Tag: Allen Kopp

Haunt ~ A Short Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It wasn’t them,” she said.

“What?” I asked.

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

“Who was it, then?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’ll show you!” she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

A Short Life and a Merry One ~ A Short Story

A Short Life and a Merry One
A Short Life and a Merry One
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

I had my friend Calvin Pears. He was in my class at school. We were both twelve years old and had known each other since we were five. We spent a lot of time together. We were good friends because we were both shy and not popular in school.

Calvin and I always had a lot of things to talk about. We laughed a lot. We laughed about things that nobody else would have thought funny. We made fun of people behind their backs. Calvin was a good imitator. He imitated our teachers, whether they were male or female. He imitated the way they walked or talked or smoked. He wanted to have a show business career after he finished school.

It was a Friday evening in October. After being in school all week, it was time to get out of the house and have some fun. Calvin and I decided we’d rather go roller skating than see the western movie at the Bijou. I liked roller skating and could skate circles around Calvin. He usually said he was tired or his legs hurt and he wanted to call it a night.

We were a couple blocks from the roller rink when we saw two boys from high school standing on the street corner. I had seen them but didn’t know their names.

“Well, here’s a couple of little kids!” the taller of the two boys said when he saw us. “Does your mommy let you out after dark?”

“Hi, Lonnie!” Calvin said enthusiastically.

“How’s it going, little man?”

“I’m doing spectacularly well!” Calvin said.

“Well, glad to hear it! What’s your sister, Bimbo, up to these days?”

“Bimbo’s fine. She was rolling her hair up at the kitchen table when I left home.”

“She wasn’t going out on a date, was she?”

“No, I think she was just going to pop some popcorn and watch TV.”

“Well, you be sure and tell her old Lonnie said ‘hi’!”

“I will.”

Lonnie’s friend’s name was Brent. He had red hair and a sly look about him like a fox. When Calvin introduced me to Lonnie and Brent, they both shook my hand without irony. I was used to high school boys calling me names or making fun of me.

“Where you little hoodlums headed?” Lonnie asked.

“We’re going roller skating,” Calvin said.

“Well, that’s a kids’ thing, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is,” Calvin said. “It’s fun, though.”

“Yeah, I guess you would think it’s fun!”

“They are kids,” Brent said.

“Yeah, and we’re grown men, ain’t we?” Lonnie said. “Hah-hah-hah!”

“Let’s go!” Brent said. “I’m tired of just standin’ here!”

“Now, look here, you two little kids!” Lonnie said. “I’ve got my brother’s car parked over there. I don’t have my own car yet, but I will soon. We were just about to go for a little hell-raising adventure, if you two would care to join us.”

“What do we need them for?” Brent said.

“It’s just for a little while,” Lonnie said. “I need to find out some stuff about Bimbo.”

“Oh, you and your girls! You make me sick!”

“So, how about it?” Lonnie said. “Do you two little sixth graders want to go with us for a little ride?”

“Sure!” Calvin said.

“We’re not sixth graders,” I said. “We’re in the seventh.”

“Do you want to go?” Calvin asked me.

“I guess so. If you do.”

“Well, let’s get crackin’, then!” Lonnie said.

On the way to the car, Lonnie put his hand on Calvin’s shoulder and leaned down and talked in his ear. So, that’s what this is all about, I thought. Lonnie only pays any attention to Calvin and me at all because he’s interested in Calvin’s sister, Bimbo. I’d rather go roller skating.

Lonnie opened the door for Calvin and me to climb into the back seat. He and Brent got into the front seat and Lonnie started the engine and pulled away from the curb with a jerk.

“Where do you kids want to go?” Lonnie asked over his shoulder.

“Any place is fine with us,” Calvin said.

“Isn’t this fun?”

“I’ve never had so much fun in all my life!”

“Does Bimbo ever talk about me?” Lonnie asked. “I mean, like at the dinner table or anything?”

“I never pay any attention to anything Bimbo says,” Calvin said.

“Do you know if she’s seeing anybody right now?”

“Seeing anybody? I don’t know what that means.”

“Is she dating anybody regularly?”

“I don’t know. I don’t pay any attention.”

“Well, are there any guys that hang around?”

“I haven’t seen any. Except for the man who reads the gas meter.”

“If you see any, you be sure and let me know.”

“I will.”

We went through town, past the chemical plant, over the railroad tracks and the bridge, and in ten minutes we were out in the country. The road was dark, now, and hilly, with abrupt dips in the road and signs about watching for high water. There were sharp curves that couldn’t be seen until we were right up on them.

Lonnie angled around in the front seat so he could see Calvin’s face. “Does Bimbo go around much? With other girls, I mean?”

“Yeah, they have stupid slumber parties and they go to shows and things like that. They’re all hoping a talent scout from Hollywood will discover them and want to put them in the movies.”

“Yeah, I know what they’re like,” Lonnie said. “Completely unrealistic. I mean, how many people get discovered by talent scouts?”

“I never heard of anybody.”

“Watch this!” Lonnie said.

He got the speed up to sixty miles an hour (the limit was twenty-five) and then he turned off the headlights, and we found ourselves speeding blindly through absolute darkness. I held on to the door beside me and closed my eyes.

“Oh, my god!” Calvin gasped.

“Isn’t that the wildest thing you’ve ever seen!” Lonnie said.

“That’s a stupid trick, man!” Brent said. “What are you trying to do? Get us all killed?”

“If you don’t like it, man, I can always let you out here!”

“No thanks, man! It’s a long walk back to town! Just slow down a little.”

“Now it’s time for the roller coaster!” Lonnie said. “Don’t you kids in the back seat just love roller coasters?”

“Sure!” Calvin said.

He took a series of small hills at a high rate of speed, engine roaring. At times we were flying, all four tires off the road at the same time. We could hear the bottom of the car scraping the road in the low places.

“I’m glad this is not my car!” Brent said.

“Oh, my brother does this all the time!” Lonnie said. “He’s the one that told me about it!”

There was a sharp curve in the road and then another one. Lonnie had to fight the wheel to keep the car on the road.

“This is so much fun!” Lonnie said. “I’m going to turn the headlights off again!”

“Don’t be a jerk, man!” Brent said.

He didn’t turn the headlights off, but he went faster. There was a curve on a hill and then another curve going down the hill. There was a straightaway, then another hill.

“Isn’t this living!” Lonnie said. “It feels just like flying!”

He didn’t see the next sharp curve until it was too late and the car left the road. He struggled to regain control, but it was too late. The car glanced off a tree and kept going to the next tree—down a gulley, up the other side, taking out fence posts and small trees as it went. Finally it came to rest on a huge flat rock ten feet below the level of the road, smashed flat like a stepped-on bug.

I was thrown from the car. I didn’t know where the others were. I knew I was dead, but I also knew that I was aware of what was happening and that the same thing had happened to me before at an earlier time. All this went through my head in the briefest of flashes.

I was present at my funeral, and I don’t mean just as a dead body in a closed-up box at the front of the church. I saw the whole thing from up near the ceiling. My mother sat on the front row, a stunned look on her face. My father, divorced from my mother since I was four, sat on the other side of the room. Everybody from my seventh-grade class was there, even the ones who didn’t like me.

My mother, sparing no expense, had me buried in the Methodist cemetery beside my great-grandfather, who died long before I was born. I was dead, now, and buried and the people who had known me would soon forget about me.

The one person who remembered me years later was my father, though I had hardly known him in my short life. Since I was the only child he ever had, he became sentimental about me in his old age. When he was over ninety and aware that he was nearing the end, he had my body (what was left of it) disinterred from the grave where it had lain in for fifty years, flown halfway across the country, and cremated.

When he died a short time later, he had my ashes, along with his own, interred in a niche in a columbaria. Both our names were inscribed on the niche, along with the dates we were born and the dates we died. He had a long life and I had a short one. Father and Son. Together Forever.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

You May Know Him as a Ghoul ~ A Short Story

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 © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Today I Quit My Job at the Factory

Today I Quit My Job at the Factory
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The mother looked at the clock on the wall above the stove. Sloan was late. She worried about him driving home in rush-hour traffic. He was a safe driver, but other people weren’t so safe and something could always happen.

Finally she heard his car in the driveway and let her breath out that she had been holding in. She put the spaghetti in the boiling water and was facing the door when he came in from outside.

Her smiled faded when she saw that somebody had come in behind him.

“Mother,” Sloan said, taking off his hat and gloves. “This is my friend Gaston.”

Gaston stepped around Sloan to shake her hand.

“Gaston is going to be staying with us for a while.”

“Staying with us?”

“If I’m too much trouble,” Gaston said, “just say so.”

She was confused and shy. She hadn’t been expecting company.

“Why didn’t you call me and tell me you were bringing somebody?” she said to Sloan. “I would have at least dusted the furniture in the living room.”

“It’s all right!” Sloan said. “You can treat Gaston just like family.”

“Supper will be ready in a few minutes,” she called after them as they took their coats and hats into the other room.

During supper, Sloan and Gaston talked easily about the things they knew, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. When she looked at Sloan, the dearest and most familiar person in the world to her, she thought he looked different somehow, animated in a strange way with a spark in his brown eyes that she had never seen before.

“Did you have an interesting day today, son?” she asked.

“More interesting than most,” Sloan said, and then he and Gaston looked at each other and laughed.

“Why is that funny?” she asked.

“The spaghetti and meatballs are delicious!” Gaston said.

“I’m glad you like them.”

“Mother,” Sloan said, “I quit the factory today.”

“You what?”

“I said I quit my job today at the factory.”

“All right. What’s the joke?”

“No joke.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I quit my job today. What’s so hard to understand about that?”

“Why on earth would you quit the factory? It’s your future and your security.”

“Isn’t thirteen years in one hell hole long enough?”

“I thought you liked your job.”

“I always hated it!”

“You never told me that!”

“Well, I suppose it was all right in the beginning, but I came to hate it after a while. I want to do something else with the rest of my life.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know yet, but it’ll come to me.”

She looked at Gaston, believing he had to have something to do with it. “Did you quit the factory today, too?” she asked.

“Gaston doesn’t work at the factory, mother,” Sloan said.

“Nope,” Gaston said. “I never worked in the factory.”

“What do you do, then? If you don’t mind my asking.”

“He’s a painter, mother,” Sloan said.

“He paints houses?”

“No, mother. Not that kind of a painter. He paints pictures.”

“What kind of a job is that?” she asked.

“It’s a job that most people would do if they could.”

“Do you have a wife?” she asked Gaston. “A family?”

“No, ma’am. I’ve never been married. My parents are still alive. They’re all the family I have.”

She wiped her mouth and pushed her plate aside. There would be no more dinner for her.

“Did the two of you just meet?” she asked.

“We’ve known each other for a while now,” Sloan said.

“Where did you meet?”

“Now, mother! Why are you asking so many questions?”

“I’m just trying to understand,” she said. “That’s all.”

“There’s nothing to understand.”

“Why would you quit your job after all these years? I’m afraid you haven’t put enough thought into it. You always were impulsive.”

“I’ve been thinking for years about quitting the factory,” Sloan said. “There’s nothing impulsive about it.”

“You might have at least told me you were thinking about quitting.”

“So you could tell me I shouldn’t do it?”

“How will you live? What will you do for money?”

“I have my savings. That will keep us happy for a while.”

Us?

“But now, though, I’m going to take a vacation.”

“For how long?” she asked.

“As long as I want.”

“And then what?”

“Don’t worry about it, mother. It’ll all be sorted out in the end.”

“What does that mean?”

“When we’re finished eating, Gaston,” Sloan said, “I’ll take you up and show you my room.”

Sloan stacked the dishes beside the sink and he and Gaston went upstairs, closing themselves up in Sloan’s room for the rest of the evening.

The next morning she was in the kitchen when Sloan came down alone.

“Where’s your friend?” she asked.

“He was a little late waking up. He’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“Good. I was hoping to have a chance to talk to you alone this morning.”

“What about?”

“You know what about. Who is that man and why did you quit your job?”

“His name is Gaston Pierce. He is my friend. I’ve known him for about five years. That’s all there is to say.”

“Did he have anything to do with your quitting your job?”

“No.”

“Why is he here?”

“I invited him. He’s my guest.”

“You never had a guest before.”

“Does that mean I can’t have one now?”

“Of course not!”

“This is my house, too, isn’t it? Just as much as yours?”

“If you put it that way, yes, it is.”

“Well, then. What more is there to say? Maybe I’m tired of always being alone.”

She was prevented from asking further questions by the arrival of Gaston from upstairs.

“I’ve starving!” he said, sitting down at the table.

She cooked the breakfast and set it on the table and busied herself while they ate. Sloan and Gaston sat at the table and spoke together quietly. She didn’t know what they were saying. Did they have secrets from her that she wasn’t supposed to know about? Her own son and his friend, about whom she knew nothing. In her own home. Things had certainly taken a disconcerting turn.

“It’s almost eight-thirty,” she said in a loud voice. “You’re going to be late for the factory, Sloan!”

“Did you forget, mother? No more factory for me.”

“Oh, yes. How could I forget? It must have slipped my mind for the moment.”

When they were finished with breakfast, Sloan and Gaston put on their coats and hats and left. “We won’t be here for lunch,” Sloan called to her. “Expect us for dinner, though.”

She went upstairs to Sloan’s room with the intention of tidying up, but everything was perfect. The bed was neatly made, the clothes all hanging in the closet, the shoes aligned side by side. The dresser and chest of drawers were straight and neat, not a sign of dust or clutter anywhere.

With no work to do, she sat down on the bed and ran her hands over the expensive light-green chenille bedspread that Sloan had picked out on his own.

Since there was only one bed in the room, it had to mean that Sloan and Gaston were sleeping together. What does it mean when two unrelated men sleep in the same bed together? She had heard of such things, of course, but had never been confronted with it in her own house.

She had to remind herself that Sloan was no longer a child. He was her boy and would always be her boy, but he was no longer a child of seven or eleven or seventeen. She knew she would one day lose him, but she thought it would be to marriage.

Should she ask him if he and Gaston were sleeping in the same bed? Of course not! He was thirty-five years old. She was sixty. Nothing was the same as it was when she was young. Younger people no longer cared what older people thought. They wanted to live their own lives.

She fixed fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner, things Sloan had always liked. She still had hope and her hope of the moment was that when Sloan came home he’d be alone. At a few minutes before six, the time Sloan would have arrived home from work if he had gone to work, the two of them came into the house, talking and laughing.

“Hello, mother,” Sloan said.

“Good evening, Mrs. Millett,” Gaston said.

“Did you go to the factory after all, Sloan?” she asked.

He gave her a sad look and shook his head. “You still don’t believe I quit, do you?”

“Where did you go all day if you didn’t go to the factory?”

“This morning we went to a museum. Then we had lunch in a restaurant and after that we went to a movie. Then we did some shopping.”

“I’m exhausted,” Gaston said, collapsing onto the chair. “This son of yours has a lot more energy than I do!”

“Is that what you plan on doing every day for the rest of your life?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Sloan said. “I haven’t thought about it.”

That evening after dinner they left again without telling her where they were going or when they’d be back. This was the prerogative of the grown child, she told herself. She busied herself with paying bills and little jobs in the kitchen and went to bed early, having tired herself out.

She slept until nine o’clock the next morning and when she awoke and went downstairs, Sloan and Gaston were in the kitchen, putting away the groceries they had just bought.

“What’s all this?” she asked, pointing to the bags on the table.

“It was Gaston’s idea,” Sloan said. “He has some notion that he needs to contribute.”

“I can’t take without giving,” Gaston said.

“Isn’t that just too sweet?” Sloan said, laughing.

She wanted to object but could find nothing to object to. Without speaking, she set the water on the stove for tea and set about cooking breakfast.

After two weeks of Gaston in the house, she decided it was time to confront Sloan. Gaston was taking a bath and would be out of earshot at least for a few minutes.

“How much longer is he going to be here?” she asked.

“Who, mother? Who are you talking about?”

“How much longer is Gaston going to be here?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t discussed it.”

“Doesn’t he have home of his own to go to?”

“He does, but now he’s here.”

“I want this to end.”

“You want what to end, mother?”

“I want us back the way we were before he came here.”

“What are you saying, mother? Are you saying you want Gaston to leave?”

“I don’t want to have to force him to leave. There must be a tactful way to handle it.”

“You can’t stand to see me happy, can you?” Sloan asked.

“He makes you happy? How does he make you happy in a way you weren’t happy before?”

“Taking control of my own life is what has made me happy.”

“I thought we were happy before,” she said.

“Maybe you were.”

“If something was bothering you, you could have talked to me about it. I’m your mother. What exactly is he to you?”

“I know I would never be able to make you understand, mother. People grow up and change. It wasn’t possible for me to always remain an adolescent.”

“I always gave you the space I thought you needed. I kept house for you and cooked your food and kept your clothes clean. I thought you had all you needed and wanted in life. I hoped, of course, you’d find a nice young woman one day and get married and have children, but I accepted a long time ago that you weren’t inclined in that direction.”

“Oh, please, mother! You’re giving me a headache!”

The next morning Sloan and Gaston loaded their suitcases into the car. Gaston shook Mrs. Millett’s hand, thanked her for her hospitality and went out the door, leaving a hundred-dollar bill on the kitchen counter under the sugar canister.

“You’re leaving with him?” she asked Sloan.

“Yes, mother.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll let you know when we get there.”

She watched the car until it was out of sight and then she sat down at the table and had breakfast. He’ll be back, she thought, and when he comes back he will be alone. A boy will choose his mother over his friend every time.

And if he’s lonely (she reasoned), we’ll find a lovely young woman for him. I’ve noticed the girls looking at him when we’re out together. He’s a very striking-looking boy and so smart!

It was in a terrible moment of weakness that he quit his job at the factory. A couple of phone calls will fix everything. They will welcome him back with open arms. He’s such an asset to the company they won’t want to let him go. Everything will work out according to God’s plan, just as it always does.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Far Down the Hill ~ A Short Story

Far Down the Hill
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The summer he was twelve, Seaton Knox had been visiting his grandparents on their farm. He was down in the far pasture to see the cows when a sudden thunderstorm blew up. He didn’t go back to the house the way he should have. He liked storms.

When the rain became so intense it hurt his skin, he took refuge under a huge oak tree growing along the fence row. Lightning struck the tree and split it in two. Half of the tree fell one way and the other half fell the other way.

Seaton didn’t see the lightning. When the tree split, he heard a tremendous cracking sound, but he didn’t know what it was. If he had known the tree was coming apart, he might have been able to get out of the way. One-half the tree came down upon him.

Nobody found him for six hours. It was almost dark when the people back at the house wondered why they hadn’t seen him for so long. His grandfather and his uncle went out looking for him and found him in the far pasture, underneath the fallen tree. They rushed into town to the hospital, but there was nothing to do; he was already one with the ages.

In the midst of life we are in death, they said, but it didn’t help. People who knew Seat0n Knox were terribly saddened by his unexpected death. Hundreds of people attended his funeral. The city was awash in tears.

Sparing no expense, his parents bought him a grave in the best cemetery in the city. It was a garden cemetery, known for its beauty, its statuary and its lush greenery. It boasted the remains of war heroes, celebrated writers, well-known musicians and politicians. And now it boasted the remains of Seaton Knox.

Lovely as Seaton’s grave was, it was in a very crowded part of the cemetery. It had other graves all around it on all sides. Someone’s feet touched the top of his head, while his own feet touched the top of someone else’s head—a person he didn’t know and didn’t care to know. If it had been up to him, he would have had acres and acres to himself, where he could stretch out without ever feeling another person nearby.

In the beginning, his family kept flowers on his grave almost all the time, to show how much he was loved and missed. There was flowers for Christmas, birthday, Decoration Day, a patriotic spray for the Fourth of July, and any other special occasion that presented itself, such as National Biscuit Day and Dominion Day.

But then, inexplicably, the flowers stopped. The little attentions to his grave stopped. There were no more trimming of the margins; no more pulling of extraneous weeds. He wondered what happened to his family. Why did they seem to just forget about him? Didn’t they miss him anymore? Didn’t they feel sorry that he was dead? Had they forgotten that he ever existed?

He became lonely, believing that nobody cared about him anymore. Why had his mother stopped visiting his grave, bringing flowers? Was she dead herself? Wouldn’t he have heard?

He began talking more to other spirits. Most of the other spirits had been dead longer than he had, so he didn’t have much in common with any of them. They wanted to talk about what the world was like when they were alive. They loved talking about wars they had fought in and things that happened to them long ago. He found their conversation singularly uninteresting. They were just weren’t good company.

One day, though, he heard some news that captured his attention. A lot of the graves were going to be moved to make way for a highway extension. Nobody knew yet which graves would be moved or when, but still it was disconcerting news. A grave should be permanent. A grave should never be moved. Graves are more important than highways. Doesn’t everybody know that?

The rumor, if rumor it was, turned out to be true. An army of workmen came and systematically dug up Seaton’s grave and hundreds of others, making a wide swath all the way through the cemetery. None of the spirits were happy about it, but what can a spirit do? No matter how much a spirit complains, nobody listens.

The old graves were moved to the new part of the cemetery, which had recently been cleared. It was a in a flat place without any of the Old World charm the cemetery was known for. The worst part was that it was perpetually soggy. No spirit likes lying in a wet grave.

Seaton tried to give the new location the old college try, but after a few nights of reposing in a puddle, he decided he was pulling out. It wasn’t conventional, but he would be unconventional and find a different location, a dry one. Didn’t he deserve at least that?

In the rich people’s part of the cemetery were some elaborate family mausoleums that looked like little chapels. They had been built at great expense by the wealthiest families in the city, serving as the final resting place for each new generation. They were private and exclusive. They were only for family.

Seaton shyly approached the most elaborate of the family mausoleums. Having been a spirit for so long, he knew how to get into a place where he didn’t belong. He insinuated himself and, in the politest of ways, pretended to belong.

There was an old man, the grandfather, who built the mausoleum, his wife, his sons and daughters, their sons and daughters and even a couple of family pets. It was a large and growing family, growing in the sense that somebody was always dying and joining the group. Seaton pretended to belong and it was easy for him. He met each family member in turn, and they were all welcoming and loving. Nobody asked him who he was or how he came to be there. Nobody asked to see his credentials. They were his family and he belonged. The only thing was they called him Frederick. He really didn’t mind. After a while he began to think of himself as Frederick. My name is Frederick. I’m so happy to see you again.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Single Man in Large House ~ A Short Story

Single Man in Large House
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

They both died in their rooms upstairs, first the mother and then the father, only six months apart. The father was eighty-eight and the mother ninety-one. They left behind their only son, Gunter, age fifty-four. He was a gray, colorless man, a man without attachments or issue. He was a man who, in certain respects, barely existed.

Now that his parents were dead, the fourteen-room house belonged to him and him alone. For the first time in his life, he had absolute freedom. He could stay in bed all day if he wanted to, or eat dinner in front of the television, watching cartoons or old westerns. He could indulge any whim, such as putting on lipstick or wearing his mother’s wig just to see what it looked like.

The top floor of the old house was very hot during the summer. He liked to go up to the small bedroom all the way at the top of the house, spread a blanket on the floor, and sleep naked in front of the open windows. With the lights turned off, it was like sleeping outside. He would listen to the nightbirds and small animals doing whatever they do at night. He could feel the scented breeze wafting through the trees. The best part was when there was a thunderstorm with lighting, wind and rain. He would feel a tingle all over his body, as if he was part of the storm without a single drop of water touching him.

After his mother died, he went on a spending spree. He had always wanted a tuxedo, so he bought one, even though he didn’t need one and had no place to wear it. He would be buried in it, if nothing else.

He bought an expensive couch and matching chair and had the trash collector take away the old couch and chair. He bought all new linens for bath and bed, all new underwear and socks. He bought himself six pairs of silk pajamas in a variety of colors, including pink. He bought wine glasses and an expensive set of china. The list went on and on.

He always hated going to the grocery store and buying food. He never knew what to buy. There were too many choices and he wasn’t good at making decisions. He would end up buying impractical items, such as a three-pound box of candy or four bottles of wine because he thought the labels were pretty. After one trip to the store, he realized he hadn’t really bought anything he could eat for dinner, so he sat down and made out a list and went back to the store and bought only the things he had written down.

One day when he was in the store, surrounded by crowds of people and at least two screaming babies, the idea came to him to hire a woman as cook and housekeeper. He could afford it. It would have to be an older woman, a motherly type. She could vacuum the stairs, wash the clothes, dust the furniture and buy all the food. Then after she had bought the food she could carry it home and cook it. It was a wonderful idea and it put a crazy smile on his face.

The next day he placed an ad in the newspaper: Single man in large house seeks experienced cook, housekeeper for light housekeeping duties. Since he hated talking to people on the phone, he asked interested applicants to respond to a post office box. Within a week, he received sixteen replies.

After carefully reviewing all the applicants, he chose one out of all the others. She was an overweight, forty-five-year-old widow, an Austrian woman named Alma Bergner. She had lots of experience and glowing references, but, above all, she knew how to make genuine apple strudel. She agreed to his terms, he offered her a generous salary, and she started to work the next day.

The first day he gave her a list of items he wanted from the grocery store. When she returned from the store, she put away the groceries, made a delicious stew for dinner and did all the laundry that had been piling up for weeks. She vacuumed the stairs, cleaned the upstairs bathroom, and organized the kitchen pantry. He was so impressed with her quietly effective way of working that he wondered why he had waited as long as he did to hire her. She was unlike his own mother as a pig is from a giraffe.

One night, in the middle of the night, he awoke with the feeling that he wasn’t alone. Startled, he came partly awake and sat up in the bed.

“Who’s there?” he said.

He heard a muffled voice but couldn’t make out any words.

“If there’s anybody there, you’d better identify yourself!”

“It’s me, Vera, your mother,” a raspy voice said, and when he focused his eyes on the space at the foot of his bed, he could indeed see his mother standing there.

“My mother’s dead!” he said.

“Yes, my body is dead,” she said, a little more coherently, “but I’ve never left your side this whole time.”

He reached out to turn on the lamp beside the bed, but the lamp had vanished. It was like a dream he had when he was eight years old.

“Go away and leave me alone!” he said.

He covered up his head, but her voice only became louder.

“Look who’s giving the orders now!” she said. “Mr. Big Shot!”

“I’m so glad you’re dead!” he said. “I thought you’d never die!”

“I want that woman gone!”

“What woman?”

“That foreign woman!”

“Do you mean Alma?”

“Do you know she’s stealing from you?”

“She wouldn’t do that!”

“I saw her take a stick of butter out of the refrigerator and put it in her purse as she was leaving. Another time I saw her steal a stamp from your desk.”

“Why don’t you stop spying on people and stick to the business of being dead?”

“She’s going to poison you when she gets the chance.”

“What? Why would she do that?”

“She’s going to get you to marry her and then she’s going to poison you so she can have the house.”

“Please believe me, mother, when I tell you I have absolutely no interest in being married to Alma or anybody else!”

“She’ll trick you.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“I know what she’s like!”

“All right. I’ll ask her tomorrow if she plans to marry me and then kill me so she can take the house.”

“You don’t think she’d tell you the truth, do you?”

“Not everybody’s a liar like you are, mother! Some people actually have some integrity.”

“I know how much you’re paying her and it’s far more than she deserves! You’re throwing my money away! Before you know it, there won’t be any left!”

“It’s my money now, mother! You have nothing to say about it!”

Just then, Tom, his father, came stumbling into the room. He looked disheveled and confused. He was wearing what looked like a choir robe.

“What’s all the turmoil about?” he said, rubbing his head. “You woke me from my nap.”

Gunter groaned. “Get out of here, both of you!” he screamed. “It’s the middle of the night. You’re both dead and you’re both crazy! Now that I’m finally free of the pair of you, I won’t have you intruding on my life and on my privacy! I won’t have you barging into my bedroom at all hours, interrupting my sleep!”

“You wouldn’t even have this house if it wasn’t for me!” his father said. “You wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for me!”

“He’s right, as much as I hate to admit it!” his mother said. “You wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for us!”

“You’ve both lived your lives and now it’s time for me to live mine!”

“I can cut off your money, you ingrate!” she said.

“How are you going to do that, mother? You’re dead!”

His mother and father both faded into the wall then, and that was the end of the dream, if a dream is what it was.

A few days later Gunter went downtown to see his lawyers. He was gone all morning and when he got home he had a terrible shock waiting for him. Alma was lying unconscious at the foot of the stairs. When he saw she was still breathing, he called an ambulance. They came and took her away and a few hours later she died at the hospital of a broken neck.

Nobody could be really sure what happened because she was alone at the time, but apparently Alma had tripped when she was vacuuming and fell the entire length of the stairs. After a thorough investigation, police ruled it an accident. Gunter wanted to tell them that there might be more to the “accident” than there appeared to be, but he knew that doing so would raise questions for which he had no answers.

Alma had no family living in the United States, so Gunter paid for her funeral and burial. He couldn’t help feeling at least partly responsible for her death.

Three days after Alma’s death, when Gunter got up in the morning, on his bathroom mirror was scrawled this message in lipstick: It was no accident. You’re next.

Now, why would a dead mother threaten to kill her living son? That was the foremost question in his mind. He had no answer, except that his mother and father were awfully strange when they were alive. Not like anybody else. Outside the norm. They wanted him dead, or gone, so they could have the house to themselves to haunt on their own. He, alive as he was, was in their way. He didn’t fit in with their future plans. His whole life, he had felt he wasn’t wanted, that he was an inconvenience. Looking back on his life, he wondered why one of them, his mother or his father, hadn’t killed him at some point in his childhood. It would have been so easy when he was a baby.

A few nights later he received a message in a dream: Look in the attic.

His mother never threw anything away. If there was something she no longer needed, she didn’t discard it the way most people would; she stored it in the attic.

He hadn’t been in the attic for years. When he opened the door, the cobwebs swirled and the mice ran for cover.

There were trunks, boxes, and barrels of stuff he had never seen before; shelves loaded with wrapped parcels. It was like opening the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh. He didn’t know where to begin, so he started with the nearest thing at hand, an old-fashioned trunk, what they used to call a portmanteau.

The trunk was full of books and papers on the subject of Satan worship, witchcraft, demonology, spells and incantations, black sabbath. His mother’s name was on all the books. He never had an intimation that she was interested in any such subject.

In the next trunk he found photo albums containing pictures of his mother and father performing Satanic rituals with other people. Some of the pictures were taken in their basement, where they had constructed a kind of altar. The most embarrassing aspect of these photos was that all the people, including his parents, were naked. He didn’t know how anybody could ever get his father to pose naked; it was so unlike him. They were probably in their late fifties or early sixties at the time.

Other pictures included his father fellating a man wearing a devil costume and his mother slavering over a goat. He was embarrassed for them. Such undignified behavior. He supposed it was all part of what they were required to do, but it made him want to vomit.

So, his parents were Satan worshipers. He never suspected, although it made perfect sense. They used to host parties for special people when he was growing up, but his mother always made sure he went to the movies or spent the evening at a friend’s house. There were the weekend trips to some undisclosed location, mysterious phone calls at odd times, heavy packages arriving by messenger. One time his parents took him on a trip with them to Mexico. He was excited about seeing a foreign country, but he saw nothing of it because they left him locked in a hotel room.

As for the altar in the basement, it was still there, or at least part of it was. When he was a child, his mother wouldn’t let him go down to the basement. He never knew why.

He began seeing his mother and his father every night when he was awakened from sleep. They floated over his bed, made a clatter on the stairs, or moaned and rattled chains. They were definitely taunting him.

Now, the question was how he might make his mother and father depart from the house so he could go on living there? It was the only house he had ever known, and he wanted to stay. It was a comfortable, commodious house. It was home. Hadn’t his parents lived in the house long enough? Now it belonged to him.

Again, it came to him in a dream: consult a professional spiritualist who had experience dealing with people who linger on the earth plane after they’re dead. He didn’t have a lot of confidence in spiritualism, but he supposed it couldn’t hurt to try.

Not knowing where else to begin, he read the classified ads in the newspaper. Right away one ad jumped out at him. It was a woman named Beatrice Corn. She was, according to her ad, a licensed, certified, reputable spiritualist, with one-hour consultations starting at $175.

Beatrice Corn agreed to come the next day at ten o’clock. When he told her what he wanted, she said she had seen many cases like it before. It wasn’t always easy to get an entrenched spirit to vacate the premises that they knew so well in life. She preferred the house to be as quiet as possible while performing her consultation. Also, she liked to be paid in cash but would accept a check.

She was an eighty-year-old eccentric dressed in an army uniform from the First World War and a gentleman’s top hat. He showed her the pictures of his parents engaged in Satanic worship and the books with his mother’s name on them about witchcraft, demonology, and spells and incantations. She clucked her tongue and asked to see the rest of the house.

When she went into his mother’s room, she said she felt a very strong psychic presence.

“The mother is definitely present in the house. The father too. There are also at least two other spirits in residence.

“Who are the other two?”

“I’m not sure. A couple your parents met in the afterlife, possibly. They all want you gone. I think their intention is to kill you in a horrible way so they can deliver your soul up to Satan.”

“They killed my housekeeper. I don’t have any proof that they killed her, but I know they did. They wrote on my bathroom mirror that I was next.”

“How long did your parents live in this house?” she asked.

“Over sixty years.”

“Then they won’t leave willingly.”

“Is there any way to get them to leave?”

“Burn them out.”

“What do you mean?”

“Burn the house down.”

“I’m obviously not going to do that.”

“I’d advise you to sell your house and get far away from here, for your own good. Otherwise something terrible will happen. You’ve seen what they’re capable of.”

“If I leave, how do I know they won’t come after me?”

“From all you’ve told me, I would say they’re not interested in you. They want the house and they want you out of it. Spirits are always unpredictable. I would advise you to do what your instinct tells you to do.”

He thanked Beatrice Corn for her professionalism and her sensible advice. She gave him her business card and told him to call her any time, day or night. He paid her her fee and she left.

Two days later he put the house up for sale. Within a week, a funeral home agreed to his price of two million dollars. They had two funeral homes in other locations and wanted to open a third one. They were eager to close the deal and take possession of the house as soon as possible.

He made his new home in the Old World. He lived in Paris for a while and then in the Italian countryside. He could live in style wherever he wanted. The world was finally opening up for him.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Odell the First ~ A Short Story

Odell the First
Odell the First
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

I got a letter from my mother, the first in five years. She told me she was dying and that I’d better come home. More of a command than a request. I was ready to toss the letter aside and ignore it, but I suppose I still had something in me like a conscience. I loaded all my worldly goods in my old station wagon, vacated my apartment and headed north.

I drove the three hundred and fifty miles over two days, spending the night in a cheap roadside motel where the crickets wouldn’t let me sleep. When I got home it was two in the a.m. I knew the doors would be locked so I let myself in by a window in the hallway off the kitchen, a trick I had learned when I was twelve years old. I hoped my mother wouldn’t shoot me for a burglar as I made me way through the dark house and up the stairs to my old room. I took off my shoes and lay on the bed in my clothes without getting under the covers and soon I was asleep, more tired than I thought.

When I woke up the next morning and saw it was after ten, I started to get up and realized my mother was standing in the doorway looking at me.

“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” she said.

“If you had a telephone,” I said, “I would have called.”

“Don’t want one,” she said.

When I went down to the kitchen, she was cooking eggs and ham. I took my place at the table as if I hadn’t been away for decades. She poured me a cup of tea—we were never coffee drinkers—and set a plate of food in front of me.

“You home to stay?” she asked.

“It depends,” I said as I started to eat.

“On what? On whether there’s anything in it for you?”

“Well, is there?”

“The house is in your name. When I’m gone, it’s yours to do with as you please. You can sell it.”

“Nobody would ever want it. It’s too far from town.”

“You can live here, then, as long as you live or as long as you want, and take care of him.”

 I looked at her as if I couldn’t believe the words that were coming out of her mouth.

“That’s no kind of life,” I said. “I think I might get lonely.”

“Get yourself a wife and have some children.”

“Phhft!” I said, almost choking on the tea. “We’ll forget you ever said that!”

“You know why I wanted you here,” she said.

“Maybe you need to remind me.”

“I’ll be dead soon.”

“I don’t believe it. You’ll outlive everybody I know.”

“When the time comes, I have specific instructions. I’ve written them down. Call the funeral home in town. I want a simple service and I want to go into the ground beside your father.”

“Ugh! That’s no kind of talk for the breakfast table.”

“I’ve never asked anything of you in your life,” she said.

“I know.”

“I wouldn’t be asking you now if there was anybody else.”

“That’s so sweet!” I said.

“The main thing is Odell.”

“I know.”

“I want you to take care of him after I’m gone.”

“Mother, I can’t do that!” I said, setting the cup down with a clatter. “I’m not going to devote my whole life to taking care of a person who isn’t my responsibility.”

“I know it’s asking a lot,” she said, “but there’s nobody else.”

“There’s places for people like him,” I said.

“I know there are places,” she said, “but I’ve always kept him with me. This is his home.”

“I won’t promise that I won’t put him in a hospital for the criminally insane the minute your back is turned.”

“Well, we’ll see,” she said mildly, and I knew the subject, for the time being at least, was closed.

After breakfast she took me down to the basement where Odell was kept. It was more like a room in the house now than the dungeon it had been before I went away. The chains were gone and had been replaced by bars on the windows. There was a regular bed with sheets and pillows instead of a mat on the floor, and other comforts, such as a table, a lamp and pictures on the wall, one of a horse standing in a field and another of a sunset over the ocean.

When Odell saw me, a spark in his eyes told me he remembered me.

“Brother?” he said.

“He’s talking now?” I asked.

“Yes, he’s learned a few words,” mother said. “I think he seems less like an animal when he speaks.”

He was sitting in an old upholstered chair by the bed. She went over to him and pulled him to his feet. He opened his mouth wide as if to receive food and she laughed.

“No, it’s not time to eat,” she said. “I want you to stand up and greet your brother.”

Odell looked at me over mother’s shoulder as I stepped closer to him. The sharp, fox-like face was the same, but his look had softened somehow. He was less like an animal now and more human-like. His face was shaved and his hair clipped and combed. The teeth had been filed down.

“You’ve done wonders with him!” I said, genuinely surprised.

“You don’t think they could have done anything for him in one of those places, do you?” she said.

At mealtime she showed me how to prepare his food: one slice of bread and a piece of meat cut up into tiny pieces, served on a large tin plate. That’s all he wanted, she said, three times a day.

When it was time to change the sheets on his bed or straighten up the room or groom Odell, she made me go down to the basement with her and watch how it was done. I knew she was preparing me to take over for her after she was gone, but I still wasn’t ready to assume that responsibility.

“He likes to look at pictures in magazines,” she said. “When you go to town, buy him a couple of new ones with lots of pictures. Or comic books. He loves comic books.”

“Does he read them?”

“No, but he looks at the words and pretends he’s reading.”

“Teach him to read and maybe he can get a job teaching in a university.”

“Read to him when you get the chance. He loves Dickens.”

“Dickens?”

 “Yes, we’re about halfway through The Old Curiosity Shop.”

“He’s more human now than he was before, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but he’s still a wild animal. Be gentle with him or he’ll rip your arm out of its socket.”

“I’ll certainly remember that!” I said.

A week later she died, simply and without fanfare, in her sleep. I think she knew exactly when it was going to happen, down to the minute. I hoped that when my time came, I could go with such grace and ease.

I called the funeral home and they took care of everything, including registering the death certificate. The graveside service was sparsely attended. Besides me, there was the minister to intone a couple of Bible verses, two funeral home men and two old ladies from town who probably never met my mother but who had certainly heard her name. As I left the cemetery, I felt relieved of a terrible burden and I planned, over the next week or so, to find a good place to put Odell, where he would be safe and comfortable and as happy as it was possible for him to be. Then I would move on.

I put the house on the market but I was sure nobody would want to buy it. There were too many rooms and it was too hard to heat in the winter. If nobody wanted to live there, somebody might open a haunted house and charge admission. I was sure I had seen a ghost or two walking the halls.

The day after mother’s funeral I saw that Odell knew something was wrong. I took him his food and he ate it but finally he looked at me with his sad eyes and said, “Mother?”

I knew the moment would come when I would have to tell him. I sat down in the chair beside the bed and put my hands on my thighs—a gesture of trust, I hoped.

“Mother gone away,” I said.

“Where?”

“Remember father?” I asked.

“Father?”

“Yes. Remember when he want away?”

“Father?”

“Well, mother has gone to be with father. One day we’ll see her again.”

“Not come back?”

“No, but you don’t need to worry. I’m here and I’m going to take care of you.”

“Mother!” he said, beginning to cry.

“I know,” I said, “but I’m afraid you’re just going to have to get used to the idea.”

He began scowling at me whenever I went down to the basement, disappointed that I wasn’t mother. He still remained manageable and docile, though. I took him some new magazines with pictures of animals and airplanes and he seemed happy with them. He ate all his food and when I told him he had to take a bath I filled the tub with hot water and he got in and washed himself all over.

Every evening when I took him his supper, he would gesture toward the barred window.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Me,” he said. “Outside.”

“I’m afraid you can’t go outside. It’s dangerous for you out there.”

“No! I walk.”

“You want me to take you for a walk?”

“No! Alone.”

“How do I know you’d come back?” I ask.

“Come back!”

“What if you get into trouble?”

“No!”

His pleas to go outside at night became more emphatic and more-oft repeated. He had been locked up in the basement for I don’t know how many years without respite. He wanted desperately to get out on his own, out of the basement, for just a little while, and who could blame him? It might make him more manageable when the time came for me to uproot him and place him in an institution. I decided we would try it one night and see how it went.

On a Friday evening in October I stayed with him while he ate his supper and when he was finished and pushed the plate aside I pulled him to his feet. When he looked at me questioningly, I put father’s old jacket on him, an old fedora hat and some battle-scarred boots and then I pointed toward the door.

“Where?” he asked.

“You wanted to go for a walk,” I said. “Then go for a walk.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, but I have to tell you if you don’t come back before morning you won’t go out again.”

“Morning,” he said.

“And if you get into any trouble or cause any mischief, I’ll say you got out on your own and I didn’t know about it.”

“My own.”

I took him by the arm and propelled him toward the door. “Remember,” I said. “Come back before daylight. And don’t wake me up. I’ll leave the door unlocked for you.”

That night was the first cold night of autumn and I slept soundly. When I got up the next morning, the first thing I did was to go down to the basement to make sure Odell made it back. He was asleep. The jacket was draped neatly over the chair and the boots were side by side on the floor beside the bed.

He wanted to go out the next night and the night after that and I didn’t object. I wondered where he was going but I knew if I asked him he wouldn’t be able to tell me. I pictured him wandering around in the woods and fields, marveling at the wonders of nature, and running like a scared rabbit if he saw anybody.

On the fourth night, Monday, it was raining and I thought to keep him at home, but after he ate his dinner I knew he was planning on going out again and I hated to disappoint him. As he went out the door, I said, “Remember. You have to be back before the sun comes up.” He nodded his head and I knew he understood what I was saying.

The next morning I woke up early, barely daylight, with a bad headache. I went downstairs to the kitchen to find some aspirin and when I looked out the window I saw Odell coming into the yard from the back pasture. He was carrying something in his arms. I ran out the door in my bathrobe.

“What is that?” I said, but by then it was apparent it was a limp body.

He laid his burden down on the flagstone walk and smiled at me. “Mother,” he said.

“Oh, my god!” I said. “What have you done?”

“Mother!” he said again.

“That’s not mother! You’ve killed somebody!”

It was a stout middle aged woman with gray hair, bearing little or no resemblance to mother. She was considerably mauled and obviously dead. Her eyes were open and also her mouth, as if she had screamed in the middle of dying.

“Where did you find this woman?” I said.

He pointed vaguely over his shoulder and laughed.

“It’s not funny!” I said. “Do you know what they’ll do you when they find out you did this?”

“Hurt,” he said.

“Yes, they’ll hurt you. They’ll do worse than that. They’ll lock you up forever and ever and they won’t let you come home again.”

“No!” he said, his eyes filling with fear.

“Yes! That was a very naughty thing for you to do! People don’t look kindly on that sort of thing!”

“Nobody see!”

“You’d better hope nobody saw or your goose is cooked!”

“Goose?”

“Never mind! Go into the shed and get a shovel and take this deep into the woods and bury it. Bury it deep. If they ever find out what you’ve done, they’ll be very angry with you. Do you understand? Go get the shovel and take it into the woods and bury it where nobody will find it!”

While he ran off to the shed to get the shovel, I took an old horse blanket from the back porch and covered the woman’s face and upper body with it so I wouldn’t have to look at her eyes.

It rained all morning. Odell came home about eleven o’clock, covered with mud. He went to put the shovel away and when he came into the house I was waiting for him.

“Did you do what I said?” I asked.

“Bury deep,” he said.

“Where?”

“Deep in woods. Nobody go there.”

“Go to your room and get yourself cleaned up,” I said.

For the rest of the day I expected a squad of police officers to show up at the door, but I saw no one. The next day I went into town to buy a newspaper, a carton of milk and a loaf of bread.

“Did you hear about the mayor’s wife?” the cashier asked as I paid for my purchases.

“No, I didn’t,” I said. “What about her?”

“She disappeared.”

“Where?”

“She went out for a walk after supper and when she didn’t come home the mayor called the po-lice.”

“As he should have,” I said.

“There’s all kinds of rumors about what happened to her, but I’m not sure I believe any of them. What I do believe is that she had a lover.”

“A lover?”

“Yeah. You know. A man from the city. Everybody knew she had been cheatin’ on the mayor ever since they was married.”

“No!” I said.

“Everybody’s out looking for her now. When they find her, they’ll bring her back and it won’t be pretty. The mayor will probably want a divorce now.”

“I can’t say I blame him.”

I went out to my car and unfolded the newspaper. In a sleepy town where not much ever happens, the disappearance of the wife of an important man is big news. I could tell from the pictures that it was the same woman that Odell had brought home. All I could do now was pretend I knew nothing about it and hope that Odell had done a thorough and complete job of burying the body.

That evening after Odell ate his supper, I knew he was expecting to go out again, but I told him very emphatically that he could not. He became enraged and I knew he could easily break me in half if he had wanted to. I didn’t know how to control him when he was that way, so I locked him in for the night and went back upstairs. I hoped he would be better by the next day.

When I took him his breakfast in the morning, he glared at me with something like hatred because I wasn’t mother.

“Mother?” he said.

“She’s gone,” I said with impatience, “and she’s not coming back.”

“Where?”

“She’s dead, Odell. She’s in heaven with the angels.”

“I find,” he said.

“No, you won’t find her unless you go to Windy Hill Cemetery and dig up her grave.”

“I dig,” he said, reaching for the jacket and boots he had worn when he went out before.

“No, no, no!” I said. “You are in serious trouble! You murdered a woman that you thought was mother and now you have to keep yourself hidden away!”

“Go out!” he said, pointing to the door.

“You can’t go out! All I can do for you now is to keep you hidden away. If they come for you, I’ll have to give you up.”

“Give me up?”

He came at me with his glaring hatred and I got out as fast as I could. Now I was afraid of him. I wanted to keep both my arms in their sockets, as well as my legs and other body parts.

I expected every day for somebody to come and take Odell away, but nobody ever came. At night I could hear him wailing with grief for mother and I covered my head with my pillow. I was glad that nobody else was close enough to hear.

I didn’t know what I was going to do with him, but I believed I owed it to him to protect him as long as I could. I didn’t want to see him face punishment in prison for something he didn’t understand. I also didn’t want to see the ignorant hillbillies in and around town try to take justice into their own hands and lynch him. I had heard of such things happening before.

After two weeks, I figured we were safe. The prevailing belief was that the mayor’s wife had run off with her lover and might never be found. Because I was afraid of Odell, I no longer groomed him properly, bathed him or straightened up his room. I only opened his door wide enough to put his food inside.

One night my mother came to me in a dream. She stood beside my bed and told me to do what needed to be done. I didn’t know what she meant at first and then I remembered she always kept a loaded pistol in the drawer of the table next to her bed. She was telling me to get the pistol and pop a cap into Odell’s head from behind when he wasn’t looking.

The gun was where I thought it would be, and fully loaded. I would only need one bullet, unless, of course, I decided to do away with myself after I did away with Odell. I took The Old Curiosity Shop with me when I took him his supper and had the gun in my pocket where he couldn’t see it.

He seemed calm now and almost glad to see me. I read a few pages out loud while he ate his food and then I stopped reading and moved around behind him. I took the gun out and pointed it at the back of his head as he chewed. When he turned around and looked at me, I slid the gun back into my pocket. I knew I would never have the courage to shoot him. I would sooner be able to shoot myself.

“Mother,” he said.

“You need a haircut,” I said.

“Mother. Bring here.”

“I’m going to teach you to string words together into sentences so we can have a real conversation,” I said.

“Mother.”

I went to bed early and about one o’clock I got out of bed and looked out the window. The yard and trees were beautiful in the moonlight. I got dressed without turning on a light, put on my boots and hat and went down to the basement and woke Odell. I helped him into his clothes and boots and then led him out to my car. We drove out to lonely Windy Hill Cemetery and dug up my mother’s grave. He was much stronger than I was and, after we had dug down so far, he was able to lift the coffin out of the ground and together we carried it to the car. Then we smoothed out what had been her grave to make it seem undisturbed, except by maybe a groundhog or two.

I drove slow with headlights off and the back door partly open. Odell rode in the back to make sure the thing stayed steady. When we got home, we carried it in and set it on sawhorses in the basement where he would be able to look at it whenever he wanted. I opened the lid and he gasped with astonishment, his eyes filling with tears. She looked as if she would wake up any second and speak to us.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Seven Eight Nine ~ A Short Story

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Seven Eight Nine
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~  

(This is a re-post.)

Milly Pogue was the guidance counselor. She walked with a limp because she had an artificial leg. She came into fifth-hour study hall where Penny Costello was looking at a magazine and told her she wanted to see her in her office. Without questioning the command (there would be time for that later), Penny stood up and followed Miss Pogue down the hallway to her office. Clunk, clunk, clunk went her artificial leg.

They went into the little windowless office and Miss Pogue closed the door.

“What did you want to see me about?” Penny asked. “I was busy.”

“You were looking at a magazine,” Miss Pogue said. “Sit down.”

Penny sat in the metal chair facing the metal desk and already she looked bored.

“You’re not living up to your potential, Penny,” Miss Pogue said.

“What do you mean?”

“Your math and reading scores are the lowest in your class.”

“I can’t help that! I’ve been sick!”

“You’ve missed too many days of school.”

“When you’re sick, aren’t you supposed to stay at home so you don’t spread your germs around?”

“The school nurse says there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“What does she know? She’s a crackpot. She’s not even a real nurse. She flunked out of nurses’ school.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“My mother heard it in the beauty shop.”

“It’s not true. She’s a fully accredited nurse.”

“Okay. That’s what you wanted to see me about?”

“I met with Mr. Bumpus this morning.”

“Was it good for both of you?”

“He asked me to have a private talk with you.”

“What about?”

“You won’t be passed on to the ninth grade.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’ll be repeating eighth grade next year.”

“What?”

“In view of your low scholastic ranking, you’ll be required to repeat eighth grade again when the new school term begins.”

“Could you put that in plain English?”

“You flunked eighth grade. You’ll have to do it all over again.”

“Bullshit!”

“In these cases, we find it’s better to inform the student privately beforehand. That gives you time to adjust to the idea of repeating a grade. You’ll have time to talk it over with your mother and father before anybody else has to know about it.”

“Are you saying that when school starts up again I’ll still be in eighth grade, while everybody else in my class is in the ninth?”

“It can be a difficult adjustment, I know, but I’ll be here as your guidance counselor to help you in any way I can.”

Penny began to cry as the truth of what she was being told took root in her brain.

“I can’t repeat the eighth grade!” she said.

“What not?”

“It makes me look so stupid! Everybody will laugh at me.”

“No, they won’t!”

“Am I the only one?”

Miss Pogue looked down at her paper. “There’s one other person.”

“Are you going to tell me who it is, or do I have to ask?”

“It’s really none of your business, but if you think it’ll help, I’ll tell you. It’s Hermie Malchick.”

“Hermie Malchick! Why, he’s retarded! He can’t even write his own name!”

“I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.”

“Do you think I’m retarded?”

“No, Penny, I know you’re not retarded.  You have the ability. You just don’t use it.”

“Everybody will laugh at me for being such a loser. Me and the retarded boy are the only two that didn’t pass the eighth grade! That must mean I’m retarded, too!”

“No, Penny. It doesn’t mean you’re retarded. It means you have to try a little harder in the future.”

“I can’t repeat eighth grade! I won’t!”

“Penny, I don’t think you have much choice in the matter.”

“We’ll get a lawyer! They’ll make you pass me on to ninth grade!”

“Can your family afford a lawyer?”

“No, but we’ll get one, anyway!”

“It wouldn’t do you any good.”

“As of this moment, I’m quitting school! I won’t ever be back! Not to this school or any school!”

“You’re too young to quit school, Penny, and you know it. You have to be sixteen, and even then you have to have your parents’ permission.”

“There’s a very good reason I won’t be coming back and it’s not only because I’m flunking eighth grade.”

“What is it?”

“I’m going to have a baby.”

“Oh, Penny! Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Who’s the boy?”

“You mean the father of the baby? He goes to a different school. He’s a senior.”

“Oh, Penny, that can’t be! You’re just a child yourself.”

“I know, but it sometimes happens.”

“Whoever he is, he could be facing legal issues. You’re a minor.”

“He knows all about that and he doesn’t care. You see, he’s in love with me and I’m in love with him.”

“What could you know about love at your age?”

“I know plenty. I’m not stupid.”

“Have you told your mother and father?”

“Sure. They know all about it.”

“And they approve?”

“They know there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“Oh, Penny! This is tragic. There’s no other word for it.”

“I’ll get over it. In about seven and a half months.”

“You can go on back to study hall now.”

“Hell, no! I’m not going back to study hall! I’m going home! I’m done with this place once and for all! No more school for me! Ever!”

When Penny was leaving Miss Pogue’s office, she almost ran into Hermie Malchick coming out of the boys’ restroom. She and Hermie were a matching pair. Two of a kind. Two cards from the same defective deck. If she had had a knife in her hand, she might have stabbed him in the throat with it.

Before she left school for the last time, she went up to the third floor and emptied the contents of her locker out onto the floor. One last act of defiance.

Walking home, she had to laugh at how readily Miss Pogue believed the lie about the baby. The only person she knew of who was going to have a baby was her own mother. She was an expert at it. She had had seven.

She was all smiles that evening, that school was finally out for the summer and she had three long months of vacation before she had to go back. If she had told her parents that she was never going back, it would not have gone well. There would have been a big scene, and either her mother or her father would have ended up slapping her. They would find out the truth when school took up again and she stayed at home in bed.

Her mother had her baby in the middle of June. It was a boy and they named him Skippy. Her mother had a difficult time with lasting effects. The doctor told her she’d better not think about having any more babies. Seven were enough. Any more would be excessive.

Throughout the summer, Penny began thinking of Skippy as her own child. She fed him, bathed him, got up with him in the night, and took him all over town in his perambulator, while her mother lay in bed and complained.

Old ladies looked at her with Skippy and turned up their noses, as old ladies do. It’s such a shame, they said, that a girl of such a tender age is already a mother. What is the world coming to? If she was my daughter, I’d keep her busy scrubbing the floors and cooking the meals. She wouldn’t have any time for nonsense with boys.

Copyright 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Gluteus Maximus ~ A Short Story

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Gluteus Maximus
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

School let out at three-fifteen. It took me fifteen minutes to walk home, about five blocks. I was always told to come straight home. Don’t dawdle. Don’t fool around. I was seven years old.

My mother had started working as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, so I knew she wouldn’t be home until later in the afternoon. I didn’t mind being on my own. I always liked it. I liked to get some cookies or potato chips or something and then not have anybody around while I watched cartoons on TV.

On a day in the middle of October, my father was sleeping when I came home, though, so I couldn’t turn on the TV. Even with the sound turned all the way down, he said, it kept him awake. Anything I did might keep him awake. If I opened a drawer, he would hear it and get mad. I could be quiet if I had to, but it was always so boring, like being in jail.

He was working night shift; he would get up about five-thirty and get ready for work. Can you imagine working all night and sleeping all day? It suited him somehow.

I went in my room and laid on my bed for a while. I tried reading a comic book but I was too restless after being in school all day. Then I went into the kitchen and played with the phone. I called time and temperature and then I called the bowling alley and hung up when they answered.

While I was in the kitchen, I had a snack. I ate a cold hot dog right out of the package. I liked the taste. Then I ate a couple of marshmallows and a couple of chocolate cookies. My mother always told me not to eat anything when I got home from school because it would spoil my appetite and I wouldn’t want any dinner. I wouldn’t want any dinner anyway unless we had noodles or macaroni and cheese.

I was bored and starting to get sleepy. I could have gone to sleep until my mother got home from work, but I didn’t want to be too much like my father. My mother would think I was sick if she came home and I was asleep.

I was looking around for something to help me pass the time, when I heard voices out in front of the house. I went to the front door and opened it a couple of inches and looked out. There were a couple of police cars and an ambulance at the house across the street. People were standing out on the sidewalk to watch.

I had to know what was going on. I ventured out into the front yard. I couldn’t see much from there, so I went out to the street. I had to look around all the tall people.

At the house across the street, a couple of uniformed police officers stood sentinel on either side of the door. The door was open. I was just standing there, trying to see what was happening, when Miss Katz from up the street approached me.

“You’d better get back inside!” she said. “There might be more shooting!”

“I just wanted to see,” I said.

“Where’s your mother?”

“She hasn’t come home from work yet.”

“What about your pa?”

“He’s taking a nap.”

“Better go back in.”

“What happened?”

“Miss Burford shot her old man.”

“Her father?”

“No! She shot her husband, Harry Burford.”

“Did she kill him?”

“I don’t know. That’s what we’re all waiting to find out.”

Two police officers brought Miss Burford out of the house with her hands cuffed behind her back. She was bawling but not saying anything. They put her in the back of a police car and drove away, not too fast but with the red lights spinning. Then a little while later they brought Harry Burford out of the house on a stretcher. He clearly wasn’t dead but didn’t look too happy. His face was pale and his eyes were closed. They loaded him into the back of the ambulance, slammed the doors shut, and drove off with the siren going.

“I think he looks like he might die,” Miss Katz said.

“Why’d she shoot him?” I asked.

“She probably found him fooling around with another woman. She shot him in both cheeks!”

“She shot him in the face?”

“No, she shot him in the ass cheeks. The butt!”

“Oh!”

“He probably won’t be sitting comfortably for the rest of the year.”

“What will they do to her?”

“I think they should lock her up for a good long time, don’t you? If old Harry dies, they’ll probably put her in the penitentiary for life. She always was crazy if you ask me. She just has a funny look about her. She’s the kind of woman that when you see her coming you feel like turning around and running.”

“She always seemed okay to me,” I said.

“That’s because you’re a child. She wouldn’t dare do anything crazy to a child.”

“Well, I’d better get back inside.”

“What time does your mama come home?”

“Not for a while yet.”

“Are you hungry? I can fix you a baloney sandwich if you want to come home with me. You can sit with me, if you want, until your mama comes home.”

“Okay.”

She didn’t exactly hold me by the hand, but she kept her hand on my shoulder as we walked the short distance to her house. We went into her kitchen and she set me down at the kitchen table.

“Your house is pretty,” I said.

Her kitchen didn’t look anything like ours. Everything was shiny and clean-looking. Everything was in its place. I didn’t know much about Miss Katz. I think she used to have a husband, but I don’t know what happened to him. He must have died. I know she had a son who died in a war.

Do you like baloney?” she asked me.

“Sure.”

“Do you like mayonnaise?”

“I love mayonnaise!”

She fixed the sandwich and set it on a plate in front of me. It was two slices of baloney, with one slice of cheese in between, on fresh bread, with lots of mayonnaise. It was delicious.

“I used to know your mother a long time ago when she was a little girl,” Miss Katz said. “I worked in the cafeteria at school when she was just a little thing. She had the prettiest blond curls.”

“She works in a doctor’s office now,” I said.

“Life plays some dirty tricks sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“It sure does.”

“What about that father of yours?”

“He’s working nightshift tonight. When I got home from school, he was sleeping so I wasn’t supposed to make any noise. He didn’t even know when I came outside. He gets up to go to work about the time my mother comes home. Sometimes I wish he would stay gone all the time.”

She made some sympathetic noises in her throat and then put a bowl of fruit in front of me.

“Do you have any Pepsi?” I asked.

When I got home, my father had already left for work. My mother was in the kitchen.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

“I was talking to Miss Katz. Did you hear what happened?”

“No.”

“Miss Burford shot Mr. Burford.”

“Shot him where?”

“In both ass cheeks! That’s got to hurt!”

“Who told you that?”

“Miss Katz. I was standing there when the police brought Miss Burford out of the house in handcuffs! Then they brought Mr. Burford out on a stretcher and took him away in the ambulance! If he dies, Miss Burford will go to the penitentiary.”

“I want you to stay away from those people! I always suspected something funny was going on with them.”

“I don’t ever go near them,” I said.

She fixed chow mien with rice for dinner. I wasn’t hungry by then, but I picked at it with my fork and tried to eat a little of it. I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

A Mother and Her Cigarettes

A Mother and Her Cigarettes
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

When Ruffin awoke early on Monday morning, he immediately began calculating how he might miss school that day. He could say he was sick, but if he wasn’t vomiting or didn’t have a fever, his suspicious mother wouldn’t believe him. He had to be visibly sick. Not always easy.

He realized, after a couple minutes of deep thought, that he was going to have to go to school no matter what. There was no way around it. He already had more than enough absences for the semester; any more would result in disciplinary action, which meant tedious lectures about the tragic consequences of not taking school seriously enough.

He splashed some water on his face, made a feeble effort at brushing his teeth and dressed in the same clothes he wore to school on Friday. Taking a quick look at himself in the mirror, he went downstairs to the kitchen, where his mother was sitting at the table smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. She hadn’t yet put on her wig and makeup and looked like a derelict old man.

After pouring himself a cup of coffee and adding milk, he sat down at the table, squinting in his mother’s cigarette smoke.

“Boy, I feel lousy this morning!” he said. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I have a splitting head. I think I probably have the flu.”

“You’re not missing school again today,” she said.

“When you were young, I bet your mother didn’t make you go to school when you were sick.”

“I don’t believe you’re sick.”

“Can’t you tell just by looking at me? My color is terrible!”

“If you miss any more school, you know what’s going to happen, don’t you? They’re going to come after me for being a lousy parent.”

“You are a lousy parent!”

“The whole world doesn’t have to know it!”

“Just feel my forehead,” he said. “I’m burning up!”

She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray and finished her coffee. “You’re not sick!” she said.

When she stood up to put water on her geranium in the window over the sink, he reached across the table and stole three cigarettes out of her pack and put them in his shirt pocket.

“I saw that,” she said, slowly turning around.

“Saw what?”

“Put ‘em back.”

“Put what back?”

“I’m not as stupid as you seem to think I am. I saw you steal cigarettes out of my pack.”

“I didn’t!”

She started slapping him with both hands. He put his arms up in feeble defense.

“I’ve told you I don’t want you smoking!”

“I haven’t been smoking!” he said. “I would never smoke! It’s bad for your health!”

“You stole them!”

“All right, I’ll admit I took them. I didn’t really steal them. I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“So, are you telling me you’re stealing my cigarettes but not smoking them? If you’re not smoking them, what are you doing with them?”

“I took them for a sick friend.”

“What friend?”

“You don’t know him!”

“I want to know his name!” she said, slapping him again.

“Harry Burgess! His name is Harry Burgess!”

“Tell Harry Burgess to steal his own cigarettes!”

“He can’t! He doesn’t have any hands!”

“How does he smoke, then, if he doesn’t have any hands?”

“I have to light the cigarette for him and hold it up to his lips.”

“You’re a liar!”

“No, really, mother. That is the Lord’s honest truth!”

“I want you to bring Harry Burgess to meet me. I’d like to meet a boy with no hands.”

“Well, he’s shy. He doesn’t like meeting people. People laugh at him and call him ‘meat hooks’.”

“He sounds like your type of friend.”

“I’m going to the school nurse today and tell her you beat me! I’ll have the bruises to prove it! She’ll call the police and they’ll come and take you away in handcuffs.”

“Put the cigarettes back in the pack and get your ass to school!”

On his way to school, he stopped at Finklehoff’s Sweet Shoppe and bought his own pack of cigarettes. Hungry from not eating breakfast, he also bought a donut, which he ate in a few quick bites.

Being within sight of the school building always made him feel despondent and a little suicidal. He loitered out in front for a while before going in. Soon he was joined by his friend Harry Burgess.

“Did you study for the American history test?” Harry asked him.

“Hell, no!

“Me either. All that stuff just goes right out of my head as soon as I read it. Why should I care about history stuff?”

“My old lady beat the crap out of me at the breakfast table this morning,” Ruffin said.

“You mean your mother?”

“Yeah, I mean my mother.”

“Why did she beat the crap out of you?”

“Because she’s evil.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.”

“I have cigarettes, though.”

“Yeah? Where’d you get ‘em?”

“I stopped at Finklehoff’s on my way to school this morning.”

“Did you steal ‘em?”

“No, I didn’t steal them! What do you think I am? I bought them!”

Together they went into the school building. It was still a few minutes to first bell, so they made their way to the boys’ restroom on the first floor. All the way in back was the traditional smoking space between the last stall and the wall. It was fairly private and there was a window there that might be raised to let out any excess smoke.

Ruffin took the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and opened it. He gave one to Harry and took one himself. They lit up and puffed greedily.

“Boy, that tastes good!” Harry said. “I’ve been having a nicotine fit all night long!”

“I know what you mean,” Ruffin said. “Smoking is one of life’s greatest pleasures!”

“Does your mother know you smoke?”

“I think she knows but she doesn’t want to admit it. She smokes like a fiend all the time, but she tells me if she ever sees me smoking she’s going to knock it down my throat.”

“That might cause you to get choked!”

“Yeah, if she caused me to choke to death, she’d go to jail, but she’d swear I had it coming. How about you? Does your mother know you smoke?”

“She doesn’t pay any attention. If she saw me smoking, she’d scream at me and lecture me, but five minutes later she’d forget about it.”

They heard the door open and close and then quiet footsteps.

“Who do you think that is?” Harry whispered.

“Probably nobody.”

Harry opened the window a little higher and began fanning the smoke with his hands.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ruffin said. “So, we’re smoking! What of it? Who cares?”

They heard the water running and relaxed. Whoever had come in didn’t care what they were doing. They kept smoking, generating an unusually large amount of smoke.

“What’s going on here?” a loud voice said behind them.

Startled, they both turned and looked into the face of Mr. Emmett Terry, school principal.

“Are you smoking?” Mr. Terry said. “Hiding in the bathroom and smoking?”

“No, we were just taking a little break before going to class.”

“You’re not smoking?”

“No, we’re not smoking,” Harry said, grinding his cigarette out under the heel of his shoe.

“There’s enough smoke in here for a forest fire!”

“Oh, that! We were wondering about that too!”

“My office! Right now!”

“Yes, sir!” Harry said.

The penalty for smoking on school grounds was a three-day suspension. Mr. Terry, in this case, was not inclined to be lenient.

“The three days of your suspension will go on your permanent record as unauthorized absences,” Mr. Terry said gravely. “This could severely limit your ability to get into a good college.”

“This is going to kill my mother!” Harry said.

“Now, I’m sending a letter home with each of you for you to give to your parent or guardian. At the end of your suspension, you will not be readmitted to school until your parent or guardian comes to the school for a sit-down meeting with me, the superintendent, and the guidance counselor.”

Harry groaned.

“When you boys sneak cigarettes in the boy’s restroom, it’s a serious breach of discipline. School administration seeks the help and intervention of the parent or guardian in a situation this serious.”

“You make it sound like we killed somebody!” Harry said.

When Ruffin got home in the middle of the day, his mother was dozing on the couch.

“What are you doing home from school so early?” she asked.

“I’ve been suspended from school.”

“What?”

“I said I’ve been suspended from school for three days.”

“You’ve what?”

His hand shook as he handed her the letter from Mr. Terry. She looked at the letter, front and back, but before she opened it she lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of blue smoke upward into his face. He was sure he was going to vomit. He was more afraid of her than he was of Mr. Terry.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997