short story – Page 21 – Literary Fictions

Cigarettes

Cigarettes ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

When Lester Bright awoke on Monday morning, he thought about how he might skip school that day. He could say he was sick, but he had used that excuse—when was it?—not two weeks ago. He groaned and rolled out of bed. After performing his morning ablutions, he dressed himself in the same clothes he wore on Friday and went downstairs.

His mother, Loyce, was sitting at the kitchen table, a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. She barely looked at him when he came into the room.

“I sure do have a headache this morning,” he said, as he poured cornflakes into a bowl and splashed some expired milk on them. “I’m sick at my stomach, too. I think I’m going to vomit.”

He looked at her to see what effect his words might be having, but she was ignoring him. Her eyes were baggy and she hadn’t put on her wig yet or any makeup. She looked like a scary old man. Was it any wonder his friends were afraid of her?

He sat down at the table across from her and eyed her Pall Mall menthol cigarettes while he chewed. Three of them were sticking up invitingly out of the pack. When she got up from the table and went to the sink to rinse out her cup, he reached across and took two of them, sticking them in his shirt pocket.

She turned around from the sink, or maybe whirled around from the sink would have been more like it. “I saw that!” she said. “Put ‘em back!”

“Put what back?” he said.

“Those cigarettes you just stole from me.”

“I didn’t steal any…”

She was on him before he knew what was happening. She moved across the room awfully fast for such a big woman. She grabbed for his pocket and took the cigarettes, ripping his shirt. Any defensive movement on his part would have been useless.

“Have you been smoking?” she asked.

“Of course not!” he said. “I would never smoke!”

“You’re stealing cigarettes from me but not smoking them?”

“I didn’t think you’d mind!”

“What do you mean taking my cigarettes when my back is turned? Are you insane?” She began slapping at him with both hands.

He tried to cover his head with his arms. “You’re hurting me!”

“If I ever see you smoking a cigarette, I’ll cram it down your throat! You’re thirteen years old!”

“I wasn’t taking them for me! I was taking them for a sick friend.”

She stopped the slapping. “Who?” she asked.

“You don’t know him!”

“I want to know his name! Now!”

“He lives down by the river. His name is Harry Burgess.”

“Well, you tell Harry Burgess to get his own damn cigarettes or he’ll be a lot sicker than he ever imagined!”

“I’m going to the school nurse today and tell her you beat me! I’ll have bruises to prove it!”

He had some money he had found on his mother’s dresser, so he stopped at the mini-mart on the way to school and bought a doughnut and a pack of his own Pall Malls. After eating the doughnut in three quick bites, he wiped his hands on his pants and went on to school.

It was still a few minutes before first bell, so he unwrapped his pack and lit up just outside the school gate. His friend Harry Burgess had just stepped off his bus and ran over.

“Where’d you get the cigs?” Harry asked.

“Bought ‘em.”

“I bet you stole them. You never have any money.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Well, are you going to offer me one like the gentleman you are?”

Harry took one from the pack and was about to light it when the bell rang. “I’ll smoke it during third period,” he said, putting it in his pocket.

At the beginning of third period, when they were supposed to be in study hall working on their American history project, they went to the boys’ restroom on the first floor. After the other boys had gone on to their classes and they were alone, they went over to the row of windows beyond the stalls and lit up, first Lester and then Harry from the same match.

“Oh, tastes so good!” Lester said.

“I’ve been dying for a fag all morning!” Harry said.

After a couple of minutes they were engulfed in a cloud of smoke, so they opened a window a few inches to let some of it out. They were each on their second cigarette when they heard a sound behind them that told them they were not alone. Mr. Phegley, the school principal, had just come in and was looking at them. He had a look on his face that neither of them would ever forget.

Lester didn’t mind the three-day suspension so much—he was always glad for a reason to not go to school—but the bad thing about it was that he was going to have to tell his mother. There would be no way to make a three-day smoking suspension sound like anything other than what it was.

When he got home before noon, she was dozing on the couch. He stood looking at her until she opened her eyes.

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

“I have something I have to show you,” he said, holding out the letter detailing the terms of his suspension.

“Oh, no!” she said, pulling herself to a sitting position. “What have you done now?”

She reached for a cigarette, lit it and blew a big cloud of smoke in Lester’s face. He inhaled deeply and experienced a few moments of absolute giddiness before she took the letter out of the envelope and unfolded it.

January 22, 2014February 1, 2014 by allen0997

I’ll Do It but I Won’t Like It

I’ll Do It but I Won’t Like It ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

I wonder about people who work in offices, and I especially wonder about people who work in offices and like it. I’ve worked in quite a few offices over the long years and I guess I can say I’m stronger for having done it. (That which doesn’t kill us makes us stronger). I have to admit, though, that most of the time I didn’t like it. It has mostly been my experience that “office” is just another word for “hell” or “prison.” The best offices to work in are the ones where you have lots of freedom and the worst are the ones where freedom, as a word and a concept, is completely unknown.

I’ve worked at a number of contract positions, meaning that I was part of the organization but not “altogether” a part of the organization. I was, of course, expected to abide by all the rules of the company (start times, codes of conduct, breaks, dress code, etc.) but was excluded from company benefits, social functions and perquisites. If the company was closed for the afternoon so employees could attend the funeral of a fallen executive, for example, I would, as a contractor, have my pay docked, while the regular employees didn’t. Also, being a contractor means that one is completely expendable. If a contract employee’s work is in any way unsatisfactory (and even if it isn’t), he can be removed so fast he won’t even know what happened, with as little fanfare as the changing of a light bulb. So, in a phrase, being a contractor means I am a disposable commodity. If I have human feelings, they’re going to be trampled on.

The best contract position I had lasted for three years. I know I was a fool for hanging around that long, but I was promised a permanent position that never happened. I liked the job—or anyway, could tolerate it—because we had a company cafeteria and a four-day work-week, but also because I had a boss who didn’t much care what I did as long as I did the work I was supposed to do. It was a congenial—some might even say permissive—environment and I probably would have stayed until I died in harness, but my boss (the man who hired me and authorized my pay) was fired for some naughtiness or other, and the corporate robot who took his place decided there was no room in the company for me. (He never liked me, anyway, and the feeling was mutual.)

If you are NOT a contractor, of course, that means you are a “regular” or a “permanent” company employee, which in corporate language very often means “slave” or “possession that we can do with as we please.” At company XYZ, for example, I was never supposed to think for myself or make decisions—that was done for me by a person far superior to me, a manager. I almost felt like I was in third grade again because the manager was breathing down my neck all the time, watching my every move, chewing me out for any little thing. (When I was on kitchen duty, for example, I was chewed out for going to the kitchen to clean up too early, because the three of us who were assigned were supposed to do it as a “team.”) We had endless meetings, some of them conducted over the phone, where we had to sit and listen to some blowhard gasbag of a manager (one of those “superior” people) think out loud, sometimes for as long as two-and-a-half hours. (Of course, nothing was ever accomplished at these meetings.) When the meeting was finally over, I found I had fallen behind on meeting my “deadline.” Guess what the solution was to that? I was supposed to catch up on the work on my own time! (Why else did I have that laptop computer that I was supposed to carry around with me all the time?) If they could figure out a way to get people to work in their sleep, they would do it. They’re working on it, I’m sure.

Of course, managers are notoriously cloven-hooved nincompoops who have no clue about human psychology or how to deal with people. (Some of them don’t even know the difference between “there and “their,” let alone “affect” and “effect.”) They don’t seem to realize that if they treat people like shit, they will get shit in return. You reap what you sow. The good manager, and there are a few of them, knows to treat people the way he himself wants to be treated. It’s so simple. If a manager is liked and respected, he will get so much more from people than if he is hated.

The office, for me, is a very unnatural environment that brings out the worst in people. When you are thrown in with a bunch of office people, strangers with whom you have nothing in common, you learn almost by instinct which ones are to be avoided. You are naturally distrustful of the people who “love” their jobs (or say they do) and believe the company is sacrosanct. (I call these people “abiders”—for them there is no other religion.) They have usually been brainwashed to the point where you can no longer have any possible human connection with them. They believe that every company rule, no matter how stupid, is to be obeyed. If they see you committing some minor infraction or other (he took two ink pens instead of one), they will more likely than not tell on you, just like on the playground in second grade. They cringe if you indulge in any kind of bitchy humor at the expense of the company or its management. They take their jobs so seriously that they become overwrought and face potential nervous collapse if something isn’t done the way they think it should be. They are the watchdogs of those of us who don’t give a shit. Stay away from these people. If you ever hand one of them a knife, you will be sure to find it sticking in your back.

A common question that’s asked in job interviews is, “What is your ideal work environment?” One time when I was asked this question, I said to the female interviewer, “Freedom.” To which she responded, “We don’t have any.” I didn’t get the job, even though I was well qualified for it.

And that brings me to my favorite kind of job, the job where there are no ringing phones, no yak-yakking people, no meetings with a nauseating number of clichés and buzz words spoken, no people (mostly women) complaining about how cold they are while I am dying from how hot it is in the place, no getting up extremely early in the morning, no traffic jams going to or from work, no petty jealousies, no backbiting, no whining, no adult babies, no wishing I was someplace else, no clockwatching, no pretending to be busy when I’m not, no pretending I like something or somebody I don’t, no “Sunday blues” because I have to go to work on Monday, no evenings getting ready for—and dreading—the next day of hell. I control the temperature (a little on the cool side, summer or winter). If my phone is ringing, I don’t have to answer it because it is, after all, my phone. I can work in my bathrobe all day, take extra long lunches, and can take a nap whenever I feel like it. I can have music playing (Mozart, Bach, Glenn Miller, Peggy Lee, Paul Whiteman, or whatever) while I work—or not—and I control what kind of music I listen to without having to defer to anybody else’s preferences. This sounds like heaven, doesn’t it? It sounds a lot like home.

January 16, 2014January 16, 2014 by allen0997

Mr. Woodbine is Here

Mr. Woodbine is Here ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

The nurse came in and took Erwin’s blood pressure. He opened one eye and looked at her and asked if he was dead yet. She ignored him and a little while later she was back again, fussing with the equipment beside the bed, turning dials and flipping switches and writing things down on her clipboard. A clear bag of liquid hung on a pole beside the bed and drained into his arm. He wanted to ask what it was but he was too weak to get the words out. He was sure he was dying, but he told himself he didn’t really mind. Life was far too much trouble, anyway.

In between times when the nurse was fussing someplace else, he saw people in the room with him. They moved quietly around the bed, as if they were keeping watch or waiting—for what he didn’t know. He couldn’t see them very well, but he knew they were there. (Sometimes one of them would lean over and look closely into his face.) If he tried to speak to them, they withdrew. He wanted only to say hello.

One morning after he had been given a sponge bath (he was beyond embarrassment), he opened his eyes and saw a strange man standing at the foot of the bed looking at him—strange because Erwin had never seen him before but strange also because he was wearing a double-breasted, pin-striped suit with a red carnation.

“Who are you?” Erwin asked in his faint voice.

“How are you feeling, kid?” the man asked.

“Feel stupendous.”

“You know you were shot three times?”

“Feels like more.”

“You know who did it?”

“Not telling.”

“You had surgery to remove the bullets.”

“They didn’t need to bother. I know I’m going to die.”

The man shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not here to say one way or another.”

“You a doctor?”

“No, my name is Mr. Woodbine.”

“You the angel of death?”

“No, but I appreciate the compliment.”

“The undertaker?”

“No, no, no.” He took a cigar out of his pocket, rolled it around between his fingers, and lit it.

“You’re not supposed to smoke.”

“Well, I won’t tell if you don’t.”

“You’re police, aren’t you?”

“No, but I will tell you that I’m closer to being the angel of death than an officer of the law.”

“I give up then. I don’t feel like guessing anymore.”

“You give up too easily,” Mr. Woodbine said with a little laugh. He puffed on the cigar and blew a big cloud of blue smoke out over the bed.

“That ugly old nurse with the red hair is really mean,” Erwin said. “If she comes in and sees you smoking, she’ll probably stab you.”

“I’m not worried about her.”

“Who are those people standing behind you?”

“Oh, they’re nobody.”

“Well, if they’re there, they must be somebody.”

“They’re just curious. They don’t have much to do with their time and they want to know what’s going on.”

“That doesn’t tell me who they are.”

“They’re people you don’t ordinarily see unless you’re in the state you’re in.”

“Dying, you mean?”

“You said it. I didn’t.

“Tell me more.”

Mr. Woodbine opened his mouth to speak again, but the ugly nurse with the red hair came in and he left. When she pulled back the sheet and started poking at Erwin’s legs, he said, “Do you smell cigar smoke?”

“Why? Have you been smoking?”

“Not me.”

“If you smoke in this room, you’ll set off the sprinklers and that will make certain people very unhappy.” She pointed at the ceiling.

“I’ll tell him.”

“Who?”

“That man that was just here.”

“If anybody was smoking,” she said, “I would know it. I’ve got a nose like a bloodhound.”

“Am I going to die?”

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

He went to sleep again and a large, indeterminate chunk of time passed, maybe days or maybe only hours. Once when he awoke, he was aware of rain pattering against the window and then of Mr. Woodbine sitting in the chair beside the bed smoking his cigar.

“How are you feeling now, son?” Mr. Woodbine asked.

“How do you get in here all dressed up like that, smoking that cigar? Don’t the nurses try to stop you?”

“They don’t see me.”

“Well, that must be convenient. You’ll have to let me in on some of your secrets.”

“There’s nobody around. I thought we could talk a little more.”

“What time is it?”

“Does it matter?”

“No.”

“Tell me how you came to be shot.”

“An argument over money.”

“Ah!”

“And not very much money, either.”

“Not worth dying for?”

“If I live, I’m going to go find the rat that shot me and shoot him. Only I’m going to do it right. I’ll make sure he’s dead.”

“How do you know he’s not in police custody already for shooting you?”

“Maybe he is. I don’t know anything about what’s going on out there.” He pointed feebly toward the window. “The police were here asking me questions but I wouldn’t tell them anything. I want to take care of that rat myself. I never liked that guy anyway.”

“Revenge will be sweet?”

“It already is, just thinking about it.”

“What if I told you he’ll be taken care of and you don’t need to bother yourself?”

“I’m still going to kill him, except I’m going to make him suffer.”

“The way you’re suffering now?”

“Only worse.”

“Even if you live, you might not walk again.”

“I can kill the son of a bitch from a sitting position.”

“I have no doubt.”

“Why am I telling you all this?” Erwin said. “I don’t even know who you are!”

“It’s all right, because I know you.”

“I never saw you before in my life.”

“You have, many times, but you aren’t able to remember. I was there the time you nearly drowned in the swimming pool in high school. Remember?”

“I remember the incident but I don’t remember you.”

“Some of our memories are blocked out. The ones we’re not supposed to remember, for one reason or another.”

“You’re talking nonsense.”

“Not the first time and certainly not the last.”

“Tell those people to stay away from me. They’re getting on my nerves.”

“You just rest now. I think I hear that mean nurse coming.”

Anytime he was conscious, he expected to see Mr. Woodbine again, but Mr. Woodbine came no more.

Finally the day came when he arose from the bed on his own without any nurses fussing around him. His clothes were there, draped neatly over the chair. His wallet, glasses and keychain were on the table beside the bed where he would be sure to see them. He knew that he was being allowed to leave the hospital. Everything that was wrong with him had been fixed. He was renewed. He was going to have a fresh start. All his thoughts of revenge were gone. He didn’t even remember what had brought him to the hospital in the first place. He couldn’t wait to get outside and breathe the fresh air, even if it did smell like bus fumes. He jumped into his clothes excitedly.

He was going to tell the nurses goodbye as he walked past, but they were busy and didn’t look at him. Instead of waiting for the elevator, he walked down the five flights of stairs to the street. It felt so good to use his legs! Who said he might not ever walk again?

It was a brilliantly sunny day. As he walked down the broad steps of the hospital, he saw Mr. Woodbine waiting for him at the curb. They got into a waiting car and, as the car sped away, he lowered the window to feel the rush of air in his face. He was leaving pain and suffering behind. His problems, at last, were at an end.

January 10, 2014January 16, 2014 by allen0997

People are Talking

People are Talking ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

It was a slow day. A boy came in to buy a reed for his clarinet. A woman brought her daughters in to look at pianos with no intention of buying. A man came in to inquire about selling a violin he had that belonged to his brother who had just died. A couple of other people came in looking for certain classical recordings, one Bach and one Sibelius. Then it was time for lunch.

Roberta was alone in the shop, so she couldn’t leave. She sat on a high stool behind the counter, where she could see the door, and ate the lunch she had brought. While she ate, she looked over the morning paper. When she was just about finished, the wife of the store’s owner came in.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Doheny,” Roberta said pleasantly.

“I want to have a talk with you,” Mrs. Doheny said. “I’m glad there’s no one here.”

“Whatever would you want to talk to me about?” Roberta asked, her smile fading because Mrs. Doheny seemed angry about something.

“I’ll bet you already know.”

“Why, no, I don’t!”

“You know, of course, that my husband is a married man?” Mrs. Doheny said. She leaned forward on the counter, her face uncomfortably close to Roberta’s.

“Yes.”

“I just wanted to make sure you are aware of that fact.”

“I’ve worked for him for two years. How could I not know he’s married?”

“And we have two children in high school.”

“Yes.”

“I own half of this store. I have as much say over what goes on here as my husband does.”

“Yes?”

“I could fire you without batting an eyelash but I thought it only fair to warn you first. If you don’t heed the warning, then I fire you!”

“Warn me about what?”

“Your relationship with my husband is to remain purely a professional one. If it goes any farther than that, I have no other choice but to take action.”

“What action? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You and my husband were seen together, more than once, outside the store.”

“Seen by whom?”

“Never mind who it was. You just need to know that people are not as stupid as you seem to think they are.”

“What makes you think I have any interest in your husband?”

“People are talking!”

“What people?”

“Those in a position to know.”

“Oh, I think I’m starting to see it now. I’ll bet it’s that girl, that Stephanie, that he fired a while back for stealing things when she was alone in the store, isn’t it? She’s your niece or something, as I remember.”

“You don’t think I’d tell you who it is, do you?”

“I knew she was stealing and I told her if she didn’t stop I was going to tell on her. The next time I knew she was doing it, I went to Mitchell and told him about it and he fired her, niece or no niece.”

“Oh, it’s ‘Mitchell’ now, is it?”

“If you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Doheny, I’m not going to talk to you any further. This conversation is at an end.”

“You’re not going to get rid of me that easily!”

“If you have suspicions about anything, why don’t you talk to your husband about it and leave me out of it?”

“You don’t think I’d believe his lies, do you?”

“You’re a very disturbed woman, Mrs. Doheny. I feel sorry for your husband. He’s a nice man.”

“Why, you stupid little bitch! I could buy and sell you ten times over!”

A customer came in and Mrs. Doheny went into the back of the store where no one could see her. When the customer left a few minutes later, she re-emerged, her face pale and puffy from crying.

“You don’t look very busy,” she said as she prepared to leave. “I don’t think you’re earning your pay.”

She pushed over a display case with glass shelves, causing a tremendous crash. The display case broke and the merchandise scattered over a good part of the store.

“That will be deducted from your pay, of course!” she said, as she went out the door.

While Roberta was sweeping up the mess, she cut the first two fingers of her right hand. She went into the bathroom to hold her hand under the faucet, not caring if anybody came in or not—if they did, they could help themselves to anything they wanted as far as she was concerned.

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly. Right before closing time, Mitchell Doheny came in. He noticed right away that the display case was gone.

“What happened?” he asked.

“It fell over and broke,” Roberta said.

“By itself?”

“I was nowhere near it when it happened.”

“I’ll have to order a new one,” he said.

As she was preparing to leave for the day, he came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. She wasn’t used to being touched and flinched.

“Would you like to have dinner with me to celebrate?” he asked.

“Celebrate what?”

“The end of the week, I suppose.”

“I have nowhere else I have to be,” she said.

Instead of having hamburgers at the diner, they went to an Italian restaurant with real Italian cuisine, live music, and checkered tablecloths.

“How did things go for you in the store today?” he asked, as they sipped wine and waited for their food.

“All right,” she said. “A little slow.”

“I’m thinking about opening another store across town. How would you like to manage it?”

“We’ll see. Could we talk about something other than business?”

“What else is there?”

“I want to show you something,” she said.

She opened her purse and held up the small handgun she always carried, wrapped loosely in a headscarf.

He laughed when he saw the gun. “Are you planning on shooting somebody with that?” he asked.

“Only if I have to.”

“Be sure and tell me if it’s going to be me,” he said. “At least give me a chance to run.”

It was just starting to rain when they left the restaurant. She could easily have walked home, but he insisted on taking her.

When they pulled up in front of her building, she turned to thank him for the ride.

“I could really use a cup of coffee,” he said, “to clear my head.”

“You know I don’t drink coffee,” she said.

“Yes, I know, but you keep some on hand for guests, don’t you?”

“Guests like you?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to come up?”

“I can see we’re thinking along the same lines.”

She turned on all the lights in the little apartment and turned on some music they both liked, a small ensemble with Benny Goodman so mellow on clarinet. While the coffee brewed, he made himself comfortable on the couch.

She went and sat beside him. He put his arm around her and started to pull her toward him, but she disengaged herself and got up and went back into the kitchen. When she came back with his cup of coffee, he took a sip and set the cup down. He reached for her and began kissing her, hurting her in a way, but she didn’t make him stop as she had always done before.

January 3, 2014January 16, 2014 by allen0997

One Way

One Way ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

There she was, Mrs. Velda Millis, age seventy-eight, taking a bus trip on her own. Her hairdo was beauty-parlor fresh and she was wearing a new dress, bought on sale for the occasion. She had her purse, her ticket and her suitcase and was wearing her comfortable shoes. All she had to do was sit and wait for her bus.

The bus station scared her a little. It was too big, there were too many people moving too fast, too much noise. The noise alone set her on edge; every time an announcement was blatted over the loudspeaker, she jumped as if a gun had been fired behind her head. When a woman with a screaming baby sat down near her, she got up and moved to a different seat farther away.

She watched the minutes ticking away on a clock high up on the wall until her vision blurred. She was bored and wasn’t used to being bored. How did people stand to wait for hours in such a place?

Her hand started to cramp and when she looked down she realized she was holding onto her ticket for dear life. She wouldn’t need the ticket until time to board the bus. She slipped it into her purse and massaged her thumb. “Calm down,” she told herself. “You’re going to make it through this.”

Her daughter, Teresa, had given her the ticket and some instructions. What were they? Oh, yes, she was supposed to wait until two-fifteen (or was it three-thirty?) and then make her way over to gate five (or was it gate three?) and wait there until they announced over the loudspeaker that she could get on board. She hoped the announcement was in English. If it was in any other language, she wouldn’t know what they were saying.

It was only eleven-thirty. She still had hours to go. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths and thought about her son’s house where she was going to live.

Julian was a successful businessman and had a large house with an upstairs where she could have her own room. She would make herself useful by helping Susie, Julian’s wife, with the housework and by minding the two kids. She hardly even knew her grandchildren and was looking forward to getting acquainted.

She had lived with Teresa for the last two years and Teresa didn’t want her anymore. They got on each other’s nerves and had taken to quarreling over little things. She realized for the first time that she didn’t like Teresa very much and that the feeling was mutual. After one of their fights that lasted several days, Teresa told her she wanted her out of her house and was going to put her in a nursing home. Teresa had a long conversation with her brother Julian that night on the phone, the upshot of which was that they were going to put mama on a bus and send her to him.

“It’s your turn to deal with her,” Teresa had said to him with mama sitting right there. “I’m at the end of my tether. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

“Talk some sense into me about what?” she asked when Teresa hung up the phone.

“None of your business!” Teresa snapped. “Oh, to have some privacy again in my own home!”

When Teresa presented her with the bus ticket, she saw right away that it was marked One Way. She was going away from her home and never coming back.

When she was realistic and looked the facts in the face, she knew she wasn’t going to have her own room at Julian’s place and be able to help with the housework and the children. Telling her that was just a trick, she saw now. Julian and Susie would be there to take her off the bus, all right, but they would then whisk her off to one of those places where blank-eyed old people sit in chairs and wait to die, forced to surrender control of their lives to absolute strangers. She was not to be given any choice in the matter.

Now that she knew what they were going to do to her, wasn’t it her last chance to escape? She didn’t have to get on that bus, just because snooty Teresa had bought her a ticket. There was something else she could do.

She picked up her suitcase that sat at her feet and opened it. Underneath the clothes were her Bible and a bulky manila envelope. These were the things that gave her strength and comfort: the Bible because the words in it sustained her in times of trouble and the envelope because it contained one hundred and eighty one-hundred-dollar bills. (She had counted them over and over.)

She found the money in the bottom of one of Teresa’s dresser drawers when she was cleaning and took it as her own. Teresa would say she stole it, of course, while she maintained it was money due her. For what? For keeping herself from slapping Teresa across the room all the times she had wanted to.

Having decided she wasn’t going to take that bus, she couldn’t stand being in the bus station another minute. She went outside, finding herself on an unknown city sidewalk. She followed her nose, as the saying goes, to the old Windsor hotel, which sparked some memories for her of long ago. She went inside and engaged a room, registering under the name of Ann Harding, the name of a long-ago movie actress. Nobody would ever know it was her.

After she was shown to a room by a dwarfish bellboy, she kicked off her shoes and called room service and ordered a steak sandwich and a bottle of beer. When the boy came with her order, she tipped him generously. She had money and money will take you a long way in this world.

November 8, 2013November 9, 2013 by allen0997

Broomstick

Broomstick ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

She was old and stayed shut up inside her castle high on a lonely mountaintop. There was one night in the year, though, that she had to go out into the world, and that night was Halloween. She wouldn’t be much of a witch if she didn’t fly on Halloween.

As the sun sank behind the mountains in the west, she woke up her old black cat, Lucifer, who was sleeping in front of the fire, and told him to get up and have a snack and wash his face in preparation for leaving.

“I’m not going with you this time,” he said.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I’ve seen enough of the world. I’ve flown with you on countless Halloweens. I just want to be left in peace.”

“Well, suit yourself,” she said. “You’ll be missing a good time.”

“I’ll guard the castle while you’re gone,” he said, going back to sleep.

As she flew off on her broomstick, she realized she hadn’t flown since the previous Halloween. She really needed to get out more. She was a little wobbly at first, as if she might fall off, but soon she hit her stride and did a couple of loop-the-loops and reverse maneuvers to prove to herself that she still could.

After she had flown a good distance away from her castle, she felt an urgent need to do something bad, to cause some mischief and mayhem, as witches do on Halloween. Seeing a church in a village, she threw a ball of fire that caused the steeple to burst into flame. Then, outside the village, she caused some railroad tracks to buckle so that the next train to come along would derail. She turned a cow standing in a field into stone and two small children into white mice. Feeling less than fulfilled, she redirected a creek so that it would flood some farmland. These things were nothing, though, compared to what she did next: Hovering over the roof of a maternity hospital, she cast a spell that would cause the next baby to be born to have two heads. Now there was a fiendish accomplishment!

As good a time as she was having, she felt that something was missing. In the old days of her witchery, she always had somebody with her; if not a victim, then a fellow witch. Doing bad things just wasn’t as much fun if there wasn’t somebody along to tell her how terrible she was. She needed to hunt up the old gang to see what they were up to.

She flew on until she came to the environs of her youth, the place where she got her start as a witch. The forests, mountains, and rivers all looked the same. The village was much the same but had grown shabbier and poorer. The witches’ nightclub, Eye of Newt, was still there, thank goodness! She went inside, carrying her broomstick in her hand.

A hunchback dwarf greeted her at the door. She recognized him at once.

“Raphael, is that you?” she said.

The dwarf squinted up at her in the dim light. “Have we met?” he asked.

“It’s Mignonette, the witch. Don’t you remember me?”

“Oh, yes! Mignonette! Of course, I remember you, but I thought you were dead.”

“Not yet.”

“My eyes are not what they used to be.”

“Any of the old crowd here?”

“I think you’ll find a few of them at the table in the corner.”

As she made her way through the crowd to the last table against the wall, nobody turned to look at her. There was a time when she could command an entire room with her presence.

Two witches and a ghoul were sitting at the table. She recognized the two witches from the long-ago, but she didn’t know the ghoul.

“And who might you be?” one the witches, the one known as Hildegard, asked.

“Why, it’s Mignonette,” she said. “Your old friend.”

“I don’t remember anybody by the name of Mignonette,” Hildegard said stubbornly.

“Why, of course you remember her!” the other witch said. (Her name was Carlotta.) “There was the time that Mignonette was the toast of the town.”

“Oh, yes, I remember now,” Hildegard said. “She tried to kill me once.”

“Only once?” the ghoul asked, standing to hold the chair out for Mignonette as she sat down.

He was Erich, a holdover from the Third Reich. (People always wanted to hear the stories about his association with Herr Hitler.) He wore a top hat and pince nez. With his long, emaciated body, skin the color of ivory and black circles around his eyes, he was every inch the ghoul.

“I’m so happy to make your acquaintance, mademoiselle,” he said in his smooth continental accent, taking Mignonette’s hand in his own and kissing it.

“Likewise, I’m sure,” Mignonette said.

He motioned for the waiter and ordered a round of witches’ brew.

“So, I’m wondering where all our old friends are this evening,” Mignonette said. “Ethelbert, Lulu, Patsy, Lucille, Laverne and the others.”

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Carlotta asked.

“Heard what?”

“Lucille and Patsy are dead. Ethelbert got married and went back to the Old Country. Lulu’s in a hospital for the criminally insane and, last I heard, Laverne was in jail for something or other.”

“So, it’s just the two of you left in our little coven?” Mignonette asked.

“I’m afraid so.”

“There are lots of new young witches coming along,” Carlotta said, ever the optimist. “I’m thinking we can recruit some of them to join us in our crusade of evil.”

At the mention of young witches, they all turned to look at the crowd that was hemming them in against the wall. The young witches were nothing like the older generation, which included Mignonette, Carlotta and Hildegard. They were sleek and didn’t go in for scary ugliness as the older generation had done. They had done away with the long black dresses, pointed hats, green skin, facial hair, and warts. Some of them didn’t even look like witches. They seemed to be more interested in flaunting their assets than in casting spells and riding around on broomsticks.

“I’m afraid things have changed,” Hildegard said.

“The old ways are still the best,” Mignonette said. “We can still have fun doing what we always did.”

“My motto exactly!” Erich said.

“It’s the one night in the year that witches should be having a good time.”

“Yes, yes, that’s so true,” Hildegard said.

“You’re not going to sit here all evening and drink witches’ brew, are you?”

“Well,” Carlotta said, “Hildegard and I were thinking about kidnapping a couple of teenagers from lovers’ lane and scaring the hell out of them. Make them think we’re going to kill them and then let them go at the last minute.”

“We’ve done all that,” Mignonette said. “Time and again. Maybe it’s time of think of other things to do.”

“Like what?”

“May I make a suggestion?” Erich asked. “Forget your teenagers. Some friends of mine, fellow ghouls, are getting up a party in the Cemetery of the Holy Ghost for around midnight. It’ll be a lot of fun. Skeletons dancing around a fire and that sort of thing. I’d be happy for the three of you lady witches to accompany me. And you won’t have to fly on your broomsticks. I have my car outside.”

“Can you imagine three witches and a ghoul in a car on Halloween night?” Carlotta said. “What do we do if a policeman stops us?”

“You either turn him into a toad or we tell him we’re on our way to a costume ball,” Erich said.

“It really isn’t any of his business,” Hildegard said.

“You three run along,” Mignonette said. “I don’t think I’ll come along.”

“Why not?” Carlotta asked.

“I think my time as a witch has passed. Do you know that I haven’t even left my castle since last Halloween night? My black cat, Lucifer, didn’t feel like coming with me tonight. It just isn’t the same without him.”

“Oh, I haven’t had a black cat for years,” Hildegard said.

“I have another suggestion,” Erich said. “The two of you run along and I’ll stay here with Mignonette. I’ll even lend you my car. You know how to drive, I trust?”

“Well, I like that!” Hildegard said. “She’s still doing it, after all these years! Stealing away all the men!”

“I’m not stealing away anybody,” Mignonette said.

“It’s parked just down the street,” Erich said. “You can’t miss it. It’s a 1932 Cadillac V16 Fleetwood sedan. The keys are in the ignition.”

“Let’s go,” Carlotta said. “I haven’t been to a cemetery party in years. We’ll have the pick of the men there.”

After Hildegard and Carlotta were gone, Erich ordered more drinks and moved his chair over as close to Mignonette as he could get. He put his arm around her waist and whispered in her ear.

“My place is very cozy,” he said. “I have embalming fluid.”

“Why me?” she asked. “I’m just as old and ugly as they are.”

“No, you’re not,” he said. “You’re different.”

“I’m not.”

“Wouldn’t you like to see my collection of Nazi memorabilia?”

“If I go with you, will you tell me all about Herr Hitler?”

“Would you be surprised if I told you I have his body in a trunk in my bedroom?”

“What for?”

“We’re going to try to bring him back to life.”

“Who is?”

“Come along with me and you can meet them.”

She blushed and pulled the brim of her hat down farther so her eyes were hidden. He stood up and took her by the hand.

She hadn’t had a passenger behind her on her broomstick for many years, especially a man. As he leaned forward and put him arms around her waist, she felt a quickening in her blood that she thought was long dead. He was a gentleman, she could see, and a Nazi gentleman at that. It was turning out to be a very fine evening after all.

October 31, 2013November 4, 2013 by allen0997

Celeste

Celeste ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

She owed everything to M and F. They brought her into the world, fed and clothed her, educated her, gave her a wonderful childhood. When the world was against her, M and F were always in her corner.

After she grew up, she married and left M and F. The marriage didn’t last, though, and after it came to its sad end she moved back home. M and F were growing old by then and needed her in the same way she needed them when she was a little girl growing up. She would never leave them again.

She did everything for them. They were helpless without her. She got them up in the morning, dressed them, sat them in their chairs, turned the TV or radio on for them. She read the newspaper to F and helped M with all the housework. She loved them so much that she told them all her secrets, like the time she pushed a girl down a long flight of stairs or the time at the lake when she could have saved a drowning boy but instead let him die.

On a beautiful autumn day, when the leaves were bright colors and the air held that wonderful crispness that can only mean the end of October, she bundled M and F up in their coats. F looked so sweet in the knit cap she made for him and M seemed to glow with the prospect of the fun they were going to have.

With M and F snuggly secured in the back seat, she drove out to the country road that she remembered from her childhood. They used to take long drives on Sunday afternoons in autumn, stopping to pick bittersweet or wild flowers or a few persimmons off a scraggly tree. She laughed to remember how eating a persimmon would make the inside of her mouth so puckery that she would have to spit it out on the ground. Autumn was her favorite time of year.

The road was just as she remembered it, the hills, curves, and sudden dips that made the stomach turn over. In fact, everything was exactly the same. There was the old red barn, there the grain silo and over there the horses grazing in a field behind a fence. The rickety old bridge still spanned the creek and the old country store still sold ice-cold drinks and pumpkins.

She looked away for a moment and when she looked back a porcupine was running across the road in front of the car. Porcupines don’t run very fast. If she had run over it and killed it, she would have been upset for the rest of the day. She swerved the car too much and lost control. The car careened off the road, across a ditch and into a tree.

Her first thought was for M and F. They had slid off the seat onto the floor but were unhurt. After she tended to them, she got out of the car to assess the damage. She had hit the tree squarely; water was dripping out of the radiator. She could not drive the car another inch in its present state.

It was too far to walk to town and, besides, she couldn’t leave M and F in the car alone. She could think of nothing else to do but stand by the side of the road and wait for somebody to come along and help.

There wasn’t much traffic and the few people who went by just stared at her as if she were a lunatic and went on past. Finally a police officer in a patrol car came along and, seeing her and the car smashed into the tree, pulled off onto the shoulder and got out.

“Anybody hurt?” the officer asked.

“No,” she said.

“I’ll call a tow for you.”

“Thank you.”

He spotted M and F in the back seat of the car. “Are they all right?” he asked.

“I think so,” she said.

He went closer to the car and leaned over to get a better look. “Why, they’re wax figures!” he said. “Aren’t they?”

“They’re…my family,” she said.

He straightened up and looked closely at her to see if she was making a joke. “Are you made of wax, too?”

“They’re surrogates.” she said.

“They’re what?”

She was wearing an old coat that belonged to F. She thrust her hands into the pockets and felt in the right-hand pocket a small knife that F used to use for whittling. She brought the knife out and stabbed the officer in the forearm.

He yelped with surprise. When she saw the knife sticking into his arm, she turned and started to run, but he grabbed onto her and wrapped his arms around her to subdue her. He pushed her toward the patrol car, opened the back door and shoved her inside.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she said. “I haven’t done anything wrong!”

“Shut up!” he said.

He slammed the door, locking her inside.

“Let me out of here!” she said. “They need me!”

The officer went over to her car and opened the back door. F tumbled out onto the ground head-first in a very undignified manner. The officer picked him up by the arm and tossed him back inside.

She winced as if she had been struck and then laughed at herself because she knew then that it wasn’t the real F. They—the real F and the real M—were asleep in a big trunk in the basement. Only she knew where they were. Nobody else would ever know. She was so much smarter than she had ever been given credit for.

October 29, 2013October 30, 2013 by allen0997

Horse Face

Horse Face ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

I bought only two items, a pound of butter and a jar of pickles. I could have gone through the express lane and been on my way in thirty seconds, but I waited twenty minutes or more behind an old lady with a couple hundred dollars worth of stuff in an overflowing cart. When my turn finally came, I smiled at the checker and placed my items on the conveyor belt. When she looked at me, she blushed a little. I know she did.

Her name, displayed on her name tag for all the world to see, was Patricia. She was twenty-eight years old, wasn’t married, and lived with her mother the same as me. I knew these things from hearsay. I had been seeing her in the Food Giant for two years. We had been on a first-name basis ever since I had told her my name.

“Hi, Patricia!” I said, hoping she wasn’t catching any bad smells coming off my body.

“Hello, Morgan. All alone this evening?”

“I’m just stopping by on my way home from work.”

“Most people go through the express lane when they only have two items. It saves time.”

“I know, but I prefer your lane.”

She laughed and pushed her glasses in place up her knobby nose. “Why is that?” she asked.

“You’re my favorite checker.”

“I didn’t know I was anybody’s favorite anything,” she said with a little deprecatory laugh.

The trouble with buying two items is that it takes such a short time to pay for them. It was over all too fast. I gave her a pained smile, took the bag with my two items in it, and left.

When my mother and I were having dinner that evening, I decided to bring up the subject of Patricia to see what she would say.

“At the Food Giant,” I said carefully, “have you ever noticed a checkout girl named Patricia?”

“I don’t pay any attention to their names,” mother said. “The only thing that matters to me is whether they’re fast or slow. The fast ones I like. The slow ones I don’t.”

“Patricia is the one with brown-blond hair that looks like a curtain that’s about to close over her face.”

“Does she have spots on her hands?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Is she the one that’s so fat it looks like she’s eaten half the food in the store before she started her shift?”

“No, mother. The one I’m talking about isn’t fat.”

She thought for a moment. “I know who you mean!” she said. “She’s the one with a long face like a horse.”

“Well, if you want to be cruel about it, that’s the one.”

“What about her?”

“I’m thinking about asking her over for dinner.”

She was speechless for a moment. Then she laughed as though I had made a joke. “Why would you want to do that?” she asked.

“I think she’s lonely.”

“Why should that concern you?”

“Maybe I’m lonely, too.”

“Do you mean you’re thinking of asking her out on a date?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“You don’t know anything about her. She might have filthy habits. She might have insanity in her genes. She might have diseases, for heaven’s sake!”

“Yes, the possibilities are limitless, are they not?”

“Why her?”

“I seem to feel some kind of connection between us, and I have ever since the first time I saw her.”

“The last girl you dated turned out to be a man!”

“That isn’t fair. She was a girl stuck in a man’s body.”

“She could be a frog stuck in a man’s body and she’d still be a man. It’s the body that counts.”

“That doesn’t prove anything.”

“It proves you have poor judgment.”

“My judgment is as good as anybody else’s!”

“I don’t care what you do. It’s your life.”

“Thank you!”

“But I refuse to stand idly by and see you ruin your life on…”

We went on and on in that way until she couldn’t stand to look at me anymore and retired to her room to watch her TV shows, leaving me to wash the dishes on my own.

The next day I again stopped at the Food Giant on my way home from work. I bought a bag of peanuts in the shell and a bottle of maple syrup and stood in line to pay for them. When Patricia saw me, the pained look on her face went away and she brightened.

“Back again, are we?” she said.

“Always the loyal customer,” I said.

“If you buy only two items at a time, it’ll take you forever to finish your grocery shopping.”

“What are you doing Saturday night?” I blurted it out before I lost my nerve.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I haven’t thought about it. I’ll probably catch up on my sleep.”

“Would you like to have an adventure?”

“What kind of adventure?”

“Come to my house and have dinner with my mother and me.”

“Well, um, I don’t know.”

“I’ll make lasagna. Tell me you don’t like lasagna.”

“I do like lasagna.”

“Well, then?”

“What time?”

“You mean you’ll come?”

I gave her directions to my house and told her to be there around six o’clock.

My mother was still peeved with me that evening. She didn’t chatter on about her soap operas and the things that had happened to her that day, as she usually did. She hardly spoke at all and when she did speak, she let me know how much it pained her.

“Is horse face coming for dinner?” she asked, looking down at her plate.

“Yes. And her name is Patricia.”

“When?”

“Saturday.”

“I’ll make it a point to be gone. I’ll go to a movie or something.”

“I’d like for you to be here. I want you to meet Patricia.”

“Why would I want to meet her?”

“Because she’s a friend of mine. I think you’ll like her.”

“When she ruins your life, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

On Saturday I cleaned house, or at least the parts that Patricia was likely to see, and then I took a long bubble bath. I put on a brand-new plaid sports shirt and pants I had been saving for a special occasion. I set the table for three with the good dishes.

Patricia arrived right on time. I gave her a glass of wine and we sat on the couch and talked about small things—the weather, traffic, and her job at the Food Giant. Then we went into the kitchen and I showed her the place at the table where I wanted her to sit. She pulled out the chair and sat down with a set-in-place smile.

Before I took the lasagna out of the oven, I went upstairs to the door of mother’s bedroom and knocked softly. I could hear the voices coming from her TV.

“Mother,” I said, “dinner’s ready and we have a guest.”

She said nothing so I thought maybe she had fallen asleep. I knocked again, this time a little louder.

“It’s time for dinner, mother,” I said. “Please come to the table before the food gets cold.”

I heard her say, seemingly from far away, “I don’t want anything.”

“You have to eat, mother,” I said. “You haven’t eaten all day.”

“Go away and leave me alone,” she said. “I have a headache and I just want to be alone.”

When I went back into the kitchen, I smiled at Patricia and said, “Mother is doing the Greta Garbo routine this evening,” I said. “She just vants to be alone.”

“She what?” Patricia said.

“She has a headache and doesn’t want any dinner.”

After we ate, Patricia helped me clean up the dishes and then we went into the living room and watched Now, Voyager on TV. I had seen it maybe ten times, but Patricia had never seen it. When it was over, I could see she was puzzled about something.

“Did Charlotte Vale really kill her mother?” she asked.

“Not literally,” I said. “Only figuratively.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

I could see then that Patricia wasn’t as bright as I might have wished.

The dinner went well, I thought, in spite of mother’s refusal to come to the table, and the next time I saw Patricia I planned on asking her out on a real date.

Mother was fine the next day, her usual self. She went to church with her girlfriends, Pansy and June Ellen, and when she got home she was laughing about some gossip she had heard involving the minister’s wife. She didn’t mention my dinner with Patricia.

After my third date with Patricia, I realized that if mother was ever going to meet her, I was going to have to force it.

It was Sunday again and she wanted to drive out to the cemetery and put some plastic flowers on my father’s grave. Before we left home, I called Patricia without telling mother and asked her if she’d like to join us for a drive in the country. She said yes, so I told her I’d stop by and pick her up on our way out of town.

As soon as I deviated from the expected route, mother knew something was up.

“Why are you turning here?” she said. “This is not the right way.”

“I have a little surprise for you,” I said.

“You know how I hate surprises!”

When I pulled up in front of Patricia’s house, she came out the door in her coat with a big smile on her face. Her mother, who could pass for Marie Dressler, was right behind her in her bathrobe. She waved to us from the front porch.

“Would your mother like to go with us?” I asked Patricia as she climbed into the back seat. (Mother wasn’t about to give up her spot in the front.)

“No, she’s having a bad day,” Patricia said. “She’s got the twitches.”

“Patricia, I want you to meet my mother,” I said.

Patricia pulled herself forward on the seat back and reached awkwardly for mother’s hand with her left hand. Mother shook her hand and then looked at her own to see if anything had been left behind.

“I’m so happy to finally meet you, Mrs. Fenwick!” Patricia gushed. She seemed about to climb over the seat and crawl into mother’s lap.

“Hello,” mother said.

“You have a wonderful son!”

“I know.”

“And isn’t it a beautiful day to be out of the house?”

“I suppose so.”

Mother seemed disinclined to speak further, so Patricia shut up. I knew what mother was thinking and I was glad that Patricia didn’t know. I was hoping we could get through the day without mother calling her horse face.

At the cemetery when we were standing over my father’s grave and mother was fussing with the artificial flowers, Patricia wanted to know all the details about his death.

“Was it a painful death?” she asked.

“I’m afraid you’d have to ask him that,” I said. “He was in coma for the last ten days of his life.”

“The gophers have been digging again,” mother said.

“How did he die?” Patricia asked.

I mimed dying, the best I could standing up, but that’s not what she meant.

“Silly,” Patricia said.

“Do you mean of what did he die?”

“Yes.”

“He had a heart condition.”

Patricia seemed disappointed that there was so little drama surrounding his death. “Don’t you feel sorry for the people who kill themselves?” she said.

“That’s enough of the chatter,” mother said. “This is a solemn occasion.”

“What’s the occasion?” Patricia asked.

“Anytime you’re in a cemetery, it’s a solemn occasion,” I whispered.

“That’s my place there, right next to him,” mother said. “It’s waiting for me.”

“You’ll outlive us all,” I said.

“I’m going to be cremated,” Patricia said, “unless, of course, I die in a place where my body is never found, like outer space.”

When we were walking back down the hill to the car, Patricia took my hand and twined her fingers through mine. She giggled like an adolescent girl on her first date and whispered in my ear. Mother was right behind us taking it all in.

After I had dropped Patricia back at her house, mother said, “I don’t like her.”

“You haven’t given her a chance,” I said.

“It’s not what I see that I don’t like. It’s what I don’t see.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said.

“I think you should get rid of her.”

“I’m thinking of asking her to marry me.”

I continued to see Patricia on a regular basis. On the two or three nights a week I was gone, I knew mother knew I was with Patricia, but we didn’t talk about it. She filled in her time alone like the stalwart she was, with her lodge functions, TV programs, and phone conversations.

Patricia won a three-day, all-expenses-paid trip to a lakeside resort in the mountains for two. She asked me if I’d like to go with her and I said yes. I planned to propose to her in the romantic setting of the resort. When we returned from our three-day trip, we would announce our plans to be married. There was no turning back now.

“When I told mother I was going to be gone for three days, she said, “With her?”

“Yes,” I said. “With her.”

“I’m not going to let it upset me,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

“I’m not going to try to interfere because you are an adult now and you have your own life to live apart from me.”

“That’s very sensible of you,” I said.

She sniffled a little into her hanky but that was the end of it.

Patricia and I had a wonderful time in those three days. We indulged in lavish meals, swam in the lake, rode horses, hiked, and just got to know each other better. It was a sort of preview of what our future life together would be like. On our last night there, I asked her to marry me and she accepted.

I couldn’t wait to share my happy news with mother. I was sure she would overcome her reluctance and would come to love Patricia as much as I did. We would be sure to include her in all our future plans and would, of course, expect her to live with us.

When I got home on Sunday evening, I knew right away that something was wrong. All the lights were on, but there was an abandoned feel to the house as if it had not been lived in the whole time I was away. Mother wasn’t in the kitchen or in any of the downstairs rooms.

I found her upstairs in her bedroom. She was in her bed, wearing her pajamas, barely breathing. She had taken a bottle of sleeping pills and had timed it, apparently, so I would find her when I arrived home.

On the bedside table was the empty bottle, minus the lid. Underneath the bottle was a suicide note: “Dear Morgan,” the note read, “If I’m going to lose you, I don’t want to go on living. Love, Mother.”

I called an ambulance. They came and took her to the hospital, where emergency room doctors pumped her stomach. I sat beside her bed for twelve hours until she regained consciousness. When she woke up, she had a terrible headache and a sore throat.

When I told Patricia I couldn’t marry her and wasn’t going to see her again, she took it well. She said she never really believed me anyway. I didn’t know what she meant by that, but I didn’t press it any further.

Now when I go to the Food Giant, I use the express lane. If I have more than twelve items, I use one of the regular lanes, as long as it’s not Patricia’s. I keep my eyes down and don’t look her way. I’m sure it’s all for the best.

October 15, 2013October 15, 2013 by allen0997

Cat Scratch Fever

Cat Scratch Fever ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(This is a slightly expanded version of a story I posted earlier.)

When Miss Cudgel walked into the classroom, the laughter and loud talking stopped at once. She shot a stern look to the class at large to let them know they weren’t getting away with anything she didn’t know about, removed her sweater and draped it over the back of the chair. After sitting down at the desk, she waited a few seconds for absolute silence and began calling roll.

“Phillip Abbot.”

“Here,” Phillip said.

“Junie Adler.”

“Present, teacher.”

“Eli Babb.”

“Wah-wah-wah! Here, teacher!”

Everybody laughed.

“Very funny,” Miss Cudgel said. “Anything for a laugh. Who are you supposed to be today?”

“Nobody, teacher,” Eli said. “I was pretending to play the trombone.”

“Well, you play your imaginary trombone someplace else. The classroom is not the place for it.”

“Yes, teacher.”

“Wanda Baggett.”

“Here.”

“Clarabelle Beers.”

Silence.

“Clarabelle Beers!”

She looked up from the roll book, about midway to the back of the room and saw Clarabelle Beers in her usual seat with her head down and her face hovering over her desk. “Clarabelle, why don’t you answer me?” she said. “Can’t you hear me call your name?”

Veronica Stompers, sitting to the right of Clarabelle, raised her hand timidly.

“Yes, Veronica, what is it?” Miss Cudgel said.

“She wet her pants,” Veronica said. “There’s pee all over the floor.”

At this the class laughed uproariously. Everybody jumped out of their seats to see. There was nothing like somebody wetting their pants in class to spice up a dull winter morning.

“Sit down!” Miss Cudgel bellowed in her finest authoritarian manner. “What is this? You know not to get out of your seats without permission! We’re not a bunch of animals!”

“Oh, yes we are!” somebody said, but she didn’t know who said it so she chose to ignore it.

She stood up and walked back to where Clarabelle was sitting and bent over her. “Clarabelle,” she said softly. “Did you have a little accident?”

Clarabelle looked miserably into her eyes and nodded her head.

“Come with me and we’ll get you fixed up, then” she said.

She took Clarabelle to the nurse’s office down the hall, where she knew there was an abundance of paper towels.

The school nurse, Maxine Phegley, who was not really a bonafide nurse but a sort of medical assistant, was sitting at her desk reading a magazine. When she looked up and saw Miss Cudgel open the door and come into the room with Clarabelle, she quickly stowed the magazine out of sight.

“What’s this?” she asked, standing up.

“We had a little accident,” Miss Cudgel said.

While Miss Phegley went to get paper towels to help Clarabelle get herself dried off, Miss Cudgel went to summon the janitor to come with his mop to clean the mess up off the floor in the classroom. When she returned to the nurse’s office, Clarabelle was snuffling into a paper towel held to her face.

“I’m cold,” Clarabelle said.

“I’m afraid her clothes are soaked through,” Miss Phegley said. “I think you should send her home.”

“I can’t send her outside in wet clothes,” Miss Cudgel said. “It’s five degrees outside. She’ll freeze to death.”

“Well, call her mother, then.”

“You wait here, dear,” she said to Clarabelle, “and I’ll go downstairs to the principal’s office and get your mother on the phone.”

She asked the secretary to get the phone number for the Beers family. When she called the number and got the busy signal, she waited two minutes and tried again. Still the busy signal.

She went back upstairs and informed Miss Phegley that she would drive Clarabelle home herself, in her own car, to get into some dry clothes. They would be back as soon as they could.

“Would you mind,” she asked Miss Phegley, “to sit in on my class and make sure everybody behaves until I get back? Tell them to read in their social studies book the chapter on Peru. Take down the names of anybody who thinks of it as a play period and doesn’t do what they’re supposed to do.”

“Just as you say,” Miss Phegley said.

Miss Cudgel helped Clarabelle into her coat and led her outside to the parking lot. She opened the passenger-side door for Clarabelle, thinking vaguely about the pee on her car seat, and then got in herself.

“Where do you live, Clarabelle?” she asked.

“We live out in Scraptown,” Clarabelle said. She had brightened considerably outside of school.

Miss Cudgel sighed but didn’t say anything. How could she not have known that Clarabelle lived in Scraptown? If she had ever given it a thought, she would have known.

Scraptown was on the southern edge of town, across the railroad tracks near the sewage processing plant. It was where the poorest people lived, the ignorant and hopeless of the world. The one thing the people in Scraptown could do properly, Miss Cudgel thought as she jolted her car over the ruts in the road, was have lots of children they were in no manner prepared to take care of.

The Beers home was the last dwelling in Scraptown, a miserable little gray square of a house set on a hill, surrounded by winter scrub and an assortment of car and major-appliance parts.

“You can pull in there, by the fence,” Clarabelle said.

It hardly seemed like a driveway, but Miss Cudgel turned off into a little scooped-out space that had been washed away by the rain just big enough for a car.

Clarabelle ran on up to the house with Miss Cudgel behind her. When Clarabelle came to the front door, she stood aside and waited. Miss Cudgel knocked, expecting a slatternly, fag-smoking mother to answer the door, but instead it was answered by a frizzy-haired girl in her teens.

“Who are you?” the girl said.

“I’m Miss Cudgel, Clarabelle’s third-grade teacher.”

“Did something happen to Clarabelle?”

“Here I am!” Clarabelle said, coming around behind Miss Cudgel.

“Clarabelle had an accident at school and she needs a clean change of clothes,” Miss Cudgel said. “I’m going to wait for her and then take her back.”

The girl seemed hardly to care, but she stood aside for Miss Cudgel to enter.

“Are you Clarabelle’s sister?” Miss Cudgel asked.

“I’m Rosalie,” the girl said.

“Is it all right if I sit down?”

“Sure.”

She sat down on a sofa the color of mold.

“What kind of accident did Clarabelle have?” Rosalie asked.

“I went my pants!” Clarabelle said proudly.

“Oh, brother!” Rosalie said. “Anything for attention.”

Clarabelle disappeared into the back part of the house.

“She needs a bath, too,” Miss Cudgel offered.

“Take a bath, CB!” Rosalie yelled.

“Shouldn’t you be in school?” Miss Cudgel asked, smiling to soften the question.

“Well, ordinarily I would be,” Rosalie said, “but my mother is in the hospital with cat scratch fever, and while she’s away I have to stay home and take care of Winchell.”

“Who’s Winchell?”

“He’s my brother.”

“Too young to go to school?”

“He’s twelve.”

“Well, why…”

“He’s retarded and doesn’t go to school. He used to go to retarded school but he flunked out.”

“Where is he now?”

“He’s in his room. I gave him a pill to quiet him down. Would you like a beer?”

“No, I…”

“My mother says I should always offer visitors a beer.”

“We have to be getting back to school as soon as Clarabelle finishes dressing.”

“Before you came,” Rosalie said, “I was sitting here by myself wondering and wondering. Do you think I ought to get married?”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“I think you should finish school before you think about marriage.”

“That’s what everybody says, but I don’t think I’ll wait that long. My boyfriend wants me to marry him and he’s not going to wait years for me. He’ll find him another girl if I make him wait that long.”

“Is he a classmate of yours at school?”

Rosalie laughed. “No,” she said. “He doesn’t go to school. He’s twenty-one. His name is Ricky. Don’t you think that’s a cute name for a boy?”

“Does your mother know about him?”

Rosalie laughed loudly, throwing her head back. “She’d steal him away from me if she thought she could!”

Finally Clarabelle came out of the back room, wearing a stiff corduroy dress three or four sizes too big for her and a knit cap with all her lank blond hair tucked inside. “I got dry,” she said, “and I took a bath, too!”

“That’s the first one in about a month, isn’t it?” Rosalie said.

As Miss Cudgel and Clarabelle were going out the door to go back to school, Miss Cudgel said to Rosalie, “It was nice talking to you.”

“Yeah,” Rosalie said. “You too. I’ll invite you to my wedding. Haw-haw-haw!”

When they were on the highway headed back to town, Miss Cudgel looked away from the road to Clarabelle and said, “Somebody needs to speak to you and I suppose it might as well be me since your mother is, um, in the hospital.”

Clarabelle looked solemnly at her, believing she was about to be scolded.

“I won’t be able to do this again,” Miss Cudgel said. “Bring you home to change your clothes, I mean. This has disrupted everybody’s morning, including Miss Phegley’s. You’re supposed to go to the bathroom before school starts in the morning or during recess. If for some reason you don’t go during recess and you have to go when you’re in class, come and tell me and I’ll let you go. Please don’t sit there in class and let it build up until you can’t hold it in any longer and it comes out on its own!”

“Are you mad at me?” Clarabelle asked.

“Of course not.”

“Could we stop someplace and get a hamburger?”

“I’m afraid not. They’re waiting for us back at school. Are you hungry?”

“Yeah.”

Miss Cudgel looked at her watch. “It’s almost lunchtime,” she said. “You have your lunch money, don’t you?”

“No.”

“When the lunch bell rings, go down to the lunchroom and get yourself a good lunch. Some roast beef and mashed potatoes. Cooked carrots. Tell the head hairnet to put it on Miss Cudgel’s tab. Can you remember that?”

“The head hairnet.”

“That’s right.”

“I like you, Miss Cudgel,” Clarabelle said.

Miss Cudgel turned her eyes away from the road for a moment to smile at Clarabelle. That’s when she hit the icy patch that she should have slowed down for. The car spun around two times like a carnival thrill ride and slipped rearward into the ravine that could not be seen from the road.

October 2, 2013October 2, 2013 by allen0997

Lola Fenwick

Jasper Dill Loves Lola Fenwick ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp

(This is a slightly expanded version of a story I posted in January 2013.)

A woman in a trench coat and a stylish hat ran down a city street in the rain, ably but not fast in high-heeled shoes. When she came to a certain apartment building, she ducked inside, stopping just inside the door to shake the water off her coat.

“Elevator’s busted, Miss Fenwick,” the clerk said from behind the desk. “I’m afraid it’s the stairs tonight.”

She gave the man a tense smile and hesitated for only a moment before crossing the lobby to the stairs. She nearly fell on the first step but caught hold of the railing and righted herself. The clerk turned around and watched her until she was out of sight up the stairs. He smiled but there was no telling what the smile meant. It could have meant that he knew something she didn’t know but was about to find out.

When she came to the sixth floor, she wasn’t out of breath from running up the stairs, but she had an anxious look on her face. She went along the deserted hallway to the door she wanted and inserted the key into the lock and opened the door. She stepped into the darkened room and turned on a lamp.

“Hello, Lola,” a man’s voice said.

She whirled around, drawing in a sharp breath, and faced the man. “Oh!” she said. “It’s you!”

“Glad to see me?” he asked with a devilish grin.

“I thought you were…” Everybody thought you were…”

“Dead?” he asked. “No, I’m not dead. I’m very much alive and I’ve come back to pick up where we left off.”

Music began faintly in the background and swelled dramatically. With the two of them standing there looking at each other, not speaking and not moving, the picture slowly faded to black.

Dorothy switched off the TV before the commercials began and turned to Jasper. “I knew something like that was going to happen,” she said.

“How did you know?” Jasper asked.

“Oh, the signs were all there,” she said. “The mysterious phone calls. The anonymous letter. I knew Palmer was alive all the time.”

“You did not! You couldn’t have known!”

“Well, anyway, our Lola is certainly in a fix now!”

“He’s going to take that money she has saved for her nephew’s eye operation, I just know it.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know about the money.”

“Of course, he knows! Why else would he come back from the dead?”

“Maybe he really loves her.”

“Bah! He doesn’t know the meaning of the word. He’ll only use her to get what he wants and then run out on her.”

“Just when she was all ready to marry Dr. Blake.”

“Well, she can’t marry Dr. Blake now unless she wants to commit bigamy.”

“I shudder to think what Dr. Blake will do when he finds out that Palmer isn’t really dead and has come back to torment poor Lola again. You know what a temper he has!”

“I hope he kills the son of a bitch,” Jasper said.

“Oh, I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow to see what’s going to happen,” Dorothy said.

“Today is Friday. You’ll have to wait until Monday.”

“Oh, dear! I wish I could just snap my fingers and make it one o’clock Monday afternoon.”

“Wishing your life away, you cluck.” he said.

Dorothy had to go downtown to do some shopping, so Jasper went upstairs to his bedroom and closed the door. He took off his shoes and lay down on the bed and covered up with an afghan. In a few minutes he was asleep.

He slept much longer than he intended and when he awoke it was early evening. He wondered if Dorothy was back from shopping yet. As he yawned and started to get up from the bed, he realized there was somebody else in the room with him.

“Hello, darling,” a woman’s voice said.

He turned sharply toward the voice and saw Lola Fenwick from To Live, To Love stand up from the chair in the corner and walk toward him in her stiletto heels.

“How did you get in here?” he asked. He knew it was a stupid thing to say but it was the first thing that came into his head.

“I’ve been here all along,” she said.

She smiled indulgently with those ruby lips of hers. She was dressed in a stunning wool dress of a tawny color, showing her trim waist and large breasts. He could smell her perfume that smelled like the lilac bush his mother had in the yard when he was a boy.

“Has Dorothy come home yet?” he asked. “She’s got to see this!”

“Now don’t worry about her. She and I had a long talk while you were asleep. I gave her a nice drink and a pill and she’s sound asleep in her bedroom.”

“I’ve been watching you on To Live, To Love for eight years. You’re more real to me than anybody I know.” He realized as he spoke these words that he had been in love with her almost from the first moment he saw her.

“I know, darling. That’s why I’m here.”

“Darling,” he said. “I’ve imagined many times, by some sort of magic, being able to hear you call me that.”

“Now, I don’t want to rush you, but there isn’t much time and we’re going to have to get a move on. They’ll be here any minute.”

“Who will be? Is it that son of a bitch Palmer Belvedere?”

“Yes, him, and all my other past husbands, the good and the bad.”

“But what can we do?”

“I want you to take me away from here before something terrible happens.”

“All right, but where to?”

“I’m thinking Mexico.”

“Mexico! But what about Dorothy?”

“She’ll be fine without you. She has often wished that you would go away and leave her in peace.”

“I’ve always wanted to see Mexico, and with you! I must be dreaming!”

“Now, please hurry and get dressed! You don’t need to worry about packing a bag. We’ll buy what we need when we get to where we’re going. I’ll call a taxi and will be waiting for you downstairs.”

“All right, dearest,” he said.

When he went downstairs, she was waiting for him by the front door in her mink coat. She was more lovely than Kim Novak and Rhonda Fleming put together. He felt a thrill that he hadn’t felt in at least twenty years. She took him by the arm and they went out and got into the back seat of the waiting taxicab.

“Bus station,” she said to the driver, “and please hurry!”

“I figured we would go to the airport and fly down in a plane,” Jasper said.

“No, that’s just what they’ll be expecting us to do. They would never think I’d go on a bus. It’s the perfect dodge.”

“But isn’t it an awfully long way to go on the bus?”

“Several hundred miles. We’ll be there in no time.”

“Well, I’m sure you know best,” he said.

When they got to the bus station, they had to wait for over an hour for the southbound bus they wanted, so they went into the diner and sat at a secluded booth in the back and had a bite to eat.

“Oh, I do hope we can get on that bus before anybody tries to stop us,” she said.

“I think we’re fairly safe here,” he said, looking over his shoulder. “Nobody’s paying any attention to us.”

“There are spies everywhere!” she said.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll protect you.”

“Oh, I just knew you would.” She reached across the table and put her hand over his.

“Maybe I should call Dorothy and tell her where I am,” he said.

“Now, don’t you worry about a thing,” she said. “I took care of all that while you were asleep.”

“You didn’t kill her, did you?”

She laughed the tinkling little laugh that he loved so well. “I can tell when you’re not being serious,” she said. “No, I didn’t kill her. I have some scruples, you know.”

“But what about Dr. Blake? He’s expecting you to marry him. He needs your help with the life-saving serum he’s working on.”

“The marriage to Dr. Blake is off, I’m afraid. When I told him last night that we were finished, he threatened to kill me.”

“He’ll never find you, dearest.”

“You’re sweet,” she cooed.

“I’ve seen you through all your marriages, your miscarriages, your near-drowning, your trial for murder, your brain operation, your kidnapping, your amnesia, your car going over the cliff, your alien abduction and your stint in women’s prison. You always look stunning, no matter what terrible thing you’re going through, but I have to tell you that you have never looked any lovelier than you do right now.”

She looked across the table at him and there were tears in her eyes. There was nothing she could say that was equal to the moment. He thought he might be able to lean across the table and manage a little kiss, but the departure of their bus was announced over the loud speaker.

He took her by the hand and led her to the last seat in the back of the bus where nobody would look at them. She slipped off her mink coat and he put it on the overhead rack for her and sat down beside her. She slipped her arm through his and put her head on his shoulder.

They rode all night without getting out of their seats, talking little and sleeping fitfully. When he awoke and felt the warmth of her body against his, he knew he was as happy as he had ever been in his life. This was, perhaps, his last chance at happiness and he intended to take it.

He thought about their coming life in Mexico spread out before them like a sun-drenched dream. They would lie in the sun to the accompaniment of the splashing surf, drinking exotic fruity drinks out of coconut shells. He would rub suntan oil on her shoulders, and everywhere they went people would admire her beauty and envy him for being her man.

Just as the sun was coming up, the bus stopped for a fifteen-minute rest stop. Lola was still sleeping, using her mink coat as a pillow. Jasper stood up so as not to disturb her and tiptoed away to the front of the bus. Most of the other passengers were sleeping, unaware that there was a celebrated international beauty in their midst, slipping away to Mexico with her man.

He stepped off the bus and was making his way to the little building that served as gas station, restaurant and bus stop, when two men came from around the front end of the bus and stopped in front of him.

“Are you Jasper Dill?” the larger of the two asked.

“Who wants to know?”

He pulled a badge from his pocket and flashed it in Jasper’s face. “I’m Officer Harry Holt and this is Officer Tom Green.”

“Very impressive, I’m sure,” Jasper said.

“We have to take you in, sir.”

“In where? For what?”

“I’m not an information bureau. We’re just supposed to take you in.”

“If you don’t tell me, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Well, completely off the record, now. When your wife ends up poisoned to death and you take it on the lam, it looks like you might have had something to do with it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. My wife is perfectly fine.”

“That’s a good one! It’s a little stale, though. You need some fresh material.”

“What if I refuse to go?”

“We’ll take you anyway. We’ll hurt you if we have to but we’d rather not.”

“There’s been some terrible mistake.”

“Well, if that’s the case, you can get it all straightened out when you get to police headquarters and then you can go on your pathetic little way.”

“Wait a minute,” Jasper said. “I have a traveling companion, asleep on the bus. I can’t just go off and leave her without telling her what’s happened!”

Officer Harry Holt considered for a moment. “All right,” he said, “you can go tell her, but I’ll have to come with you.”

Feeling as if his heart and lungs had been pulled from his body, Jasper stepped up the three little steps onto the bus and walked down the aisle with the officer close behind him. When he came to the back of the bus, Lola wasn’t there. No one was there. He looked for the mink coat but it wasn’t there, either.

The nearest person was a Mexican, asleep several seats away. Jasper grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him roughly awake.

“Where is the lovely young woman that was sitting with me in the back of the bus?” he said. “She was wearing a mink coat! You couldn’t miss her!”

The Mexican sat up straight, alarmed. “I see no one,” he said, holding up his hands as though he would be struck. “No one there. Seats empty. My eyes they are not so good.”

His legs failing him, Jasper sat down heavily on the nearest seat. Officer Holt pulled him to his feet and led him off the bus to the back seat of the patrol car. As they sped away, Jasper craned his neck around to get a last glimpse of the bus. He began to cry, not for himself, but for the lovely Lola. He was leaving her and he didn’t even have a chance to tell her goodbye.

September 29, 2013January 9, 2014 by allen0997