Tag: fiction

Columbarium ~ A Short Story

 
 
Columbarium ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

A man stepped out of the darkness into the dim light. He looked both ways before turning to the right. He walked until he came to the wall, and then he turned around and walked back. On his third circuit from wall to wall, he met another man, taller and younger. The second man surprised the first by speaking.

“Who do you suppose that is?” the second man asked, pointing to a recumbent figure on the floor.

“A bum,” the first man said. “We get a lot of them here.”

“Came inside to get out of the rain, I suppose.”

They both looked out the window then, aware for the first time that a thunderstorm was raging beyond the glass.

“I like a good storm,” the first man said, and walked on.

In a little while the two men were joined by a third man, this one wearing a soldier’s uniform from a long-ago war.

“You can’t trust anybody,” the soldier said. “You must always doubt their intentions. We should call for backup. It might be a booby trap.”

An old woman walked by wearing a green dress. “Has anybody seen my children?” she asked. “They’ll be wondering what happened to me in this storm.”

“Look over that hill,” the old soldier said.

“I don’t like being kept waiting.”

A small girl hurried by, chasing an imaginary cat.

“Don’t run in here!” the old woman in the green dress said viciously. “Can’t you show some respect?”

“You’re not my mother.”

“And glad of it, too.”

When the little girl caught sight of the recumbent figure, she forgot the cat and went over to get a better look.

The first man, the one who likes a good storm, came again. “I was the first one to wake up,” he said. “When I wake up, everybody wakes up.”

“Yes, it’s funny how things work here,” the old soldier said. “I don’t like this place at all.”

A new woman appeared, wearing a blond wig and a diamond necklace. “I’m always so confused when I wake up,” she said. “I was sleeping and some loud-mouth woke me up. What kind of a hotel is this, anyway? I’m going to complain to the manager.”

“I don’t like all this rain,” a woman beside her said. “I need to get home and check on my meercats.”

A nurse emerged from the shadows, wearing a crisp white uniform and a pointed cap. “I like helping people,” she said. “As you can see, I’m wearing my uniform and I am always ready to lend a helping hand.”

“Oh, why don’t you shut up!” a male voice said.

“Who is that over there?” the nurse asked, gesturing toward the recumbent figure. “He might be in need of medical assistance.”

“Why don’t you go over there and ask him?”

The nurse approached the recumbent figure cautiously. She nudged him with her toe and, getting no satisfaction, uncovered the several layers of clothing covering his face.

“It’s a man!” she proclaimed loudly.

With all eyes upon her, she pinched, probed and palpated the man through his clothing. She blew in his ears and stuck her fingers down his throat. She stood on his stomach and lay on top of him and blew into his mouth.

When she had done enough, she stood up, waving her arms in the air.

“That concludes my physical examination of the subject!” she said in her best public-announcement voice. “Now, if someone will call an ambulance, we can get this fellow taken care of!”

“She’s crazy,” someone said.

Around dawn the storm dissipated. Everyone returned to their comfortable resting places until the next time. Someone came and removed the body of the bum who came in out of the rain and died on the floor. All was well.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

 

by allen0997

Physical Education ~ A Short Story

Physical Education image 2
Physical Education 
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

We each had one chance to “serve” the ball over the net. The net was about ten feet high and the ceiling was thirty feet high. We had to get the ball over the net and through that twenty foot space between the net and the ceiling. Like inmates in a prison camp, we were lined up alphabetically. The pressure was on. What was going to happen if we couldn’t make the grade? We were fifteen years old. Most of us were as unathletic as a boy can be. As much as we hated gym class, we had to get a passing grade.

We were used to Mr. White humiliating us, but mostly he would humiliate us singly. He humiliated Claude Fowler in front of the whole class for wearing his regular socks with his gym shorts instead of his gym socks. We all knew that Claude was from a poor family and was lucky to have one pair of socks on his feet of any kind. He was denied the luxury of having one pair of socks for one thing and another pair of socks for something entirely different.

Another time Mr. White humiliated Johnny Bottoms for having beard stubble on his cheeks. Johnny Bottoms was older than the rest of us from having been held back a couple of grades and already had a man’s beard. Mr. White became furious that Johnny hadn’t shaved since the last gym class. He threatened to go to the shop building and get a plane and shave Johnny’s whiskers off (and most of Johnny’s skin in the process). Of course, this was only a bluff, but we could easily picture it happening.

When my turn came to serve the ball, I had a stomach ache and my knees shook.  I went to the end of the court to the starting point, looking at my feet again to make sure I was standing in the right spot. With the ball in my left hand, I gave it as forceful a “punch” with the inside of my right wrist as I could. I thought for a second it would sail effortlessly over the net, but instead it went straight up and hit the ceiling with a whomp. Someone laughed. I saw Mr. White over to my right, entering an “F” in his grade book beside my name.

Out of the class of thirty-four boys, twelve could get the ball over the net with one attempt. The rest of us, according to Mr. White, were sissies. We were girls. We were a disgrace to our gender. We weren’t worthy of the jockstrap we wore about our loins. He was going to bring some dolls for us to play with next time.

I hated volleyball. I hated dodgeball. I hated softball. I hated basketball. I hated every kind of ball devised by man. Playing with dolls couldn’t be as bad as any of them. I wanted to ask if we would have to “dress out” to play with dolls, but I didn’t want Mr. White to turn his wrath on me.

When we heard that Mr. White broke his ankle, we were all jubilant. We hoped he’d be laid up in bed for a long time, but he was only out of school for three days. When he came back, he walked with crutches and he had a mean scowl on his face. Breaking a major bone in his body didn’t help to sweeten his disposition.

It was our first gym class since Mr. White returned from breaking his ankle. I had been dreading the hour, wondering what kind of verbal abuse we would be subjected to. When he came into the gym, he was eight minutes late. I was hoping he wouldn’t come at all and we could go on to our next class which, for me, was American history.

He was fuming about something, as usual, but his ill will, this time, was directed toward one person, instead of all of us. A boy named Terry Caplinger had taken his gum out of his mouth upon leaving the locker room and, instead of finding a handy trash can where he might deposit  it, threw it against the wall, where it stuck and then fell to the floor. Mr. White saw him do it.

Instead of making an example of Terry Caplinger and embarrassing him in front of the whole class for being such a “pig,” Mr. White thought of a unique punishment: Make Terry get down on his hands and knees and “push” the gum from one end of the gym to the other with his nose (a painfully long way).

As Terry got down on the floor to push the gum with his nose, he was trembling and he fought back tears. I didn’t know him very well since he was new to our school, but I didn’t like seeing him demeaned in this way. It was something he would always remember. Maybe the defining moment of his school years. I wished a thunderbolt might come out of the sky and strike Mr. White dead.

I thought that somebody outside the class should know about Mr. White’s bullying teaching methods. I sent an anonymous letter to the school principal, telling him all I had witnessed, but especially about Terry Caplinger’s gum. I didn’t have the courage to sign my name, but it didn’t make any difference. I think it found its mark.

At the end of the school year, we heard that Mr. White wouldn’t be back next year. Satan was waiting for him in the nether region.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

It Was Christmas ~ A Short Story

It Was Christmas image 1
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.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Christmas Club

Christmas 9

The Christmas Club ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

(This short story has been published in Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k).)

Stanley and Virginia Miller lived in a modest four-room house on a tree-lined street in a small town. They had known each other their entire lives and had been married for ten years. To this union had been born two children: Georgette, age nine, and Ian, age seven. When Ian was born, Virginia experienced some complications and wasn’t able to have any more children, but that was fine with her because she thought two children were as many as she could reasonably hope to take care of. Both children attended the town’s public elementary school, the same school that Stanley and Virginia had gone to when they were growing up.

Stanley was never very good in school, had just barely graduated, and worked as a miner. He spent all day long, every day, below the ground chipping away at rock. The mine where he worked had been in operation for many years, and every year the mine became bigger and bigger until it had become so vast that people never believed how big it was until they saw it for themselves. It had become big enough, Stanley joked, to swallow the entire town. He sometimes had nightmares about the mine, about digging down too far to ever make it out again, and he would wake up calling for help and gasping for air. Every time he came out of the mine at the end of his shift, being out in the open air again seemed like something of a miracle.

Stanley’s take-home pay was meager and he and Virginia never quite had enough money to go around. After paying the rent, buying food, paying the gas bill and the light bill and all the other incidentals, they sometimes ran out of money before the end of the month. To help meet expenses, Virginia took in washing and ironing and occasionally hired herself out for “heavy cleaning” or some other kind of domestic work.

When Virginia was younger, before she married Stanley, she had worked in a tailor shop doing alterations and seamstress work. She thought she was quite good at it and she liked working for the old man who ran the tailor shop. Now that she was older and, knowing that she had real aptitude for the work, she wanted to buy her own sewing machine and whatever else was needed to go into business for herself. She was sure she could make enough money to supplement Stanley’s pay and provide a few little extras for her family.

When she spoke to Stanley about going to the bank and borrowing money to start her own little business, he was against the idea from the outset. He was superstitious about banks and he hated the thought of owing money. He had the idea that Virginia would never make enough money on her own to pay back a loan and he would have to make good on the loan himself.

In spite of the shortage of cash, Virginia was still able to save a little money here and there by scrimping and counting pennies. If she bought a cut of meat, for example, for thirteen cents less than she had paid for it the last time, she would put thirteen cents in her jar at the back of the kitchen cabinet. If the light bill was two dollars less this month than last month, she would put two dollars in the jar. When she had more than two or three dollars in the jar, usually in small change, she would take it out and deposit it into her Christmas Club account at the bank. By autumn she had about two hundred and thirty dollars in the account, but she didn’t want Stanley to know about it just yet. Eventually she would have to tell him, but she would deal with telling him at the appropriate time. She hoped he would be pleased with her for saving money he didn’t even know they had.

She wanted to give Ian and Georgette a wonderful Christmas, the kind of Christmas she had never had when she was growing up. Every Friday when she was finished at the grocery store and had the groceries stowed in the trunk of the car, she would take a walk down the block to look at the bicycles in the window of the hardware store. There was a boy’s bicycle and a girl’s bicycle that were very much alike. The boy’s bicycle was a little bigger, with a crossbar that the girl’s bicycle didn’t have. Both were shiny red, with chrome bumpers, pristine-looking whitewall tires, and streamers attached to the handlebars. She knew that any child would be thrilled to own such a bicycle.

When Virginia was growing up, Christmas never amounted to much in her house. Her father was much older than her mother and, although a decent man, he was odd in his own way. He didn’t believe in any kind of religious observance and would never allow the celebration of Christmas in his house. Christmas was, he said, for people with lots of money to throw away and he had none, in spite of the stocks and bonds he owned that eventually left Virginia’s mother well-off in her widowhood.

There were never any gifts or music or Christmas tree or decorations in their house, and on Christmas Day they usually had stew or hash or beans and cornbread for dinner, while Virginia’s father silently read the newspaper or listened to the stock market quotes or the war news on the radio and Virginia and her mother sat with their eyes downcast and ate in silence.

On the first Friday in December, Virginia went to the bank to withdraw the money from her Christmas Club account. She waited in line behind several other people, and when her turn came she stepped up to the teller’s window and handed the teller her passbook that showed the balance in her account. She told the teller she wanted to withdraw the money and close the account.

The teller frowned and squinted as she looked for the account number in her records. She had a double chin and eyebrows drawn on in graceful arcs halfway up her forehead. When she spoke, her voice had an odd little-girl quality about it. “Hold on a minute,” she said. “I’ll have to go check on this.” She turned and walked away to the rear of the bank and disappeared through a doorway.

When she came back, she smiled at Virginia and handed the passbook back to her. “Your money has already been drawn out of this account,” she said.

“There must be some mistake,” Virginia said. “I haven’t taken my money out.”

“No, but your husband did. I guess he forgot to tell you.”

Virginia just stood there looking at the teller with no expression on her face until the teller asked her if she was all right and if there was anything else she needed.

When she got back home, she felt better because she was sure the bank had made a mistake and, after speaking to Stanley when he returned from work, she would call the bank and have the matter straightened out in a matter of two minutes. Stanley would never take her money without telling her. He didn’t even know the money was there, so how could he take it out? She couldn’t wait for him to walk through the door so she could talk to him about it.

When Georgette and Ian arrived home from school, Virginia gave them some money and sent them to the store to buy a loaf of bread and a quart of milk. She gave them a little extra money so they could each buy themselves a candy bar, but she made them promise not to eat it until after supper.

She was sitting at the kitchen table thumbing through a magazine when Stanley came in from work, a few minutes later than usual. Without looking at Virginia, he set his lunch pail on the table and went to the sink to get a drink of water.

Virginia looked up from the magazine at the back of Stanley’s head. She waited until he had turned the water off and then she said, “I went to the bank today.”

He turned around and faced her with the glass of water in his hand, his hip resting against the sink. “What?” he asked.

“I said I went to the bank today. They told me you took the money out of my Christmas Club account. I was sure it had to be a mistake. I knew that, even if you had known about the money, you would never take it without telling me.”

“Oh,” he said, looking down at the floor.

“So, the question is: Did you withdraw the money from the Christmas Club account?”

“Yes, I guess I did,” he said.

“Why did you do that? That was my money. I saved it.”

“Just what is a Christmas Club anyway?”

“I want to know why you took my money.”

“Well, I think there’s a law somewhere that says your money is also my money.”

“You had no right to take it without telling me.”

“I was going to tell you.”

“That money was for Christmas. I wanted to buy some things for Ian and Georgette. I wanted to give them a nice Christmas.”

He poured his glass of water out into the sink. “Some things are a lot more important than Christmas,” he said.

“Do you still have the money?”

“No.”

“I want to know what happened to it.”

“Ian and Georgette have everything they need.  They have food to eat and clothes to wear and they’re getting an education. That’s a lot more than I had.”

“What happened to the money?”

“I’ve owed my brother Richard two hundred dollars for a long time. He was desperate to get it back. He’s getting a divorce and he needs all the money he can get.”

“So, you’re telling me that my Christmas Club money went for your no-good brother’s most recent divorce?”

“He’s family,” Stanley said. “I think family is more important than buying stuff for the kids for Christmas that they don’t need.”

She wasn’t finished with what she wanted to say, but Ian and Georgette returned from the store and she didn’t want them to hear her and Stanley arguing about money. She stood up from the table and went to the sink and began peeling potatoes for supper.

Over the next few days, Virginia wouldn’t look at Stanley and she spoke to him only when he spoke first or when he asked her a question. She slept on the couch and when Stanley got up in the morning to get ready for work, she covered up her head with the blanket and wouldn’t get up and cook his breakfast as she usually did. She wouldn’t uncover her head until after he had left for work.

In the second week of December, there was an accident in the mine. Stanley and two other miners were injured when some rock above where they were working gave way and fell on them. One of the miners died instantly. Stanley and the other miner were rushed to the hospital.

Stanley had a fractured skull and a badly broken arm and shoulder and was in a coma. Somebody from the mine called Virginia and told her what had happened and she got the next-door neighbor to drive her to the hospital in his car. She sat in a chair by Stanley’s bedside and prayed that he would be all right. She twisted a handkerchief in her hand and wept some, but most of the time she just looked at Stanley lying in the bed, hoping to see some sign that he was going to be all right. When there was no one else in the room, she told him—even though he was unconscious—that she was sorry for the way she behaved about the Christmas Club money. He was right, she said; some things are a lot more important than Christmas presents.

After a day and a half, Stanley died without ever regaining consciousness. Virginia knew there had never been any hope that he would live. She went home and sat on the sofa and cried and waited for Ian and Georgette to come home from school to tell them their father was dead.

A week after Stanley’s funeral, two letters came in the mail. Virginia carried them into the kitchen and opened them one after the other with a paring knife. One was from the mine where Stanley worked and it contained his last two weeks’ pay. The other letter was from the miners’ union; it was a letter of condolence and a “death benefit” check in the amount of three hundred dollars. These two checks were all the money she had in the world.

That night she lay awake most of the night, hearing the forlorn sound of the train whistles off in the distance. After Ian and Georgette left for school the next morning, she put on her clothes and drove downtown with the two checks. She went to the bank and deposited Stanley’s paycheck to pay for the rent and other bills that would soon be coming due. The death benefit check she endorsed. When the teller handed her six crisp fifty-dollar bills, she folded the money and put it inside the zipper compartment inside her purse. It was the most money she had ever seen or owned at one time.

Her next stop was the hardware store. Luckily they still had the bicycles in stock that she admired and hoped to get for Ian and Georgette. She bought both bicycles, paying a small down-payment on them and arranging to have them delivered to her house on the day before Christmas. She signed an agreement stating she would make monthly payments on the bicycles until they were paid for.

After the hardware store, she went to another store where they sold sewing machines and asked to see the best top-of-the-line machine the store carried. The clerk demonstrated the machine and told her it was so simple to operate even a child could use it. She bought the machine and asked that it be delivered to her house as soon as possible.

After the sewing machine store, she went to another store where she bought a record player with a radio built into it and a selection of records that she knew Ian and Georgette would like. In the same store she bought new winter coats for herself and for Ian and Georgette, refusing to add up in her head the amount of money she had spent that afternoon.

On her way back home she stopped at the supermarket, where she bought a large turkey and everything she would need for a Christmas dinner. She also bought a lot of extra things she would not ordinarily buy, such as candy and nuts and fruit. Outside the supermarket where they were selling Christmas trees she bought a large fir tree that would reach all the way to the ceiling in their little house. The clerk tied the tree to the top of the car for her.

When she got back home, she carried everything inside, and then carried the Christmas tree in and set it up in the living room. She went down to the basement to bring up the lights and decorations. She was stringing lights on the tree when Ian and Georgette came home from school. She knew they would appreciate decorating the tree by themselves without any help from her.

She stood back and watched as they excitedly took the decorations out of the box and began putting them on the tree. She tried to remember what it was like to be their age and find joy in such simple things; she had lost the feeling long ago and would never experience it again.

The phone began ringing in the kitchen. She didn’t want to leave the Christmas tree and answer it, but she would tell whoever it was that she would call them back later, after supper. It was a woman down the street, a Mrs. Capers, for whom she had done some housecleaning a while back.

Mrs. Capers had heard about Virginia’s past experience as a seamstress and wanted to know if she was interested in coming by her house the day after Christmas and talking to her about making some new drapes for the dining room. If everything went well (that is, if she liked the drapes), she would have other work to be done. Also, she had a couple of lady friends who needed to have all their clothes let out due to the middle-aged expansion. Having their old clothes altered would be so much cheaper than buying new ones.

Virginia arranged with Mrs. Capers to come around to her house at one o’clock on the twenty-sixth. When she hung up the phone and went back into the living room, Georgette stopped what she was doing and looked at her.

“Who was that on the phone?” she asked.

“It was the spirit of Christmas,” Virginia said.

Georgette didn’t ask for an explanation because they had all the lights strung on the tree. When Ian plugged them in and they saw that all of them still worked after their year-long hibernation in the basement, Virginia took that as a very good sign.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Cemetery Christmas

Cemetery Christmas
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

Calvin Horne took the wreath out of the back of his car and walked down the hill with it slung over his shoulder like a garden hose to his parents’ grave. It was the day before Christmas and he didn’t want to be in the cemetery; didn’t want to be reminded of death on a joyous holiday. Christmas was about birth, about what’s good in the world.

He hadn’t been especially close to either of his parents. His mother, dead two years, was a difficult and obstinate old woman. The two of them, Calvin and his mother, could hardly be in the same room together without a clash of wills. His father had been dead for twenty years and was only a distant memory.

He trudged down one hill and up another one. It was there, at the top of the next hill, where his parents were buried. His mother had generously offered to buy the plot for him on the other side of her, but he declined the offer. (He wanted simply to vaporize into the air as if he never existed at all.) Now that space was occupied by a stranger that his mother, in all probability, wouldn’t have liked.

His parents had a large and rather ostentatious granite headstone as tall as a man’s head that his mother bought and paid for. In the middle of the stone, at the top, the name Horne was etched in large letters. Below were the names, birth and death dates of Byron and Julia. Under the names were two intertwined hearts with an arrow shot through them and, in fancy script, the ironic words Together Forever. They were together, he was sure, only in the sense that they were both dead.

He took a deep breath, a little winded from his climb up the hill, and pushed the legs of the wreath’s tripod into the soft earth in front of the headstone. Now, if his sister or any other family members came snooping around, they wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t discharged his duty to his parents at Christmas.

The wreath seemed secure enough to withstand any winter blasts, so he pulled his gloves back on over his frozen fingers and was just about to retrace his steps back to the car, when he heard someone coming.

“I hear voices in the cemetery, don’t you?” a voice said.

He turned and saw a large woman in a fur coat and fur hat coming toward him. “What?” he asked.

“I said I hear voices when I’m in the cemetery. Don’t you?”

He thought she might be making a joke, but he wasn’t sure.

“No, I don’t hear any voices,” he said. “All I hear is quiet.”

“Yes, the quiet of the grave,” the woman said. “Do you need any help?”

“Why, no,” he said. “I was just leaving.”

“What are you doing here today?”

“I came to put a Christmas wreath on my parents’ graves.”

The woman looked down at the headstone and nodded. “They’re dead,” she said.

“Yes, that’s why they’re buried in the cemetery.”

“I’ll bet you were a good son.”

“Well, I can say I at least tried.”

“Do you have other family?”

“A sister and a son.”

“How old’s your son.”

“Twenty-two.”

“What happened to your wife?”

“We got divorced. She’s married to somebody else now.”

“What does she…

“I think that’s enough questions,” he said. “Especially since we don’t know each other.”

“Are you in a hurry to get away?” she asked.

“No more questions, I said.”

“I’ll bet you have a girlfriend waiting for you someplace, don’t you? Or maybe a boyfriend?”

“Let’s just say that’s for me to know and you to find out.”

“Okay. I get the picture. You don’t want to talk to me.”

“Well, it’s cold and it is Christmas.”

“Not today. Today is the day before Christmas. Tomorrow is Christmas.”

“Yeah. Enjoy your walk through the cemetery, or whatever it is you’re doing. I’ve got to be going.”

“Can’t you stay and visit a while?”

“No. I did what I came to do and now I need to go.”

“Haven’t we met before?” she asked. “A long time ago.”

“It isn’t likely.”

“I feel as if I’ve always known you.”

“We’ve never met, I’m sure of it.”

“Do you find me at all attractive?” she asked.

“What kind of a question is that? Of course I don’t!”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“I have to be going.”

He started to move away and she stepped in front of him.

“Could you spare me some change?” she asked.

“No, I can’t spare you any change. I don’t have any change. I might ask why you need change in a cemetery, wearing a fur coat, but the honest truth is I don’t care.”

“That’s not very nice. I thought at first you were a nice man.”

“Well, I’m not!”

“Where is your Christmas spirit?”

“It disappeared as soon as you started talking to me.”

“Don’t you like me?”

“I have no opinion of you one way or the other.”

“My brother, Ogden, will be along to pick me up any minute. He went to buy some cigarettes. When I tell him how you insulted me, he’ll be awfully mad.”

“I didn’t insult you!”

“You did! You said you found me unattractive and you didn’t want to talk to me.”

“If you hadn’t spoken to me first, I would never have said anything to you at all!”

“Well, how are people supposed to get to know one another?”

“They’re not!”

“Can I come home with you?”

“No!”

“I’ll bet you have a beautiful home, don’t you?”

“None of your business!”

“I’ll do anything you want!”

“None of your… I don’t want anything from you except for you to stop annoying me!”

“If you get to know me, I’m sure you’ll like me.”

“Dear Lord, why me?”

She lifted her arms up and put her hands behind his neck, locking her fingers at the back of his head.

“Stop that!” he said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He took hold of her wrists and forced her to release her grasp.

“You don’t like women at all, do you?” she asked.

“It isn’t any of your business what I like! When I leave here, I’m going straight to the police station and tell them there’s a crazy woman in a bearskin coat accosting people in the cemetery. They’ll send a squad car out here and pick you up.”

“Well, you don’t have to be so unkind about it!”

Down the hill she saw Ogden, her brother, lurking behind a tree. She called to him, he spotted her and began walking up the hill. In less than a minute, he was standing before them.

“Who’s this bozo?” Ogden said with a sneer. With his fat face, fur coat and fur hat, he was the male equivalent of the woman.

“He wanted to leave, but I kept him here,” she said.

“Good work, Bootsie girl!” Ogden said.

“Your names are Bootsie and Ogden?” Calvin asked.

“Yeah, what of it?” Ogden said.

“He insulted me, Oggie!” Bootsie said.

“Oh, he did, did he? How did he insult you?”

“He doesn’t like me. I offered to go home with him and do anything he wants, but he said he’s not interested.”

“Well, that’s not very gentlemanly, is it?”

“Oh, I get it.” Calvin said. “She’s a whore and you’re her pimp.”

“Ooh! Some words are so ugly, don’t you think?” Ogden said.

He pulled a small gun out of his jacket and pointed it at Calvin.

“You’re wasting your time robbing me,” Calvin said. “I only have about two dollars.”

“Prove it!” Ogden said. “Give me your wallet!”

Calvin removed his wallet and handed it to Ogden as if it was something he did every day. Ogden opened it; after he had thoroughly examined its interior, he looked back at Calvin with hatred.

“You’ve got two lousy dollars? And no credit cards? What kind of a loser doesn’t have any credit cards?”

“I always pay for everything in cash.”

“You’re a deadbeat, you know that?”

“I told you it wouldn’t do you any good.”

“How about if I drive you to your bank and you withdraw about two thousand dollars from your account and give it to me and Bootsie here as a Christmas present?”

“What makes you think I have two thousand dollars in the bank?” Calvin said.

“Fellows like you always have lots of money in the bank.”

“The bank is closed for the Christmas holiday.”

“Well, isn’t that that just too convenient!”

Bootsie whispered in Ogden’s ear. His bewildered expression faded and he smiled. “I’ll bet you’ve got an expensive watch, haven’t you?”

“I have a Timex. It cost twenty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents and I’ve had it for six years.

“All right, Mr. Smart Aleck! Hand it over!”

Calvin unfastened the watch and gave it to Ogden with a smile.

“All right!” Ogden said. “I have two dollars from you and a cheap watch. If that’s the best you can do, I’m going to have to kill you and if I do nobody will find your frozen body at least for a couple of days, since it’s a holiday and all.”

“No, don’t kill him,” Bootsie said reasonably. “He’s not worth it. Just let him go.”

“And he’ll go straight to the police.”

“We’ll be long gone by the time they get here.”

“He knows what we look like, for Christ’s sake!”

“So what? Do you really want to spend the rest of your life in the penitentiary? I don’t think I do! Only a crazy person would kill a guy over two dollars and a cheap watch.”

“I can’t just let him go without doin’ nothin’ to him,” Ogden said.

“Just kick his ass good.”

“No, I know!” Ogden said. “I’ll make him strip naked and he’ll have to walk home with his best parts on display for all the world to see.”

“You really are sick, you know that?” Bootsie said. “Nobody’s going to strip naked! It’s too damn cold for that shit!”

“Hey! You know what?” Calvin said. “I just saw two police cars turn into the cemetery. They’ll be on top of us in about one minute!”

Ogden and Bootsie turned all the way around in confusion and, seeing nothing, began running down the hill to get away.

“A couple of professional criminals!” Calvin said to himself and laughed.

He picked up the gun where Ogden had dropped it beside the trunk of a tree and slipped it into the pocket of his coat. He doubted the gun would even shoot, but it would be an interesting piece of evidence to turn over to the police so they could know he wasn’t just making the whole thing up.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Frozen Charlotte ~ A Short Story

Frozen Charlotte image 6

~ Frozen Charlotte ~
A Short Story by Allen Kopp

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

The snow has stopped falling. The temperature hovers at fifteen degrees. The wind is minimal. The air crackles with electricity. The stars twinkle like diamonds on a bed of blue-black velvet. Atmospherically it is the best Christmas Eve on record.

Roads are snow-packed and have been for weeks. The best way to get from place to place is by horse-drawn sleigh. The automobile is still not in common use, as it is 1897, but those days are coming.

Charlotte Little will be attending the party at the Whites on her own, even though she is only twelve. Vardaman will drive the sleigh. He will watch out for her and see that she returns safely.

It is to be a party for adults as well as children. There will be an orchestra, bountiful food and drink, musical acts, caroling, magic tricks, surprises and a visit from Santa. Those who attend the party will remember it all their lives into old age. They will take memories of the party to their graves.

As the best friend of Amy White, Charlotte will be an honored guest at the party. She doesn’t mind that she has to go alone but finds it rather exciting and grown-up. She has a new dress made for her by a real dressmaker. It is white bombazine with red satin trim. It reminds her of peppermint, of Christmas. She has never had a dress before of which she is so proud.

She is to leave at five o’clock. Allowing for no mishaps with the sleigh, she will arrive at the party at six o’clock. She is dressed and ready to go hours in advance. Mother tries to get her to eat before she goes, but she is too excited; there will be lots of time to eat later.

When she goes down to leave, mother and father are waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. Mother has her coat and scarf for her and father her fur hat, gloves and galoshes, but she doesn’t want to put any of them on. She has spent hours getting herself ready for the party and doesn’t want to spoil the effect. The coat will flatten the frills and puffs of her dress and the fur hat will mess up her hair. She doesn’t need the boots at all but will walk in tracks that have already been made. As a kind of concession, she puts the scarf around her shoulders and slips the gloves on her hands.

Vardaman is waiting for her in the sleigh at the front gate, whip in hand. He is so bundled up in his riding accoutrements that only his eyes can be seen. Charlotte gets into the sleigh, piling her warm winter coat and fur hat on top of the lap robes in the corner of the seat. She throws her galoshes on the floor of the sleigh and forgets about them. Who wears galoshes with a fancy Christmas dress?

Vardaman drives slowly at first and then faster. Soon he seems to be flying without leaving the ground. The trees and farmhouses whiz past in an icy blur. Charlotte breathes deeply of the icy air and looks up at the twinkling stars. Already she is having a good time, and she’s not even at the party yet. She spreads her coat over her lap, but that is the only concession she makes to the cold.

She doesn’t speak a word on the way. If she has anything to say, she would have to say it to Vardaman and she rarely speaks to Vardaman unless he speaks first. He is what they call all business.

The trip goes smoothly enough without incident. Vardaman has guided the sleigh expertly and efficiently, as he always does. He pulls up to the side of the house belonging to the Whites and gets out, throwing a blanket over the horse’s back. His back is sore and he is in a hurry to get inside and take off his coat and outer wrappings and warm his feet at the kitchen fire. In his haste, he fails to notice that Charlotte hasn’t moved from the sleigh. She still sits there, not moving, her icy blue eyes staring straight ahead.

Sometime during the trip, Charlotte’s blood freezes in her veins. Her heart stops pumping blood and turns into a useless, frozen muscle in the middle of her upper torso. Her eyes become fixed in their sockets, frozen in place, eyelids opened. How can someone so dead look so alive?

It is the easiest of deaths. She has felt nothing, not even a tingling sensation. From one second to the next, she is here and then she is gone.

The party disperses at eleven o’clock. Those who expected Charlotte to attend are disappointed, but they figure something must have come up unexpectedly at the last minute to keep her home.

Vardaman, sated with food and drink, comes out and is happy to see that Charlotte has taken her place in the sleigh and is ready to go home. He is all too eager to get home to his warm bed. He wakes up the horse and takes the blanket off his back and in thirty seconds the sleigh has taken to the road.

He turns and asks Charlotte if she had a good time at the party. He believes she answers in the affirmative but, of course, no answer is forthcoming.

When they get back home, it is near midnight on Christmas morning. Unknown to anybody, Charlotte has been sitting in the back of the sleigh on a frigid Christmas Eve for seven hours.

He stops the sleigh at the front gate. When Charlotte doesn’t get out as he expects, he turns around in the seat and looks at her, at her blue, staring eyes. Right away he knows something is wrong. He runs to the front door and bangs loudly. Mother and father, both in their night clothes, know that something is wrong and come running out.

When they see that Charlotte is frozen through and through, they take her in and set her by the fire. They try to lay her flat, but she is frozen in a sitting position. They rub her hands and wrists and pat her cheeks. They put more wood on the fire. They believe all they have to do is thaw her out and she will revive and start breathing again. Not knowing what else to do, mother sends for the doctor.

In the morning they send for the undertaker’s men. They come promptly and take Charlotte away. In the afternoon on Christmas Day, mother and father pay a call at the undertaking establishment. They choose embalming for their little girl and, after she is embalmed, they want her dressed in her fancy, red-and-white Christmas dress that she wore to the party. They pick out the finest and most expensive cast-iron coffin with a little window over the deceased’s face. Only the best will do.

Two days before the New Year, a service is held at the Methodist chapel for Charlotte Little. All the same people who were at the White party attend the service, except now they are in black and are no longer smiling. Everybody wants to know how such a thing could happen. How could a little girl go out on a freezing Christmas Eve in only a thin dress and no coat, hat, gloves or galoshes? Some of the ladies look accusingly at mother and then look away quickly when she looks back.

The ground is hard as iron. No new graves can be dug until there is an appreciable thaw. Frozen Charlotte is kept in the frigid sub-basement of the church for the duration. All through the winter, people may come and visit her and pay their respects. They line up and peer into the little window over her face and are subdued into silence by the mystery of death.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Third Day of Winter ~ A Short Story

 

The Third Day of Winter image 4
The Third Day of Winter
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in Offbeat Christmas Story and The Literary Hatchet.)

They had a little party at work, complete with cake and champagne (Here’s to another successful year!), and then everybody was allowed to leave for the day. It was the day before Christmas and nobody had to be back to work for three days. What a festive mood the downtrodden workers were in! There was dancing on tabletops, furtive kissing in corners, drunken laughter.

As Vesper left the office, it was just beginning to snow so she decided to walk home instead of taking the bus. She had always liked snow, especially at Christmastime, and had seen too little of it in recent years. She stopped on the way home at a little market and bought a dozen oranges and a small box of chocolate-covered cherries. As she was paying for her purchases, the old man behind the counter gave her a sprig of mistletoe.

When she reached her building, she felt agreeably fatigued and slightly frostbitten. As she climbed the stairs to her third-floor apartment, she couldn’t help noticing how quiet the building was. The usual loud voices, TVs, crying babies and yapping dogs were absent. She seemed to be the only tenant who hadn’t gone out of town for the holiday.

She unlocked the door, kicked off her wet shoes and hung up her coat. It was just beginning to get dark outside so she turned on all the lights. She tied a ribbon around her mistletoe and hung it in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room; plugged in the lights on her little artificial Christmas tree that was made to look real but wasn’t fooling anybody with its brown-and-green plasticity. She stood back and admired the comfort, the appeal, of her little home. It was the first home she had ever had that was hers and hers alone without belonging to somebody else.

“I’m really very lucky,” she said to herself as she stood in the middle of the room.

Already she was missing her friend Marlene at work, even though she had just left her a short time earlier. She wanted to call her and tell her about walking home in the snow and about the mistletoe. She knew that Marlene would enjoy hearing those things and would laugh at them in her usual way.

She went to the phone, not to call Marlene—she would be busy now with family—but to call somebody else.

“Hello?” she said when she heard her mother’s voice, sounding very faint and far away.

“Who’s that?” her mother said.

“It’s Vesper.”

“Is anything wrong?”

“No. I just got home from work and I wanted to call you and wish you a merry Christmas.”

 “You know I don’t go in for that stuff very much.”

“I know. Did you get the silver pin I sent you?”

“Yes, I got it.”

“I thought it would look good on your black coat.”

“Oh, I don’t have that coat anymore. It was a little too funereal for me.”

“It was a beautiful coat.”

“If I had known you liked it so much, I would have given it to you.”

“It doesn’t matter. How’s Stan?”

“We’ve separated. I haven’t seen him since summer.”

“Are you getting a divorce?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s a new man in my life now. His name is Milt. He’s talked about marrying me, but I don’t think I want to get married again. I’ve been down that road too many times.”

“Any news of Weston?”

“Nothing, except that he’s living the bohemian life and wants nothing to do with his family.”

“When you see him, tell him I said hello.”

“I will, dear. I really have to run now. I’m meeting some people for dinner. I have a terrible headache and don’t really feel like going out, but I said I’d go and I don’t want to break my word.”

“All right, mother. Goodbye.”

As Vesper hung up the phone she was aware of the hurtful omissions in the conversation. Her mother hadn’t bothered to ask her how she was or what plans she had for Christmas, if she had someone to spend it with or if she was going to be alone. Those things wouldn’t occur to her—she simply didn’t bother herself too much with her grown children. She had delivered them safely to adulthood and that’s all that anybody could reasonably expect.

Vesper went into the kitchen to see what she might dig up for dinner, but the prospect of having the usual everyday fare on Christmas Eve and then dozing on the couch in front of the TV until time to go to bed was suddenly dismaying to her. She didn’t have to do what she always did, just because she always did it. She could make Christmas Eve into something special, even if she did have to spend it alone.

She went into the bedroom and changed her clothes quickly before she gave herself the chance to change her mind. She made herself ready to go out again (boots, scarf, gloves, coat) and turned off all the lights except for one small lamp beside the door.

She began walking, not knowing for certain where she was going. The snow had accumulated to three or four inches and was still coming down, the wind blowing it along the sidewalk and causing it to drift along the building fronts. Nothing made it seem more like Christmas.

Two blocks from her building she came upon two men, an older and a younger one, standing with their hands over a barrel in which a small fire burned. Both men looked down into the barrel, but when she passed near them they turned and looked at her. The older man was the nondescript sort that one sees on the street every day, ragged and undernourished. The younger man was thin, medium-tall and sturdy-looking. He wasn’t wearing a hat (in the light from the fire his hair had a reddish tint) and he wore an enormous overcoat that went down past his knees, with the collar turned up to partly cover his ears. On his cheek was a crescent-shaped scar as if once, long ago, he had been gouged by a shard of glass or the blade of a knife. These details about him registered on her brain in the few seconds she looked at him and then she looked away.

She came to a brightly lighted drugstore and stopped and looked through the frosty window at the rows of displays and the people moving about as if they were underwater. After a moment of indecision, she went inside, passing a perfume display over which two fat women were talking loudly, and went to a rack of magazines in the back. She picked up a magazine, thumbed through it and put it back.

The wall behind the magazine rack was a mirror. As she reached out her hand to put a magazine back on the rack where she had found it, she saw the reflection of a man in the mirror. He was half-a-foot taller than she was and standing behind her, to her right, as though looking over her shoulder. Thinking herself in the way, she stepped aside to give the man more room and that’s when she realized it was the same young man with the scar on his face who had been standing over the fire in the barrel. She felt embarrassed at the thought that he might speak to her, so she left the drugstore and went back out into the freezing night.

She walked on from the drugstore for a block-and-a-half and when she had to stop at a corner with a clot of other people to wait for the light to turn, she took a quick glance over her shoulder to see if the young man had come out of the drugstore after her. She didn’t see him, so she was sure he wasn’t following her. Why would she have ever thought he was?

A little restaurant with the smell of garlic and twinkling lights in the window attracted her attention. It was a place that ordinarily would have been too expensive for her, but she was tired of walking and went inside.

The lights in the restaurant were very dim, giving the place a dreamlike quality after the snowy street. A smiling waiter seated her at a small table near the front and helped her remove her coat. He handed her a menu and when she seemed to be having trouble making up her mind, he suggested fried calamari and polpette di baccala. She didn’t know what it was but readily acceded to his suggestion anyway. Since it was Christmas, she was glad to be able to order something unusual and exotic that she could tell Marlene about.

When the waiter asked her if she wanted a bottle of wine, she said yes and as soon as he brought it she started drinking copious amounts of it and eating delicious garlicky breadsticks out of a little basket while she waited for her food.

The food was very much to her liking but what she liked most was the wine. She ended up drinking the entire bottle before, during and after the meal.

When all the food on her plate was gone, she felt happy and fortunate, happy to be alive and fortunate to have a good-paying job that would allow her to have an extravagant meal on a special occasion. She thanked the waiter effusively, gave him a more-than-generous tip, and wished him a merry Christmas. He helped her into her coat and opened the door for her as she left.

In the next block she slipped on an icy spot on the sidewalk and fell sideways into a pile of snow, unhurt, but attracting some unwelcome attention. As a small crowd of people gathered around to see if she was all right and to help her to stand up again, she saw coming toward her the man in the long coat with the scar on his face. Someone blocked her view for a few seconds and when the way was clear again he was gone. Was she seeing people who weren’t really there? It must have been a result of drinking all that wine.

It was not late at all for Christmas Eve and, in spite of the snow and cutting wind, she wasn’t ready to go home just yet. She would make a night of it. She would have lots to tell Marlene and her other friends at work how she spent Christmas Eve while they were all with their families. They wouldn’t exactly envy her but would admire her for having a good time on her own without having to depend on somebody else.

Four or five blocks farther on was the Odeon movie theatre. She was delighted to see that the show was just about to begin. She paid her admission and went inside and took a seat in the orchestra among a handful of other people. She dozed during the previews of coming attractions and a featurette about a Christmas tree farm, but when the feature began she was fully awake.

In the feature presentation, a woman named Mildred was released from a mental hospital at Christmastime. She had to become reacquainted with her children because she had been away so long they almost forgot she existed. She tried to resume her role in life as wife, mother and society hostess, but she had terrible nightmares and hallucinations that showed she should never have been released from the mental hospital at all. What was even worse, though, was that her fifteen-year-old daughter, Veronica, was showing signs that she had inherited Mildred’s mental illness. She would put her dress on backwards without even knowing it and stand up during mealtimes and scream there were Martians on the roof. These were the exact same things that Mildred had done that caused her to be sent to the mental hospital in the first place when Veronica was in grammar school.

When the picture was over, Vesper sighed heavily, put on her coat and went back out into the cold. She was feeling tired now and the movie, although she had enjoyed it, made her feel like crying. It had been a lovely evening, though.

It was nearly eleven o’clock. The snow had stopped but it seemed colder now because the wind was blowing. When she thought of the long way she had to walk to get back home, she wished she was already there, relaxing in her pajamas, drinking hot chocolate and listening to Christmas music on the radio.

The streets that had been so crowded before were almost deserted now. Everybody had gone home to celebrate Christmas. A drunk stepped out of the shadows and asked her for a dollar but she sidestepped him and kept going without looking back.

Two blocks from her building she came upon two men, an older and a younger one, standing with their hands over a barrel in which a small fire burned. Both men looked down into the barrel, but when she passed near them they turned and looked at her. The older man was the nondescript sort that one sees on the street every day, ragged and undernourished. The younger man was thin, medium-tall and sturdy-looking. He wasn’t wearing a hat (in the light from the fire his hair had a reddish tint) and he wore an enormous overcoat that went down past his knees, with the collar turned up to partly cover his ears. On his cheek was a crescent-shaped scar as if once, long ago, he had been gouged by a shard of glass or the blade of a knife.

As she walked past these two men, looking straight ahead, the younger man disengaged himself from the older and began following her. She didn’t hear  a sound—his footsteps in the snow were silent—but she knew, she felt, that he was a few paces behind her.

She came to her building and climbed the stairs to the third floor, opened the door with her key, let herself in, and reclosed the door without locking it.  Without turning on any lights, she went to the window overlooking the front of the building and looked down. Standing there in the snow, looking up at her, was the young man in the long overcoat with the crescent-shaped scar on his cheek.

She wrote on a piece of note paper from beside the phone these words: Come up, apartment 320. She wadded the paper into a little ball and opened the window just wide enough to insert the ball of paper and let it drop to the ground. She stood there in the dark and watched the man approach the paper, pick it up and read it. She took a couple of deep breaths and in a few seconds she heard his footsteps on the stairs, exactly in time to the beating of her own heart.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

 

by allen0997

Another Christmas Eve ~ A Short Story

I Want to Spend Christmas with You
Another Christmas Eve 
~ 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.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

In a Cemetery on Halloween Night ~ A Short Story

In a Cemetery on Halloween Night
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story was published in Creaky Door magazine.)

When we were younger, the three of us were fascinated by the subject of death. We had lengthy discussions about the possibility of a continued existence after life has ended. We all wanted to believe in such an existence. Since Halloween is the one day in the year that the veil between the living and the dead is supposed to be at its most transparent, we decided to put all talk aside and conduct a little experiment.

There were no fewer than eighteen cemeteries in our county, some of them tucked away in forgotten corners. Each of the three of us would select a cemetery to spend the night in—the night of October thirty-first. We believed it was important for each of us to be alone, as spirits were more likely to make themselves known to an individual rather than to a pair or a group. We would meet the next evening and discuss our experiences. We hoped that at least one of us would have the proof we longed for.

I chose the Cemetery of the Holy Ghost because I remembered my grandmother telling me when I was a child that some of her family were buried there, and I also had a vague recollection of being there a time or two with my grandparents when I was in grade school.

It was a once-fine cemetery that had fallen out of vogue about a hundred years ago. It contained many interesting mausoleums, above-ground crypts, stones and monuments. Some of the illustrious (but now forgotten) inhabitants of the cemetery included governors of the state and their “consorts,” a United States senator or two, a celebrated writer (all of his books out of print for fifty years), several war heroes, an actress who appeared on the stage in both New York and London, and a notorious multiple murderer. In checking the records, I discovered that the cemetery had not received a newly deceased person in almost fifty years.

In the early evening of October thirty-first, I drove my car out into the country. I made sure I knew the way before I started and found the cemetery without any trouble. I parked the car in a low spot where it couldn’t be seen from the road (if anybody happened to be passing by, which was unlikely), and went in. There was an iron fence all the way around the cemetery that had fallen down in places. Nobody who wanted in was going to be kept out. I walked around for a while, taking in the sights as much as I could before it was too dark to see.

I found a good place under a big maple tree to sit down where the ground was covered with fragrant, dry leaves. The spot had the advantage of making me feel safe from anything or anybody that might approach me in the dark, so I planned on staying there most of the night until daylight when I would get back into my car and go home again. I took the things out of my backpack that I had brought—a flashlight, some drinking water and snacks, a lightweight blanket, a paperback book in case I became bored with the whole scene—and as I made myself comfortable on the ground under the tree, I realized just how peaceful and lonely an abandoned country cemetery is on a beautiful autumn evening.

I sat with my back against the tree as night came on. I wasn’t especially afraid of the dark but I had to admit that every sound I heard made my heart beat a little faster. Was the snap of a twig or the crunch of leaves someone—or something—coming toward me? What if I really did have an encounter with a spirit of some kind? Would my nerve fail me? Whatever happened, I promised myself that I would leave and go home if the situation became too unpleasant.

Once when I heard a sudden rustling sound right above my head, I jumped up with a little yell, ready to defend myself. When I realized that it had only been an owl—in fact, a pair of owls—I felt a little foolish and was glad nobody was there to see how skittish I was.

I sat underneath the tree for what seemed several hours. I had to get up several times to get the circulation going in my legs and to keep warm. The balmy evening had turned into a chilly night. I was a little disappointed—but not altogether surprised—to see that a country cemetery on Halloween night is the same as on any other night. The dead are sleeping peacefully and there is nothing to be seen or felt. The only thing I was sure of was that it was without a doubt the loneliest place I had ever spent a night in.

When I looked at my watch and saw it was only a few minutes before midnight, I longed to go home and go to bed, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want the night to end that way, with my leaving long before I was supposed to because I wasn’t having any fun. Instead I wrapped myself in my blanket like a cocoon and laid down on the bed of leaves with my head a couple feet from the tree. If I could spend a few hours sleeping, it would be dawn when I woke up and I could go home and have a good breakfast and sleep until noon.

I was more tired than I thought and lying on the ground was more comfortable than I expected it to be. In a very short time I was lost in sleep.

I woke up long before dawn to what sounded like the strings being plucked on a musical instrument. I gasped, believing for a moment I was choking, and sat up.

“That’s Edith playing her ukulele,” a male voice said.

Since it was too dark for me to see anything, I reached for the flashlight but wasn’t able to find it. “Who’s there?” I asked.

“I’m right here,” the voice said.

I squinted into the darkness but couldn’t see anything. Then, as my eyes seemed to adjust a little bit, I could see what seemed to be the blurry outline of a person. After a few seconds I could see the features of a face—nose, eyes, a mouth—but they were very faint. I seemed to be looking at a person who was there and not there at the same time. Lit from within, he seemed to be, as when you put a small lighted candle inside a large paper sack.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I belong here,” he said. “You don’t.”

“Who’s Edith?”

“She’s my daughter. Ukulele player extraordinaire.”

As soon as her name was mentioned, a small girl “lit up” beside the man. Apparently they were able to turn the light on and off at will.

“Is there anybody else here?” I asked stupidly, running my hand across my eyes.

“My son Tom is here and several others who are just now hearing about you.”

A boy of about fifteen made himself known to me the way Edith had done. Then several others behind him did the same thing. As I looked out at them over the man’s shoulder, I saw that they were not quite touching the ground but “floating” above it.

“What are you doing here?” the man asked. I could hear the amusement in his voice.

“Do you know what day it is?” I asked.

“Time doesn’t mean anything here,” he said.

“Well, it’s Halloween,” I said.

“Oh, that,” he said, as if disappointed.

“So you understand the significance of the holiday?”

“Yes. And you are one of those who believe that Halloween is the one day in the year you will be able to see for yourself that we exist.”

“It sounds rather silly when you put it that way.”

“Are there others here also?”

“No. I’m by myself.”

“Are you some kind of medium between the world of the living and the world of those who have passed over?”

“No! Oh, no!”

“Then why are you seeing us right now?”

“This isn’t really happening. It’s just a dream. I’m afraid I’ve fallen under the spell, the romance, of being in an old country cemetery on Halloween.”

There was a murmur among the spirits behind the man. He listened to them for a moment and then turned back to me.

“They’re saying we can’t let you go like this,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked.

“They think, and I agree, that you’ll go back and spread the word that you’ve seen proof of life after death and then this place will never be the same. There’ll be people coming out here in droves—curiosity seekers like yourself and newspaper men and the like. I haven’t been dead so long that I don’t remember what people are like!”

“I won’t tell a soul.”

“No, indeed, you will not!”

I couldn’t help noticing that the spirits had increased in number. Before there were just a few but now there were dozens and behind them dozens and maybe hundreds more. I began to feel a little afraid at what they were going to do to me.

“Why are there so many of you here?” I asked.

“They all want to get a look at you,” he said.

“That’s not what I mean. Why haven’t you moved on in the spirit world? Do you have to stay here because this is where your bodies are interred?”

I heard faint laughter but couldn’t see who was doing the laughing.

“Of course not,” he said. “We’re everywhere. We can go wherever we want. There are no restrictions. That’s what being a spirit is. Some choose to stay here because their loved ones are here; others don’t want to leave because they’ve been here so long they don’t remember any other place.”

“You don’t like living people like me coming around bothering you, do you?”

“Most spirits choose to remain solitary or with other spirits. We would prefer that you left us alone. Nothing good comes out of it for us when you try to prove that we exist.”

“So, are you going to scare me to death so I won’t go back and tell people that I’ve seen you?”

“No, I have to tell you that a spirit can’t kill a living person unless it’s by suggestion. I’ve also heard of spirits causing heavy objects to fall on living people, but that doesn’t happen very often.”

“Well, I think I’ll get into my car now and drive home, then, if it’s all the same to you. And I promise you I’ll forget I was ever here.”

“You’ll go back to sleep. You’ve never really woken up. At dawn you’ll wake up and leave this place. You’ll forget any of this ever happened. You’ll have nothing to report to your friends.”

“I won’t remember any of this,” I said, “because it’s a dream and I never remember dreams after I wake up.”

Just as the sun was coming up I awoke to the enthusiastic singing of birds. As I stood up from my bed of leaves and folded my blanket, I was relieved that morning had arrived, I had survived the night intact and it was time to go home. I had done what I said I would do, which was spend Halloween night alone in a country cemetery. I wondered if my friends had fared as well as I had.

I walked to my car, started the engine, and turned on the heater. By the time I got out to the highway, morning was well on its way and the sky a brilliant autumnal blue.

I didn’t see the deer that came rushing out of the brush toward me like the angel of death. All I saw of it was its back legs as it sailed over the hood of my car. I suppose I had been thinking too much about bacon and pancakes and wasn’t paying as much attention to my driving as I should have. I swerved the car sharply to avoid colliding with the deer. Since I was going about sixty miles an hour, I lost control and ran the car off into a deep culvert that, lucky for me, had no water in it. I hit my head and was knocked out cold.

Somebody passing by on the highway saw my car in the ditch and called for help. An ambulance came and took me, still unconscious, to the hospital. The police had my car towed into town.

While I was still unconscious, I could hear a song being played on the ukulele. I didn’t know what the song was, but it was the same song over and over. A ukulele is not an instrument I’m used to hearing or would expect to hear. It forced me to recall in vivid detail the dream I was supposed to forget. When I regained consciousness, I asked for a pencil and some paper. I knew I had to write it down while I remembered it or risk losing it forever.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

A Mate for the Monster

The mate for the monster.

A Mate for the Monster
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

The monster is seven and a half feet tall and as strong as ten men. He walks in a frightening, slow-gaited, halting manner. He has a bolt in his neck; his face is stitched onto his enormous head. He probably doesn’t know that he is made up of body parts from dead people (and if he did know he wouldn’t care). No matter where he goes or what he does, he scares people without even trying. That’s what makes him a monster.

He lives in a lonely castle on a mountaintop. He has no friends and his days are empty and pointless. His brain is not so addled that he can’t ask himself why he was ever created in the first place. He has recently taken to talking a bit and, when he’s not smoking cigars, drinking wine, or running around the countryside scaring people, he says things like, “Love dead—hate living.” This is not a good sign.

The mad scientist who made him, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, and his equally mad colleague, Dr. Pretorius, see that the monster is not happy. He is not fulfilled and is not living up to his full potential as a monster. After much thought and deliberation, the two mad scientists decide that the monster needs one thing above all others: a mate who will appreciate him for what he is and won’t be repulsed by the way he looks or by his crude manners. They toy with the idea of creating a male mate but that just doesn’t seem the thing, somehow, so they decide they will create for him a female mate.

Dr. Frankenstein sends his hunchback assistant, Fritz, out on a midnight graveyard run. From the graves of the newly dead, Fritz will gather the body parts needed to cobble together a female mate for the monster. He knows just the place, he says. Leave everything to him.

Now, Fritz has never been overly scrupulous about where he gets what he needs. He isn’t above going to the village and, seeing a lone woman standing on a corner singing a song, hitting her in the head to subdue her and then strangling her. When he makes sure she’s dead, he puts her in a burlap bag and throws it over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and goes back to the castle. He knows Dr. Frankenstein will never ask questions as long as Fritz delivers the goods. The woman was just a nobody anyway. She’ll never be missed.

Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius spend about two weeks creating what they think is a perfect mate for the monster. They take as much time as they need without rushing; they want to get every little detail just right. When the next violent thunderstorm occurs, they will be ready to harness the lightning.

They don’t have long to wait. All day long the next Saturday the sky is turbulent and dark. Finally, at night, a fearsome storm comes down the mountain, tearing at the castle walls. The wind howls and the rain falls as if a spigot has been opened in the sky. The lightning seems to be exactly on top of the castle, as if made to order. The two mad scientists place the as-yet lifeless body of the female mate on a table, connect the conductors that will attract the life-giving lightning, and hoist the table upwards through a hole in the ceiling.

The monster knows what is going on in the laboratory and paces his chamber nervously. Dr. Frankenstein has told him he must stay away until they are ready for him to see his mate. He combs his hair; he tries on several suits of clothes but nothing seems just exactly right. He fears that his mate will be afraid of him and will try to get away. He wonders if he will have to tie her up or club her in the head to be able to get a kiss from her. He lies on the bed and watches the storm out the window until there is a knock at the door; it’s the hunchback Fritz telling him that Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius are ready for him to come to the laboratory.

When the monster sees his mate for the first time he is a little disappointed. She is standing between Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius and she’s swaying from side to side as if she might fall over. Her hair is very high off her head and frizzy as if electrified; white strands on both sides resemble bolts of lightning. Dr. Pretorius has dressed her in a flowing white gown that goes all the way to the floor.

She tries to pull away when she sees the monster standing in the doorway, but Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius hold her by the arms. As the monster walks across the room to her with a welcoming smile, she screams a piercing scream that rattles the castle to its very foundations. The monster is not put off by the scream but advances toward her. When he is face to face with her, Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius let go of her arms and withdraw to the dark recesses of the room. She surprises the monster by hissing at him like a snake, which he finds very arousing. When she screams again, he puts his enormous hands around her throat to get her to shut up. And so begins a great romance.

Dr. Frankenstein proposes a toast and they all have a friendly glass of champagne. They break the champagne glasses in the fireplace for good luck and then Dr. Pretorius, who is also an ordained minister, marries the monster and his mate so there won’t be any question of immorality going on in the castle.

They all live happily for many years to come in Castle Frankenstein on their mountaintop. Eventually Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius—even Fritz—all die because they are just ordinary men. The monster and his mate, however, live on and on. Through studying the writings of Dr. Frankenstein—and also Dr. Frankenstein’s father and grandfather—the monster has learned how to prolong his life and that of his mate for a very long time. The next thing he is working on is how to resurrect Dr. Frankenstein and Dr. Pretorius from the dead. If he is able to do that, there will be no stopping any of them.

Copyright © 2024 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997