Tag: short story

Sleep Will Banish Sorrow ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Ring the Night Bell image 9

Sleep Will Banish Sorrow
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

The time was between ten and eleven and traffic was light. An occasional car went by, slowly, its lights reflected in wavering bars on the wet pavement. A liquor store in the next block went dark. A policeman walked his beat, rousting a drunk from a doorway.

A man stepped out of a dark alley. He took a few slow steps into the glow of a streetlamp and stopped. He heard a siren off in the distance and lifted his head to listen, but gradually the siren faded to nothing. He reached into the pocket of his coat and removed a cigarette and put it between his lips and lit it with the little gold lighter engraved with his initials that he always carried. He took a long drag on the cigarette and turned and walked down the street.

In appearance he was a man like many others: not young and not old, of average height, lean and muscular, broad through the shoulders and narrow in the hips. He wore an expensive, perfectly tailored suit and a hat low on his brow, making his face difficult to distinguish.

He spotted a policeman walking toward him on the opposite side of the street. He knew without looking directly at him that the policeman was watching him. He didn’t want the policeman to think there was anything about him out of the ordinary or that he was, perhaps, planning on breaking into one of the businesses along the street that were closed down for the night. He began walking a little faster, with apparent purpose in his step, so as not to arouse the policeman’s suspicions.

After he had walked another half-block, he glanced over his shoulder to see if the policeman was still looking at him, but he was far down in the next block peering into a darkened window. A taxi went by, its tires hissing on the wet pavement. A woman’s laughter came from inside the taxi, a high-pitched sound that might have been a drunken laugh or even a scream. The tail lights of the taxi were receding into the distance when movement in an upper window across the street drew his attention. A woman came to the window and was silhouetted in the light behind her. She looked down to the street for a moment—she seemed to be looking right at him but he couldn’t be sure—and then reached above her head and drew the curtain closed. Seconds later the window went dark like all the others.

As he kept walking, he passed an all-night bowling alley and several small bars and cafés that were opened, but all the stores and offices and businesses were dark and shut down for the night.

After walking several more blocks he came to a movie theatre that was an island of light in the sea of darkness. The marquee was outlined in flashing bulbs surrounding the title of the movie currently playing. The sidewalk and the street in front of the theatre were bathed in garish white light. Inside the ticket booth at the front of the theatre a fat woman sat behind the smudged glass. She wore round glasses and a black dress with little red flowers. She had no customers at the moment and so appeared bored. She leaned her head on her hand and looked longingly out at the street.

He stood on the sidewalk underneath the marquee, put his hands in his pockets and leaned his shoulder against the wall. The woman in the ticket booth looked at him and then looked away. If she thought anything about him at all, she would think he was waiting for someone to meet him for the next show. He lit a cigarette and avoided looking at the woman and watched the few cars going by on the street.

A man and a woman walked past on the sidewalk. The woman stood out because she was tall and straight and she wore a red coat and a jaunty red beret with a black feather sticking out of the side. The man was older and shorter; he wore a black hat that seemed too small for his head and was smoking a cigar. They seemed too polite and restrained with each other to be anything other than business associates. They walked past and went to the end of the block and crossed the street and disappeared into the next block.

Suddenly the doors of the theatre opened and people started coming out. At first they came out in twos and threes, and then in dozens. In a couple of minutes there were as many as two hundred people on the sidewalk in front of the theatre. The fat woman in the ticket booth came alive, as dozens of people lined up to buy tickets for the next show.

After the crowd had reached its maximum size and began to dwindle, a lone woman came out of the theatre. She was the only person in the crowd who wasn’t with someone else. She was wearing an ugly tan raincoat like a man’s raincoat and a hat that covered most of her hair, the type of hat worn by women who don’t care how they look when it rains. She walked out to the edge of the sidewalk and looked up and down the street, as though looking for someone. Maybe someone was supposed to meet her or pick her up after the movie and didn’t show up.

From where he was standing under the marquee he watched the woman. She stood at the curb waiting for a couple of minutes and then she began walking down the street. After she was about halfway down in the next block, he began following her, close enough that he could still see her but far enough away that she wouldn’t know he was there.

Something in the woman’s manner indicated that she was not afraid of being alone on a dark street late at night. She looked straight ahead and didn’t seem in any hurry. He knew she didn’t know he was following her. She hadn’t even seen him. He was careful to walk so she wouldn’t hear his footsteps on the sidewalk.

She came to an intersection and stopped, waiting for a couple of cars to pass. When the way was clear, she crossed the street and went through the open door of an all-night drugstore on the corner.

He hesitated for a moment and then went up to the window of the drugstore and stood at the edge and looked in, so that anybody inside would not be able to see him. The inside was brightly lit and cheerful. He could see all the way to the back of the store, rows of display cases and a large rack of magazines and newspapers. Three fans in a triangle hung from the ceiling and turned slowly like airplane propellers in slow motion.

The woman in the tan raincoat went behind a counter and disappeared through a doorway. A man at the magazine rack picked up a magazine and went to the counter to pay for it. An old woman with a little boy standing beside her waited at the prescription counter for the druggist to come back.

Soon the woman in the tan raincoat came out of the doorway at the back of the store. With her was a slightly older woman who resembled her enough that they must have been sisters. The older woman put on a coat and picked up an umbrella and laughed and said goodbye to someone, and then the two of them came out the door. He was standing several feet to the right of the door and, since they turned to the left, they didn’t see him. He stood beside the window and watched them until they turned the corner in the next block and went out of sight.

He turned and began walking again in an easterly direction. There were more people on the sidewalks and more cars in the street than earlier. People were finished with the evening’s activities—the boxing match or club meetings or whatnot—and were heading to bars and nightclubs for some of the nightlife the city was fabled for. A dirty-looking man, a hobo, stepped out of the shadows and blocked his way, asking him for a quarter. He waved the man away and stepped around him to keep from colliding with him.

He came to a bar and stopped and looked at the place. He was tired of walking and needed to sit for a while, have a drink and maybe order some food. He was considering whether or not to go inside, when the door opened and a woman came out. She was wobbly on her feet as though drunk, or nearly drunk. She stumbled and then righted herself and looked up at the sky as though expecting rain. She mumbled something but he didn’t hear what it was.

He saw the red beret and the black feather sticking out of it, and he knew right away it was the same woman he had seen earlier in the evening when he was standing in front of the movie theatre; except now she was alone. He had a fleeting thought that, since it was the second time he had seen her in the same night, they must have been fated to meet. He believed very much that two strangers came together because they were fated beforehand to do so.

He was standing there on the sidewalk in front of the bar, silently, and she didn’t see him until she had almost walked into him. She was startled slightly and confused, but when she looked up at his face and saw he was smiling at her, she relaxed and didn’t regret so much almost bumping into him that way. She apologized profusely and gave a little laugh and stepped around him to continue on her way.

He thought quickly about how he might get her to keep from leaving, how he might engage her in conversation. He took a cigarette out of his pocket and held it between his fingers and asked her for a light. She laughed again and looked grateful that he had asked for anything at all and opened her purse and took out a lighter. She held the flame to the cigarette in his mouth and returned the lighter to her purse.

He took a draw on the cigarette and blew smoke out above her head and smiled at her again and asked if she would like to have a drink. She said she had already had several drinks but she wouldn’t object to a nightcap all the same. She suggested they go to the bar in the hotel where she was staying, which was nearby.

The bar was on the ground floor of the hotel, just off the lobby. They went inside and sat at a small table against the wall. He removed his hat and she took a good look at him. She reached across the table and ran her hand along his arm from his shoulder to his elbow. He looked at her without expression. He didn’t like being touched that way, but he didn’t tell her to stop. The waiter came and took their order and in a couple of minutes their drinks arrived.

She told him the pertinent facts of her life. She came to the city a couple of times a year on business. She always tried to mix in a little fun with the business while she was at it. She had been married once but it didn’t work out and she sent the boy packing back to his mother, where he never should have left in the first place. She liked a man to be a real man and not a grownup baby.

She lived with her sister in a big dreary house in a small town in another state. Her sister was older and a widow. No fun at all. It was a stale kind of existence, so that’s why she liked to kick up her heels whenever she had the chance. She supposed, however, that was as happy as the next person.

She talked only about herself and didn’t try to find out anything about him, not even his name. She leaned across the table and, breathing into his face, told him she found him exceedingly attractive. She was always stimulated by a man’s indifference, she said. She didn’t like the kind of men who were always cloying and falling all over themselves to present themselves well. She liked a man to be a bit of a brute. He grew bored with her talk, but he pretended to be listening to every word, while in fact listening more to the music playing in the background.

After a while the bar was getting ready to close for the night and everybody was going to have to leave. The woman smiled sadly at him and told him she hated to break up their little party, she was having such a good time. She finished her drink, and he put his hat back on and put some money on the table and they both stood up and walked out into the lobby of the hotel.

He was going to ask her if she’d like to go to a place that didn’t close for the night where they could continue their little tête-à-tête, but they saw through the window of the lobby that it was raining furiously outside and he didn’t think she would want to get wet. As he started to leave, she put her hand on his wrist and said she just had a wonderful idea. She had a full bottle of bourbon in her room and she wasn’t sleepy at all. Would he care to come up to her room for a little while?

When they got to her room on the eighth floor, she was too drunk to fit the key into the lock. She laughed and dropped the key on the floor and he picked it up and opened the door and pushed it open for her to go in before him.

She switched on the lights and took off her red hat with the black feather and put it on the dresser and removed her coat and threw it down and stepped out of her shoes. She told him to make himself comfortable and then she went into the bathroom and closed the door. He took off his hat and jacket and sat down on the couch and waited for what was going to happen next.

In a couple of minutes she came out of the bathroom and turned off all the lights except for the small one in front of the window, throwing one side of the room into darkness. She turned on the radio and found some music she liked. After she adjusted the radio to just the right volume, she opened her bottle of bourbon with some difficulty and poured some out into two tiny paper cups, apologizing for not having anything better.

She handed one of the paper cups to him and sat beside him on the couch to his right. She had partially unbuttoned her blouse so that a large portion of the area between her breasts was visible. She remarked how cozy it was sitting there with him, with the sound of the rain and the music and the drinks.

He finished his drink and she offered to pour him another, but he refused, saying he had had enough for one night. He crumpled up the paper cup and slipped it into his pocket.  He put his arm up behind her on the back of the couch and she sat very close to him.

He kissed her lightly on the lips, not because he had any great need to kiss her but because he believed it was what should come next. She kissed him back harder and reached out for his left hand and placed it on her right breast. He squeezed her breast gently and she made little moaning noises.

Suddenly the phone rang shrilly. The woman sighed and stood up and answered it impatiently. He listened carefully to what she was saying; it was the front desk calling to give her a message that was left for her while she was out.

She concluded the call and came back to the couch and sat down beside him again, leaning her body heavily against his. She leaned in for him to kiss her again and he could smell her musky smell and the alcohol on her breath. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing hard.

From his pocket he extracted a two-foot-long silken cord that he always carried, very strong and lightweight. In one deft movement he had the cord around her neck, and before she was aware of what was happening he pulled it very tight. He watched the expression on her face change from surprise to fear and then to pain. He stood up and pulled her sideways on the couch and got behind her and pulled both ends of the cord at the back of her neck.

She made little gurgling noises and tried to get her hands around the cord to pull it loose. She kicked out her feet, propelling her body into his and knocking him off-balance. He pulled the cord tighter and tighter until his arms trembled from the exertion. She gave one violent backward thrust of her body against his and then she began to go limp. When he was sure she was dead, he eased her down onto the floor in front of the couch carefully so as not to make any noise.

He was out of breath and his muscles ached. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his mouth and when he pulled it away he saw her lipstick that had come off onto the handkerchief. He could smell her perfume and he still had the taste of her mouth in his. He shuddered and retched and collapsed onto the floor.

He lay on the floor until he felt that his legs would carry him again and then he stood up and went to the door and put his ear against it to see if he could hear anything from the hallway outside the door. Hearing nothing, he put on a pair of thin kidskin gloves he carried and began methodically going through the woman’s luggage and purse and other belongings. He found two hundred and ten dollars in cash in a pocket of her suitcase. He folded the money and put it inside the breast pocket of his jacket. Then he found a train ticket and put it with the money without even bothering to look and see where she was bound for.

He turned off the lamp but the light from the windows was enough for him to see the body of the woman on the floor in front of the couch. Her face was turned slightly toward him and her eyes were opened; she seemed to be looking right at him. Her skirt was pushed above her thighs and her legs slightly twisted. Her left arm was folded under her and her right arm was underneath the couch. He went over to her and knelt down and removed the silken cord that was still partway around her neck and returned it to his pocket.

The rain gently pelting the windows was lovelier than any music and made the room seem peaceful and inviting. Suddenly he was tired and every muscle in his body ached; he felt an overwhelming desire for rest and sleep. He would stay for a while and then be on his way. He knew he would be safe there until morning.

He went to the bed that had been carefully made up and lay on his back with his head on the pillow. He had never known a more comfortable bed in his life. Soon he drifted into a sleep as deep as any sleep could be.

He awoke in the morning feeling replenished. He looked at the clock and saw it was not quite seven. He sat up and put on his shoes and went into the bathroom and splashed some water on his face and combed his hair, looking at himself in the mirror the whole time.

Suddenly he was eager to be gone, to be on his way again. He straightened the wrinkles out of the bed and put on his jacket. He took a quick look around the room and made sure he was leaving no trace of himself behind. He took one tiny sentimental souvenir of the woman to remember her by.

He put on his hat and went to the door and opened it and stepped out quietly into the hallway and walked up the hallway to the elevator. When the elevator arrived and the door opened, he was relieved to see he was its only passenger.

He took the elevator down to the lobby, crossed the lobby to the front door and went out the revolving door onto the street into the gloomy morning unnoticed. He found a cab and took it to the train station and paid the driver out of the bills he had folded in the pocket of his jacket.

He hadn’t decided yet where he was going, but he planned on taking the earliest available train out. First, though, he would have some breakfast. He bought a newspaper and went into the train station coffee shop.

He sat down in a booth toward the back and a pretty blonde waitress came and brought him a glass of ice water, smiling the whole time. He ordered enough food for two people and while he was waiting for it he lit a cigarette and looked the newspaper over without much interest.

Setting the newspaper aside, he remembered the train ticket he had taken from the woman’s luggage and took it out of his pocket. It was for a train that left at nine o’clock for a city he had never visited before. He would use the ticket and not bother with buying another one. He marveled at how everything had gone so well for him, as if it had all been planned in advance—all the pieces had come together in a most pleasing and beneficial way. He would keep traveling around from one place to another until the time came that he decided he had seen enough, experienced enough. When that time came, he would buy a small farm somewhere and live out the rest of his days.

He took the black feather out of his pocket from the woman’s hat and brushed it over his mouth and held it under his nose. It smelled the way the woman had smelled. Ever since he was a small boy, he had kept a little souvenir of the significant events of his life. He had a whole box of them. From time to time he would open the box and take out each item and relive fond memories of the person or event it represented. He would add the black feather to the collection and it would help him to recollect the woman and her face and the sound of her voice and the time he had spent with her. Of course he would remember her fondly. He remembered all of them fondly, being the sentimental man that he was.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

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

 

It's Not My Fault She Wasn't Dead

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

(This is a repost. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

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

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

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

 “You alone?”

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

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

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

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

“What did he do to her?”

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

“I’ll wear my Boris Karloff disguise.”

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

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

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

“Sounds like a cakewalk.”

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

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

“And make sure nobody sees you!”

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

“You the man Ludwig sent?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Turn off those headlights!”

“No need to be so jittery,” I said.

“Did anybody see you?”

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

“Nobody but the police,” he said.

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

“You sure she’s dead?” I asked.

“I strangled her.”

“Charming.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Any problems?” Mr. Ludwig asked.

“No,” I said.

“Nobody saw you turn in here?”

“Only a couple of owls.”

“Well, bring her on inside then.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“About a year, I guess.”

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

“All right. Just one.”

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

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

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

“You like working for me, don’t you?”

“Sure.”

“You like working at night.”

“I guess so.”

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

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

“There are infinite possibilities lurking in the dark.”

“If you say so.”

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

“Uh-huh.”

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

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

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

“I don’t want to know his name.”

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

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

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

“He said he strangled her.”

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

“He a friend of yours?” I asked.

“I’ve known him all of thirty years.”

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

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

“What is it now?” Mr. Ludwig asked.

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

“What is it?”

“It’s the girl in the bag.”

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

“Anything the matter?” I asked.

“She’s not dead,” Mr. Ludwig said.

“What?”

“I said she isn’t dead.”

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

“You’ll have to kill her.”

“What? I’ll have to kill her?”

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

“She hasn’t seen me.”

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

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

“Kurt’s no killer.”

“Neither am I.”

“I thought you were courageous.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sounds delightful.”

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

“Yeah, I’m a doer,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Find her!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She flew the coop!” I said.

“She what?”

“She ran out the back door.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s crazy, you know,” he said.

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

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

“Are you saying Mr. Ludwig is queer?”

He shrugged. “Call it whatever you want.”

“What do you get out of it?”

“He pays me plenty.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who’s there?” I said.

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

“I’m not going to shoot you!” I said.

“What is this place?” she asked.

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

“How did I get here?”

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

“Can you help me?”

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

“Take me to who?”

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

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

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

“Oh, yeah. Him.”

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

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

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

“Who’s Kurt?”

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

“Okay.”

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

“Any luck?” I asked.

“No. I didn’t see anything.”

“Me either.”

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

“Maybe his people will find her.”

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

“Did you find her?” he asked.

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

“Did you look everywhere?”

“As well as we could in the dark.”

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

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

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

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

“People like what?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Uh-huh,” she said.

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

“I got it.”

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

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

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Somebody Somewhere ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

Somebody Waits for Me image 3

Somebody Somewhere
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This is a repost. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

I was standing at the window. Inside it was still winter but outside it was spring. The sky was blue, trees and flowers were budding, the sun was shining and birds were singing. Miss Deloite, the woman with the delightful hanging mole on her upper lip, came up behind me. I heard her shoes squeaking on the floor and then smelled her particular sharp smell.

“You shouldn’t be wandering the halls,” she said.

I ignored her but as she walked away I turned and stuck out the tip of my tongue at her and she turned into a puff of blue smoke. You can’t know how satisfying it is to turn an annoying woman into a puff of blue smoke.

I went back to the room that I had come to identify as my own and lay on my back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling. I knew there was something wrong with me but I couldn’t remember what it was. I couldn’t even remember what place I was in. Oh, well. If it mattered at one time, it didn’t matter much any more.

I heard somebody coming and picked up a magazine and opened it and pretended to be reading. I wanted to look busy so nobody would ask me questions or try to engage me in conversation.

It was Theo, all dressed in white as usual. If I saw him in any other color, I wouldn’t recognize him.

“Where’s Miss Deloite?” he asked. “She said she was coming in here to help you with your bath.”

“I’m perfectly capable of taking a bath on my own without any female assistance,” I said, not looking up from the page.

I should probably have told him I just turned her into a puff of smoke but I would have to let him figure it out on his own. He should feel lucky that I didn’t do the same to him.

I crossed my ankles and wished I had a cigarette, and in came Louie from next door. He was wearing a lady’s red kimono with colorful dragons. I didn’t like Louie and I let him know it.

“What makes you think you can just barge into my room any time you feel like it, Louie? I’m supposed to be taking a bath.”

“I already took mine.”

“I’m so happy for you.”

“Do you have any candy?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t give it to you.”

“That’s not very nice.”

“Shouldn’t you be having your nails done or something?”

“I’m going to tell Miss Deloite you were snotty to me,” Louie said.

“You’ll be telling it to a puff of blue smoke.”

“What?”

Before Louie could annoy me any further, I raised my eyebrows and turned him into a little spider. I laughed as I watched him run on his touchingly small legs across the floor to the wall. He crawled up the wall to the ceiling and looked at me.

“You’re a medical phenomenon,” I said.

I was thinking about taking a nap, for lack of anything better to do, when Theo came back, bearing clean towels.

“Since Miss Deloite is temporarily not to be found,” he said, “I’m going to help you with your bath.”

“I already told you I don’t need help with a bath,” I said.

“Stand up now and take off your clothes, or I’ll do it for you.”

“I don’t want to take off my clothes for you any more than I do for Miss Deloite.”

“Do you want me to go get Stan and Sylvia?”

“Oh, please! Not Stan and Sylvia! I can’t tell them apart. Oh, I remember now. Sylvia’s the one with the mustache, isn’t she?”

“Cut the comedy now. Stand up.”

“Theo, I don’t like your tone of voice!” I said. “It’s not a polite way to speak to a man who isn’t well.”

He came at me with the intention of pulling me off the bed by my arm, but before he knew what was happening I raised my index finger at him and turned him into a blue jay.

Now, I had always thought the blue jay a most attractive bird, even though people said he was mean and liked to eat carrion.

Theo flapped his blue wings a couple of times and flew up to the ceiling and ate the tiny spider Louie in one gulp. Louie didn’t even have time to try to get away.

“Good bird!” I said.

He flew around the room a couple of times, bumping painfully into the walls until I stood up and opened the window for him. He didn’t have to be coaxed to fly out and then away over the treetops.

“Be well!” I called to him.

I lay down again. I did not want to take a bath and would be just as obstinate about it as I needed to be. I still believed the decision to take a bath should be mine alone. Crazy though I may be, I must have some rights left!

Before I had time to draw another breath, Nurse LaPeezy was upon me with my meds. I eyed the pills suspiciously.

“What if I don’t want to take that stuff?” I said.

“Doctor’s orders,” she said.

“So you’re saying I don’t have a choice?”

“I could call Stan and Sylvia if you like.”

“Oh, no! Not that!”

She handed me a cup of water and I pretended to take the pills. I put them in my mouth and swallowed but I held them under my tongue. When she bent over to pick something up off the floor, I spit them into my fist. The hand is quicker than the eye.

As Nurse LaPeezy was leaving I felt a strong dislike for her. I flicked the little finger on my right hand at her and she turned into a mouse. Realizing she was a mouse, she scurried across the floor the way mice do and disappeared into a conveniently placed mouse hole in the corner. I envied her because I knew she’d find her way to the kitchen where she’d have plenty to eat and find lots of other mice to keep her company. How sweet the life of a mouse must be! Much better than that of a nurse.

The next time somebody came in to help me take a bath, I was going to tell them I had already taken it while everybody was occupied elsewhere. I wanted them to know I had been taking a bath on my own since I was three years old and didn’t need help from anybody.

I was almost asleep when a slight change in the air currents around the bed made me open my eyes. Dr. Felix had come in silently and was standing at the foot of the bed looking at me.

“Sorry to wake you,” he said.

Dr. Felix wore glasses and looked like the movie actor Franchot Tone. His hands were folded in front of him. I looked at his hairy wrists and his expensive wrist watch so I wouldn’t have to look at his face.

“If you don’t mind, doctor,” I said. “I don’t really feel like talking to you today.”

“Anything wrong in particular?” he asked.

“No. It’s just that I’m here and I don’t know where here is.”

“Here is where you need to be at the moment.”

“I must have a home somewhere, even if I can’t remember it. I want to go home.”

“Everybody feels that way sometimes.”

“That’s comforting.”

“I’m going to increase your antidepressant medication again.”

“You doctors think drugs are the answer to everything, don’t you?”

“You’re spending far too much time alone. That’s not good. I’m going to assign you to some group activities.”

I groaned and closed my eyes. “Don’t trouble yourself,” I said. “I won’t be here that long.”

“Are you planning on going someplace?”

“Well, you never know,” I said.

He chuckled in his knowing way and turned to go. As he started to put his hand on the door to open it, I blew out a little puff of air in his direction and turned him into a cockroach. He ran under the door and out into the hallway. One of the nurses would see him and scream and step on him and then take a Kleenex out of the pocket of her uniform and pick him up and throw him in the trash can. How fitting is that for Dr. Felix?

Before anybody else had a chance to come in and annoy me further, I dressed in some clothes I had been hiding in the bottom of the closet. It was a uniform the maintenance men wore that I had stolen one day when I was exploring in the basement. In the uniform and with the brown cap pulled low over my eyes, nobody would recognize me. Also hidden away in the closet I had some ninety dollars and a pack of cigarettes, which I stuffed into the pants of the uniform.

I took a good look at myself in the mirror over the sink. I looked as much like a maintenance man as the real one did. Cautiously I went out into the hallway. Everything was quiet and nothing out of the ordinary. I made my way down the stairs to the main entrance.

The receptionist at the front desk looked up from the magazine she was reading and then looked away. I knew she didn’t know who I was. If she had known, she would have been screaming for help.

I walked out the door into the bright cool air and down the steps, wanting to run but not running because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. I followed the concrete walk to the driveway and along the edge of the driveway a quarter-mile or so to the main gate. I saw nobody and nobody saw me.

I turned right at the gate out of the place, which seemed to me a better choice than going left, and began walking briskly. I walked for many blocks and saw nothing that looked familiar. I might have been in a foreign country or on another planet, for all I knew. Still, it felt good to be free and on my own.

Checking my pocket to make sure the ninety dollars was still there, I remembered the cigarettes and how long it had been since I had one. I lit one up and as I walked I puffed out a cloud of smoke behind me.

I stopped at a bar that looked inviting and had a beer and a hamburger and after that I kept walking deep into the city. It was a big city but I didn’t know what the name of it was and I didn’t know if I had ever been there before. I saw many people but they seemed to not see me, which altogether suited me.

After what seemed like hours of walking, I felt tired but pleasantly so, and I felt good about the distance I had put between myself and the place I had left behind. When I came to a faded old hotel with a sign that said Clean Rooms and Cheap, I decided that getting a room was the most logical thing I could do.

The desk clerk signed me in without asking for identification or money in advance. He gave me a key to a room on the tenth floor and I went up in a smelly elevator that must have been a hundred years old.

The room was clean, as advertised, and pleasant. There were two windows, a bed, desk, dresser with a large mirror, chair, closet and tiny bathroom. I liked the feeling of being up high. I opened the window a couple of inches to feel the air and to hear the traffic noises from the street, which at that distance I found soothing. After checking the door to make sure it was locked, I lay down on the bed and fell into a deep and restful sleep.

I spent two days and nights in the room, sleeping a lot during the day and walking around the city at night. Nobody ever approached me or bothered me or seemed to find my behavior in any way out of the ordinary. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so free and unencumbered.

More than anything I wanted to go home, but I didn’t know how that was ever going to be possible. I knew very little about myself, except for insignificant details like enjoying smoking and preferring tea instead of coffee. I could remember nothing of my past life. Where had I come from? Where was I going?

Did I come from a small town or a city like this one? Did I grow up in an apartment in the city or in a house in the wide-open spaces with a big yard and a view of the mountains? Wasn’t it likely that somebody was waiting for me somewhere, wondering if I was alive or dead or if I would ever come home again? A mother? A wife? A lover? A son or daughter? Whoever he or she was, I could feel them and I knew they could feel me.

When the people from the hospital I had just left realized I was gone, I knew they would come looking for me. I had done some very bad things, including turning my doctor into a bug and a nurse into a mouse, which I have already told you about. They would lock me up now and I would never go free again.

On my third day in my little hotel room high up, I had the window open as high as it would go to let in the warm breezes. At any one time, there were as many as five pigeons on the ledge outside the window. They cooed and danced and seemed happy. When I got close to them, they weren’t at all afraid of me. If I had had something to feed them, they would have eaten right out of my hand.

I sat on the bed, looking at myself in the round mirror on the dresser. Wait a minute, I thought. I don’t have to go back to that place or any other place like it. I can do to myself what I did to the others.

I pointed at my reflection in the mirror and turned myself into a pigeon. I flapped my wings on the bed to try them out. From the bed I jumped to the floor and then to the window ledge. There were three pigeons already there to greet me. They knew I was somebody they had never seen before, so they were curious about where I had come from. After introductions were made, they were all eager to show me around the city. They were extraordinarily accepting of me, even though I was a stranger. How happy I was to be welcomed by them. How fortunate to have made such delightful friends so fast.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

For Sentimental Reasons ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

For Sentimental Reasons
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

(This is a repost. It has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Hearing Russell’s footsteps on the stairs, Vee set a glass of orange juice on the table and cracked two eggs into the skillet. When he came into the sunny kitchen, she smiled and wished him a good morning and asked him if he’d like bacon with his eggs. Not waiting for an answer, she took four slices out of the refrigerator and laid them carefully in the skillet beside the eggs.

He helped himself to some coffee and sat down at the table. He looked across the table at Vee’s husband, Milt, but Milt didn’t look back. He was absorbed in the morning newspaper. He loved reading about crime in the city. It seemed to somehow make him happy.

“You’re such a sharp dresser!” Vee said to Russell from her place at the stove, pointing to his natty black pants and red-plaid shirt. “A lot of college students go around looking like bums all the time.”

Russell smiled modestly and downed his orange juice.

“Did you say something?” Milt asked, looking around the edge of the newspaper.

“I was just saying to Russell here how he always looks so dapper, even early in the morning.”

“Oh, Russell!” Milt said, putting down the paper. “I almost forgot about Russell!  He is a quiet boy!”

“He’s hardly a boy!” Vee said, setting Russell’s plate down in front of him. “He’s a fully grown man! Just look at those arms!”

“I work out when I have the time,” Russell said.

“Whatever makes you happy,” Milt said. “Say, I was just reading in the paper where a family of six was murdered in their own beds. No sign of forced entry. Police don’t have a clue who did it. Can you beat it? What is the world coming to? And over on Polk Avenue, in those old apartment buildings near the post office, a woman stabbed her common-law husband in the neck and went off to work and left him on the floor to bleed to death.”

“Can’t we talk about something more cheerful?” Vee asked. “It’s a beautiful morning!”

“I heard yesterday about an old woman who lived alone. Somebody broke into her house and after they stole her money and jewels, they killed her. Slit her throat. She had two big dogs. They didn’t have any food for a long time so they ate her body, right down to the bones! Did you ever hear of anything so awful?”

“Russell doesn’t want to hear that gruesome talk!” Vee said. “He’s young and full of life!”

“It’s all right,” Russell said. “I don’t want you to do anything different on my account.”

“How do you like your room?” Milt asked.

“I like it fine, sir.”

“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’. This isn’t the army.”

“No, sir. I know it’s not the army.”

“How old are you?”

“Twenty-four in October, sir.”

“It’s probably hard for you to believe right now,” Milt said, “but I was twenty-four not so long ago.”

“Russell’s a graduate student,” Vee said. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

“A what?”

“He’s earned his undergraduate degree. Now he’s in graduate school.”

“Oh, right! I guess you can’t have too many degrees.”

“I should be able to get my master’s degree in two more semesters,” Russell said.

“So you’ll only need the room for two semesters,” Vee said.

“As far as I know.”

“Oh, I hope you’ll stay longer than that! You’re the best boarder we’ve ever had!”

“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble renting the room to somebody else,” Russell said. “It’s a comfortable room, conveniently located, and you are an exceptional cook.”

Vee smiled with pleasure and set down her cup. “It’s sweet of you to say so,” she said. “Most people don’t usually have anything good to say.”

“We don’t want any beatnik types with their bongo drums,” Milt said.

Vee laughed. “You’re behind the times, dear!”  she said. “There aren’t any beatniks anymore!”

“You know what I mean!” Milt said. “We only want the decent-living, clean-cut types. The ones who don’t make a sound at night because they’ve got their noses buried in books all the time.”

“I think he’s saying he approves of you, Russell!” Vee said.

“We don’t need to overdo it,” Milt said.

Russell finished his breakfast and stood up. He offered to carry his plate to the sink, but Vee told him she’d take care of it.

“I won’t be here for dinner,” he said, as he left. “I’m going to be working late at the library.”

“It’s all right, darling!” Vee called. “Have a wonderful day!”

“Darling?” Milt said.

Milt left to go to work. The day was long and dull for Vee. She washed the breakfast dishes and when she was finished she lay down on her unmade bed and read an article in a magazine about a woman who was spontaneously turning into a man, and when she was finished reading she dozed for a while until a big truck passing on the street in front of the house woke her up.

She carried her broom and dustpan up the stairs and let herself into Russell’s room with her spare key. It was her duty as landlady to tidy up, empty the trash, sweep the floor, put clean towels in the bathroom and clean sheets on the bed.

Not only was Russell neat in his dress, but also in the way he lived. The covers on his bed were pulled up over the pillows. There were stacks of books and papers on the desk, but, other than that, no clutter anywhere; no dirt and no piles of dirty clothes. In the bathroom, the towels hung neatly; there were no splashes on the mirror; the bathtub gleamed, as if it had just been scrubbed.

Before going back downstairs, she lingered for a while over Russell’s belongings. She ran her fingertips over his alarm clock and his jade elephant that she admired every time she was in his room. She picked up a couple of the books and opened them, read a few words, and set them back down exactly where they had been. She opened the closet door and marveled at the perfect order: coats, jackets, shirts, pants. On the floor were four pairs of shoes aligned with precision. On the inside of the closet door was a rack of belts and ties, the ties arranged according to color.

One thing she expected to see in Russell’s room but didn’t: a picture of a lovely young woman. Of course such a handsome, intelligent, smartly turned-out young man would have a girlfriend, a real homecoming queen type, who would be waiting for him to come home and marry her when the time was right. Beauty is always rewarded with beauty, isn’t it? Isn’t that the way the world works?

In the afternoon she took a long bubble bath and washed her hair and set it. When she was finished, she dressed in fresh clothes. There was no reason for her to look slouchy all the time. She wasn’t an old woman, not yet, and she didn’t want to get old before her time. Of course, it didn’t help being married to an old stick like Milt, but she wasn’t going to let him drag her down even more than he already had.

At dinnertime she set three places at the table, even though she knew Russell wouldn’t be there. Milt didn’t notice the extra plate or that she had fixed herself up and looked better than usual. He came into the kitchen and sat down at the table at six-thirty, the time they always ate. She served up the food and they sat in silence; she stared absently out the window into the back yard or at the empty plate and unused silverware across from her. Milt didn’t talk about his day; they were all the same and had been for twenty-five years or more.

When dinner was over she washed the dishes and Milt, bone-tired as usual, retired to his spot on the couch in front of the TV. He would watch one mindless show after the other, all evening long, until it was time for the ten o’clock news and then he’d turn off the TV and get into bed, literally asleep before his head hit the pillow.

Vee went to her room at eleven o’clock and closed the door. She lay for a long time without sleeping, listening to the sounds outside: the wind in the trees, distant traffic on the highway, the faraway barking of a lonely dog.

At one o’clock, she had been dozing lightly but awoke when she heard the floor creak upstairs over her head. It meant Russell was home. She imagined him taking off his clothes and getting into bed. He’d be tired out from his long day, a day well-spent, and would go to sleep quickly.

An hour later she was still awake. She got out of bed and, without turning on a light, put on her bathrobe and stepped into her slippers. She crept slowly out of her room, careful not to make a sound, feeling her way along the wall, and up the stairs to the door of Russell’s room.

The door wasn’t locked. She turned the knob and stepped into the room. There was just enough light coming in at the window that she could see him sleeping in the bed, lying on his back. The blanket was pulled up to his waist. He wore an undershirt.

She stood for a minute beside the bed, watching him sleep. He had his right arm over his head with his left arm resting at his side. She was reaching out her hand to touch him when he opened his eyes.

He reached over and turned on the lamp beside the bed and looked at her with alarm. “What’s the matter?” he asked. “Is anything wrong?”

“No, nothing’s wrong. I…”

“There’s not a fire, is there?”

“No, there’s no fire.”

“Why are you coming into my room late at night without knocking?”

“Please don’t be mad at me! I missed you at dinner and I just wanted to make sure you made it in all right.”

“Of course I made it all right!” he said. “Why wouldn’t I? You don’t have to watch out for me.”

“I know. I wouldn’t blame you for being terribly angry, but…I just couldn’t seem to help myself.”

“Why not?”

“You’re special to me.”

“What are you talking about? You woke me up to tell me that?”

“I can’t stop thinking about you. I like looking into your beautiful dark eyes and talking to you and being in the same room with you.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I just like being near you.”

“Oh, I think I get it now! I’m not going to have sexual intercourse with you. Now or at any other time.”

“No, it’s not that!” she said. “That’s not what I want!”

“What do you want?”

 “I want you to turn off the light. I want you to close your eyes and pretend I’m somebody else. I want to touch your face and your hair. I want to feel your arms and your chest, your legs and your feet. I want to feel you all over.”

“That’s a very odd request. Do you always do that with your boarders?”

“Oh, no! This is the first time!”

“Does Milt know about it?”

“Milt doesn’t know a thing.”

He threw back the blanket that covered his lower body and stood up from the bed. He pulled his undershirt off over his head and stepped out his pajama bottoms and turned off the light.

“All right,” he said in a whisper, lying back on the bed as though waiting for a medical examination. “Please make it quick, though. I’m cold and I feel kind of funny about this.”

“I promise you, nobody will ever know,” Vee said.

In the morning Vee was in the kitchen cooking breakfast when Milt came in, yawning, and took his place at the table.

“Did you hear anything unusual last night?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

“I heard a dog barking but it didn’t keep me awake,” she said.

“With all the crime in the city, you have to be constantly aware of what’s going on in the neighborhood. You can’t be too careful these days.”

She handed him the morning paper to get him to stop talking it and he opened it and began reading a story on the front page about a triple homicide.

“One of the people killed was a niece of the mayor’s wife! Can you beat it?”

“Eat your eggs while they’re hot,” she said.

He was halfway finished with breakfast when he noticed someone was missing from the breakfast table.

“Hey, where’s what’s-his-name?”

“Who?”

“Our little boarder.”

“Do you mean Russell?”

“Yeah, Russell. Where is he?”

“He’s gone.”

“He had an early class or something?”

“No, he left. He moved out.”

“Moved out? What are you talking about? He just said yesterday he liked it here and wanted to stay. Did something happen?”

“No. I don’t know.”

“Did he skip out on the rent?”

“He was paid up until the first of the month.”

“What is wrong with these people? He’s the third boarder we’ve lost in less than a year! They’re here and everything is fine, and then the next day they’re just gone without so much as a wave goodbye! It must have something to do with all this crime!”

“I’ll place the ad in the paper again,” she said, “but I don’t think we’ll get anybody as sweet as Russell ever again. Not in a million years.”

She turned her head away and went out of the room so Milt wouldn’t see her tears. She stayed in her bedroom until he left for work and then she went into the kitchen and began gathering up the dirty dishes to wash them. She hoped that Russell might come by later in the morning so they could have a private talk, just the two of them, without Milt, and she could apologize for what happened and set things right. Oh, how she hoped!

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Until We Meet Again ~ A Short Story

Until We Meet Again
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(Published in The Corvus Review.)

During the years that Hulga Van Sipes took care of Isadore, her invalid husband, he wasn’t able to speak or barely to blink his eyes. She did everything for him: got him up in the morning and put him to bed at night, bathed him, dressed and undressed him, lifted him in and out of his wheelchair (he had always been a small man), cooked his food and fed it to him (all he had to do was swallow), and talked to him as if he might answer. She read to him, sang to him in her wheezing soprano, and sometimes she put a little rouge and lipstick on him to make him seem more alive.

When Isadore finally died in his sleep, Hulga had his body cremated without fanfare. She put his ashes in a large-sized Hellman’s mayonnaise jar and kept the jar on a shelf of the curio cabinet next to the TV where she could always see it.

Hulga thought she could go on with her life (what was left of it), but she found it was just too bleak and lonely—empty, so empty—without Isadore. She had been married to him for fifty-two years and most of them were good, fine years. She wasn’t able to erase all those years and go on her merry way as if nothing had happened.

At a store called Under the Sun on Skid Row Boulevard that sold just about anything, she bought a full-sized male mannequin (also known as a doll) with fully articulated arms and legs. She took the mannequin home with her in a taxi.

Of course the mannequin looked nothing at all like Isadore. Everything about him was shiny. He had shiny black hair (complete with pompadour) painted on his head, shiny black eyes (sparkling, like the glass eyes of a stuffed mountain lion), and a shiny skin with red spots on both cheeks. His shiny lips were slightly parted, showing tiny, perfect teeth which, of course, were shiny.

At first Hulga was put off by the difference between the mannequin and Isadore, but after a few days she came to accept the difference and appreciate it. The mannequin was a young man and at times she was able to think of herself as a young woman worthy of him (even if the mirror told her otherwise). And, even though he was inanimate, he was for the most part no more inanimate than Isadore had been.

Hulga Van Sipes was happy again or, if not happy, she felt useful and not quite so lonely. At mealtimes, she propped the mannequin up at the table and put little dabs of food on his plate which, of course, she ended up eating herself or putting down the garbage disposal. She was delighted that her grocery bills were smaller because the mannequin really didn’t eat all that much.

As she chewed her food, with the radio playing lively dance music in the background, she looked over at the mannequin and smiled and he always smiled back. He was never grumpy or out of sorts. He never dribbled food out of his mouth down his front. He was the perfect dining-table companion. How fortunate she was to have found him!

She left him in his place at the table while she washed the dishes, and when she was finished she wheeled him into the living room and lifted him onto the couch, propped his feet up and covered his legs with an afghan. (He had always been susceptible to chill, especially in the lower extremities.)

They both liked the same programs on TV. If she laughed while watching, she looked at him to see if he was also laughing. If she cried, he also cried, and if she became bored with a program and wanted to change the channels, he was always compliant.

After the weather report, she switched off the TV, took the mannequin into the bedroom and got him into his pajamas and into bed. She pulled the covers up under his chin, kissed him on the forehead and turned off the light. She always left his door open a little bit so she would hear him if he stirred.

After several months of unchanging days, the line between Isadore and the mannequin became blurred for Hulga and then disappeared altogether. The mannequin became no longer a substitute for Isadore but Isadore himself. Hulga forgot that Isadore had died (she put his ashes in the basement where she wouldn’t have to look at them). He had been with her all the time. It was a leap that she made in her mind as easily as breathing.

In October the days were warm and the sky as blue as it had been all year. Hulga wanted Isadore to have some time outdoors before winter set in again. She dressed him warmly and took him for a stroll in the park where he might observe the beauty of nature. The little outing went so well, and they both enjoyed being out of the house so much, that she took him again the next day and then the day after that.

On the third day of Hulga pushing Isadore through the park, a woman came and stood in front of the wheelchair and Hulga was forced to stop. She thought the woman was going to ask her for change because she was that kind of woman, a bum or a homeless person.

“What’s the matter with you?” the woman asked.

“What?” Hulga asked.

“What are you, deaf? I said: What. Is. Wrong. With. You?”

“Why, nothing’s wrong with me,” Hulga said, thinking she was being indulged in a joke of some kind.

“Are you an escapee?”

“Am I a what?”

“You are such an asshole!” the woman said. She was very short and fat, wore a filthy knit cap on her head and a man’s wool overcoat, even though the day was warm. She brandished a lighted cigarette like a knife.

“What was that you called me?” Hulga said.

“Every day for the last three days I’ve seen you pushing that dummy around in that chair.”

“Dummy?” Hulga asked.

“Yeah! Him!” the woman said, pointing at Isadore.

Looking down at Isadore to see if the woman was upsetting him, Hulga said, “He’s my husband.”

“Your husband!” the woman said with a hoot of laughter. “One of us is nuts and I don’t think it’s me!”

“If you’ll just let me pass, miss.”

“It’s time you woke up and smelled the roses, dearie!” the woman said. “That dummy ain’t nobody’s husband!”

A small group of people, sensing that something interesting was happening, had gathered around to listen.

“We’ve been married for fifty-two years,” Hulga said. “Not that I think it’s any of your business.”

“Well, I hope you’re married for another fifty-two and I hope he don’t give you a bit of trouble, neither.”

“That’s silly,” Hulga said.

The people who had gathered around laughed and the woman with the cigarette bowed like a courtier and went away as quickly as she had appeared.

Hulga felt the people looking at her, laughing at her the way they would laugh at a freak. She wanted to get herself and Isadore away as quickly as she could, back to the safety and security of their own home. How ugly the world was! How cruel people could be!

Feeling shaken, she stopped the chair and sat down on a bench to rest before going home. The air had suddenly grown colder and the sun, shining so brightly just a little while ago, had receded behind gray clouds.

“It was a mistake to bring Isadore out into the world,” she said. “He doesn’t need this any more than I do.”

She pushed her fingers lightly into Isadore’s upper arm and he tilted crazily against the arm of the wheelchair in such a way that only a crazy person would think he was a real man.

“You aren’t real, are you?” she said. “I’ve only been fooling myself all along.”

She began to be afraid somebody might report her and they—the bureau of crazy people, maybe—would come and take her out of her home and make her stay in a mental home against her will. They might even shoot volts of electricity into her head, as she had witnessed on TV. The thought made her feel frightened and helpless.

She dumped the mannequin (not really her Isadore, after all) out of the wheelchair under a tree and hurried away before she changed her mind.

On her way out of the park, an old man shuffled toward her.

“Can you spare a dollar?” he asked.

She looked at him and smiled. “Isadore?” she said.

“Name’s Boo-Boo,” he said. “At least that’s what my friends call me.”

“Would you like to come home with me?”

She touched the sleeve of the jacket, slick with dirt. He pulled back as if uncertain what she was might do.

“Gunsmoke is on tonight,” she said. “It’s your favorite show.”

“What time is it?” he asked.

“It starts at eight o’clock,” she said.

“You really want me to come home with you?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the catch?”

“No catch.”

“Could you fix me some bacon and eggs?”

“Sure.”

“Got any beer?”

“You never drank before.”

“Could I have a bath and some clean socks?”

“Anything you want.”

She pointed to the wheelchair. He sat in it and twisted his head around and smiled up at her.

“This is all right!” he said. “Very kind of you, I’m sure. It’s only fair to warn you, though: I ain’t much of a lover.”

She patted him reassuringly on the shoulder and began pushing toward home. She thought how light he was, how easy to push, and how much she had missed him the whole time he had been away.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Until I Die ~ A Short Story

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Until I Die
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

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

Henry Hudson was waiting at a stoplight in town the first time he saw her. She passed within two feet of his car. She was with three other young people, obviously high school students. She had hair the color of burnished copper; she was wearing green. He was sure her eyes would be green, too.

The next time he saw her was at the public library. He was sitting on a bench reading a newspaper when she came in alone and sat down at a table and opened a book. She was dressed casually but in excellent taste. No blue jeans with tears in the knees or sneakers. Everything about her was perfect. From her hair to her skin to her fingernails, from her shoes to her purse, she generated good taste. She exuded perfection.

He saw her three more times in the next two weeks. The first time she was coming out of the drugstore with a woman obviously her mother. The next time he was driving by on Main Street when he saw her walking on the sidewalk, alone, in front of city hall. The third time she was with somebody else in a red car.

Then he saw her picture in the newspaper. Her name was Colleen Cork, and she was eighteen. She was the daughter of Dr. Sidney Cork, neurosurgeon. She was named Outstanding Young Citizen of the Month by the mayor’s office for her charitable work, for her high scholastic standing and for her talent as a singer and musician. When she graduated from high school next year, she planned to go to New York and become a professional musician. The world would open up at her feet.

So now she had a name. He looked up her address in the phone book and found it easily enough. With the help of a map, he found the street where she lived and then the house. It was a large, scenic, three-story brick house on a verdant lot with towering trees in the front yard. The house, the whole setting, was perfect, as he knew it would be.

He parked across the street and watched the house, imagining the perfect life she must live with her perfect family. She would have a brother or two, manly and, like her, good-looking; a handsome, heroic, distinguished father with graying temples who saved lives; an attractive, slim-hipped mother who hosted charity luncheons and boasted an ancestral lineage dating all the way back to the Pilgrims. An all-American family devoid of strife, ugliness and dysfunction.

As for his own family, they lived above the funeral home that his grandfather and then his father owned and operated. His mother had nervous breakdowns the way other people have colds. She committed suicide when he was sixteen by drinking a corrosive poison. Her death two days later in the hospital was a psychological blow from which he would never fully recover. He would carry her sadness around with him always, like a weight around the neck.

After high school, he studied embalming for a few semesters. He was all ready to take up the family business when he came to the astounding conclusion that he didn’t have the stomach for that kind of life, dealing with grieving family members and handling cadavers all the time. It wasn’t the kind of life he wanted. He told himself he was choosing life over death, but the truth was he was choosing to do nothing.

After he left school, he began drinking heavily and at twenty-five he was a full-fledged alcoholic. Doctors told him his liver was aging five times faster than normal. When he came to the realization he would die if he didn’t stop drinking, he spent several years in and out of different hospitals taking different “cures.” In time, only his willpower and determination made him stop drinking.

His father died and left him the family fortune, which was not millions but a little in excess of two hundred thousand. It wasn’t enough to live the life of an international playboy and jetsetter, but it gave him a reasonable income that he could draw on for  years to come (if he didn’t live to be too old) without having to scratch for a living in the workaday world.

He lived, by himself, in the funeral home establishment outside of town. It was no longer a funeral home but his home, the only home he had ever known. It had fifteen rooms but he only ever used five. He never went down to the basement where the embalming rooms were and all the tools and equipment, including some caskets that had never been used.

He had always been a solitary person. He had never known romantic love or even real friendship. He always believed that one day he would meet his ideal. She, like his mother, would have hair the color of burnished copper and green eyes. She would be a little taller than average and have natural grace and dignity. She would speak quietly but forcefully and she would always be on the side of right. Just being in her presence would make him a better person, would rectify all his errors and false steps and make everything right in the world.

The more he saw Colleen Cork, the more he was convinced she was the one he had been fated to meet out of all the others. All he had to do now was to have her make the miraculous discovery on her own.

He began driving around the high school at times he believed he would be most likely to see her, when school was taking up in the morning and letting out in the afternoon. More often than not, he would catch a glimpse of her, always surrounded by admirers and hangers-on. He would drive on then, satisfied, until the next time.

Once when he was driving by on Fourth Street near the school, he saw her go into the bookstore. He parked the car at a meter and got out and went into the store behind her. While she was looking around in the store, he followed along, hanging back just enough so that if she turned around she wouldn’t see him. When he saw that she was standing in the cashier’s line to pay, he picked up a book to buy without even looking at the title. He stood behind her in line, as close to her as he could get without jostling her. She never once turned and looked at him or knew he was there.

Any time he saw information about her in the newspapers, he cut it out and added it to a scrapbook. She was captain of the debating team, president of the music guild, on the board of the library and children’s hospital. She was chosen to participate in a statewide music competition in the state capitol. She appeared in the high school production of a play called Street Scene and might be interested in pursuing an acting career when she finished her education, in addition to her music. Everybody who saw her performance in the play said she was a “natural.”

He had taken to driving by her house almost every night at ten o’clock. Sometimes the house would be dark and at other times there would be lights in all the windows. He imagined which upstairs room would be hers. He could picture her sitting up in bed reading a book or washing her face in the bathroom before going to bed.

One night, when driving past didn’t seem satisfying enough, he stopped on the other side of the street and parked. He had been sitting in his car for about ten minutes when a police car pulled up alongside and stopped. He smiled because he knew he hadn’t done anything wrong.

He rolled down his window and looked up into the face of a middle-aged police officer. “Good evening,” he said pleasantly.

“Would you step out of your vehicle please?” the officer said.

“Why?”

“Just do as I say and there won’t be any trouble.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“I need to see your operator’s license.”

“My what?”

“Your driver’s license.”

He took it out of his wallet and handed it to the officer, who looked at it for a long time underneath the flashlight.

“You don’t live here,” the officer said. “This is not your address.”

“That’s right.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I wasn’t doing anything, really. Just waiting for a friend.”

“What friend?”

“I don’t know where he went. That’s why I’m waiting for him.”

“You need to go on home, now. It’s late. When people see you waiting around out here in the dark for no reason, they think you’re a prowler and they become alarmed.”

“I’m not a prowler.”

“Well, go on home, then. This is not your neighborhood.”

“Yes, sir.”

He was going to have to be more discreet. He didn’t care what people thought of him, but he didn’t want Colleen Cork to hear about him and get the idea that he meant to do her harm or that she needed to be afraid of him. He had only the kindest and most generous intentions toward her.

He was trying to think of a way that he might approach her without alarming her or making her suspicious. If he only had some pretext to talk to her, it might break down the barrier between them, but what could the pretext be? He was mulling these questions over in his mind when he heard the news.

He saw it in the morning newspaper: Country Club Trio Killed in Saturday Night Car Crash.

Colleen Cork was a member of a string trio performing at a function at the country club on Saturday night. About eleven o’clock, after the function ended, the car in which the trio were riding was struck head-on by a drunk driver going eighty-five miles an hour about five miles outside of town. Two of the young musicians were pronounced dead at the scene. The third died at the hospital before morning. The drunk driver was not injured. Charges were expected to be filed.

The world turns on such events. Everything changes in the blink of an eye.

On seeing the news, he lost consciousness. When he awoke again, he began drinking whiskey and taking pills. He intended to kill himself, but twenty-four hours later he was still alive. God had kept him alive, when a lesser man would have succumbed.

After he sobered up and thought clearly again, he knew what he was going to do.

Colleen Cork lay in state at the Vernon Vale and Sons Mortuary Chapel on Mission Street. On Tuesday morning the body would be removed to the Central Avenue Methodist Church for an eleven o’clock service. Private interment would follow at the Cemetery of the Holy Ghost.

On Tuesday morning at two o’clock, he got out of bed after several hours of sleep and dressed entirely in black. He drove his car to the Vernon Vale and Sons Mortuary Chapel on Mission Street. Using a crowbar, he easily broke the lock on a side door and made his way in the dark, with the aid of a small flashlight, to the viewing chapel where Colleen Cork’s body lay.

She lay in a white casket, dressed in a white gown, with a wreath of rosebuds in her hair. He wept with gratitude when he saw her beauty was in no way diminished by the violent way in which she died. Quickly, before any alarms were raised, he scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the building, stumbling with her in the dark as he ran back to his car. He opened the door and slid her easily enough onto the back seat and covered her with a blanket. The whole thing had taken less than ten minutes.

In the lower basement of the funeral home was a vault-like room where his grandfather and his father used to prepare bodies for burial. He unlocked the door with the only key in existence, turned on the lights, carried the body of Colleen Cork inside and placed it in a massive, antique, cast-iron coffin from his grandfather’s day. Nothing less would do.

He learned from the newspaper that the purloined body of the beautiful Colleen Cork caused quite a stir in the town. Nothing like it had ever happened before. What kind of a depraved person would steal a body from a funeral home hours before the funeral? Police were investigating but so far had no leads. Everyone was wondering how the family would proceed with the funeral with the body missing.

They would be coming for him, he knew. The policeman he encountered on Colleen Cork’s street would remember him, would remember what he looked like and remember his car. It wouldn’t take long for them to figure out what he had done.

Every time he heard a car outside, he imagined it would be them. They had come for him with a warrant to search the house. They would find Colleen, take her away, put her in the ground, send him to jail for the rest of his life. It was the ending he abhorred.

On the third day, early in the morning, he began taking barbiturate sleeping pills, two or three at a time, swallowing them with swigs from a bottle of rye whiskey. Over a period of two or three hours, he took the entire bottle of a hundred pills, drank the whole bottle of whiskey.

Feeling himself to be floating, he descended the steps to the lower basement where the still-beautiful Colleen Cork waited for him. When he opened the door to the vault where she lay and beheld her, he wept once again at the richness of the beauty that now belonged only to him.

He lay down beside her in the coffin to her left, inclining his head toward hers, smelling the chemicals that had gone into her body. He didn’t have long to wait now, he knew. He was fading. Floating. Ebbing. He embraced easeful death lying beside the only person in the world he had ever loved and he was happy. It was the thing he had waited for his whole life.

Copyright © 2026 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Third Day of Winter ~ A Short Story

 

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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 © 2025 by Allen Kopp

 

by allen0997

My Christmas Eve That Year ~ A Short Story

I Want to Spend Christmas with You
My Christmas Eve That Year
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

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

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

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

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

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

“I haven’t been bad!” he screeched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shut up!” I said.

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

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

“Why do we have to wait so long?”

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

“I want to open one now!”

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

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

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

 “Drunk as a skunk!” Georgie screamed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But I’m meeting someone.”

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

“Is he going to be here?”

“He has a name, you know.”

“Is Regis going to be here?”

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

“I don’t feel like going to church.”  

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

“Church gives me a headache.”

“You’re insane.”

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

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

“Why would you want to marry Regis?”

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

“He sells washing machines in an appliance store.”

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

“What about daddy?”

“What about him?”

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

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

“What does that mean?”

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

“All ties are severed!” Georgie shrieked.

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

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

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

“Why don’t you like Regis?”

“He belongs to a bowling league.”

“A lot of men belong to bowling leagues.”

“He’s old!”

“He’s forty-three.”

“He wears cologne that smells like bug spray.”

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

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

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

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

“Your daddy is not coming back. Ever.”

“You might be surprised.”

“It’s time for you to face reality.”

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

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

“You’re hallucinating again,” I said.

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

“I can certainly see why,” I said.

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

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

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

“I don’t like eggnog,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the rush?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hello,” a little groggily.

“Daddy?” I said. “Is that you?”

“Who is this? Is this Evan?

“Yeah, it’s me. Evan.”

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

“Can you hear me better now?”

“Yeah, I hear you fine now.”

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

“Merry Christmas to you, Evan!”

“Do you know where we’re living now?”

“No.”

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

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

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

“Where are you now?”

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

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

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

“How is your mother?”

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

“She’s not sick, is she?”

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

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

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

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

“I want you to come and get me.”

“What?”

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

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

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

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

“I’ll call her from your place.”

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

“Is it that bad?” he asked.  

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

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

“How long? How long will it take?”

“Give me a half-hour or so.”

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

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

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

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

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The House He Lived In ~ A Short Story

The House He Lived In image 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“In horse-and-buggy days?”

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

“I was looking for Miss Faulk.”

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

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

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

“How do you know?”

“You’ll never be sick again.”

“How do you know?”

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

“Why not?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay.”

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

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

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

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

   

by allen0997

Queen of the Monkey Women ~ A Short Story

Queen of the Monkey Women
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(Published in Ear Hustler Magazine.)

I’ve lived in the same small, dreary town my entire life. You’ll hear me use the word “dreary” a lot in describing my life. I graduated from high school three years ago. After high school I tried taking some college classes, but I hated them and stopped going. I work in an insurance office, where all day long I sit at a desk, hold a pencil in my hand with a frown of concentration on my face, and try to give the impression that I’m working. Trying to appear that you’re working is probably harder than actually working, but you get better at it with practice.

I live with my parents. My mother is depressed and takes a lot of pills. My father is gone most of the time, and when he’s at home he’s usually sleeping or hiding out in the basement or back yard to avoid my mother. He’s probably cheating on her and, if it was anybody other than my father, I would probably say he has every right.

Since it’s Saturday night I want to go downtown and see a movie. I call my friend Vernon Pinkston, who I’ve known since second grade. When I hear his voice, I remember that the last time I saw him we hadn’t parted on the best of terms. We had an argument about—what?—I don’t remember.

“Who is this?” Vernon asks.

“Sabu, the Elephant Boy,” I say. I think he’ll laugh but he doesn’t.

“I don’t know anybody by that name,” he says.

I know he knows who I am but is just playing with me. “It’s Warren Peace,” I say.

“What do you want, Warren?” he asks. “I’m busy.”

“Queen of the Monkey Women is playing at the Regency tonight. Do you want to go? It’ll be fun.”

“No,” he says.

“Why not?”

“I told you. I’m busy.”

“Busy doing what?”

“I’m having some friends over.”

“What friends?” I ask, trying to sound like I don’t care.

“You don’t know them. They’re from work.”

Since Vernon works in the produce section of a food market, I can only imagine what his evening with his “friends” will be like. They’ll probably sit around and talk about sorting cabbages.

“Well, okay, I’ll ask somebody else then,” I say, and he hangs up without saying anything else.

I’m getting the distinct impression that Vernon doesn’t like me very much. If truth be told, I don’t like him, either. He was always a fat loser.  His mother was old when she had him and that’s why Vernon is the way he is. He was still wetting his pants in high school. Ever since I’ve known him, he’s walked around with a bewildered look on his face.

I don’t want to go to the movies alone. Since it’s Saturday night, there’ll be a lot of young kids there, screaming and throwing popcorn. I consider just staying at home and getting into bed and reading, but I did that last night and the night before. I get dressed and put on my coat and shoes and leave the house without really knowing where I’m going.

I stop at the corner market and buy a pack of cigarettes and some gum and head downtown. It’s mid-October and the wind is cold; I put my hands in my pockets to try to keep them warm.

I haven’t eaten since morning so I stop at Willy Fong’s place for a plate of chop suey. I sit at a tiny table toward the back against the wall, and when the waiter comes out he doesn’t look real. He’s a grown man but he’s tiny—maybe three-quarters size—dressed in traditional Chinese garb that’s almost like silk pajamas. He looks like a doll. The only thing missing is the pigtail.

After I tell the doll what I want to eat, he leans down toward me and says in a confidential tone, “You want see girls in back?”

I look at him, not sure if I heard him right. “No,” I say, embarrassed.

“You want see boys in back?”

“No!”

He bows and smiles and walks away. I wonder what the girls and boys are doing in back while they’re waiting for somebody to want to see them, and then I light a cigarette. In a few minutes my chop suey arrives.

The pot of tea the waiter brings me tastes better than the chop suey and I drink all of it. I push the food around on my plate. I think it has some shrimp in it. I’m allergic to shell fish and just the thought of it makes me want to throw up. I pick the shrimp out and push it to one side of the plate. I take my time and when I’m finished I smoke another cigarette and pay my tab and go back out into the night.

Down the street is the Rio Rita Roller Rink, always a lively place. I haven’t been there since high school. I buy my ticket and go inside. The place is crowded and noisy, as I knew it would be on a Saturday night. The people who aren’t skating are talking and laughing and having a good time.

I go to the counter where they have the skates and show the man my ticket. When he asks me what size skate I want, I realize it’s Mr. Elmo, my old history teacher from high school. He recognizes me as he hands me the skates and smiles.

“How are you, Warren?” he says.

“You work here?” I asked, genuinely surprised.

“I own the place,” he says.

I check my shoes and my coat and sit down and put the skates on and take a couple of turns around the floor to loosen up. The recorded organ music sounds good. They’re playing March of the Wooden Soldiers, a corny old tune but good to skate to. After that it’s American Patrol and then That Old Black Magic.

I spot a girl I knew in high school named Mimi Boynton. She looks like she’s gained fifty pounds at least. Her hair looks like it’s been whacked off with a machete and she’s wearing ugly red capri pants and a white sweatshirt. I know she sees me and recognizes me. She says something to the girl she’s with and the girl turns and looks at me and they both laugh. At what, I wonder?

When I sit down for a minute to take a breather and tighten the laces on my skates, Mimi Boynton comes and stands beside me. I grimace at the effort of bending over and look up at her.

“Hello, Warren,” she says. “Remember me?”

“Sure,” I say. “High school.”

“On the next couples promenade, would you skate with me?” she asks.

“No, no,” I say. “I’m with some people. They’re waiting for me over by the concession stand.”

“Oh, I see,” she says, embarrassed.

She stands there looking at me for a minute as though she expects me to say something else, and then she says, “Well, it was nice seeing you again,” and turns around and goes back to where her girlfriend is waiting for her.

“Yeah, you too,” I say, but I don’t think she hears me.

I skate for about an hour, until the place starts to give me a headache, and then I decide to leave and go someplace else. When I turn my skates back in, I want to ask Mr. Elmo to give me a job (anything has to be better than working in an insurance office), but he’s busy and I don’t get a chance to speak to him. I tell myself I’ll call him on Monday and then I leave the place.

Outside, traffic is stopped for a red light and somebody hollers at me from a car window, but I ignore it and keep walking. I walk down the street a couple of blocks and cross the street to a little bar I remember being in once before. I’m thirsty from all the skating and decide to go in and buy myself a beer.

The bar seems dark and quiet after the roller rink. The juke box is playing, but it’s not very loud so people can talk and be heard. I sit at the bar and tell the bartender I want a beer. He looks at me skeptically and I think he’s going to give me some trouble, but he serves me anyway. I don’t like the taste of beer very much, but I drink the first one down fast and order another one.

After I’ve started on my second beer, I light a cigarette and look around. The place is not very crowded for a Saturday night. Three or four drunks sit hunched over the bar and a few people sit at the small tables, talking intimately. I hear a woman complaining drunkenly to the bartender about her drink, but the man she’s with quiets her down and they soon leave.

In a little while somebody comes in and sits on the stool to my right. When I turn my head slightly to catch a glimpse, I see it’s a middle-aged woman wearing a black dress and a black hat with a see-through veil that covers her eyes and nose. Oddly enough, there’s a cluster of red cherries on the hat and that’s what you look at first thing because it stands out on the black. She orders a drink and puts a cigarette in her mouth but she can’t seem to find a match, so she turns to me.

“You got a light, hon?” she asks.

I give her my matches and she lights her cigarette and gives me back the matches and smiles. I consider getting up and leaving, but I don’t.

“Could I buy you a drink?” she asks.

I hold up my beer that’s still about half-full and say, “Just leaving.”

“Well, what do you think about me?” she says. “I just came from an undertaker’s conference. Don’t I look the part?”

I look at her and shrug my shoulders. I don’t care what she is.

“You’re not an embalmer, are you?” she asks.

“No,” I say.

“You look like you might be an embalmer. I know the type.”

“Well, I’m not.”

“I want to open my own funeral home but I don’t have the capital. I’m looking for an embalmer with money to go partners with me.”

When I don’t say anything, she says, “What do you do? Do you go to school somewhere?”

“I work in an office, but I’m not going to be there much longer.”

“Oh,” she says.

That seems to end the conversation, so I start to get up to leave.

“Are you sure I can’t buy you a drink?” she asks.

“No,” I say. “I have to get home.”

She looks at me and narrows her eyes as if she’s looking at me from a long way off. “Got a wife at home waiting for you?” she asks.

“No.”

“Girlfriend?”

“I live with my parents.”

“Oh,” she says knowingly. “So it’s like that, is it?

I don’t like her tone. “Like what?” I ask.

“Even though you’re a grown man, they still treat you like a baby.”

“It isn’t that way at all,” I say. “I’ve been roller skating and I’m tired. I still have to walk home.”

“How about if we go for a drive along the river?” she asks. “It’s a lovely night and there’s a full moon.”

“No,” I say. “Not for me.”

“There’s a full moon for everybody,” she says, and I can see she’s already drunk.

“Well, good night,” I say, standing up.

“Wait a minute,” she says, putting her hand on my arm. “I’d really like you to stay a little longer. I need somebody to talk to. These other people here are duds. They’re all drunk.”

I sit back down and she says to the bartender, “Bring this young gentleman here another drink. He’s going to stay and talk to me.”

She lights another cigarette and seems for the moment to forget I’m there. After a minute or so, she turns and looks at me as if she’s seeing me for the first time and says, “I think you’re kind of cute in spite of what everybody else says.”

“I think you need to go home and sleep it off,” I say.

“Did I tell you I’m very lonely? You probably can’t tell by looking at me, but I’ve been married three times.”

The bartender sets the drink on the bar in front of me and I take a sip, even though I don’t want it.

“Men are such bastards,” she says, “but of course you are one so you already know.”

I don’t say anything but put my hands on the bar and look straight ahead.

“I’ve offended you,” she says.

“It doesn’t matter,” I say. “Nothing you say matters to me.”

“You’re sweet,” she says.

“I’m not what you think I am,” I say. “You’ve got me all wrong.”

“Now, don’t go jumping to conclusions,” she says. “Just relax and have another drink.”

I light a cigarette and then she puts her cigarette out and takes a fresh one and wants to light the fresh one from mine.

“I like you,” she says, “and you ought to be very flattered because there aren’t many people I like.”

“You don’t even know me,” I say.

“That’s true, but I can tell a lot about you just from the way you move and from the way you shift your eyes about.”

“You can’t tell anything about me,” I say. “And I don’t care whether you like me or not. How do you know I’m not a psychopathic killer?”

“Because you’re not,” she says.

“Well, I could be,” I say.

She laughs and pats me on the arm indulgently the way you would a small child.

“I’ve really got to be going,” I say.

“Past your bedtime, is it?” she asks.

“If you must know,” I say, “it is.”

“I’ve got a bottle of Kentucky bonded bourbon in my car. We can have a party.”

“No,” I say. “I hate bourbon.”

“Finish your drink and we’ll go for that drive.”

“I’m not what you think I am,” I say. “I’m not anybody you want to know.”

I don’t know why I leave with her, but I do. I suppose you could say it’s because nobody has asked me to do anything with them for a long time and I just wasn’t ready to go home.

When we get outside, she hands me the keys to her car, an ancient Cadillac the color of brown eggs parked down the street from the bar.

“You drive,” she says.

“Where to?” I ask.

“I’ll tell you.”

We get into the car and I start it and pull away from the curb as she makes herself cozy on the seat beside me. She takes off her hat with the veil and the cherries and throws it in the back seat and takes her bottle of bourbon out of the glove compartment and uncaps it and takes a drink and offers me the bottle, which I refuse.

She has me drive outside of town, to an old country road that I haven’t been on since I was a child. The road is hilly and curvy and I have to pay close attention to keep the car on the road. After I’ve driven a few miles, she tells me to turn off to the left. I hesitate at first because it seems there’s nothing there, but after I turn off I see there’s another road downhill that seems to go off nowhere into the woods.

“Where does this road lead to?” I ask.

“You’ll see,” she says, taking a swig of the bourbon.

“I don’t like it here,” I say.

We come to an old cemetery and she tells me to slow down and turn off the road. I do as she says and stop just short of an old wrought iron gate, part of which is missing.

“This is the place,” she says.

“Why are we here?” I ask, turning off the engine.

“I love this spot,” she says. “It’s the perfect place to think.”

“We probably aren’t supposed to be here,” I say, looking over my left shoulder.

“Come with me,” she says.

She takes a blanket out of the back seat and heads into the cemetery. She seems to be able to see where she’s going, so I just follow her. She goes far in, where some of the old grave markers are taller than our heads. When she comes to a little clearing cut off from view of anybody who might be on the road, she spreads the blanket on the ground and lays down on it, leaving plenty of room for me beside her.

“It’s so restful here,” she says. “There’s no noise. Only the sounds of nature.” She points up into the trees where a brisk wind is rustling the leaves.

I stand looking off into the distance, thinking I see movement. Something or somebody is watching us, but it’s so dark that I can’t be sure of anything. The full moon seems to have gone behind a cloud, or maybe it’s the trees.

“What’s the matter?” she asks. “Why are you standing there like a statue?”

“I’m sick,” I say.

I bend over and vomit on the ground near her feet on the blanket. I didn’t drink enough to be sick. I didn’t touch the bourbon. I’m sure it’s the shrimp from Willy Fong’s chop suey.

“I need to go home,” I say. “I’m sick and I’m not what you think I am and I didn’t want to come here in the first place.”

I turn my back on her and take a few steps away because I’m going to vomit again and I don’t want her looking at me. After I’ve vomited for the second time and am recovering a little bit, I turn to her but she’s gone. While I had my back turned she had picked up her blanket and left.

I almost panic at being left alone in such a dark and unfamiliar place and I start running in the direction of her car, thinking I can catch her before she drives away, but I run headlong into a grave stone and fall on the ground and hurt my knee. As I pull myself up and see that my pants are torn and my knee is bleeding. I hear the Cadillac start and then I see the headlights moving through the trees fifty yards away. As she drives off, I realize I don’t know where I am but—worse than that—I don’t know what I’m doing there.

Copyright © 2025 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997