fiction – Page 2 – Literary Fictions

It Was Christmas ~ A Short Story

It Was Christmas
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

I had an end room on the fifth floor of Richardson Hall. Having an end room meant I didn’t have to have a roommate because it was a small, odd-shaped room and there was only room for one person. I considered myself lucky to get one of the few single-occupancy rooms, especially considering who my roommate might have been.

I was in my third year at State University, so I was used to dormitory life. Richardson Hall was the oldest building on campus, built around 1895. I liked its creaking elevator, drafty windows, and high ceilings. There were people who wanted to tear it down and put a parking lot in its place, but I think it’s a shame to destroy a historic old building to make way for something new and ugly. It’s like destroying a work of art.

Well, Christmas was here again and I was one of the few staying on campus. I could have gone home, but I wanted to stay at school, even though it meant I would be alone. I didn’t mind being alone. I lived six hundred miles away and the trip by bus usually made me vomit. I could have flown, but I hated airplanes more than I hated buses.

When I told my mother I wasn’t coming home for Christmas, her feelings were hurt and she almost cried. She said she couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to be with my family during the most joyous season of the year, but I told her I was run down and if I stayed at school I could catch up on my rest and read a book I was supposed to read without distractions. She accepted my explanation but wasn’t happy about it. She implied I wanted to stay at school because I was enamored of some girl there. I laughed and let her think whatever she wanted.

The cafeteria was closed for Christmas vacation, so it meant that during the twelve days of vacation I would have to eat at one of the restaurants in town or eat from my stock of non-perishable foods that I kept in the desk drawer in my room. My mother sent me five one-hundred dollar bills in a Christmas card. She wrote that she hoped I had a lovely Christmas. Go someplace nice and have a good dinner on Christmas Day, she wrote. I failed to tell her everybody else went home and I practically had the whole dormitory to myself, not to mention the entire campus.

Besides me all the way up on the fifth floor, there were only four other people in the whole building who didn’t go home for Christmas. In five floors, there were five people. I liked those odds. I liked the feeling of being by myself in this old relic of a building. If there were any ghosts—and I’m sure there were—I was sure to see them.

The toilets and showers were down the hall from my room. I always undressed in my room and wore my bathrobe down the hall to the shower. Now that I was alone, I could walk down the hall naked the way everybody else did. The first time I did it, I walked all over the floor naked, even sitting for a while on the ratty, vinyl-covered couch in the TV room. I loved the feeling of freedom, the feeling of being the last person left alive. I felt like Robinson Crusoe and, like him, I had everything I needed.

On my first night alone on the fifth floor, I covered up in bed and read by my little bedside lamp. It had turned much colder outside and the wind was kicking up. The wind rattled the old windows in their frames and soon it started to rain. I lay for a while, listening to the wind and the rain and the quiet of the old building and soon I turned off the light and burrowed under the covers, experiencing a sense of well-being.

Sometime in the night the rain turned to snow and when I got up in the morning, there were at least a couple of inches on the ground. It was perfect. Nothing felt more like Christmas than snow. I didn’t have anything for breakfast, so I dressed and walked across campus to the student union to get a cinnamon roll and a cup of tea.

While I was sitting at a table my myself looking out the window, Dorian Dye came in and helped himself to the seat beside me. I knew him slightly and didn’t like him very much. He had a thin, rat-like face and discolored teeth. He was nosy and always asked questions that were none of his business. One time he asked me how much a jacket cost that I was wearing and another time he asked me my grade-point average.

“Hello, there, stranger!” he said.

“Hi, Dorian,” I said, wishing he might disappear.

“I heard you were one of the few staying behind in Richardson Hall.”

“Who told you that?”

“Oh, a little birdie told me!”

“There’s no reason to be coy, Dorian,” I said. “Just come right out and say it.”

“So, why did you stay behind?” he asked.

“My family doesn’t like me. They paid me to stay away.”

“Oh, hah-hah-hah! I don’t think I believe that!”

“You don’t think I’d tell you the real reason, do you?”

“Okay, so don’t tell me. I don’t care. Do you want to know why I stayed behind and didn’t go home?”

“Not especially,” I said.

“My mother is bipolar and an alcoholic and I can’t stand to be in the house with her.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“Listen. I’m on the third floor of Richardson Hall and I’m the only one there, so if you get lonesome give me a holler.”

“I won’t get lonesome,” I said. “I like the solitude.”

“Yes, you’re the solitary type, aren’t you?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“When I’m in my room alone, I try not to think about the all the ghosts in the building.”

“There’s only one, isn’t there?”

“Yes, there’s the boy who hanged himself in his room, but in a building that old there’s bound to be others.”

“I don’t mind a ghost or two,” I said.

“Tomorrow night is Christmas Eve. What are you going to do?”

“Nothing special, I guess.”

“Give me a call and we’ll get together.”

“I don’t think so, Dorian. I’ll probably just do some reading and then go to bed.”

“Well, if you change your mind, let me know. My number is in the student directory.”

I knew Dorian was another loser like me; what he said about not going home confirmed it. I really did have plans for Christmas Eve, but I didn’t especially want to discuss them with Dorian.

In the afternoon it was snowing again in a Christmassy way, so I put on my boots and my coat and walked downtown. The stores were crowded, as one might expect two days before Christmas, but I braved the crowds and tried to ignore them. I spent an hour or so looking around in the bookstore and bought two books, one that I wanted to read and one that I had to read if I knew what was good for me. Then I braved the department store and walked all over the three floors, absorbing the Christmas atmosphere, listening to the Christmas music, and observing the strange cavalcade of human life. I bought myself a wool cap and a pair of gloves. Merry Christmas to me.

After I left the department store, I stopped at a diner that had festive lights in the window and sat at the counter and ate a large cod sandwich with fried potatoes they called chips and drank a chocolate milkshake. While I was in the diner, nobody spoke to me except the waitress who took my order. I might have been invisible. I might have been the ghost of the boy who hanged himself in his room.

On my way back to the dormitory I stopped at the corner grocery and bought a few oranges, some donuts, a large candy cane, a loaf of French bread, a bag of pretzels, and a small jar of peanut butter. I also bought a pack of cigarettes and a bottle of fizzy white wine. I wasn’t much of a drinker or a smoker, but I figured I needed to do something out of the ordinary to celebrate the holiday. While I was paying for my purchases, an old woman wearing rhinestone glasses who worked in the store put a sprig of mistletoe in my bag. Nobody could say I didn’t have what I needed to celebrate my first Christmas away from home.

That evening I was sleepy, so I got into bed and read for a while and then I turned off the light and lay there listening to Christmas music on the radio. It was still snowing outside and the wind was gusting against the windows. Most people don’t like the snow, but no matter how much it snowed it didn’t bother me. I wasn’t going anywhere. I was happy and comfortable—snug as a bug in a rug, as my grandma used to say when I was little.

After I was asleep, somebody knocked on my door, but I didn’t get out of bed to answer it. I preferred to let them think I wasn’t there. Maybe it was the ghost of the boy who hanged himself in his room, but I don’t think ghosts knock on doors. It was probably Dorian Dye, since he was one of the few people who knew I was there.

The next day was the day before Christmas. I got up and had an orange and a chunk of French bread and a donut for breakfast, and then I took a shower and shaved. The weather forecast on the radio said the snow would continue through the day and into the night, with the temperature in the teens. It was ideal Christmas weather.

In the afternoon I put on my new wool cap and gloves and walked downtown, welcoming the frigid wind in my face. I had an early dinner at an Italian restaurant and then I went to a movie.

There were three movie theatres in town to choose from. I went to the one that showed only old movies and saw a double feature of movies from the 1930s. It was a very old theatre, with appropriate décor and all the pungent odors, and I sat down close to the front, as I always do, and enjoyed the feeling of stepping into another time. There weren’t more than fifteen or twenty other people in the theatre—it was, after all, Christmas Eve—and nobody made a sound when the movies were playing, not even laughing when something funny happened.

When the show was over and I left the theatre, the snow had stopped but the wind was just as cold as before, if not colder. There were still lots of people everywhere, but not nearly as many as before. Most people had gone home, I supposed, to rest up for Santa.

When I got back to the dormitory, it was after eleven o’clock. I put on my pajamas and bathrobe and, since it was Christmas Eve, opened my bottle of wine. I drank about half the bottle sitting up in bed, listening to the radio, until I was partly drunk. I saw out the window that it was snowing again. When I was seven years old, I would have been watching in the sky for signs of Santa.

Thinking of Santa made me think of home and my parents. I wondered what they were doing on Christmas Eve. It was the first Christmas Eve of my life that I hadn’t been with them. They had probably eaten a silent dinner and when they were finished, my mother would start clearing the dishes off the table and my father would go into the living room and expire in front of the TV. I wondered if they were lonely and thinking of me, their only child.

That night I dreamed of the boy who hanged himself in his room in Richardson Hall. He came into my room and sat on the edge of my bed. I sat up and introduced myself. He had dark circles around his eyes and his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, but he tried to smile. He still had the noose around his neck that he hanged himself with. I asked him why he was so unhappy, but he didn’t answer. I also asked him if he would do it over again if he had the chance but he didn’t answer that, either.

A little while later I dreamed that I got out of the bed and looked at myself in the mirror over the sink without turning on the light, and I had become the boy who hanged himself in his room. The boy was me. I was the boy. We were the same person. I tried to remove the noose, but the knot was so tight I couldn’t get it loose.

Christmas morning I slept until ten o’clock. I got dressed and was just about to go over to the student union for a light breakfast, when there was a knock at my door. I thought it might be the ghost of the boy who hanged himself in his room, so I opened the door and when I did I was disappointed to see Dorian Dye. He was singing “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” I wanted to smack him in the mouth to get him to shut up.

“Have you seen any ghosts?” he asked as he came into my room and draped himself on my bed.

“A few,” I said.

“Are you lonely yet and wishing you had gone home instead of staying in this dreary old place?”

“Not a bit, Dorian,” I said. “Would you please get your shoes off my bedspread?”

“Yes, sir!” he laughed. “Do you know Vernon Vogel?”

“No, I don’t know Vernon Vogel,” I said with a hint of impatience. “Is that a person?”

“Hah-hah-hah! Well, of course he’s a person! What else would he be?”

“I don’t know, Dorian. You tell me.”

“Well, Vernon has a car.”

“I’m so happy for him.”

“Well, since Vernon’s alone for Christmas, and since I’m alone for Christmas, and since Vernon has a car, we’re going to Pirandello’s for Christmas dinner. They have a special Christmas buffet. Have you ever been to Pirandello’s?”

“Once, I think.”

“I told Vernon about you, all alone here on the fifth floor, and he and I both decided it would be the neighborly thing to do to ask you to come along. We’ll make it a threesome.”

“I don’t think so, Dorian. Thanks for thinking of me, though.”

“Do you think you’re too good for Vernon and me?”

“Of course not, Dorian! I just don’t feel much like going. I have a sore throat and I’m kind of achy. I might be coming down with something.”

“What will you do for dinner?”

“I don’t know. Probably not much of anything.”

“We’ll have fun and the food will be great.”

“I don’t think…”

“What will you do if you don’t go? Just sit here all alone in your room?”

“I don’t know. I was thinking I might…”

“If you don’t have the money for Pirandello’s, I can pay for both of us.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Dorian! Of course, I have the money for Pirandello’s!”

“So you’ll go, then?”

“All right, I’ll go.”

“Excellent! Meet me downstairs at four o’clock and we’ll go to Vernon’s room.”

I wanted to go out for Christmas dinner with Dorian and Vernon Vogel about as much as I wanted to eat ground glass, but it was more fun than I thought it would be. Vernon, a pleasant enough fellow, was the proud owner of a sleek red sports car.

Pirandello’s was about fifteen miles outside of town. It was a swanky place and packed with people, as if nobody stayed at home for Christmas dinner anymore. As Dorian said, the food was terrific. I ate more than was healthy, including turkey, duck and beef, not to mention three desserts.

When we left Pirandello’s, Vernon had had a little too much champagne—I had only had two glasses—so I drove back to school. I was glad for the chance to drive a European sports car for once in my life.

Back at Richardson Hall, Dorian wanted me to walk downtown with him to take in the Christmas lights, but I told him I had a headache and just wanted to go to my room.

I got into bed and drank the second half of the bottle of wine from the day before, listening to Christmas carols on the radio. Christmas really was a special time of the year. There was nothing else like it. My mother would be happy to know I had Christmas dinner with friends (even if they weren’t exactly good friends) and wasn’t alone.

I slept all night without waking up. In the morning I woke up to the phone ringing down the hall. I looked at the clock and saw it wasn’t even eight o’clock yet. Who gets up that early the day after Christmas? I groaned and rolled over and went back to sleep.

In a little while the phone rang again. Everything was so quiet and the phone so loud that it seemed it was in the room with me. It was probably a wrong number or somebody calling somebody who wasn’t there. Without bothering to put on my bathrobe, I opened my door and went down the chilly hallway and lifted up the receiver, ready to slam it down again.

It was my mother. As soon as I heard her say my name, I knew something was wrong.

My father had a heart attack in the early-morning hours of Christmas Day. An ambulance came and took him to the hospital and he died around noon. He was fifty-one years old.

When I hung up the phone from talking to my mother, I wasn’t sure if anything was real. It was Christmas, my father was dead without warning, and I was standing in the silent hallway on the fifth floor of Richardson Hall in my flannel pajamas. I was stunned. I had to wait an hour or so before I could think, or get dressed, or do anything.

I called the airport and reserved a seat on a flight for later that day. I packed my bag and when it was time to go, I called a taxi.

During the short flight, I sat staring out the window and didn’t exchange a word with a single person. My tearful mother picked me up in her Cadillac when my flight landed. From there it was on to the funeral home to pick out a casket and plan a dignified burial. I kept thinking that if I had gone home for Christmas in the first place, my father wouldn’t have had a heart attack and wouldn’t have died. I knew my mother was thinking the same thing. I was the villain of the day.

December 22, 2023December 22, 2023 by allen0997

My Christmas Eve That Year ~ A Short Story

My Christmas Eve That Year
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

My parents got their divorce the summer I was fifteen and sold the house we lived in. My mother, my little brother, and I moved into a small, four-room flat in an old apartment building downtown. It was on the fifth floor and there were no elevators, so that meant we were constantly walking up and down the stairs.

The flat wasn’t big enough for me to have my own room, so we moved my bed into a little space off the kitchen, which was originally meant to be a pantry. It was tiny and cramped, but the best thing about it was that I had my own window with a good view of buildings and trees far off in the distance. I liked to lay in bed at night and look out at the sky. The best nights were when there was a full moon. When there were thunderstorms, it felt like the lightning was going to come in through the window and zap me into oblivion.

Now it was Christmas again, or almost. Our first Christmas in the apartment. Our Christmas tree stood in the corner of the front room, aglow with multi-colored lights and loaded down with tinsel and ornaments, stacks of presents beneath its branches. A sprig of holly hung in the doorway into the kitchen. On the front door was a wreath that would probably be stolen before Christmas morning ever arrived.

My little brother Georgie, age six, jumped up and down on the couch and screamed. He was wholly invested in Christmas. It was snowing out, he didn’t have to go back to school until after New Year’s, and he believed that Santa was going to be especially generous with him this year.

“You’d better calm down,” I said. “Santa will pass you by if he gets word that you’ve been bad.”

“I haven’t been bad!” he screeched.

My mother came in from her bedroom, where she had been putting on makeup and fixing her hair. She was afraid I was going to divulge the great secret that Santa doesn’t really exist.

“What did you just say to him?” she asked, looking at me threateningly.

“I didn’t say anything,” I said. “I just told him he’s giving me a headache.”

“Get down from there, Georgie! You know you’re not supposed to use the couch as a trampoline! The couch is for sitting, not for jumping.”

“All this Christmas stuff is making me puke,” I said. “A person can only take so much.”

“Well, it’s too bad you’ve forgotten what it’s like to be excited about Christmas,” she said. “I guess you’ve grown too sophisticated for your family.”

“He’s grown too sophisticated!” screamed Georgie.

“Shut up!” I said.

“When do we get to open the presents?” Georgie screamed.

“For the eighty-seventh time, we will open the presents on Christmas morning after we’ve had a good breakfast.”

“Why do we have to wait so long?”

“Because I said so, that’s why!” She sat on the other end of the sofa and patted her hair in back.

“I want to open one now!”

“No! We’ve been all through that a dozen times. You have to wait like everybody else.”

“Tomorrow’s Christmas and we haven’t heard anything from daddy yet,” I said.

“No, and you probably won’t, either. He’s probably laying up in some hotel room, drunk as a skunk.”

“Drunk as a skunk!” Georgie screamed.

“I thought he’d send at least send us a present.”

“You’re old enough to know you can’t count on him for anything.”

“We always had a good Christmas with him,” I said.

“I know, but those days are over. Your daddy is out of the picture now. He was the one that wanted the divorce.”

“I’m going to the movies tonight,” I said. “It’s a Christmas Eve horror double feature.”

“I don’t care what it is,” she said. “You’re not going to the movies on Christmas Eve. You’re going to spend the evening with your family.”

“But I’m meeting someone.”

“Call whoever it is and tell them you can’t make it.”

“Is he going to be here?”

“He has a name, you know.”

“Is Regis going to be here?”

“Yes, he’s going to be here in time to eat dinner with us and later we’re all going to church.”

“I don’t feel like going to church.”

“You feel like going to the movies but you don’t feel like going to church?”

“Church gives me a headache.”

“You’re insane.”

“If I am, I get it from you. Insanity runs in your family.”

“I think Regis is going to ask me to marry him.”

“Why would you want to marry Regis?”

“Why shouldn’t I marry him? He’s the sweetest, kindest man I’ve ever met and he’s got a good job.”

“He sells washing machines in an appliance store.”

“Someday he’ll be manager. There’s really good money in that.”

“What about daddy?”

“What about him?”

“You’re going to marry Regis without telling daddy first?”

“You’re a smart boy, but you just don’t seem to understand. There is no longer any connection between me and your daddy. We are kaput!”

“What does that mean?”

“Your daddy and I are finished with each other. All ties are severed.”

“All ties are severed!” Georgie shrieked.

“If you marry Regis, does that mean we can move out of this crummy apartment?”

“Not right away. Regis will probably move in here with us. His business hasn’t been so good lately. He’s a little strapped for cash at the moment. He expects things to pick up next year, though.”

“If Regis moves in here with us, I’m moving out.”

“Why don’t you like Regis?”

“He belongs to a bowling league.”

“A lot of men belong to bowling leagues.”

“He’s old!”

“He’s forty-three.”

“He wears cologne that smells like bug spray.”

“I’ll get him to stop wearing it after a while.”

“He has hairs sprouting out of his ears. Haven’t you ever noticed that?”

“Of course, I’ve noticed it. His grooming isn’t the best. That’s because he lives alone. All that will change after we’re married.”

“I think you should check with daddy first before you marry Regis. He might want to come back. If you marry Regis, it’ll be too late.”

“Your daddy is not coming back. Ever.”

“You might be surprised.”

“It’s time for you to face reality.”

“I am facing reality and I don’t like it.”

“I think I see Santa way up in the sky over there,” Georgie said, standing at the window.

“You’re hallucinating again,” I said.

“It’s too early for Santa,” mother said. “He won’t come until we’re all asleep. He doesn’t like for people to look at him.”

“I can certainly see why,” I said.

“I hope he remembers everything I wanted,” Georgie said.

Mother went back into the bedroom and in a little while came back out in her red Christmas dress that in my opinion was too tight. She had dowsed herself in perfume. When she saw me lying on the couch staring at the ceiling, she decided I needed something to do.

“I want you to go down to Friedlander’s market and buy a carton of eggnog for tonight,” she said, digging in her purse for some money.

“I don’t like eggnog,” I said.

“Well, are you the only one here? Regis says it’s not Christmas without eggnog.”

“Regis says. Regis says. What else does Regis say?”

“Can I go to the store, too?” Georgie asked excitedly.

“No! You stay here and help me wrap Regis’s present.”

“Regis, Regis, Regis,” I said as he went out the door. “He’s certainly a big man around here, isn’t he?”

The snow was falling heavier now. Cars made hissing sounds on the pavement as they passed by. Last-minute shoppers were still keeping the stores busy. With the setting of the sun, Christmas Eve had officially arrived.

The store only had one carton of eggnog left, so I grabbed it and went and stood in the long line to pay. When the cashier smiled at me and wished me a merry Christmas, I gave him a sour look.

When I got back home, Regis had arrived with presents for all of us. He was throwing Georgie up near the ceiling and then catching him on the way down. Georgie squealed with delight. Mother stood at the stove and beamed her approval.

Regis had brought Georgie a stuffed elephant and some other toys. My present from him, still wrapped in a big box with a red bow, was at my place at the table. Before I sat down, I picked up the box and set it on the floor.

“Aren’t you going to open your present from Regis?” mother asked.

“I’ll open it later. I have a headache now.”

When we were all seated at the table, mother insisted we join hands while Regis said grace. Regis’s hand felt clammy and unclean in mine. When he finally let go, I wiped my hand back and forth along my leg before I touched any food.

While we ate, I could see that mother was wearing a diamond engagement ring. This, of course, would be her Christmas present from Regis. So, it was official, then. He had proposed and she had said yes.

Regis talked about his day at work and laughed while we ate. Mother didn’t say much. Georgie kept looking out the window for signs of Santa. When Regis seemed to have run out of things to say for the moment, mother looked at me and said she had something she wanted to tell me and Georgie.

“What is it?” I asked with a sick feeling.

“Regis has asked me to be his wife and I’ve consented. We’re going to be married on New Year’s Eve.”

“What’s the rush?” I asked.

“I think it’s so romantic to be married on New Year’s Eve,” she gushed. “It will be a new start of a new year for all of us.”

She turned and looked at Regis. There were tears in her eyes. Regis took hold of her hand and pulled her in for a kiss. I knew he was getting ham grease all over her.

“I think I hear Santa’s sleigh outside!” Georgie said.

After we finished eating, mother told me to go put on my dress pants and a white shirt for church. She would help me with my tie before we left for church.

Except there wasn’t going to be any church for me. I grabbed my coat and hat and ran out the front door before she had a chance to see what I was doing.

The snow must have been five or six inches by that time. I still had on my tennis shoes and I could feel the snow soaking through to my socks after a few steps, but I didn’t mind. I needed to talk to daddy.

I knew that Colson’s Drug Store, about four blocks down from where we lived, had a pay phone. I had a pocket full of change especially for that purpose.

Right after the divorce, daddy gave me his private number where I could reach him any time. If I ever needed him, all I had to do was give him a call.

There were a lot of people at Colson’s, mostly at the pharmacy counter. Nobody paid any attention to me as I went all the way to the back, where the pay phone was.

I was sure he would answer. He would probably figure it was me calling on Christmas Eve.

The phone rang ten or twelves times, but finally he answered.

“Hello,” a little groggily.

“Daddy?” I said. “Is that you?”

“Who is this? Is this Evan?

“Yeah, it’s me. Evan.”

“I couldn’t hear you very well at first.”

“Can you hear me better now?”

“Yeah, I hear you fine now.”

“Well, since it’s Christmas Eve, I wanted to call and wish you a merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you, Evan!”

“Do you know where we’re living now?”

“No.”

“In an apartment downtown, on the fifth floor of an old building.”

“I’ve been wanting to come and visit you and Georgie, but I wasn’t sure where you were living. How’s Georgie?”

“He’s fine. Waiting for Santa to bring him everything he asked for.”

“Where are you now?”

“I’m in Colson’s Drug Store, near where we live. Do you know where that is?”

“Yeah, I’ve been to Colson’s a few times. Don’t you have a phone in the apartment?”

“We do, but I didn’t want mother to know I was calling you.”

“How is your mother?”

“She’s fine, but she’s the main reason I wanted to talk to you.”

“She’s not sick, is she?”

“No, she’s not sick. She’s getting married on New Year’s Eve.”

Daddy was silent for a moment and then he laughed. “Who is she marrying?”

“His name is Regis. He’s a creep. He smells funny. I don’t like him.”

“Maybe that’s because you don’t know him very well.”

“I want you to come and get me.”

“What?”

“I said I want you to come to Colson’s Drug Store and get me. I want to spend Christmas with you.”

“Wait a minute, Evan! I’m afraid that’s not possible. I’m not living in a very nice place. I don’t even have a tree.”

“That’s all right. I don’t need a tree.”

“If your mother doesn’t know where you are, she’ll be worried.”

“I’ll call her from your place.”

I started to cry like a blubbery crybaby. I hadn’t meant to cry, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

“Is it that bad?” he asked.

“Mother just isn’t herself. I don’t want to be around her. She acts like Regis is some kind of a god. They make me sick.”

“All right. If it’s that bad, I’ll come and get you.”

“How long? How long will it take?”

“Give me a half-hour or so.”

“Colson’s Drug Store. I’ll be waiting outside for you.”

It was still snowing, harder than ever now, but I didn’t mind waiting in the snow for a half-hour. People coming in and out of Colson’s looked at me and then looked away. Maybe some of them thought I was going to try to rob them. I tried leaning back against the building, crossing my legs and putting my hands in my pockets. I tried to look casual, but I felt conspicuous.

I wasn’t sure what kind of car daddy would be driving, but I looked at every car. One of them would be him.

The half-hour passed and then an hour and then two hours. I was determined to wait as long as it took. I would wait all night. I would still be waiting on Christmas Morning if I had to. My fingers and toes were numb. I could no longer feel them. I wasn’t sure if they would ever work right again or not. I didn’t much care.

December 18, 2023 by allen0997

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hah-hah-hah!”

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

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

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

“What do you mean?”

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

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

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

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

“Well, something like that.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

October 16, 2023October 16, 2023 by allen0997

Haunt ~ A Short Story

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.

October 15, 2023 by allen0997

Five-Finger Discount ~ A Short Story

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

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

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

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

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

“No,” Dot said. “Look what you did.”

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

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

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

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

“A little,” Lennie said.

“Will you buy me a goldfish?”

“What do you want with a goldfish?”

“For a pet. What else?”

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

“I don’t care. I want one anyway.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I didn’t like her. She scared me.”

“I didn’t like her either.”

“Do you think she’ll tell on us?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How much is the book?”

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

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

“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?”

“Well, yes, I believe I have.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How does it look?” she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“Will that be all today?”

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

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

“I thought you smoked Luckys,” Dot said.

“Well, today I’m smoking Pall-Malls.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does that mean?”

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

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

The waitress wrote that down and turned to Lennie.

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

“Anything else?”

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

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

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

“What?”

“Don’t you go to Calvin High?”

“I used to. I graduated.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Now!” Dot said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hello, sweetness!” Newton said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you mean right now?”

“What better time?”

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

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

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

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

“How do you do?” Lennie said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hi there!” Newton said.

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

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

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

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

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

“When are we going home?” Dot asked.

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

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

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

“What kind of a party?”

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

“Lurlene won’t like it.”

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

“Who’s Lurlene?” Newton asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, now, isn’t that just too bad?”

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

“Just where is this party?” Lennie asked.

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

“Will there be lots of people there?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What things?” Lennie asked.

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

“I can do that anytime, silly.”

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

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

“What do you want me to tell Lurlene?”

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

Newton and Stegg laughed again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where’s Lennie?”

“Don’t ask me.”

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

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

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

October 5, 2023October 5, 2023 by allen0997

The House He Lived In ~ A Short Story

The House He Lived In image 1

The House He Lived In
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Sid Bone was small for his age. He was the boy in school with the funny clothes: the pants too big and the sweater too small, the shoe with the flapping sole and the holes in his socks. His classmates never invited him to any of their parties because he wasn’t the party type and, anyway, he had a funny smell.

Sid Bone would never grow to manhood. When he was twelve, his liquor-addled mother gave him sleeping pills to make him unconscious and then she wrapped an electrical cord around his neck and strangled him. She just couldn’t take care of a twelve-year-old boy anymore, she said. It cost too much money to feed him and just having a kid underfoot all the time wore on her nerves. Without him, she’d be able to get her life in order, get off the booze, find a decent man. Then, later on, when everything was jake, she’d have another baby and they’d all be happy. Maybe the new one would be a girl who would take care of her in her old age.

After she sobered up a little, she was sorry for what she had done to Sid Bone. She would never have had the courage to do it if she hadn’t been drunk. She sat in her easy chair and blubbered and wailed for a while. Since there was no one to hear her, she let loose with some anguished screams. After she had cried herself out, she gave a little laugh, peed in her pants because she couldn’t get up, and reached for the bottle again.

After a day and a night spent in the chair, drinking and feeling bad about her terrible life, she made herself get up and go into the bathroom and clean up, wash her face, comb the mats out of her hair and put on some clean clothes. She was going to have to call the police. They would send someone out. She needed to make herself look decent and presentable.

She had the story straight in her head. She worked out all the details. Her boy, Sid Bone, had met with a bad accident. She had been sick, sleeping in the other room; she didn’t hear a sound and she wasn’t even sure what happened. When she found him lying on the bed, unconscious, she tried to revive him, but, of course, it was too late. He must have done himself in because the kids at school laughed at him. There could be no other explanation.

For a while, several days at least, Sid Bone didn’t realize he was dead. He woke up in the morning and sleepily went to school as he always did. He thought it was a little funny that his mother wasn’t in any of her usual places, on her bed or sitting at the kitchen table, but he didn’t mind her not being there; he could manage fine on his own without her.

At school, he sat at his desk all day long, as he always did, doing what he was supposed to do: listen to teacher talk, copy problems off the blackboard, read this or that book, get up for recess or lunch. Then when school ended, he walked home as he always did. The next thing he knew, he was getting out of bed in the morning to start his day all over again. He had no recollection of anything in between.

On the fourth day, Sid Bone knew something was different; something had changed. Somebody new was sitting at the desk he had occupied all year. When he went to the front of the room and tried to ask teacher about it, she didn’t seem to see him but instead looked right through him. He turned around and faced the room at large, thirty-two of his classmates, and screamed Hey! in his loudest voice, but nobody looked up or turned their heads in his direction. It was if he no longer existed.

Not knowing what else to do, he went upstairs to the nurse’s office. Miss Faulk should be able to look at him, touch his head and tell what was wrong. She was better than any doctor.

Miss Faulk wasn’t in her office, though. The only person there was a woman he had never seen before, sitting at Miss Faulk’s desk, writing. When he paused in the doorway, she looked up at him and motioned for him to come into the room. He was a little relieved to know that somebody was seeing him, even if it was somebody he didn’t know.

“I’ve been waiting for you,” the woman said, standing up and coming around to the front of the desk. He saw that she was quite short and her face was crisscrossed with tiny lines like a road map.

“You have?” he asked, genuinely surprised. “Do you know me?”

“Well, I know of you. I’m Miss Munsendorfer. I used to be a teacher here a long time ago.”

“In horse-and-buggy days?”

“Not quite that long ago. We had cars then.”

“I was looking for Miss Faulk.”

“She’s not here right now, but I am here.”

“I wanted to see if Miss Faulk could take my temperature or something and see if I might be sick.”

“I think I can tell you you’re not sick.”

“How do you know?”

“You’ll never be sick again.”

“How do you know?”

“You don’t need to come to school anymore, either.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know how best to explain it to you, so I’ll just show you.”

She took him by the hand. Before he knew it, they were outside on the playground and then they were walking down the hill away from the school. Then, in the beat of a heart and the blink of an eye, they were in the church on Windsor Avenue.

“What are we doing here?” Sid Bone asked.

“You’ll see,” Miss Munsendorfer said. “Just be patient.”

The church was full of people, a funeral in progress. There was a closed casket at the front of the church draped in yellow-and-white flowers. All the people in the church looked solemn. Some of them dabbed at their eyes. An old man, a minister, was standing at the pulpit talking about evil in the world and how the only way to accept it is to recognize it as part of God’s plan. The words coming from the minister’s mouth sounded funny as if they were being spoken underwater.

Just when Sid Bone was looking out over the sea of faces in the church, picking out the ones he knew, Miss Munsendorfer touched his hand again and they were outside, moving away from the church and, once again, before he knew what was happening, they were in a different place: they were standing on the street where he lived.

The street was there, of course, but the falling-down house that he lived in with his mother was gone, as if by magic. In its place was bare dirt; even the junk and debris in the yard were gone.

Sid Bone was beginning to catch on. He wasn’t especially surprised the house was gone; he would have been more surprised if it had still been there.

Miss Munsendorfer again took him by the hand and, again, in the beat of a heart and the blink of an eye, they were standing in the hallway of the women’s penitentiary two hundred miles away.

“What is this place?” Sid Bone said. “I don’t like it here.”

Miss Munsendorfer pointed into one of the cells. When Sid Bone turned his head and looked, he saw his mother in the cell, sitting on the bed. She looked a human wreck: dejected, wretched, forlorn. He turned away before he started to cry.

Miss Munsendorfer again took by the hand, standing in that hallway of the women’s penitentiary, and in a flash they were back in the nurse’s office at school. Miss Faulk still wasn’t there.

Sid Bone found himself overpoweringly sleepy. He lay down on the nurse’s cot they kept in the corner for the suddenly ill and Miss Munsendorfer covered him over with an army blanket, tucking him in the way a mother would, with all but the kiss goodnight.

“Are you an angel?” Sid Bone asked her.

“No, I’m not an angel. I’m only here to help you.”

“Okay.”

“But you don’t need my help any more. You can do the rest on your own.”

She patted him on his shoulder and then she was gone.

When he awoke, he was in a place he had never been before. There were flowers and birds and lots of trees; animals of all kinds, but even the lions and bears wouldn’t hurt him because they were tame and gentle; he could walk right up to them and tug at their fur and they would only look at him. There were also people, some of whom he remembered or thought he remembered, but they left him alone whenever he wanted to be left alone. Most surprising of all, it never rained or got dark until he was ready.

August 28, 2023August 28, 2023 by allen0997

The Moving Picture ~ A Short Story

The Moving Picture
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

People said we didn’t need an opera house, but an opera house we had, and it was smack in the middle of a row of commercial buildings in the downtown district, between a furniture store and the bank. Two or three times a year the opera house opened its doors for a “serious” play or for a semi-famous author who gave a “reading” from a book he had written in an attempt to boost sales of said book. The vast majority of people in the town were happily ignorant of these, and all, cultural events.

I had been in the opera house on a couple of earlier occasions. The first time was to hear a lecture on the Egyptian pyramids and the second time for a political rally given by a candidate for the United States Senate. (He lost.) Now, here I was at the opera house again, for the third time, to witness for myself the miracle, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and twelve, the innovation called the “moving picture.” People in places like New York City would already be familiar with this phenomenon, but out here in the hinterlands of the North American continent, we were still as uninitiated as pygmies in the wilds of Africa.

Standing on the sidewalk, I looked up at the less-than-impressive edifice of the opera house and shivered in the wind. I paid my twenty cents admission to the pompadoured lady behind the window out front and went inside.

The cave-like interior of the opera house smelled like every old attic or damp basement I had ever been in. About half the seats were already taken (a surprising turnout for this town), at fifteen minutes before the moving picture was even supposed to start, so I went down close to the front and took a seat on the aisle.

The first thing I noticed after sitting down was that a tarpaulin or large canvas had been stretched across the stage. It didn’t take a genius to know, I suppose, that the moving picture would be projected onto the canvas, which glowed as if a lamp were burning behind it. (It occurred to me when I saw the glow that the opera house might be on fire and nobody knew it yet.)

In a few minutes, a young man in a frock coat came down the aisle; the audience knew instinctively that he had something to do with the moving picture and stopped talking and shuffling about. The young man took a seat at an upright piano to the right of the stage, struck a few chords of music, and the moving picture began right before our eyes. (The piano music will be continuous throughout the moving picture. The music will reflect and embellish what’s going on in the moving picture.)

The moving picture is called Cleopatra: The Romance of a Woman and a Queen. I wouldn’t be surprised if most of the people in this town had never heard of Cleopatra, but I knew she was a Queen of Egypt who lived a long time ago in biblical times. I didn’t find her unsavory life all that compelling, but I could see that there were people who found her interesting enough to make a moving picture about her, and I was sure there would be plenty of other people on the receiving end willing to put forward their twenty cents to see it.

The Cleopatra of the moving picture is as broad and tall as a man, a formidable woman and a force to be reckoned with. She has copious amounts of black hair gathered around her face and hanging down her back to her waist. She wears a loose-fitting gown almost down to her ankles and strapped sandals. The tiniest hint of cleavage shows. Her armpits are shaved; we know this because she gestures a lot with her arms, raising them above her head.

Pharon also gestures a lot with his arms. He is thin and young, dressed in a short tunic that shows his legs. He is in love with Cleopatra, but it won’t matter because he is, not only a fisherman, but also a slave. He can only worship Cleopatra from afar and gather flowers that he hopes to give her. Iras, attendant to Cleopatra, is in love with Pharon and is jealous of his love for the queen.

When Cleopatra discovers that Pharon is in love with her, she decides she will kill him. But—wait a minute—she will give him another chance. She will give him ten days of bliss with her, in her arms, at the end of which he must kill himself. He readily agrees to die at the end of the ten days.

Cleopatra likes Pharon more than she expected to, but, a bargain is a bargain, so at the end of ten days she poisons him. The attendant Iras, loving Pharon as she does, goes to him and revives him by giving him an antidote to Cleopatra’s poison. Iras lies to Pharon and tells him that Cleopatra wanted her (Iras) to save Pharon’s life and he believes her. With Pharon once again among the living, Iras tells him he must leave Alexandria. He is taken to the outskirts of the city and released.

Marc Antony, Roman general, has heard all about Cleopatra and wants to meet her. He has heard rumors that she has been conspiring against Rome. He summons her to come to Tarsus to meet with him. She is late but finally arrives in her stately barge. When Cleopatra steps off her barge and Marc Antony looks into her seductive eyes, he falls instantly in love her. He can’t keep his hands off her. Then he is easily swayed to go back to Alexandria with Cleopatra and live with her in adulterous sin. To hell with Rome and its politics!

Marc Antony and Cleopatra are happy together at Cleopatra’s home in Alexandria, but the happiness can’t last. A messenger arrives to inform Marc Antony that his wife Flavia is dead and Rome is in turmoil. He says he doesn’t care and won’t go, but Cleopatra entreats him to go and take care of matters at home, even though she loves and will miss him terribly.

Cleopatra waits months for Marc Antony to return, but he doesn’t come back for the longest kind of time. Finally she receives word that he has taken another wife, this one named Octavia, and is arming for war. She agrees to send her warships to help him at a place called Actium.

Well, the Battle of Actium doesn’t go well and Marc Antony is defeated and terrifically embarrassed. He returns to Alexandria and here is where the slave Pharon re-emerges. He takes an assassin’s arrow in his chest meant for Marc Antony because he knows how much Cleopatra loves him (Marc Antony). Cleopatra sees the sacrifice that Pharon has made her and decides he is an all right fellow.

Marc Antony can’t live with the humiliation of his defeat at Actium and kills himself by “running” on his own sword. He apparently dies without pain and makes a beautiful corpse.

Cleopatra doesn’t want to go on living without her boyfriend Marc Antony. A sympathetic friend gives her a basket of figs with a tiny, poisonous asp (snake) in it. She picks up the basket of figs, the asp bites her, and she dies with her body draped across the body of Marc Antony.

The piano music ended with a flourish, the canvas across the stage became a piece of canvas again, and everybody in the audience got up and left. I walked home with a feeling of satisfaction, knowing I had seen my first moving picture. Was it something I would tell my grandchildren about, or something I would forget about in one week?

Moving pictures caught fire (not literally but figuratively) in the United States and around the world. In a few years, the opera house was converted into a moving picture theatre. Moving pictures became the most popular form of entertainment in our town, surpassing the dance hall, the tavern, the church and the whorehouse.

In 1920 I got on a train and traveled across the plains and the desert to get to Hollywood, California, the moving picture capital of the world, and I stayed there for the rest of my life. I became employed in the moving picture business, not as an actor, but as a publicist and then a scenario writer, and it all began in the little opera house in my home town on an autumn night in 1912 when I first met Cleopatra.

August 26, 2023August 26, 2023 by allen0997

Standing at the Gate ~ A Short Story

Standing at the Gate
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Harry Hawkins had not lived an exemplary life. He was frequently harsh and impatient with his wife and children, with the result that his wife was afraid of him and his two sons grew up hating him. He despised his wife’s mother and her other family members and was jealous of his wife’s devotion to them. He was intolerant of anybody whose political or religious views were different from his own. He complained and found fault with everything and everybody, nearly every minute of every day. In short, he was a joyless man who led a joyless life.

In the last few years of his life, with his health deteriorating, he was afraid of dying and going to hell. Believing that religion might save him, he joined a splinter religious group and believed everything that representatives of the group (essentially salesmen) told him. He was promised a place in heaven by these godless know-nothings, if only he would do as they told him to do for as long as he lived. Since he lived in a fine house and seemed to have enough money, they persuaded him the best thing was for him to donate, every month, a certain percentage of his income to the church. This he readily agreed to do, surprising his wife, his sons and anybody who knew of his parsimonious nature—he had always been known how to pinch a penny until it cried for mercy.

Every month at the first of the month he sat down at the kitchen table and wrote out a sizeable check (enough to support an ordinary family of four) to the church. He believed he was “storing up treasure in heaven.” (What the church did with the money was not known, but the church fathers were known for their penchant for little jaunts to Mexico.)

He attended every church service and was always on call when somebody from the church needed a service he might perform, such as a ride to the doctor or a few dollars for medicine or to pay the light bill. If a special kind of cake was needed for a church dinner, he didn’t mind going to the bakery and buying an elaborate and expensive cake made to order, which he paid for out of his own pocket. He never complained, never balked at anything the church asked him to do. If, however, his wife or one of his sons asked him to do something for them, he was always too tired or was running a fever and needed to be in bed.

For the first time in Harry Hawkins’ life, he was beloved. He wanted to love back, but he didn’t know how. It didn’t matter that he didn’t love, though; he was doing more than enough to get what he wanted.

Harry Hawkins suffered a heart attack and then another and then another. After he was discharged from the hospital and feeling much better, the church fathers paid him a call. He had never let them down. He had proven himself to them time after time. He might always be relied upon. They had decided to go one step farther and make him one of them. There was a special (secret) ordination ceremony in which he re-affirmed his unshakeable belief in the teachings of the church. After the ceremony was over, he believed he had done everything he needed to do. He would certainly be admitted into heaven. Easily.

After a few more months of precarious life, he succumbed to his various afflictions while a patient in the hospital. After a period of darkness (let’s say three days), he found himself standing outside the gate of heaven. He waited patiently with a forbearing smile for someone to come and let him in. From what he could see from where he stood, heaven was everything he expected: golden light, feathery clouds, celestial music.

Finally the gate keeper came out of hiding and peered at him through the golden bars of the gate.

“How may I help you?” the gate keeper said with a hint of impatience.

“Are you going to let me in?” Harry Hawkins asked.

“Are you sure you’re in the right place?”

“Of course, I’m in the right place! Open the gate and let me in!”

“People are sometimes misdirected, you see.”

“Well, I’m not!”

“How do you come to be here?”

“I died and then I came here. End of story. What more do you need to know?”

“Where is your spirit guide? Did he bring you here?”

“I don’t have a spirit guide! I don’t even know what a spirit guide is.”

“You shouldn’t have come here without being directed by your spirit guide.”

“Listen! Who are you anyway?”

“I’m the gate keeper.”

“I want to speak to your superior!”

“I’m afraid you’ll have to talk to me.”

“This is heaven, isn’t it? You have no right to tell me I can’t come in! You’re just a nobody!”

“I’m terribly sorry, sir, but I believe you’ve been misdirected. We’re expecting no new arrivals at this time.”

“If I could reach you through these bars, you ass, I’d push your face in! Open these doors right now and let me in!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, sir.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not supposed to be here, sir. You’ve been misdirected.”

Harry started stammering and was about to cry. “Now, listen, fella! I know you’re a right guy and I know I’m in the right place. I’ve known for years that I would go to heaven when I died. I was promised a place in heaven.”

“Who promised you?”

“Some very important people in my church, that’s who!”

“Oh, I think I’m beginning to understand! Was this promise somehow based on lucre?”

“What does lucre mean? You need to speak English here!”

“Was money involved? Were you promised a place in heaven depending on how much money you gave to the church?”

“Bingo! You’re not as dumb as you look, Jocko! You are absolutely correct! I gave mucho money to the church over the years! Look it up!”

“I don’t wish to be rude to you, sir, but you’re not supposed to be here. You’ve been misdirected.”

Harry covered his face with his hands and began crying. When he was able to speak again, he said, “So, what am I supposed to do, then? Am I supposed to stand here by this goddamn gate like a crazy person throughout all eternity?”

“No, sir. You don’t have to do that,” the gate keeper said. “Your bus will be along shortly.”

“Bus? You have buses here?”

“Yes, a bus will come along in a little while. All you need to do is get on the bus and it will take you where you belong.”

“Another part of heaven? Is that where the bus will take me?”

“Just get on the bus.”

Harry opened his mouth to ask another question, but the gate keeper was gone.

He wiped away his tears and composed himself, gratified at what the gate keeper had said. A bus would be along to take him where he needed to go. Another part of heaven, no doubt. What else could it be?

In a little while, an enormous bus parted the clouds and came roaring to a stop in front of the gate. With a smile and without a moment’s hesitation, he got on the bus, ready to be kind to everybody.

The other people on the bus were faceless nonentities, but he didn’t care. He didn’t feel like talking to anybody, anyway. He took a seat about halfway back and continued to smile, happy that his problems were over.

From where he sat, though, he could see the face of the driver in the mirror above the driver’s head. The driver, who seemed to be the only person on the bus with a face, was looking at him, watching him, in the mirror. The bus swerved to avoid hitting a porcupine and he was thrown a little off-balance. He caught himself on the back of the seat in front of him, and when he again looked at the driver’s face in the mirror he knew he had seen those eyes before: they were the eyes of his own father.

His father was a difficult and unlikeable man, dead for thirty years. It all came back to him, then: how he hated that man when he was growing up; how that man belittled him, called him names, and how he made him feel he was less than nothing.

He wasn’t looking only at his father, though. He was looking at himself, seeing himself, for the first time, as he really was.

“How cruel is life!” he said. “I never wanted to be like him! It wasn’t my fault!”

But the other passengers on the bus paid no attention. They all had problems of their own.

A sudden rain storm came up and the bus trundled on.

August 8, 2023August 8, 2023 by allen0997

Sylvia Dell ~ A Short Story

Sylvia Dell
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

In 1926 Mrs. Bertha Indelicato of Burbank, California, took her son, Sidney Indelicato, to a movie studio to audition for a part in a motion picture. She dressed him up in a light-blue jumper and a yellow shirt, with pork-pie hat and strapped, patent leather shoes. With Sidney’s cherubic face and naturally curly blond hair, he looked as much like a girl as a boy.

At the audition the casting director, a man named Perkins Belmont Perkins, wearing knickers and argyle stockings, separated the boys from the girls so he could get a better look. When Sidney was herded in with the girls, Mrs. Indelicato didn’t dare object, afraid that doing so might cost him a part in the movie.

When Perkins Belmont Perkins, eyeing Sidney critically, asked for the name, Mrs. Bertha Indelicato stepped forward quickly and gave the name as “Sylvia” Indelicato.

“She’s rather fat,” Perkins Belmont Perkins said, “but I think she has the ‘look’ we’re looking for.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Bertha said.

“Have your daughter here at eight o’clock sharp on the fourteenth and I believe we’ll be able to use her.”

“Oh, thank you!” Bertha said. “We’ll be here! Of that you can be sure!”

After they left the studio, Bertha took Sidney to a drugstore down the street to get a banana split.

“Just think!” she said to him as he stuffed ice cream into his mouth. “We’re in!”

“In where, mama?” he asked.

“Why, didn’t you hear the nice man say they were giving you a part in the movie, honey?”

“What do I got to do?”

“Just look sweet and the director will tell you everything to do. Mama will be right beside you every step of the way.”

When Bertha’s husband, Buster Indelicato, came home from his job as a Ford salesman, Bertha told him the good news: Sidney landed a part in a movie.

“There’s just one thing,” she said. “They think Sidney is a girl.”

“What?”

“I had to think fast. I told them his name is ‘Sylvia’ Indelicato.”

“And they believed that?”

“Yes.”

“You always did dress him more like a girl than a boy.”

“If that’s the only way he can get a part in a movie, then a girl he will be!”

“Well, I always wanted a daughter, I guess,” Sidney said, reaching for a beer.

In the few days she had before the fourteenth, Bertha took Sidney shopping and outfitted him with complete feminine attire, down to the lacy bloomers. She fluffed out his hair and gave it some extra curl, insisting that she and Buster call him “Sylvia” at the dinner table and refer to him at all times as “she” and “her” instead of “he” and “him.”

“You’re going to confuse him,” Buster said, “and then we’ll have a mental case on our hands.”

“He’ll be fine,” Bertha said. “I guarantee it.”

“Why do I got to be a girl now?” Sidney asked.

“Because you are an actor,” Bertha said. “You will someday be a great actor. This will be your first acting lesson. Great actors pretend to be who and what they are not.”

“I don’t think I like being a girl.”

“Just remember that underneath the laces and frills you are still a boy. It’s only to the outside world that you are a girl.”

“If I’m an actor,” he said, “I want to be a cowboy.”

“That will come later, dear, after you are an established star.”

“What’s ‘established’ mean?”

On the morning of the fourteenth, Bertha had Sidney at the studio an hour early and was forced to wait nervously in an outer office to be called. Finally, when Sidney was called for a wardrobe fitting, Bertha was given a copy of the script. It was up to her to familiarize herself with the story and tell Sidney, as Sylvia, what he (she) was supposed to do.

The picture was called Baby Bountiful and starred that lovely young motion picture star, Arlette Joseph. She played a young mother who, when she loses her own baby to illness, goes with her handsome young husband to an orphanage to pick out another child. There are so many adorable children to choose from that the young couple can’t decide which one to take. That’s when the orphans show off their singing and dancing talents to help them make up her minds.

The young couple still can’t decide, so they go home, assuring the orphans they will return later and will, most assuredly, choose one of them to take home with them. That night, all the orphans dream of being the chosen one. The next day the young couple returns to the orphanage with some very exciting news. The young mother’s rich uncle has died and left her his millions. Since she will have all that money, she can take all the orphans and they will all live together on a fabulous Long Island estate with their new mommy and daddy.

Sidney was the orphan named Lulu. He wore a white dress and white stockings, a long wig with a large white bow. When the director told the orphans to jump up and down with excitement or to act sad, they did exactly as they were told.

Bertha stood behind the director and the camera, watching. She believed, of course, that Lulu stood out from the other orphans and that her acting was the most realistic. Her eyes brimmed with tears and her heart ached with pride. After all her years of dreaming, her own little Sidney was finally in motion pictures!

When filming was completed for Baby Bountiful, Arlette Joseph thanked all the children personally for playing orphans and everybody packed up to go home. A few days later Bertha received a fat check in the mail for Sidney’s appearance in the film. When she showed the check to Buster, he whistled and said, “That’s more than I make in a month!”

A week later the casting director from the studio called Bertha and asked if Sylvia was available to act in another picture. Bertha nearly dropped out her dentures on the kitchen floor in saying yes.

They hired Sylvia an agent, who promptly changed her name from Sylvia Indelicato to Sylvia Dell. The agent procured parts for her in five pictures the first year and seven the second year, with each part progressively larger than the one before it.

Buster quit his job and began staying home all the time, “seeing to things.” He managed Sylvia’s career from the sidelines with useless advice that nobody listened to. He began wearing double-breasted suits, smoking big cigars, and hosting luncheons at all the fancy restaurants around town.

Sidney, for his part, went along with what was expected of him. When he was at home he could be Sidney, but the minute he went outside the house he had to be Sylvia. Any time he became downhearted, Bertha presented him with a big bowl of ice cream and waved the most recent studio check in his face. When she went to the bank to cash his checks, she always took him along so he could see the big stacks of green and come to know how important they were to his family.

In 1929 the Hollywood studios stopped making silent films and converted to sound. Prepared as she was for any contingency, Bertha hired a diction coach to work with her Sidney. After all they had been through, she wasn’t going to let the advent of sound end her baby’s film career.

The diction coach, aware of how much money was to be made, declared Sylvia a “natural” after a few lessons. If he knew that Sylvia was really a boy instead of a girl, he never let on. He was accustomed to the ways of movie people and wasn’t squeamish about such things.

Sidney’s first sound picture was a big success. He had five lines, which he spoke with a convincing girlish intonation. After that, there were more offers for parts in other motion pictures. The money mounted up as Sylvia’s fame and popularity increased. Sylvia Dell fan clubs sprang up around the country. There were Sylvia Dell coloring books and dolls, an entire line of Sylvia Dell merchandise.

Sidney began to put on a lot of weight. The doctor advised Bertha to put him on a low-calorie diet, but she refused, certain the “pudginess” was part of his appeal. People had come to know him as fat and if he was no longer fat they would no longer know him.

When Sidney inevitably began to show outward signs of becoming an adult male, Bertha and Buster began to panic. They took him to a doctor and wanted to know if there was some way he, the doctor, could medically “alter” Sidney to enhance his feminine qualities and subvert the masculine ones.

“Are you suggesting I castrate him?” the doctor asked.

“If that’s what it takes,” Bertha said.

“Ask him if he wants to be castrated and I can almost assure you what his answer will be.”

“But he’s too young to know what’s best for him,” Bertha said. “He’s only a baby.”

“Good day to you!” the doctor said.

Luckily Sidney was fair-haired and the whiskers on his chin and cheeks could easily be covered up, but his deepening voice was more of a concern. Bertha began plying him with pills that she bought from a “medical consultant” and giving him cognac and whiskey toddies to “calm his nerves” and help him to sleep. In a few months he was a child alcoholic. He took to smoking prodigious numbers of cigarettes, even when he was in character as “Sylvia.” The sweet little girl had turned into a monster. The movie offers began to dry up.

Right before Sidney’s sixteenth birthday, he disappeared. Bertha believed he had been kidnapped and that soon the kidnappers would make their exorbitant demands for his return. She would pay any amount—every cent if she had to—for his return.

The police searched for Sidney but found no sign of him and after a year they gave up. They would keep his file on record, though, and if anything came up they would reopen the case. Bertha began walking the streets at night, looking for him in alleyways. She was certain he was all right and wasn’t very far away. All he needed was for her to find him.

Thirty years went by and Sidney didn’t return home. Bertha and Buster spent all the money and then there was no more. Buster died, leaving Bertha alone in her home with her memories. Her walls with lined with “stills” from Sylvia Dell movies. She never stopped thinking about Sidney.

Small packages began appearing on her doorstep, a packet with fifteen dollars in it and then one with twenty, a potted plant, a loaf of pumpernickel bread. She didn’t know who was leaving these little gifts, but when a box of chocolate-covered cherries appeared, she knew it had to Sidney. Only he would know that had always been her favorite kind of candy.

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023 by allen0997

By Appointment or By Chance ~ A Short Story

By Appointment or By Chance
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

The year was 1899. The old century was in its death spiral and a new century was about to be born. At this auspicious time of new beginning, I opened a business on Main Street in the town of Echo Bend.

I had worked as a teacher, editor at a small newspaper and clerk in a department store, but I dreamed of a profession where I was in sole command. I hated having to be accountable to anybody for anything. I wanted to be accountable only to myself.

I went to a demonstration of photography in a college lecture hall and, after sitting through a lecture and a practical demonstration, I was certain portrait photography was something at which I could make a living. I bought a couple of books and studied them, front to back, with interest. I took my savings and bought a camera and all the necessary equipment. In Echo Bend, I rented commercial space in the heart of the business district. I engaged a carpenter to construct a wall, so that the front part of the space would be public and the back part private. A professional sign painter painted my name across the window and underneath my name these words: Portrait Photographer, By Appointment or By Chance.

Photography had been around for a long time but to most people it was still a novelty. If you had the money to spend, it was all the rage to put on your glad rags and go and sit for your portrait. Then, no matter how poorly time treated you, no matter how ugly and corpulent you became, you would always have the photographic image of yourself to remind you of what you once looked like, when you were at your best. Your descendants would still have your photographic image in a quaint little frame decades after your death, and one day they would sit around and say to each other, “Now, just who was he?” or, “Didn’t she die of diphtheria when she was only about twenty-three?”

Families wanted their portraits taken as a group and then separately. Some families had as many as eight or ten children. Mothers wanted their children to sit for a portrait every year, traditionally on their birthdays. Mantelpieces and chairside tables abounded with portraits in frames. People gave them to relatives as gifts at Christmas. Photography as a business was a modest gold mine for the right sort of fellow.

And then, of course, there was death photography. People wanted portraits of their deceased family members, in a coffin or on a bed, sometimes sitting in a chair, oftentimes posed with the living members of the family or with the family dog. Some photographers painted eyes or rosy cheeks on the finished portraits, but I never employed that vulgar technique. I figured that once a person was dead, it was pointless to try to make him or her seem alive again.

While business was booming in town, I was willing, more often than not, to go out of town to take portraits of the deceased, since the deceased were by necessity bound to one spot. I could usually charge any amount for this service and people would pay it willingly because the resultant photo was a blessed remembrance of the departed loved one and money was, where the death sentiment was concerned, no object. This is not to say I cheated people; I charged them what I thought they could pay. If someone lived in a fine house with many rooms and beautiful furnishings, I had no qualms about charging top prices. If, however, they dressed in rags and lived in a falling-down shack, I did the work for practically nothing.

At this time I was still traveling by horse-drawn wagon. I had a specially made enclosed wagon to keep my equipment dry if it should happen to rain, and it rained most days at certain times of the year. Often I found myself slogging over unfamiliar country roads, looking for a place I wasn’t sure existed. Sometimes it took me all day to get to where I needed to go and I would end up staying the night. I wasn’t above bedding down inside my wagon if there was no other choice. I kept telling myself that next year, or maybe the year after, I’d hire an assistant to do the driving, carry the equipment and perform other trivial tasks. I might even train him to go on the out-of-town forays on his own.

Children died more often than adults. There was always a fever or an infection or pneumonia to carry them off. If you thought about it at all, you knew that a competent doctor might have fixed them up with a pill, a bottle of medicine, or just a word of advice, if only a doctor had been around when needed. I photographed dead babies in sateen-covered boxes in the family parlor, surrounded by sprays of forget-me-nots; babies in their mother’s arms, with a brood of older children looking on; babies just ready to go into their graves with smiles on their faces and a toy animal in their arms; twin babies in one tiny coffin with their arms entwined. Once I photographed a baby and a little brown-and-white dog side by side in a wooden box, ready to embark together on their journey through eternity.

Then there were the older children: the tiny six-year-old girl whose father accidentally shot her through the heart while cleaning a gun; the boy, eight years old, who didn’t get out of the way of the train fast enough; the girl, age ten, who died of heart failure when her mother locked her in a basement with rats to punish her. Most parents were good parents, though, and brokenhearted at the loss of a child. I provided them with the photographic remembrance that helped to ease their pain and made the child seem forever close and not so far away after all.

I was on my way back to town after one of these missions to photograph a ten-year-old boy who had fallen on a pitchfork when I saw a woman standing beside the road waving a handkerchief at me. I pulled up with impatience and stopped, ready to growl at her like an old bear.

“You’re the photography man?” she asked.

“I am,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Mrs. Trenton Fairman. I live in that house over there.” She pointed and I looked at a large brick house set back about two hundred feet from the road.

“I’m just coming off a case,” I said. “I’m headed back to town.”

“Well, you might come back in the morning, if you’re agreeable.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” I said. “Just what is it you need?”

She sighed and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Death has paid a call at my house.”

“You want a photograph of the deceased?”

“Yes, but it’s more than that.”

“What, may I ask?”

“You look like a strong man,” she said, “and quite young.”

“Yes?”

“My husband, Trenton Fairman Senior, is lying in his coffin in the bay window between the parlor and the dining room. The sun shines on him most of the day. He hasn’t been embalmed and it’s been three days now.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and bury him?”

“Tomorrow, April twenty-third, would have been his fifty-seventh birthday. When he knew he was dying, he made me promise that I wouldn’t have him buried until that day. He was very superstitious. He studied numerology and he believed that nothing would ever go right for him in the afterlife or for his kinfolk still living on the earth if he did not go into the ground on the day he was born.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that superstition,” I said.

“So, if you could consent to take my dear husband’s photograph before he goes at last into the ground on his birthday, I will make it worth your while.”

“I couldn’t do it for less than fifty dollars,” I said, believing she would balk at the price and that would end the matter.

“All right, but we’ll negotiate terms later on. You see, there’s more to my request than I’ve stated.”

“I haven’t eaten since early this morning,” I said.

“I believe we might deign to find something suitable in the house for you to eat, sir.”

She instructed me to pull my wagon around to the side of the house where she was waiting for me. When she took me inside, there was the unmistakable stench of death.

“I know,” she said. “He’s starting to smell. Nature takes its course.”

I took my handkerchief out of my pocket and held it over my mouth and nose. It was probably a good thing I hadn’t eaten.

She instructed the housemaid, a large, ungainly girl named Myrtle, to fix me a sandwich but I said, “Never mind. A drink of water will do. Just show me where the deceased is and we’ll get this thing over with.”

He was lying in a mahogany casket, very expensive looking, suffused with milky light from a bay window. Enormous potted ferns lay at the head and foot of the casket. Smaller containers of flowers were ranged on the floor along the front.

“He loved the sunlight,” Mrs. Fairman said. “I just couldn’t see blocking out the light with heavy curtains. It’ll be the last earthly light that will ever shine on him.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll bring my equipment in from the wagon and we’ll have this over in no time at all.”

While I got the camera set up and everything ready to take the picture, Mrs. Fairman and the housemaid, Myrtle, hovered in the background, watching my every move. I would have preferred that they go about their business, but they had never seen picture-taking before and were interested in how it worked.

I took two photographs of the deceased from different angles and then Mrs. Fairman wanted one with her standing next to the casket looking down into her husband’s face. When I was finished, I said, “That’ll be fifty dollars, ma’am, if you please. When your photographs are ready, I’ll send you a postcard and you can pick them up in town at your convenience.”

“I believe I mentioned there was something else,” Mrs. Fairman said.

“Yes?”

“My son, Trenton Fairman Junior, died a day and a half after his father. He is upstairs in his room, lying on his bed. He has been bathed and dressed for burial.”

“You want a photograph of him, too?” I asked.

“Yes, I do and then…”

“Then what, ma’am?”

“Myrtle and I are here alone. Neither one of us are very strong. After you take Junior’s picture, I would like to prevail upon you to pick him up and carry him downstairs and place him in the coffin with his father and then close the lid. The boys will be here early in the morning—on my husband’s fifty-seventh birthday, I believe I mentioned—to perform the burial.”

“How old is the boy?”

“He’s fifteen years old, sir, and not very big. I think he could not weigh more than a hundred pounds. I’ll pay you an extra twenty dollars to carry him downstairs and place him in the coffin beside his father and close the lid.”

“Are you sure they’ll both fit in the same coffin?”

“Oh, yes, sir! Comfortably, I think.”

“So, that’ll be fifty to photograph your husband, thirty to photograph your son, and twenty to carry the boy downstairs. That’s a hundred all together.”

“That seems fair, sir. I have the cash in the wall safe in my bedroom.”

“All right, let’s photograph the boy, then.”

Mrs. Fairman took me up a broad carpeted staircase, up one flight and then up another. We went down a hallway to a closed door, Mrs. Fairman first, then me, and then silent Myrtle. Mrs. Fairman turned to look at me before she opened the door.

“Why does God punish us so?” she said.

She opened the door and I saw the boy, Trenton Fairman Junior, lying on his back on the bed. He was a fine-looking boy, nothing like his hatchet-faced father, dressed in a dark suit with knickers, gray stockings and expensive-looking, high-top leather shoes. He wore a high collar with a cravat, just as a grown man would, with a diamond stickpin.

“He looks to be asleep,” I said.

Mrs. Fairman and Myrtle sobbed behind me.

“Maybe it would best if you leave me to my work,” I said.

They went out of the room and I went back downstairs to the parlor where the father lay and got my photographic equipment and carried it back up. I set up to take the picture and, as usual, I photographed the deceased from three different angles.

When I was finished, I carried my equipment back down, out the door, and loaded it into my wagon so I would be ready to leave as soon as Mrs. Fairman paid me the money she owed me.

Mrs. Fairman and Myrtle were waiting for me when I went back inside. Now it was time to carry the boy downstairs. The three of us went silently back up the stairs.

With Mrs. Fairman and Myrtle standing in the doorway, I approached the bed. Cautiously, I slipped my right arm under the boy’s back and my left arm under his knees. As I hefted him off the bed, I got the surprise of my life. His body went rigid, he opened his eyes and looked at me and gasped for air as if he had been under water.

“He’s not dead!” I said, laying him back down.

“Oh, oh, oh!” Mrs. Fairman said and Myrtle screamed.

“What made you think he was dead?” I said.

He continued to revive, moving his arms and legs, pulling at his clothes, as if he had suddenly become animated by the throwing of a switch. When I looked away from him over to Mrs. Fairman, I saw that she had collapsed on the floor. She convulsed violently and then stopped moving.

“Has she also been sick?” I asked Myrtle.

I approached the recumbent woman and took her hand in mine and began patting it because I didn’t know what else to do. I administered these little slaps to her hands and face and after a while I could see she wasn’t breathing. I put my ear to her chest and heard nothing.

“I’m afraid she’s dead,” I said. “The shock was too much for her.”

Myrtle gasped and ran from the room. I heard her shoes clomping all the way down the stairs.

I turned to the boy, Trenton Fairman Junior, sitting on the bed, feet on the floor. “Are you all right?” I asked him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I photograph the dead. Your mother asked me to come up here and take your picture.”

“Why would she do that?”

“She believed you to be dead for the last day and half.”

“Oh, yes. That’s right.”

“You know your father is dead, lying downstairs in the parlor?”

“Yes, we were going to have a funeral.”

“I’m afraid your mother is dead, too.”

He looked over at her lying on the floor and shook his head.

“Where is the nearest doctor?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure there is one.”

“What about that girl? Myrtle? Does she live in the house with the family?”

“I don’t know where she lives.”

“She’s the only one left.”

“She’s ignorant,” he said.

“Would she be able find a doctor?”

“She wouldn’t be able to find her bunghole with both hands.”

“I’m going back to town now,” I said. “I’ll go to the sheriff and tell him what happened. Do you want to stay here do you want to go with me?”

“I’ll go.”

“You don’t want to stay here with your mother?”

“She wasn’t my mother. She was only play-acting.”

He asked me to wait while he changed his clothes and got a drink of water. I went outside and leaned against a tree in the front yard. In five minutes he came out of the house wearing a dress suit, carrying a small valise. He locked the door and we departed in my carriage.

It was late afternoon and the sky was threatening rain. I didn’t like the way the day had turned out. On top of everything else, I hadn’t collected the hundred dollars that was owed me and there would be no way to get it now.

For the first couple of miles, Trenton Fairman Junior said nothing, so after a while I turned to him to see how he was faring. With both of his parents dead, I expected him at least to need a reassuring adult to speak to.

“Do you have any family in town?” I asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said.

“You’ll have to have somebody to stay with,” I said.

“After the dead bodies are removed from my house, I can stay there. The house belongs to me now.”

“I don’t think they’ll let you stay in that big house all by yourself without an adult present.”

“Why not?”

“You’re a minor.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re underage. Still a child.”

“I’ll bet I’m more grown up than you.”

“It’s not a subject for argument. I’m just telling you the law won’t let you live in the house alone until you’re old enough.”

“I’d like to see them try and stop me.”

“Didn’t your father have a lawyer who handled his estate?”

“Yes, I think so. A lawyer in town. I think him name was Henry something.”

“Well, that’s a start. There can’t be that many lawyers in Echo Bend with Henry for a first name.”

He was silent then. He looked straight ahead as if I wasn’t even there.

“Your mother thought you were dead,” I said. “How’s that for irony?”

“She wasn’t my mother, I told you. She was my stepmother.”

“Well, whatever she was, she thought you were dead.”

“I was dead.”

“As you stated earlier. You were dead and then what happened? You just came back to life?”

“I don’t have any explanation for it, but that’s what happened. Not everything is explainable.”

“What happened while you were dead? Do you remember anything?”

“I saw God. He spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

“I would expect you to ask a silly question like that.”

“Don’t you think anybody would want to know what God says when he speaks.”

“God is a compact man with thin lips and a small mustache, almost as if it had been drawn on. People think of him as being big and old and having a long white beard, but he isn’t any of those things.”

“I don’t think I would have known him,” I said.

“He wears a black dress suit with a gray cravat and a ruby stickpin. And a monocle in his right eye.”

“Don’t tell me God has an eye deficiency! Or is the monocle just more of an affectation?”

“Go ahead and make fun of me. I don’t care.”

“All right. What did God say to you?”

“He said the Saints are with him in heaven.”

“Is that all?”

“He told me to await further instructions.”

“What did He mean by that?”

“You tell me.”

I sighed. I was starting to get bored with the conversation. “You must be hungry,” I said for a change of subject.

“Why must I be hungry?” he asked.

“You were dead for a day and a half. Dead people don’t eat.”

“Yes, I suppose I’m hungry,” he said. “I could eat.”

“When we get to town, we’ll get you a good dinner.”

“In the morning I’ll go see Henry what’s-his-name and tell him my stepmother decided to die along with my father. He’ll advise me what to do.”

“You’ll need a place to stay tonight,” I said.

“I can manage.”

“We’ll get you a room in the hotel for tonight.”

“I don’t have any money. I know that she had money in the safe, my father’s money, but she never told me the combination.”

“I’ll advance you the money.”

“Forget it. I’ll just walk around until morning. I’ve done it before.”

“That doesn’t seem the right thing to do,” I said.

When we got back to town, I went straight to the sheriff’s office, went inside and told him what had happened at the Fairman place, that there were two dead bodies there and nobody to tend to them. He asked me a dozen questions, where I might be reached for further questioning, and then he told me I could go. I went back out to my carriage and drove to the hotel. I stabled my horse and locked my wagon so nobody would become curious about what might be inside worth stealing. These trivial matters tended to, Trenton Fairman Junior and I went into the crowded hotel dining room and sat at a round table in the middle of the room. After we placed our order, I noticed the people in the restaurant looking at us and then I realized they were looking at him.

“You see the way they’re looking at me?” he said.

“They’re not used to seeing a young fellow all dressed up in a dress suit. Not in this town. You look like you just got here from someplace else.”

“It isn’t what I’m wearing.”

“What is it then?”

“They know I’ve seen God and will see Him again.”

“They don’t know any such thing.”

The food came, huge amounts of beefsteak, fried potatoes, carrots and green beans. After we ate, the boy said he was tired and wanted to go to bed. I figured he must be upset at the strange turn of events his life had taken that day, but he seemed perfectly calm and unemotional.

After I paid for our meal, we went into the hotel, where I engaged a room for him for the night. I asked him if he was afraid to stay by himself in a strange hotel room and he laughed. “You can’t be serious,” he said. “I’ve always been by myself. Since the day I was born.”

He had such a grownup way about him that I sometimes forgot I was dealing with a child.

He signed his name in the hotel register and the clerk handed him the key. Before he went upstairs to his room, I put my hand on his shoulder and told him I’d come by in the morning at eight-thirty to take him to his father’s lawyer and for him to meet me in the lobby. He nodded and turned and went up the stairs.

When I got home, I took a hot bath and fell into bed and slept soundly until thunder woke me up at seven in the morning. I dressed and consumed a light breakfast and then I set out for the hotel. I was sitting in the lobby reading a newspaper at twenty minutes after eight. I expected Trenton Fairman Junior to come down the stairs at any moment.

At eight forty-five he still hadn’t made an appearance and at nine o’clock I was still sitting there holding the newspaper in my foolish hands. At ten minutes after nine, I went over to the desk and asked the clerk if he could check on the boy in room three-twelve for me. He had been supposed to meet me and he never appeared.

The clerk checked his book and looked up at me and said, “A boy, you say?”

“Yes, a boy,” I said.

“A small boy?”

“No, a big boy. Almost an adult.”

The clerk looked down and then looked back at me and sighed. “Room three-twelve has not been occupied for several days,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I was with the boy last night. I engaged the room for him to spend the night in and he was supposed to meet me here, in the lobby, this morning at eight-thirty.”

“Are you sure it was this hotel?” the clerk asked.

“Will you let me take the key and go up to room three-twelve and check for myself?”

“That would be against regulations, sir.”

“Then open the door yourself to make sure the boy is all right.”

The clerk went with me up to the third floor. We walked to the door of room three-twelve and he inserted the key into the lock and pushed the door open for me to enter. The bed was neatly made up. The window shades were drawn. It was clear the room had not been occupied the night before.

“He signed the register last night,” I said to the clerk. “I was with him. His name, Trenton Fairman Junior, will be there if you only bother yourself to look.”

We went back down to the lobby and the clerk checked the register from the night before. “No such name here,” he said.

“Can I look?”

He turned the register around and I read over the four or five names from the night before. The name Trenton Fairman Junior was indeed not there.

So much for Trenton Fairman Junior. I had no explanation for why his name wasn’t in the hotel register, but I figured he didn’t need or want my help any more and had gone to find his father’s lawyer on his own.

I thanked the clerk and went back out into the rain. I went to my photography studio and opened for business. It was a slow morning, so I had a chance to process my plates from the day before: two shots from different angles of the boy who died of the pitchfork wound through the stomach, two of Trenton Fairman Senior lying in his coffin, one of Mrs. Fairman standing next to her husband’s coffin. They all turned out beautifully.

When I processed the plates I had taken of Trenton Fairman Junior lying dead on his bed, I saw only a dim outline of a bed and that’s all. No Trenton Fairman Junior. Why would I have taken photographs of just a bed? I tried to recall the events of the day before to make some sense of it. I began to think I had experienced a kind of lapse while I was in the Fairman house. Had Trenton Fairman Junior even existed outside of my own mind? Was he a ghost? I couldn’t be sure. Not all things, as had recently been pointed out to me, are explainable.

After that I didn’t do any more work. I was beginning to feel tired and lightheaded so I closed the shop for the rest of the day and went home.

That night I was sick and was sure I was dying. I ached in every joint and was having trouble swallowing. I couldn’t keep anything on my stomach, not even a sip of water. I knew I had a fever.

When I was trying to think what might be the matter with me, the truth came to me as if spoken by a voice inside my head. I had failed to ask the reason for Trenton Fairman Senior’s death. He had obviously died of something catching and I had caught it. I had spent two hours at least inside a house breathing in disease germs and death.

I didn’t want to die alone and have my bloated body found only after the neighbors noticed the smell, so I checked myself into the nearest hospital. The doctor examined me briefly and put me in the isolation ward. I was sure I was going to die; if not that night, then very soon.

For two days and nights I passed in and out of consciousness. I was barely aware of anything but I knew there were other people moving at all hours around the bed on which I lay. I didn’t know who they were, or care: I only wanted them to go away and let me die in peace.

Hours passed, maybe days, but I had no real sense of time. The light at my window went from light to dark and back to light. I was aware of the sounds of rain and thunder, the perfect accompaniment, I thought, to dying.

Once when I woke up from one of my naps, Trenton Fairman Junior was standing at the foot of my bed, smiling at me.

“I wondered what happened to you!” I said. “I’m happy to know you made it all right.”

Then I realized that somebody else was standing beside Trenton Fairman Junior. He was a compact man with thin lips and a small mustache, almost as if it had been drawn on. He had a Continental air about him, rather than an American one.

“Who are you?” I asked.

He smiled and said, “It’s time for me to ask you a question.”

“What is it?”

“Do you want to go or do you want to stay?”

“What? Go where?”

“I asked you if you want to go or if you want to stay?”

“I think I’d like to stay if it’s all the same to you,” I said.

I must have drifted off to sleep after that because when I came to myself again, Trenton Fairman Junior and the man with the monocle were gone.

I was several more days in the hospital and then they said I was well enough to go home. As I was getting dressed to leave, one of the nurses told me how lucky I was to be alive because I had come so close to dying.

“I saw God,” I said. “He spoke to me.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me if I wanted to go or if I wanted to stay.”

“What did you say?”

I thought it an unnecessary question, but I answered all the same.

“I said I wanted to stay.”

“You’re not usually given a choice, I believe,” she said.

After a few days at home by myself I felt almost well again. On Sunday morning I rode out to the Fairman place, for what reason I don’t know. It looked abandoned. Grass and weeds had grown up in the yard. The windows were shuttered. A large for-sale sign was placed so that people would see it coming from either direction on the road. Just being near the house made me start to feel ill again, so I left.

In a month or so I moved to the city. I borrowed some money from a bank and set up a photography studio in a fashionable location (fashionable meaning people with money). I did well and moved into expensive lodgings with maid service. I bought myself a motor car, something every man of means was doing. I paid back the money I borrowed and was as happy as I ever expected to be.

My photographic subjects now were all living. I wanted nothing more to do with death. My own would be coming for me soon enough.

July 15, 2023July 15, 2023 by allen0997

It Was Christmas ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

My Christmas Eve That Year~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

Haunt ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

The House He Lived In ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The Moving Picture ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Standing at the Gate ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Sylvia Dell ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

By Appointment or By Chance ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

It Was Christmas
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

My Christmas Eve That Year
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

Haunt
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

The House He Lived In
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The Moving Picture
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Standing at the Gate
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Sylvia Dell
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

By Appointment or By Chance
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~