaned back so she could see the papers on my desk.

“You shouldn’t be working on that,” she said. “That was finished two weeks ago. You need to be working on something more relevant.”

She wasn’t the boss, but she thought she was. She dropped out of the sky several times a day to check up on all of us and report back to Mr. Wexler. She was his eyes and ears.

Freda Himmler was a squat woman with broad shoulders and even broader hips. She was anywhere from fifty to a hundred years of age. She wore boxy, unattractive clothes forty years out of date. Her hair was pulled into a severe knot at the back of her head, so that her large ears were always prominently displayed. She had no eyebrows to speak of so she drew them on; they were never the same two days in a row. Her mouth was always slathered with blood-red lipstick, which sometimes overextended her lips in a clownish way. She had about her a peculiar smell that might have been formaldehyde or some other chemical used in embalming corpses.

Any time Freda Himmler came near me, I had to swallow my loathing before I could speak to her.

“This is what Mr. Wexler said he wanted,” I said lamely.

“You’ve been sadly misinformed!” she said. “Meet me in Miss Wexler’s office immediately about lunch! The three of us need to have a little talk!”

The “three of us” meant, of course, Freda and Mr. Wexler and me. I’d rather eat sand and wrestle an alligator than meet with those two for one of their little “meetings.”

Freda Himmler had interrupted my flow of work, so I figured it was time for a break. I stopped by the men’s room, took care of some business, and from there went on to the break room. My friend Lonnie Dove, kindred spirit, was standing at the sink washing his coffee cup.

“What day is it?” he asked. “Is it Friday yet?”

“Three days to go,” I said.

“Do you absolutely hate this place, or what?”

“I think I probably hate it every bit as much as you do.”

“Doesn’t it make you want to go up to the roof and jump off?”

“I wouldn’t want to give anybody here the satisfaction of knowing they had driven me to suicide,” I said.

Abhorring the thought of going back to my desk and risking another encounter with Freda Himmler, I got into the elevator and rode the six floors down to the lobby. I went outside and walked down to the corner and when I got to the corner I turned around and walked all the way back to the other corner. I had the feeling that Freda Himmler knew exactly what I was doing and was watching me out the window every second.

After another torturous hour-and-a-half spent at my desk pretending to be busy, it was time for lunch. I left as fast as I could before anybody spotted me. The trick was not to let anybody know what time you left, so then when you got back they wouldn’t know how long you had been gone.

I wanted something good for lunch so I walked a couple of blocks away to a little restaurant called Manny’s Fine Eats. I had been there before and I knew the food was good and the service excellent. I was gratified to see the place wasn’t crowded; I sat at a small table next to the window beside an enormous potted plant.

My waitress, I was surprised to see, was Marlene the Midget from the bus, in her little yellow-and-white uniform with the name tag. I smiled but I wasn’t sure if she recognized me from the bus. I ordered the spaghetti and meatballs. I didn’t have long to wait long before Marlene set the steaming plate of food down in front of me.

The spaghetti was delicious with just the right amount of garlic. When I finished, I was sorry there wasn’t more. I finished my iced tea and gestured for Marlene to bring me my check.

“Will there be anything else?” she asked.

When she handed me my change, she also handed me a single yellow carnation.

“Good fortune comes your way,” she said with a cheery smile.

I thanked her and before I had a chance to say anything else she was gone again. It was lunchtime and she was busy.

I walked all the way back to the office carrying the carnation in front of me like a charm to ward off evil. I dreaded my upcoming meeting with Mr. Wexler and Freda Himmler. I knew she would put me on the spot and make me feel like a fool in front of the boss. As I went up in the elevator, I felt a bad headache coming on and a sharp pain in my abdomen. I felt like I might be sick.

Getting off the elevator on the sixth floor, I met Lonnie Dove. He was smiling and obviously happy about something.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“I was hungry, so I went out for lunch.”

“You missed all the excitement.”

“What happened?”

“Freda fell down the elevator shaft.”

“Oh, my gosh! Is she dead?”

“No, she only fell about twenty feet or so. They came and took her to the hospital. I didn’t see her after she fell, but they said she probably has some broken bones. Where’d you get your yellow flower?”

“A midget gave it to me,” I said.

“I think it’s our lucky day,” he said.

I put the carnation in a glass of water and set it on the edge of my desk where I would be able to see it. I sat down and picked up my pen and pretended to be working, but I knew there was no way I was going to get any work done for the rest of the day. A party atmosphere had taken over the entire office. Someone had a bottle of whiskey and was passing around drinks.

“Ding-Dong, the witch is dead!” they all sang together. “Which old witch? You know which one!” 

I had a couple of drinks and then I sneaked out the back way and took the early bus home.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Out to Lunch
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

On Friday morning I was about an hour late for work. I sat at my desk all morning, pretending to work but not doing much of anything except manicuring my nails and balancing my checkbook. Then I took an extra long lunch and when I got back Nipple Nose was waiting for me.

“I need to see you in my office right away, Aaron,” he said.

I hung up my coat, put on the best put-upon expression I could manage on such short notice, and went into his office.

“Sit down,” he said.

I sat in the smelly chair facing his desk and cleared my throat. “What is this about, Mr. Nipp?” I said defensively. “I have a pile of work to do.”

“You were late for work again this morning,” he said.

“I was up until two this morning watching the Joan Crawford festival on television and I couldn’t get up at the regular time. Have you ever seen The Damned Don’t Cry?”

“You were gone an hour and fifty-seven minutes for lunch.”

“You timed it?”

“Yesterday you were gone an hour and thirty-seven minutes for lunch and the day before an hour and fifty-one minutes.”

“You timed it!”

“This is a highly competitive business,” he said, “and we need to operate efficiently to maintain our standing in the industry. We can’t afford to employ slackers.”

“Slackers?” I said. “What exactly are you saying?”

“I’ve noticed—and others have noticed—that you don’t take your job seriously enough. We want people here who believe in what they are doing and who want to succeed for themselves and for the company. I’m afraid we’ve come to a parting of the ways. You’re all washed up here.”

“Do you mean you’re firing me?” I said.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“What if I told you I have a good reason for taking extra long lunches?”

“I’m afraid it wouldn’t make any difference. Mr. Miggles and I have discussed this matter. He has already signed off on it. I’m afraid his decisions in these matters are irreversible.”

“If you fire me, I’ll probably have grounds for a lawsuit.”

“I believe I’ve heard that one before,” he said with a little laugh to let me know he wasn’t to be bluffed.

“You think I won’t sue you?”

“I think you’ll do what you believe you must do.”

“You enjoy firing people, don’t you, Mr. Nipp?” I said.

“No, but it’s part of the life of an executive.”

“I’ll bet you belong to the country club, don’t you?”

He sighed and looked over my shoulder at the closed door. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“In all the time I’ve been here, you’ve fired a lot of people, haven’t you?”

“I don’t believe that’s any concern of yours.”

“You fired a single mother with two small children. You fired a man nearing retirement with a heart condition and a woman with a sick child who needed to take a lot of time off. You fired a young man just out of school for making a joke about your secretary’s falsies. I think you should reinstate all of them, or at least call them and make the offer, although I don’t know why anybody would want to come back to this place after they’ve left it.”

“You may collect your personal things from your desk and then I want you to leave. Remember I can always call security.”

“I need to speak to Mr. Miggles before I go,” I said.

“He isn’t in and, even if he was, he wouldn’t want to be disturbed.”

“I am in possession of some information that I’m sure he would want to be apprised of.”

He picked up the phone to make me think he was calling Big Shirley, the head of security, former lady wrestler and nightclub bouncer.

I looked across the desk at him with narrowed eyes. “Do you know there’s at least one embezzler in the company?”

He put the phone back and looked at me. “What? Just what are you implying?”

“May I speak candidly?” I asked.

“I don’t see that there’s anything to be candid about.”

“You’ve been skimming funds from the company for years, to put it politely. Small amounts, to be sure, but lots of them.”

“I don’t have time for your little games,” he said wearily, going to the door and pulling it open.

“If people start looking around,” I said, “you might have trouble explaining your Swiss bank account in your wife’s name.”

He reclosed the door and went and sat back down at his desk. “It’s not exactly a secret,” he said. “It’s my wife’s inheritance.”

“That would be easy for an investigator to prove or disprove.”

“I have nothing to hide.”

“I know where Mr. Miggles lives,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll be willing to speak to me when I tell him I have some information that’s vital to the well-being of his beloved company.”

I stood up to leave.

“Wait a minute!” he said. “I won’t let you go to Mr. Miggles with a story like that!”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, it’s not true!”

“Yes, it is true, Mr. Nipp. You know it’s true and I know it.”

“Mr. Miggles has a bad heart. You don’t want to get him upset by making these false allegations.”

“I think he would thank me a thousand times for telling him what’s been going on behind his back.”

“No, don’t go to Mr. Miggles! Please!”

“You said you have nothing to hide.”

“I don’t! It’s just that Mr. Miggles is an important man with a thousand things on his mind. You don’t need to bother him with trivial matters.”

“I doubt he’d find the theft of half-a-million dollars trivial.”

“I tell you what I’ll do,” Mr. Nipp said. “I’ll bring the matter up at the next board meeting. We’ll discuss it and take a vote.”

“No! I’m not going to let you get away with that!”

“I just fired you! You’re not in a position to make demands!”

“All right, then. How about if I go see my lawyer? His office is just a couple of blocks from here. I’ll tell him the whole story and he’ll advise me what to do. I’ll let him inform Mr. Miggles of all the hanky-panky that’s been going on this office.”

Mr. Nipp lowered his head and blew out his breath. It was as close to a gesture of defeat as I could expect.

“Just what is it you want?” he asked.

“You know what I want. I want you to apologize for firing me and say you didn’t mean it.”

“All right, I apologize for firing you.”

“You don’t seem to really mean it, Mr. Nipp.”

“I mean it, Aaron. With all my heart.”

“And what else?”

“You’re not really fired. Go back to your desk as if nothing happened.”

“I’m also going to need an apology for the remark about being a slacker. That really hurt my feelings.”

“I’m sorry I called you a slacker.”

“Apology accepted. I’m going to need a raise, too, though.”

“I can’t give you a raise now, Aaron. It just isn’t going to happen.”

“I think fifteen percent to start. Don’t you think that’s reasonable?”

“I’ll have to pull some strings, Aaron. I’ll see what I can do.”

“I’m sure you can pull all the right strings, Mr. Nipp.”

“Before I do all these things for you, Aaron, you’ll have to promise me to never breathe a word of this to anyone.”

“A word of what, Mr. Nipp?”

“About the half-million dollars.”

“Do you mean the half-million you embezzled from the company?”

“Please don’t use that word! Do you want to go to prison?”

“I didn’t do anything, Mr. Nipp. If word gets out, you’ll be the one to go to prison.”

“Let’s just forget the whole matter. Shall we? None of it ever happened.”

“Well, we’ll see how good I am at forgetting things,” I said.

I gave Mr. Nipp a gracious smile as I went out his door. I went from his office down the hall to the men’s room. It was vacant, so I went into a stall and closed the door. The tiny tape recorder was still recording inside my pocket. I rewound the tape and listened to it from beginning to end. It was all there. Every word as clear as the nose on Mr. Nipp’s face.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp