Mother-in-Law

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Merv turned on her then, one hand clamping down on her bony shoulder, the other rooting itself in the thin hair on top of her head. Her endless carping turned into screams, beautiful screams as the muscles in his wrists and arms and back flexed; and when her head tore loose from her neck, it did so with a glorious meaty rending sound and a fierce spatter of hot blood.

"Well?" she added, in her finest buzzsaw screech -- the woman was old and frail, but still had a pair of lungs on her. Merv sighed inwardly as his fondest daydreams once more made way for reality. Not that Julia wasn't a hell of a woman, better than a man like him deserved, but goddamn, her mother...

"No ma'am, Mrs. Feldman," he replied -- seven years he and Julia had been married, but God forbid he refer to his mother-in-law by her good Christian name; nossir, that was one liberty that Mervin J. Kincade was not in a position to take. "I most definitely am going to do that first thing tomorrow -- just as soon as the boss comes back from vacation, y'see."

"Hmph," the old bat replied. She craned her neck forward, glaring up at him as though expecting to skewer him with just that look in her eye... that haughty you-never-deserved-my-daughter look that he didn't know how he had managed to put up with this long. That, in fact, he couldn't put up with anymore. And wouldn't. The force of his clenched hand smashing into her face was enough to slam her back against the wall; he pinned her there with the other hand, and kept punching, and punching, and punching. She wasn't giving him any look, now, not through the welter of blood that had previously been her face.

Merv blinked. "Are you even listening to me, Mervin?" she snapped, hands on hips, practically sneering at him. "You'd best get your act together, young man, or my Julia may just start realizing just what a mistake she made in marrying you -- "

"Yes ma'am," Merv interrupted, speaking quickly so he could maybe get out of this conversation before she could get on his case for that, too. "I'm real sorry, ma'am, but I promised I'd help Julia set up for dinner, and you know how I hate to disappoint her."

He hurried out of the room, though not quite quickly enough to avoid hearing her mutter something about how it was already too late for that.

The story about promising to help Julia was, of course, a lie; but she was pleased enough when he showed up to help carry things to the dining room table. They all managed to sit down and start eating with a minimum of snark... and then the smoke detector in the kitchen went off.

Julia jumped up from the table. "Oh, my pie!" she exclaimed, and rushed back through the kitchen door. They could hear her in there, pulling open the oven door and muttering over its contents.

A flicker of movement caught at the corner of Merv's eye, and he felt another of those stifled sighs coming on. Mrs. Feldman was taking in a deep breath, no doubt to fuel her latest nagfest at his expense. He started to turn toward her --

-- and froze.

She was choking.

The old bat hadn't bothered to actually finish chewing before starting in on him again, and now she was actually choking on something.

For a moment he sat there, listening to his wife's movements in the next room, and watching the weak struggles of his mother-in-law across the table.

Finally he rose from his chair, set his napkin down carefully beside his plate, and headed into the kitchen to see what he could do to help.



Are mothers-in-law really that shrill in real life? I realize that in the wacky wacky sitcoms and whatnot they are awful harridans that exist only to torment and humiliate their put-upon sons-in-law (assuming we're talking about the wife's mother, which is the case in the comic). But does that actually bear out in reality? I can't really speak from experience, seeing as I don't have a wife; but, I mean, people aren't nearly as simple as TV tends to make them out to be, so I'm thinking that this relationship is probably generally more nuanced.

Also: every character name in this one is lifted from a webcomic which, in its original incarnation, was one of my favorite Keenspot titles back in the early days of that particular collective. This is because I randomly decided to name the husband Merv and then found it amusing to go with the theme. A delicious ham sandwich to anyone who spots the ref! (Void in the state of Idaho.)

Devices

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"But Mr. Phillips?" Stevie held up his own compass, a birthday present from his parents. "I think -- "

"Bob," the scoutmaster replied, still wearing the little smile he'd had on for almost this entire trip. "Call me Bob, sport, remember?"

"Um. Bob." Stevie looked again at his compass. "I think actually camp is south of here."

"What, sport?" the scoutmaster smiled. "Let me see that." He snatched the compass away and glanced at it briefly. "Nope, you're mistaken." The compass disappeared into his pocket.

"Hey -- " Stevie cried.

"Your compass must be broken, sport," Phillips replied cheerily. "Come on, boys! We've got maybe an hour before we get back to camp, so let's keep at it!"

"He said that an hour ago," Jed muttered, and several of the other boys nodded. None of them had any idea where they were, though -- especially now that Stevie's compass was gone -- so they pushed on.

Their usual scoutmaster was Kevin Lee's dad, a wisecracking used-car salesman who they all deeply admired for his ready willingness to use the word "fuck". Mr. Lee had gotten sick right before the camping trip, but rather than calling the whole thing off (thereby crushing the months-long dreams of a dozen ten-year-old boys), somehow a substitute scoutmaster had been procured. Nobody was sure how that had worked -- Kevin said he thought maybe his dad had asked around some of the other troops in the area -- but they did know that when they'd arrived at the state park Saturday morning, a cheerfully smiling stranger had been waiting for them. The smiling stranger had greeted them all, introduced himself as "Bob Phillips -- just call me Bob", chatted with their parents; then he had gathered up the boys and led them all into the woods. They'd quickly set up their tents at the campsite, and then "Bob" had announced that it was time for a hike.

Now it was Saturday night coming on, and they had been walking in what felt like circles for a couple of hours.

"'Just a little farther, boys,'" Matt said from his place near the back of the troop, mocking the scoutmaster's voice and constant smile. "'I got no idea where I am, but I figure you're too stupid to know that, so I'll just keep saying that it's -- '"

"Just a bit more now, boys," the scoutmaster's voice floated back to them. "The place we're going is just... over... this hill."

Kevin and Matt looked at each other. "The place we're going?" Kevin asked. "Weren't we heading back to the campsite?" Matt shrugged uneasily, looking up at the sky. It was nearly dark in the forest by now.

By the time "Bob" led them into a clearing and announced that they had reached their destination, most of the boys were too exhausted to argue. They all set to work putting down their sleeping bags, except for Wally, who had left his in his tent back at the campsite; Wally limped over to the scoutmaster, explaining the problem and trying his tired ten-year-old best not to cry.

The scoutmaster's calm little smile never faltered as he put a heavy arm around the boy's shoulders. "That's all right, sport," he replied cheerfully. "You can bunk with me."

Thanks, Mom

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The old woman's eyes brightened, and she clasped her hands together. "Oh, how nice to see you! Why, it's been so long since you came to visit --" Then the smile slipped from her face. "You... are here to visit with me, aren't you, dear?"

The younger woman shrugged, not actually making eye contact. "Let's go on a trip, ma."

The old woman sagged. "Oh, Megan..."

"C'mon, ma, it'll be fun." The younger woman -- Megan -- reached into her purse and pulled something out. A roadmap and a magnifying glass. "You know how I hate tryin' ta navigate while I'm drivin'."

"Oh, but Megan." The old woman resettled her glasses on her face. "Why don't we have a nice evening here at the Home? They're serving meatloaf tonight, and -- and there's a new jigsaw puzzle I haven't done yet, and..." She trailed off, only looking at her daughter, who was still looking at nothing in particular. "Please, dear, it's been so long since we've visited together."

Megan rolled her eyes and glanced at her watch. "You done, ma?" She finally looked at the other woman long enough to shove the map into her hands. "Come on, I gotta be in Roca Escalante by nine or I lose my deposit." She looked around, nose wrinkling. "And I wanna get outta here. This place smells like a damn diaper."

"You did pick it for me, dear," the old woman murmured; but she was already being overruled, Megan's strong grip on her arm propelling her toward the door.

"Now let's get goin', huh ma? You get me where I'm goin', an' I'll drop ya back off on th' way back. Teamwork, right?"

"I suppose," the old woman answered quietly, beginning to actually follow her daughter instead of just being dragged along. "Although... I don't suppose we could at least eat something this time?"

Megan snorted. "Christ, ma, I'm not made of money."


Ordinarily I don't do the Sundays -- in fact, I think I never have before, ever -- but this one just spoke to me. Who says the mom actually wants to be in that car?

Left At The Railroad Tracks

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The man drove hunched over the wheel, knuckles bulging yellowly beneath the skin of his hands. He cast the occasional quick glance at the truck's passenger seat, but mainly he kept his eyes forward. He had the headlights off, and the last streetlight had been about twenty miles back.

"Just a little farther," he muttered yet again. "Almost there. Almost there."

The boy stirred fitfully on the seat beside the man. It'd been a trick to get him into the vehicle with his wrists and ankles all bound up together like that, but once that was done, he hadn't moved much. A couple of blows to the head with a chunk of wood had helped. Now the boy barely moved but for the occasional twitch, or a flutter of lids over unfocused brown eyes. It'd been those eyes that had caught the man's attention in the first place.

"I guess you didn't want to play anymore," the man muttered, as he turned from the country road onto an even smaller one. "And that's fine. That's fine. But if playtime's over, then everyone has to take their toys and go home." The man glanced over at the boy again. "Time to put my toys away."

Woods grew up thick to either side of the road as they traveled on. At last the man slowed to a stop. He flicked his headlights on briefly, and the set of railroad tracks crossing the road reflected dimly back.

"Left," he said to himself, turning the truck in that direction. "Left. Left at the railroad tracks."

There was a faint path through the woods by the tracks, where a set of wheelruts could be seen if you knew enough to look; he followed them now, the truck bouncing along the uneven ground. A tree branch snapped against the passenger window, and the boy moaned thickly. His eyes opened fully for the first time since the trip had started.

"Hey," he said now, his voice fearful, but not panicked yet. "Hey, mister. Please. I just want to go home."

The man glanced over at the boy. Those were really wonderful brown eyes; dark, deep, promising all sorts of secrets. The man had learned lots of secrets from the boy during all those lovely days down in the basement. The boy had called for help, of course -- they all tried that, all the boys he had played with since discovering this game -- but to no avail. The man lived far from any neighbors, alone but for the playmates he would sometimes smuggle home in his truck.

"Please, mister," the boy tried again. "I won't tell anyone. Just... just let me go." He swallowed. "Right here is fine, even."

The man didn't answer, and the boy seemed to give up, falling silent again. When they reached the abandoned quarry, though, he tried one more time. "I just want to go home," he said to the man, and now he began to cry. "Why won't you let me go home?"

He struggled when the man tried to get him out of the truck, of course, but a couple swings of the tire iron and the boy went limp. The man dragged him to the quarry and sent him tumbling over the edge. The boy's body hit the still water with a loud splash. It was too dark for the man to see, but he imagined the boy sinking, falling to rest alongside all the other boys that the man had played with over the years.

"All done," he murmured, returning to the truck. "All cleaned up from playtime." He swung the truck around until it was pointing back toward the trail through the woods, and smiled as he started driving back toward the road. "Maybe I'll find some new toys to play with tomorrow."


Okay, so let me explain.

The comic shows a dog-man and a dog-dog. There is an obvious imbalance of power and of -- for lack of a better word -- humanity between the two of them. Why is this? Why does the dog-man get to drive the dog-dog around wherever he wants? Why should the dog-dog be subservient to the dog-man?

If you translated them into a human-man and a human-boy, what kind of relationship might you wind up with?

Serial killer and hapless victim, that's what.

See? It makes perfect sense!

Biofuel

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Looked like the backyard hummingbird feeder needed a refill again. Well, that was easily enough done.

Ben stepped outside to grab the bottle from the feeder, then carried it into the garage, humming idly. He rinsed it out in the sink by the clothes washer, letting the hot water run for a couple minutes before adding a bit of bleach to kill any mold. Once the bleach was rinsed out, he stood the bottle on an old towel while he fetched his nectar solution from a shelf.

His ma had used a homemade mixture of sugar and water, boiled and stored in the freezer till needed; for a while after she'd died and left him the house and its hummingbird population, he'd tried various commercial solutions. Eventually, though, he'd tired of the results those gave him. After a few tries he'd come up with the mixture he used now, which had the benefit of being easy to whip up while also managing to not attract any bugs along with the birds. Ma's old sugar-water do had always wound up getting pillaged by ants.

Ben half-filled the feeder bottle from the gallon jug of nectar solution -- almost empty, now, he'd have to make some more soon -- then put the jug back and carefully carried the bottle back out to the backyard. Still humming, he screwed the bottle back onto the feeder, then stood back and admired his handiwork. He turned to go, and something went "crunch" under his shoe. He looked down.

"Heh," he said, scraping dead hummingbird off his shoe. "Guess you just couldn't help yourself, huh, little guy?" He surveyed the lawn around the feeder, where maybe a dozen dead hummingbirds lay in various stages of rot. "Was it tasty, fellas? I sure hope it was." He sneered. "Little bastards."

He went back into the house, careful to take off his shoes before entering. "Almost out of nectar..." he muttered to himself as he walked into the kitchen. Stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like a cow was the beginnings of a grocery list; eggs, milk, toilet paper, Hamburger Helper. Ben rummaged through a drawer until he found a pencil, then walked over to the list.

Antifreeze, he wrote.

Ben grinned. "Little bastards," he said again.

Mom Said

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From the patient record for JESSUP,TIMOTHY

Progress note by Dr. Major, MD

Patient is a 43 y.o male admitted to surgical unit after presenting to emergency department with acute back pain and concussion coincident with recent fall. The history is provided primarily by patient's wife.

The current episode started today. Onset was result of a fall from roof of the patient's home. Pain is continuous and is described as sharp and extremely severe. Pain is worsened by activity.

Patient was put on saline glucose and #3 morphine drip upon arrival in emergency department. Patient reported decreased pain upon receipt of morphine, but has become disoriented and semiconscious. Recommend remaining on #3 only until admitted to med surg, at which point pt should be switched to #2 morphine drip.

Episode history as provided by pt's wife is as follows. Pt's wife reports pt's injury is due to a fall from the roof of their house. Pt was attempting to adjust exterior television antenna when he lost his footing on the roof. Pt landed on his back on concrete patio. Wife reports that pt lost consciousness briefly, but regained it before ambulance arrived. Pt reported pain at that time as extremely severe.

Tentative diagnosis at this time is spinal cord injury at multiple sites with possible spinal fractures. Consulting surgeon scheduled for examination and probable surgery at 1300 hours.

Prior history of back pain: none.

Prior history of falls: none.

Diet: NPO.

Activity: strict bed rest.

Next round on pt scheduled for 0800 tomorrow.

Bank

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"But I spent it all, mommy," Billy whined. "I got some candy an' some gum an' bet Franklin fifty cents he couldn't eat this worm I found."

Monica paused in the act of folding the laundry, staring at her son. "You bet him what?"

Billy shrugged. "It was a big worm. I didn't think he'd really do it."

"Okay, fine," Monica replied, shuddering. "It doesn't matter how you spent your allowance, it's still gone. You'll have to wait until next Saturday."

"But I want more money now! Joel's got a Grimlock action figure he doesn't want anymore an' he says he'll give it to me for only three dollars!"

Monica dropped a clean towel onto his head, and smiled at his outraged squawk. "Funny thing, I seem to remember your allowance being only two dollars a week."

"Yeah, well." Billy gazed studiously down at the towel as he balled it up in his hands. "I was kinda hopin' you'd give me a little bit extra, too."

"Oh really." She reached out to tousle his hair. "Maybe I should ask my boss for a little extra money, too, if it works that way."

Billy gave her a wide-eyed look. "So... no money?"

"Not a cent till Saturday, champ."

"Aww, mom," Billy replied, but he left easily enough. Monica chuckled to herself, then paused.

Maybe he'd given up a little too easil --

CRASH!, went something in Billy's room, and Monica hurried there to see if her suspicions were correct. They were. She groaned.

"Billy, sweetie, your piggy bank does have a removable plug in the bottom."

He looked down at the hammer in his hand, the coins scattered amid ceramic shards on his desk; then he looked back up at her. "Oops?" he replied.



I've had about five piggy banks throughout my life.

Every single one had a plug on the bottom.

Has anyone in the real world ever actually had to smash one to get at the money inside?

Slow to Adapt

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He reached out one gnarled hand to fiddle with the television. "Now, let's watch some TV, hmm? I think Happy Days is on." He grabbed for the knob, and seemed surprised to find instead a row of sleek buttons. "You like Happy Days. Why won't the channel change?" He burst into tears.

"Okay, Mr. Dalton, okay," the nurse said soothingly, taking his arm and gently leading him back to his bed. "It's all right. I can change the channel if you like."

Wyatt raised one withered old arm to scrub at his eyes before lying down. "All right. At least I got that damned VCR clock fixed."

"I know, Mr. Dalton." The nurse pulled his blanket up over him.

"I wanted to tell Sara. Where's Sara?" He looked panicked. "Sara?!"

The nurse took his shoulders as he started to rise. "She'll be here soon, Mr. Dalton. Just rest for now."

"She'd better get here soon," Wyatt grumbled, though he allowed himself to be put back to bed. "She's going to miss Happy Days."

The nurse smiled at him, patted the cover over his spindly chest, and let herself quietly out of the room. As soon as the door clicked shut behind her, she slumped.

"Wyatt giving you trouble?" asked one of the other nurses as he passed.

"No, it's okay." Wyatt's nurse put a hand to her head briefly. "Just my first day on the job. He's kind of... draining."

The other nurse nodded sympathetically. "You'll get used to it, a little. If that's any consolation."

Wyatt's nurse uttered a humorless little laugh. "Not really."

"Yeah."

She grabbed a cup of coffee from the lounge, then headed back to Wyatt's room. He had moved back to the TV, and was doing something to the VCR again.

"Look, Sara! I figured out the clock on the..." He turned to her, and his face fell. "Sara?" he added doubtfully.

"She's not here," the nurse said gently. "Why don't we get you back in bed, Mr -- "

"I don't want to go to bed!" Wyatt snapped. "I'm tired of bed! And I want Sara!"

The nurse tried to smile again. "She'll be here soon, Mr. Dalton. And if you don't want to rest, why don't we watch TV?"

"All right," Wyatt replied, reaching once more for a nonexistent knob on the television. The nurse quickly stopped him before he could get upset again, then picked up the remote and began flicking through the channels.

"No, no," Wyatt muttered irritably. "None of these shows are any good. Bunch of junk. Is Happy Days on?"

"I don't think so," the nurse replied doubtfully.

"Hmph."

She left the TV on some nature show; Wyatt was still sulking, but she preferred that to more tears. Or more questions about--

"Where's Sara?" Wyatt asked suddenly.

The nurse sighed. "She's not here, Mr. Dalton."

"I can see that. I'm not stupid." He glared at her from watery eyes. "But where is she?"

She's dead, the nurse thought to herself. She's been dead for three years, and they stopped telling you that because they couldn't bear to keep breaking your heart. Your wife's dead, you don't remember because you have Alzheimer's disease, and you're rotting away what's left of your life in a second-rate nursing home. "She's just stepped out, Mr. Dalton. She'll be back soon."

Wyatt smiled. "Good. She wouldn't want to miss Happy Days." His eyes lit up. "And maybe I can get the VCR clock set before she gets back, too. She's been on me about that for ages."

Smith-Corona

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Warren sighed as he extracted himself from the truck and carefully shut the door behind him. Damn thing was near rusted to pieces, and here he was driving all over creation for a typewriter ribbon. Of course, he hadn’t expected to have so much trouble actually finding the ribbon; but he’d already tried the Harpersville Office Depot, the Staples and Frederick’s Office Supply in Dillimore, and the Wal*Mart and other Office Depot in Blackwater Point, all with no luck. He was starting to worry he’d have to go up the city to find what he needed. There were over five thousand souls in Palomino Creek, and being surrounded by that many people always made Warren feel claustrophobic.

A puff of hot air hit him in the face as he passed through the sliding doors, and then he was in the air-conditioned cool of yet another store. He made his way toward the back wall, where a huge sign reading “OFFICE SUPPLIES” hung from the ceiling. Rows of computers and fax machines and other technological marvels seemed to glare at him disapprovingly as he sought out the customer service desk.

“Helpya?” muttered the bored-looking employee behind the counter. Warren tried to give him a friendly smile, but was stymied by merit of the man’s apparent unwillingness to look up from the computer in front of him. It looked like some kind of card game on there – poker, maybe, though whatever it was, Warren doubted this fellow was being employed to play it –

“Helpya?” the man repeated, interrupting Warren’s mental rambling. This time he deigned to glance up briefly before returning to the computer.

“Well, I.” Warren cleared his throat. “My Smith-Corona T34 needs a new ribbon, and –”

The employee looked up at him again, and something about the expression on his face made Warren falter. “This a joke, buddy?” he drawled. "We don’t sell beer here, and we don’t sell guns neither.”

Warren sighed, seeing the long drive to Palomino Creek ahead of him. “No, it’s a typewriter.”

“Uh huh. Got a lot of writing to do, buddy?”

“Yes,” Warren answered, brightening somewhat. Maybe he wouldn’t have to brave the big city after all…

“I got a recommendation for you, then,” the employee sneered. He pointed toward the aisle Warren had just walked through. “It’s not the nineteenth century anymore. Buy a goddamn computer.”

Warren sighed again. “Thank you anyway,” he said, and walked back out to his car. People these days, living crammed five thousand to a town, going in for all this strange new technology when they already had ways that worked just as well. He just didn’t know what the world was coming to.


Throughout most of my high school career, I did not have a computer; when it came time to write a paper, which was quite frequently in my honors English classes and not too seldom in any of the others, I had to use an electric typewriter that we’d picked up at Office Depot for a hundred bucks. It was extra-fun when we had to do a rough draft, submit it for peer evaluation, then “edit” it and bring in the final version… because while my classmates got to make their edits, print out their new versions, and go off to have fun, I got to sit down and type the entire thing over again. Good times.

These days I honestly cannot think of a good reason to stick with a typewriter instead of a computer. I guess some people really, really like the idea of having to type an entire document over just to correct a couple of typos.

Typewriter

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Oh, the typewriter?

I just dragged it in from the garage for a little project. Kind of a secret, really... oh, what the heck, I might as well tell you. But don't tell anyone else, all right? Eventually I'll want everyone to know, of course, but not quite yet. I'm still getting it off the ground.

Complexity.

That's what starts it, you see; all the complex things they can do with computers now, things that people couldn't even dream of a hundred years ago. Huge math problems, and genes, and whatnot. And all of it stored on computers. Think about that for a second -- how many tiny little bits of information there are. It's actually zeroes and ones, my nephew told me, and then they get translated into English. Like Morse code for computers. Ones and zeroes and zeroes and ones until there's enough to bury the whole human race in 'em. And that's just in one computer.

The problem is, you don't necessarily know where all the ones and zeroes go. Maybe you put a picture of your cat on the computer, and the ones and zeroes go somewhere in there. And then maybe you write to your sister on the e-mail, and in go all those zeroes and ones. And then your nephew puts on a game when he comes over to visit and the ones and zeroes just get all jammed in the middle somewhere. He explained it to me. The information isn't all in the order you put it there in; it's all broken up and mixed around because that's how the computer works. So all the ones and zeroes get all mixed up.

So how do you know just what the computer actually says inside?

What stops the numbers from lining up just so to unlock something that wasn't there before?

There's a lot of computers in the world, after all. Billions, I suppose. And every one of them with billions of zeroes and ones in nearly every combination. But there are some combinations that open locks that you just don't want to mess with, aren't there?

That's why I've got the typewriter out, and why I've been working so hard -- you can see what I've got so far in the drawer on the left there. I typed every copy myself. By hand. Because we can't trust computers or copier machines or all these new things -- we can't -- we're courting a fate worse than death if we do.

Yes, every copy's the same, or as close as I could manage. I think there's a couple thousand so far, even though that's not nearly enough. Every single man, woman and child in the world needs one of these flyers -- everyone has to know the danger we're in, and how close we might already be to unlocking Yog-Sothoth -- he is the gate -- he is the key --

Wait, where are you going?

Take my flyers with you!

Warn the world!

Little Pluggers

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"Goddamn little perverts!" Jeannie cried, hurling her tin of clothespins at the fleeing boys. It bounced off the leg of the youngest, who was trailing the pack, but the effort garnered nothing but a brief "ow!" for her troubles. Little bugger didn't even stumble, and all four children easily made their giggling escape. The fluttering bit of blue cloth in the grasp of the eldest was all too recognizable.

Jeannie sighed loudly, casting a jaundiced eye in the direction of the Martin house next door. All four of their boys were utter hellspawn, pure and simple. This was the second time this month that one of her bras had gone missing from her backyard clothesline, and even though she hadn't caught them at it till just now, she'd still known well enough who the little culprits were. Filthy monsters. Didn't they have an older sister to spy on?

Grumbling, Jeannie bent to pick up the basket of fresh laundry she'd dropped when she saw the boys at her clothesline, grateful at least that none of it had tumbled out to the ground. Then she remembered that the clothespins were still over by the hedge where she'd managed to peg one of the Martin spawn.

"And I'll do worse than that if I catch him again," she muttered as she began gathering up scattered clothespins. "Nothing like a good old-fashioned thirty-fifth-trimester abortion to brighten up the day."


I figure since I already did this from the one angle, I'd go ahead and try it from the other.

Damned little perverted children. Brookins and/or Fulcher, you are a filthy, filthy man and/or men.

Peek

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Sheriff Louie paused in the act of riding an imaginary horse across the backyard. "Now I gotcha!" he yelled, and plugged the grim outlaw Bad Bart with a few imaginary bullets.

The grim outlaw, for his part, seemed to be paying no notice to the little drama in which he was involved. He was kneeling in a manner wholly unbecoming to a corpse, hands pressed up against the wooden fence that separated their yard from the one next door, one eye glued to a knothole. The sheriff tried shooting him a few more times, then gave up in disgust.

"Hey, Bart, what are you -- "

The older boy whipped his head around and fixed Louie with a glare. "Shh!" he hissed, turning back to the fence.

Louie joined his brother at the fence, sitting down cross-legged beside him. "What are you doing?" he repeated in a loud whisper.

"'M watching Missus Lee be naked," Bart replied in the tone of voice often used to describe religious experiences.

Louie, for his part, merely sat there for a few moments, digesting this. Then he cocked his head. "Yeah?"

Bart nodded. "She's sittin' in a chair by her pool an' I think she's sleepin', and she's naked. All she's wearin' is just a little thing of underwear." He gave his little brother a meaningful look. "And not nothing on top."

"If she's got underwear on, she's not naked," Louie argued. Bart shrugged, his attention turned to the knothole again. After a second Louie raised up onto his knees. "Come on, Bart, I'm bored. Let's play some more."

"You can play stupid little kid games if you want," Bart replied, not looking at him. "But I don't wanna."

Stung, Louie stood up and backed away a few steps. "Fine," he replied; then, pitching his voice to a shout, "If you wanna look at Missus Lee be naked, go ahead!" He turned and pelted back to the house as from the other side of the fence came the sound of another set of footsteps, hurrying away across poolside concrete.

Home Security

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To Bill's surprise, the front door swung open as soon as he tried to put his key in the lock. He gave the knob a turn, and found it unlocked. "Um," he said. "Didn't you lock the door when we left?"

"Huh?"

He pushed on into the apartment, feeling his heart sink as he looked around at the chaos within. "Dammit, someone broke in! I can't believe this! The one time we get to take a vacation, and someone breaks in!"

Irene appeared in the doorway, and slapped a hand over her mouth as her eyes went wide. "Oh my god!" she choked out in a high-pitched voice. "My crystal!"

"Yeah, and the TV and DVD player," Bill replied grimly. "And probably just about everything else of value in the place -- they obviously wanted to be thorough." He groaned and ran his hands through his hair. "How the hell did they get in? We locked up on the way out!"

There was a pause, during which Irene's face colored. "Um," she said finally. "I didn't, um. Actually lock the front door."

Bill's hands dropped, and he looked at her with an expression of utter shock.

"I didn't figure we needed to!" she added hastily, face now bright red. "I mean, no one in this neighborhood's ever been burgled before..."

"Gnrfle!" Bill exclaimed incoherently, burying his head in his hands again.

Close At Hand

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He'd started out small, when he was younger. A few scribbles on the back of his hand when he was bored. Maybe he'd write something down on the palm so he could remember it later.

As he went through high school, either classes got more boring or his attention span just got shorter, because the patterns began to grow more complicated. Some days he would come home with ink all down his left arm, and since he tended to wear shorts, sometimes his legs would get the treatment as well. He did well in all his classes and behaved quite normally in all other ways, so while his ink-tattooing habit got him a lot of strange looks and a few trips to the school psychologist, it didn't really harm him any. Doodling, after all, is a common enough behavior; his choice of just where to doodle was the only peculiar note.

It was during his senior year of high school that the drawings reached their highest point of creativity. Jagged blocks and lines marched across his arms and legs, melding into graceful whorls and curves; they sometimes seemed almost to spell out messages in some unknown pictographic language. Every once in a while he would detail a fractal pattern in there somewhere, shapes splitting off into smaller versions of themselves, down into the most intricate levels of detail that he could get with a fine-point pen on skin. His art was a constant work in progress, for as older portions faded with time and soap and water, new drawings would take their place. He never considered himself an artist. Still, his skin was a canvas on which more than a few pens bled their last.

In college the patterns stopped. He was enrolled in the pre-law program at a fairly prestigious university; his classes were more interesting, now, or at least more challenging. There were other things to do besides doodle. By the end of his first semester, there was no sign that the ink had ever stained his skin at all.

He never considered himself an artist. But perhaps his life would have been a little more interesting if he had.

No Deal

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"Come on," Cal wheedled. "Every damn day y'come here with the best lunch, an' every day we all slog through stale peanut butter and cold soup while you're enjoyin' gor-may on-trays. Least ya could do is trade somethin' once in a while!"

Pausing in the act of unwrapping his sandwich, Shawn cast a glance at the older man. "So bring something else if you want a change. Nobody's stopping you."

"Well, see, that's just what my wife says," Oscar exclaimed, plopping his lunchbox on the table and sitting down across from them. "She figures if something she slapped together isn't good enough for me, then I can just feed myself." He winked at Shawn. "Most of us aren't still enjoying that first year of marriage, when everything is love an' kisses an' fancy lunches every day."

Shawn colored slightly, but said nothing.

"And she knows I can't cook, too," Oscar went on, with the air of one enjoying an old gripe. "Some people say they'd burn water; me, I'd burn salad. So it's what she makes, or the cafeteria... and anything's better than the cafeteria." He laughed heartily at that, then took a large bite of his own sandwich.

"Yer a lucky bastard, Shawn," Cal said with a grin. "A bastard who won't trade lunches, but still lucky."

Soap Opera

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They talked about it for years to come, in that town: how a perfectly respectable man, a successful businessman and a pillar of the community, had somehow managed to go completely mad without anyone noticing.

Perhaps it is unfair to say that no one noticed, because for some time before the end, his wife Joy had been known to occasionally hint at something unusual. While it is impossible now to know whether she realized what was happening, one can still piece together a sort of narrative out of what hints she let drop to friends and relatives.

The first thing his wife seems to have noticed was the singing. It was not singing, exactly, to hear her tell it. Perhaps chanting would be a better word. Joy never gave any indication that she could understand him, and in fact, she apparently rarely heard it at all. He seemed careful to do it out of her hearing, and sometimes she would enter the room where he was, only to hear him suddenly stop talking, as if she had interrupted a conversation with someone. Mostly she heard him doing it in the shower -- not singing, exactly, but saying something in a kind of rhythmic pattern that defied comprehension. It had worried her in a way she could not quite articulate to anyone.

At some point a bizarre obsession with cleanliness apparently emerged, as well. Specifically he had become fixated on soap. Bars of soap appeared all over the house, tucked away in soapdishes on dressers and counters, in closets and boxes and one bar, for some reason, always kept in his left slipper. Attempts to move any of them met with loud protest. Joy had confided to one or two people that threats of violence were also involved.

During all this time he presented a perfectly normal face to the outside world, and it was only at home that his behavior began to degrade in a number of ways that likely Joy did not even begin to scratch the surface of in her talks with others. Eventually, of course, came the event that remains legend to this day.

The sight of his wife and three daughters, bound with electrical tape and murdered in their beds, needs no repeating, as much as it has fueled local gossip for ten years and counting. Nor does the fate of the man himself really need to be rehashed; he remains in an institution till this day, still half-singing, half-muttering things to himself whenever he is led, closely supervised, into the shower.

More peculiar by far, however, is an aspect of the crime that was never discussed with the public, being as police felt the family had already had a bad enough time of being massacred. So it is that few people know of the full story, and especially what the murderer had done, either before or after taking those four innocent lives.

He had written his Red Right Hand on the wall.

With a bar of soap.


I... don't know either. His eyes just look so mad in the comic, and, well.

If you're wondering, yes, I am referencing the thing you think I'm referencing. That is an amazing album.

Pacemaker

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"I -- " wheezed Glen, "I can't -- can't take any more -- " He gasped for breath a few more times, mopping the sweat from his beet-red face, before going on. "What was I -- ugh -- what was I thinking?"

Sophia smiled a little, though her eyes were more concerned than amused. "You were thinking that we could use a dog around the house again, which is true. I'm not sure why you decided to get a puppy the size of a small horse, though."

"'S not -- not that big," Glen replied, sitting heavily on the porch next to her wheelchair. He glanced briefly over at the side yard, where the creature in question was bouncing around excitedly, panting but still obviously full of energy. Then he uttered a short, breathless laugh. "I remember -- last time we had a puppy -- wasn't so damn hard just to walk 'im."

"Last time we had a puppy, you were twenty years younger," Sophia replied mildly. "Also, Skipper was... rather calmer."

Glen nodded. He was breathing somewhat easier now, although his face was still an alarming shade of red. "I think I see why this guy wound up at the shelter," he said, then coughed. "My heart's goin' a mile -- mile a minute, just from tryin' to keep up with him."

"Will you be okay?" she asked, looking worried. "If we need to call an ambulance -- "

He waved a hand to dismiss her concern. "I'll be fine," he assured her, "but that dog will have to go." He looked over at it again. "I'd ask Paul if he and Rosie wanted it, but..."

"But I'd rather not have one of my grandchildren trampled by the world's biggest chocolate Lab," Sophia cut in. Glen nodded his agreement.

Ben-Gay

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Richard lowered himself into the bath gingerly, sighing as the warm water began its work. He'd have much rather run the water hot, except his doctor had nixed that -- warm was bad enough, she'd told him, it was cold that would actually help the inflammation in his joints. Thing was, there was nothing soothing about a cold bath. It seemed rather an oversight on the part of whoever was in charge of such things.

He lay there for a few minutes, not really thinking about anything, letting the warm water do its work. It had been a long day, with little opportunity to relax. He'd gotten a lot accomplished, though. Richard smiled a little. Yeah, it had been a pretty good day.

Eventually the water grew tepid, and then he rose, leaning fairly heavily on the bar installed in the bathroom wall. He stepped out carefully, then grabbed a towel and began drying off.

It was funny how much more he had come to appreciate a good bath since the accident. His broken leg and ribs had mended, and the pin in his hip had long since been set into place. Mainly he didn't have too much trouble with pain anymore, except on long days like today. But he was always up for a nice warm soak.

Finally, bathed and dressed, Richard exited the bathroom and walked slowly down the hall. He would watch a little TV, maybe catch the news, then call it a night. As he settled onto the couch, the lack of pain from his joints made him smile again. And since he'd done things the smart way 'round, he wouldn't even have to go to bed smelling of Ben-Gay tonight.

My Space

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Rebecca curled up tighter on the bed, despite the pain that shot across her middle. One hand cupped her face gingerly. She wasn't crying, in part because her left eye was already swelling up enough as it was, but mostly because she didn't want to draw any more attention to herself. She was safe in her room, at least for now. Better to keep quiet, and hope dad didn't find reason to come in here and continue their "conversation".

One shaking hand reached out and snagged the fluffy foot of a stuffed rabbit. Rebecca clutched it to her chest and allowed herself one small sob. She'd had no idea this would happen when she decided to go out with Shelly. Seeing a movie wasn't worth this. Maybe nothing was.

She'd come home from school at 3:30, just like always. No one else had been home, but that was normal. Rebecca had thought nothing of leaving the note on the fridge; she'd had a twenty burning a hole in her pocket since her birthday last week, and she and Shelly hadn't hung out in ages. "At the movies," she'd scrawled, "back 8ish." And she had pinned up the note with a magnet shaped like a tomato, and skipped right back out the door.

Now, alone in the silence of her room, Rebecca squeezed the stuffed rabbit tighter. Dad had been waiting in the living room when she came home for the second time. She should have realized something was wrong as soon as she came in the door, but the smell of beer hadn't registered at first. Then he'd fairly leapt across the room and seized her wrist like grim death. She wasn't to go out without permission again, it seemed. This became abundantly clear shortly. Dad supplemented the argument with his fists, as was usual when he'd been drinking; then, at last, he had sent her to her room. She'd gone gladly.

Now Rebecca lay on her bed, hardly daring to move, a few silent tears falling to wet the fur of the stuffed rabbit. The room softly faded to darkness as the last of the light drained from the sky outside. Finally she slept, and when her father left for the bar, she did not hear.

Banana Split

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Lynn tapped her brother on the shoulder excitedly. "Can I have half? I want half," she exclaimed. "Share?"

Laughing, Howie held the banana up above her head. "Get your own if you want some! This one's mine!" He reached up with his other hand and continued peeling the item of contention, laughing again as she made a playful jump for it.

"But if I have a whole one, my ears will itch!"

Howie rolled his eyes. "You know, generally speaking, if you have a negative reaction to a food, you just don't eat it."

"A little is okay! I'm not that allergic! And I like bananas." Lynn pouted. "Pleeease?"

"All right, all right." With an exaggerated sigh, he lowered his arms and broke off the top half of the banana. "And I don't even think you can be allergic to bananas anyway."

Lynn stuck out her tongue, then gleefully devoured her prize.