I gasped for air and woke myself up. Heart racing, I looked at my watch. 3:03 AM.

The light from my smart watch blinded me in the heavy darkness. I heard no noise at all besides the hollow creaks of the house. A minute later, a click echoed against the walls and the air conditioner kicked on, initiating a quiet roar of airflow. With no daytime noise as a buffer, the house sounded like it was alive.

I could feel my phone buzzing, but I couldn’t see any light from it. The screen on my wrist was lit up by a call from my older sister. I jumped up to shut my bedroom door before clicking to answer the call.

“Kitt, what’s wrong; are you okay?”

“I was gonna ask you that,” she said with a sleepy rasp in her voice. “You still need me to come get you?”

“Come get me? Why?” I frowned, sitting on something hard on my bed. My phone. I unlocked it and checked my notifications.

“Yeah, your text was really weird,” she said through a yawn. “You okay?”

“Huh? Let me see.” I clicked on the text conversation with Kitt, reading my initial message aloud. “I need help, come get me?”

“Something’s not right, P, I’m putting my shoes on now,” she said, her voice picking up urgency. “This is too weird.”

I was too confused to respond.

“Be outside your house in ten minutes, okay?”

“Okay,” was the only word I could squeak out before she hung up.

I was enveloped in the tight silence of the place once again. It pulled and squeezed and made my body tired, but at the same time, my mind stayed alert. I hated being the only one awake here, and I tried hard to be the first one to bed because of it. For once, I wished I could hear my roommates talking and giggling from another room.

I struggled to fill my lungs, turning on the flashlight of my phone. I fumbled around for my zebra print slippers and my thin hoodie, then started to tiptoe through the shadows. I took small steps, shaking as I aimed the light ahead of me. Every step closer to the front door felt heavier and heavier.

“Oh my GOD. Stop it, there’s nothing here,” I told myself. I took another breath, feeling like I was breathing through a thin straw.

Finally my hand gripped the handle, and immediately it turned with all my weight behind it. I stumbled out onto the sidewalk to see no more chair where it had been for two weeks. I ignored the absence, making my legs take me to the edge of the driveway. I looked back at the house, every light off except the front porch, with the front door hanging wide open. I ignored that, too. “There’s nothing here,” became my whispered mantra until I saw my sister’s car pull up.

I didn’t let her park longer than a second before I hopped in and yanked on the seatbelt.

“Whoa, girl, slow down,” Kitt said, grabbing the seatbelt to let it out until it unlocked. “Whatever it is, you don’t have to break my car about it.”

I looked back at the house, now more lit up from the kitchen chandelier than a minute ago. “I forgot to shut the front door,” I muttered.

“Well, somebody shut it for you, now let’s go get some food and figure out what I’m doing out here. Cool?”

I nodded. “Y-yeah. Sorry.”

Kitt let out a long sigh, turning her car around to leave the driveway. “You know that house is totally creepy, right?”

To Be Continued…

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Rita and I half-dragged Gary to his bed and left his door propped open while we worked together to clean the kitchen. The crash we’d heard when we were in the driveway turned out to be all three of the windows in the dining room bursting at once.

“One of my mom’s boyfriends lived in this really beat-up old house with his dealer when I was a kid,” I said to Rita while sweeping up glass, “and, like, it was probably supposed to be condemned or something because you would not believe the smell in there…”

“Hang on,” Rita stopped sweeping to look at me in confusion. “You went with her on drug deals when you were a kid?”

I frowned, “No, the boyfriend lived with his dealer. I mean, I guess she could have, and I don’t remember. But I don’t remember her doing drugs; she just dated a lot of losers.”

I watched her face change, but not the way I was used to seeing when I talked about my childhood to someone new.

“That sucks, man. You should’ve been playing video games or hanging out at the mall, not being dragged to some idiot’s stinky house.”

I froze at her strange response. She didn’t say she was sorry or that it wasn’t my fault. She didn’t even assign blame. “Yeah,” I said, “it was kinda shitty sometimes, but I got to do normal stuff, too. That’s not the point.”

“Sure, go on,” she replied. “No, actually, I have a question.”

I wasn’t used to this side of Rita. She was typically so brusque and sarcastic. Hearing an earnest tone from her was jarring. I raised an eyebrow.

Rita sighed. “What’s up with that note your mom handed me? She kept spewing a bunch of garbage I couldn’t understand without any context. The only thing I really caught was that your dad wouldn’t be caught dead back in this house. So, is your dad our landlord or something?”

“No, what? Mister Jerry is my old principal from middle school. Besides, look at my mom. I mean, I’m not a biologist or whatever, but I’m pretty sure my dad would have to be the whitest guy alive. And probably more patient than Jerry, to be able to put up with her.”

Rita looked back down at her task, shaking her head and smiling. I started to feel like I’d missed out on a friendship with her in the year and a half we’d known each other until now.

“Anyway, so this dude’s dating my mom because she always had such great taste in men, right? His house stunk like a toilet. Everything was broken. It was like your stereotypical crack house in a TV show. Then one day, boom. The walls buckled, the roof split apart, and all the windows in the whole place shattered. Just like these windows. It turned out the foundation was so cracked, it was a miracle the house was ever standing.”

“Damn. That is the ultimate crack house, isn’t it?”

I chuckled at her joke. “Definitely.”

“So you’re saying … what? You think that’s what’s going on here? A cracked foundation?”

I shrugged.

Rita stared at me for a long minute, then continued sweeping. “Sounds plausible to me, I suppose. I can look into it in the morning.”

After she and I finished picking up glass, we used old shower curtain liners and duct tape to attempt to seal off the dining room windows until we could get someone to replace them.

I checked on Gary, who had already fallen asleep in his shoes, so I covered him with his hoodie and shut his door.

“Going to bed?” Rita asked. I nodded. “I’ll keep the noise down this time.”

I got ready for bed, making a mental note to ask Gary in the morning why his sister was suddenly being so nice. Or if she had a twin I didn’t know about.

I sighed, finally able to look closely at the note my mother had left. The phone number had a local area code. Her note above it was as passive-aggressive as ever. As if she didn’t know how significant it was that after two decades, I finally had at least a chance at communicating with my real dad. Not one of Mom’s temp boyfriends she tried to force into the role. I settled into my bed, laying my head against the footboard and staring at the ceiling. My chest immediately felt heavy, and my throat felt tight. I held up the note and punched the numbers into my phone.

My arms felt like they each weighed a hundred pounds. I laid my phone on my chest without making the call. Why did I feel like this? And why now? I didn’t get more than a slight buzz the whole time Gary and I were drinking. Of course, I knew to avoid the shots he kept slamming back.

This was something new. It came with a sinister feeling, almost a warning. I lifted my eyes to look up and behind me at the door, which I hadn’t left open. Was that Gary or Rita standing in the doorway? They were both shorter than me, though. I struggled to sit up, but I couldn’t move. The more I tried, the more I felt pinned down.

I tried to speak. “Rrrrrrrr…” I tried to call out for the only other conscious person in the house. I turned my head another inch, finally, and could see the doorway in my periphery. It hurt to look at, even indirectly. Something taller than the door, and solid black. It was all silhouette, no texture. I resigned to trying to speak only in my mind, weirdly thinking it would hear my thoughts.

I focused all my energy on one question.

Who … are … you?

Then I passed out.

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 16

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“You want another?” Gary slid a shot toward me. Somehow I grabbed it just as it tipped, saving all but a couple of drops.

“I can keep up.”

“Sorry, what were you saying about my mom, I mean your mom?”

I smiled. He was already slurring. It was a rare treat to see him drink, and whenever Rita and I were getting along, we both encouraged it.

“My mom,” I said. “I don’t know, man. I don’t know. I think…”

Someone bumped my chair from behind, but when I looked, some guy was sprawled out on the floor. Gary lifted his eyebrows as if to ask if I needed him to spring into action. I definitely did not.

“Poor guy just needed a hard reset,” I said to anyone around, including the bartender.

Shanda rolled her eyes in understanding and pointed to the guy’s car keys behind her, attached to a note with his information.

“Come on,” I said to Gary after I paid the tab. I grabbed his wrist and walked him outside. We sat side by side on top of the old stone picnic table, each resting our feet on the bench.

Gary reached into the back pocket of his work slacks and pulled out a half-empty pack of menthols. He had a lighter tucked into the pack and one cigarette turned upside down. His lucky one. He pulled out the lighter and a regular. The lucky one always stayed until all the rest were gone.

“Stop it, I can see you judging,” he said. “It’s no different than your vapor … thing.”

I sighed, joining him for a smoke. “She’s just so angry. My mom. The things she says to me. It feels like she hates me sometimes, you know? Like she’s not the person I knew when I was little. It doesn’t matter what I do or say; it’s just not good enough.”

I took a long drag from my vape and blew it upward, out of our faces. Gary blew his cigarette smoke out toward the dumpster a few feet away. “She texted you again?”

“Earlier today, yeah. All I did was ask her for my dad’s phone number, and she blew up on me. Called me an ingrate and a disappointment. She said a lot, and it was all so mean. I don’t get how she could be so damn mean.” I pounded my fist on the stone table, feeling a little sting in my hand. I laughed under my breath and did it a second time, just to make sure the feeling stayed in my hand.

“Did she give you the number?”

“She said she was at work and couldn’t get to it today, then she blocked my number ‘cause none of the other texts went through. God, she makes me feel like I have to qualify for her affection. It’s messed up. It’s always been a little messed up, I guess, but like, waking up out of this fog of thinking we’re normal? It’s sad.” My voice broke at the word sad.

Gary swung his arm around my shoulders automatically, unleashing all the emotion I thought I was containing pretty well. He didn’t look at me or say anything. He just listened to me cry.

I steadied my breath after another big vape. “I actually hate how much I still love her when she’s like this. She’s selfish, she’s angry, and she makes me feel bad for wanting to grow as a person. As if it’s my responsibility to drag her forward with me, but all it would do is keep us both stuck.”

He lifted his head so slowly that it looked like it had doubled in weight. Then he turned toward me, letting his arm drop off my shoulder. “Want me to fight her?”

I laughed and wiped the tears from my face. “Yeah, I kinda do a little. She fights dirty, though, so you should sober up and eat first.”

“Mm. Fine.”

I had long cried away any hint of a buzz, so I was ready to leave. I helped Gary buckle his seatbelt and drove us back home.

“Gary? Are you good?” Rita was already outside when we pulled up, witnessing Gary tumble out of the car.

“It’s been a day,” I responded for him. “We went to Charley’s.”

She shook her head and helped him sit sideways on the passenger seat. “It’s been a day, all right. Your mom stopped by earlier.”

My face began to sweat. “What?”

Rita folded her arms across her chest as a show of disdain that somehow made her more attractive. “Yep. She banged on the door like she had a search warrant. Asked me all kinds of questions about how many people live here, who you’re ‘whoring around’ with, and got Ruby all kinds of agitated. She was barking like crazy; I had to hold her back the whole time.”

“Lemme fight her,” Gary chimed in.

Rita continued, “Then she had the nerve to come in and clog our toilet. That’s when Ruby really started growling at her.”

My jaw dropped. “Rita, I’m so sorry, I didn’t even give her this address because of how awful she is.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. Turns out I don’t have very good grip strength in my right hand, because somehow Ruby got free and chased the bitch all the way to her car. That was after she handed me this.”

I frowned as I unfolded the scrap of paper she presented. It was a phone number beneath the words, “He won’t answer, but here you go.”

My eyes welled with tears as I pocketed the note and gave Rita a hug that shocked both of us. She hesitated for a few seconds before hugging me back.

“Your mom sucks,” she said into my fluffy hair.

“I know. Thanks for being an asshole to her.”

Rita pulled back abruptly, acting offended by my comment, then she immediately smiled. “It was my pleasure. Truly.”

A crashing sound rang through the yard and echoed into the night, pulling our attention toward the house.

“I think…” Gary said with his head between his knees, “I’m gonna puke.”

And then he did. All over my car.

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 15

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Take a break.

If today you're lonely, it's just Sunday.
Tomorrow will be another Monday.
Give yourself some grace and take a walk.
Yeah, I know, I know… I'm one to talk.
Maybe one more lap around the block.

If this day just tends to suck a lot,
If everyone's happy, but you're not, 
There is a lock on the bathroom door. 
Pause, take a breath, and sit on the floor.
I promise, there's room here for one more.

Take a break.

I'm saying it's okay if you’re just…
Not reciprocating all this love,
Or you just don't want another hug,
Or you forgot to bring your earplugs.
Why? Because I said so. See above.

Here. Drink some water and have a seat.
I am you, my friend, and you are me.
If you already have a headache,
Or you can't keep up your happy face,
Can't just crack a beer, or fix a plate,

FFS. PLEASE. JUST TAKE A BREAK.

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I sat in my car, blowing vape smoke out of the crack in the window. I watched the back door open, but it was just our manager, Jill, walking out with the trash. I could tell she didn’t like me, behind her fake bubbly tone of voice, her “constructive” criticism, and her outdated layers of makeup that didn’t quite match her powdered-donut skin tone. Not that it was too light or too dark, it was just… yellow. Almost as if she were trying to look like she was in active kidney failure.

I picked at my already chipped black nail polish as I waited for Gary, wishing I were someone who put more effort into looking nice. Then I thought back to my mother and remembered how angry she got when I didn’t shave my legs for a week or let her straighten my hair. Even when I settled for braids, she tried to rip every strand out of my skull and would have a tantrum if I asked for the “boyish braids.” She told me cornrows made me look too masculine. I could never come out and tell her that was the whole point.

I shuddered, then grabbed the book.

It was probably a strange thing to read, especially in public. Some journal I found, clearly written by a lady who was losing her mind. It was juicy stuff, but I was fooling myself to think I could read it here and now. It wasn’t even a welcome distraction. My stomach started to gurgle again with anxiety.

Why today? I asked myself, thinking about chickening out.

I looked out onto the road. It was half an hour past closing time. All the businesses around our restaurant had already closed because they didn’t serve alcohol. I’d eaten as much as I could. Gary’s food I’d picked up for him was barely still warm.

I could tell him while he ate, but he might choke. I could tell him afterward, but he’d be tired. He was gonna be tired either way. God, I’m such a coward. I should have told him before work when I was running my hands through his hair, wondering what his lips might feel like.

Oh yeah, he was pissed at me. About Rita. I rolled my eyes at the thought of her and opened up the notebook again to read.

That’s when the passenger door opened, startling me almost out of my skin.

“Did I scare you?” Gary asked with a smirk and a flash of mischief over his light green eyes. He shut the door, grabbing the cover of the notebook to read it.

“You keep a journal? You don’t even write your own grocery lists.”

I laughed at how right he was. “You have better handwriting. And no, I don’t have a journal. Even if I did, it’s purple, and the handwriting is legible, so it’s definitely not mine.” I handed it to him as he buckled and settled into the seat. He smelled like a grease trap, but he looked like a snack.

He skimmed a few pages, then looked back up at me wide-eyed. “What the hell?”

“It’s like a dream journal or something. There’s all kinds of symptoms and stats at the top of each entry instead of the date.”

“Hang on, is this a blood pressure reading? Whose notebook is this?”

“I do not know. I found it in the attic a few days ago when I was looking for rodents.”

I watched him frown in realization. “You heard the scratching sounds, too? Nobody tells me anything, I swear.”

I nodded. “Every damn night. I went up there hoping to kill some rats and got distracted by this.”

“This is crazy. Should we even be reading this?”

I laughed at him as he read it anyway.

Then I took a deep breath. “Uh, look. There’s something I need to say.”

Gary sighed, closed the notebook, and set it down in the back seat. “Yeah, I know. Me too.”

Oh my GOD. Wait. There’s no way it’s the same thing. I should let him go first.

Or, I could just…stare into his eyes…

“I can’t stop thinking about you. As much as I don’t want to admit it, I think I’m starting to have strong feelings for you. I just need to know if you feel the same way.”

His face softens. He smiles and looks down bashfully, making my heart pound. I don’t let him speak; I just act. I reach for his hand, bringing it to my lips until he wraps the other hand around the back of my neck...

“Are you okay?”

I was just sitting there staring. I was staring at him the WHOLE time I was thinking about kissing him.

“Uh, yeah,” I said, starting the car. “Just kinda zoned out, can you say that again?”

“It’s just… I know I get really protective of Rita. I’ve always done that, even though she’s older. I just want you guys to get along. You’re my best friend.”

“Yeah.” I flinched at his words. I loved being his best friend, but it was eating me alive wondering whether he was feeling anything more. “I’m sorry, Gary. I’ll try harder, but I also need to stand my ground when it’s necessary.”

“That’s fair. Sometimes she makes it necessary. And you should work on showing more confidence when you talk to her.”

He nudged my elbow as he uttered the word “confidence.” My skin tingled. I looked up into the rearview to check the state of my hair. Messy as hell, but in a kind of intentional bed-head way.

“Do you want to go get drinks?” I asked, nudging him in return, praying he’d accept.

I parked at a gas station, opening my wallet app on my phone. I watched him rub his flawless face with both hands. Then he looked at me with a big grin. “Yeah, I kinda do.”

After filling my gas tank up to the one-quarter mark, I drove us to the strip of dive bars one street over and grabbed my ID.

I walked behind Gary, who got stopped at the door. Of course, he got stopped, though. He looked like he was in his junior year of high school.

“Garland?” The bouncer stared at Gary’s ID, looking like one of the dudes you see at the gym working out at the mirror and grunting like an angry pig.

“Shut up, Johnson, you have room to talk about names,” Gary grabbed his ID card back from Gym Bro Johnson, then shook his hand as he walked into the bar ahead of me.

Bro glanced at my ID, gave me the Bro Nod of approval, and moved on to the next person.

I sat on the torn red barstool, setting my toes behind its bottom rung, then I set the notebook on the bar in front of Gary.

“Okay, what is so fascinating about this notebook?”

I shrugged. “I mean, it’s a journal, so it’s got drama. But honestly, I don’t know. It looked interesting. It’s pretty clear when you read it that it’s a mandatory journal, so it’s not just some Karen writing down what she ate yesterday, or how angry she is that her neighbors are having a barbecue.”

“Didn’t you say it was a dream journal?” He said, looking at the first entry.

“I mean, I don’t know. It’s something like that. Dreams, delusions, who knows. It’s addressed to a therapist, from what I can tell.”

“So this person is dreaming about getting locked out of an empty house while the lights are flickering on and off, and things moving by themselves… and they left this inside our attic?”

I looked at the page and read through the first two paragraphs again.

“Pepper, have you shown this to my sister?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

He handed the bartender a bill and downed a shot of something clear, chasing it with a disgustingly light beer. “Do me a favor and don’t mention it to her.”

I looked at his face as it got very serious.

“Promise me?”

“Yeah,” I said, closing the notebook. “I promise.”

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 14

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Entry #26: Fatigue, body aches, no appetite, shortness of breath. 142/88.

I feel like this house is killing me. They’re killing me.

I can hear them breathing as they watch me through the ceiling vents. The ones in the attic don’t like to come down unless you open the door. But they watch me. I can feel it, like a sunburn starting to itch before it blisters. Like I have a fever.

I KNOW HOW IT SOUNDS. I’M QUESTIONING MYSELF AS I THINK THESE THOUGHTS AND WRITE THEM DOWN.

If I thought it would make it stop, I’d blind myself. I know in my gut that no amount of mutilation would keep them out. I just wouldn’t see anything else but them. They’ve infected me.

You’re probably going to find me in one of these closets, in the middle of writing in this stupid notebook, and wonder where you went wrong. I’m not asking you to change your belief system. I just want you to tell me I’m not crazy. Or tell me that I am and that it’s all going to get better with treatment.

I begged him to take off work for a few days just so we could get some rest at a hotel. Of course, he’s still pretty deep in denial, so he thought it was a veiled request for a birthday trip. He’s too thoughtful for his own good, sometimes. Now we have to wait two more weeks. Two more weeks of being jolted awake by scratching sounds above our heads, or the tub faucet turning on by itself. Or the little girl…

I don’t know what happened to that girl, or how old she was. I don’t even know if I’d recognize a photo of her. All I know is that I keep finding wispy, long blonde hairs everywhere. As light as blonde gets. Thin and stringy. It has that look that baby hair has on the ends when it’s never been cut. She must have died so young.

I hear her footsteps, small and quick, bare feet smacking on the hardwood floor. Sometimes it’s a tiny laugh or a sigh, right in my ear, so that I feel a presence.

She hides under our bed.

Behind chairs, and in cabinets, too, when she is really playful. She has fun playing hide and seek, always giggling.

Something changes, though, when she hides under the bed. No laughing when she’s there. She hides there out of fear, I think. Her fear spreads upward and outward like black mold. It chokes and gags me. She’s so scared, even though she’s already gone. There’s nothing left to lose, but she still hides from something that lives here. Somewhere in the front bedroom that looks out onto the road. It has to be in there. I can’t even walk through that door without feeling dizzy.

What’s the point of this? To torture me even more than they do? To make sure that any sleep I get is riddled with nightmares? I feel like we’re both at our limit. He’d never admit it, but I see him wearing thin. I wonder what the hell he thinks is happening, and I’m simultaneously jealous that he can stay ignorant of it.

Last night I woke up to him standing in the doorway of the bathroom. Just standing there. He kind of swayed a little, like he wasn’t fully awake. I tried to call out his name, but then he turned to me. I swear he looked right through me. Then he got right back into bed. He remembers nothing. What the hell is that? What is happening to us?

Anyway, you know how much I hate this. I’m going to install the new cameras tomorrow. Then maybe I’ll catch something definitive that I can show you, or show anyone.

No one believes me. Not even him.

To Be Continued…

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His brow furrowed at a sound he could have imagined. He was used to imagining things into his perception of reality.

The breeze hissed in his ear and tussled his overgrown beard. It shook the lights that hung from heavy, potent wires and warned him to pick up his pace. His mind wandered to his morning routine and the hum of his electric toothbrush.

Almost the same pitch. Hummmm.

The song from the restaurant rattled in his brain, losing some of its lyrics as it bounced around.

It hadn’t been the best day, but it was an overall good day in a sea of really shit days. It was a day that warranted no apologies and no regrets. A day his baby sister finally came in for a visit, insistent on buying him dinner. She told him he looked better. Happier.

The humming grew louder and turned into an engine, headlights burning into his eyes, but he was stuck.

Do I run? Do I jump? Can I make it in time?

His mind threw out a dozen more ideas before his leg twitched to run for the sidewalk. He moved in slow motion while the headlights hugged his silhouette. His knee gave way to the bumper and sent his limp body sailing over the top of the shiny, four-door sedan. His eyes fixed on the food splattered across the intersection, whiffs of Chicken Alfredo taking over his senses. As his vision darkened and his face went cold, a thought ran through his mind.

I should’ve eaten it all at the restaurant.

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I sat inside my work truck, staring at the house with my window cracked. It was objectively quaint. Ranch style, red brick with some accents of gray siding. New roof, new porch. Lots of land in front, and a sizeable fenced-in backyard. One could theoretically raise some goats or chickens here, and in this part of town, it’s practically expected. Maybe it would sell quickly, and I’d never have to look at it again.

My father-in-law pulled up in his newest hybrid lease. Always in either white or silver. This one was Unmarked Unit White. I squinted to make sure it wasn’t actually a cop, then remembered I’d already paid the traffic ticket I’d been issued last month.

I watched Mike get out of his car and walk over to my window with a big grin.

“Hey, good morning! Did you just get here?”

I rolled down my window the rest of the way. “Yeah, just waiting on you,” I lied. I was waiting to either muster the courage to walk inside or figure out a good reason to postpone.

He started talking as I turned off the truck and climbed out, “…trip out here for you, right?”

“Hm?” I followed him along the paved walkway.

“I said, shouldn’t it be close to the last trip over here for you guys? I noticed you only have a few things left inside.”

“Oh. Yep.” I tried to will him to walk faster with my mind, but that never worked.

Mike unlocked the front door, turned the handle a few times, then pushed at the door twice with his shoulder. “Hm.”

“Here, I got it.” I motioned for him to make room. This was the door Jessie kept asking me to replace, but I could never find anything structurally wrong with it. It just never wanted to open.

I turned the handle, hearing a slight creak in the wood, and popped it open with my palm.

“Weird. The moisture must have swelled it shut,” Mike said. “Thanks.”

I felt a rush of cold as I entered.

“Sorry if it’s a bit warm in here; I’ve been trying to save energy.”

“It’s fine,” I replied. Did he not feel that chill? I began to question myself as I followed him to the master bedroom.

“We’ve started painting in the bathroom, but I wanted to make sure you got everything out that you’re keeping before I painted in here. What do you think?”

I looked around at my old bedroom, peeking into the connected bathroom before remembering all the times the cabinets and drawers used to open themselves. I pulled the door shut.

“Jessie said to let you keep any old bedframes and mattresses, but I think she wants that filing cabinet and a few things from the closet.” I frowned, knowing I’d forgotten something. “Seems like there was more, though.”

“Okay, well, why don’t you check with her real quick while I get my dolly?”

I nodded, already dialing my wife’s number.

She picked up on the first ring. “Hey, sweetie, how is it going?”

“Hey, your dad and I wanted to make sure we don’t miss anything you want me to bring to the new place.”

“Oh, I think we have most everything.” She paused to think. “Did you pack up the file cabinet and both of our nightstands? I think I may have left some three-ring binders and other office supplies in the closet, too.”

I felt a hand tap my shoulder, and I turned around. I’d heard Mike close the front door and then no footsteps afterward, so it wasn’t him. Was it? Did he leave the door open?

“Ed? You there?”

My heart tried to pound through my chest. “Please, not now,” I said under my breath.

“Are you okay?” My wife asked, sounding both amused and concerned.

“I’m good,” I said, speed-walking out of the master bedroom. “We’re getting all that stuff. Is there anything left in the other rooms that you can think of?”

I tried hard to listen to what she was saying while putting distance between myself and the back of the house. I stopped just inside the office, seeing that notebook I’d forgotten to ask her about.

“What’s going on? Did something else happen?” Now she sounded worried. “Do you need me to come help?”

“Uh…no, we’re good. Sorry, I’m just a little tired.” I muted the phone to take a few deep breaths. I started to feel calmer. “Hey, what about this notebook?”

“Which one?”

I walked over to the desk and picked up her notebook. “It’s just a school notebook full of sticky notes and a ton of your handwriting. It’s almost used up, and the cover says, ‘Journaling Crap.’”

When I stopped talking, I noticed the line was completely silent.

“Hello?” I said, looking at my phone to see that the call had ended. Rarely did I hope that she’d hung up on me, but the alternative made my skin crawl. She immediately called back.

“Hey, I think the call dropped,” Jessie said, then she sighed. “Okay, if the notebook you’re talking about is in the office or the bedroom closet, I probably meant to grab it.”

“Okay, I’ll bring it with me,” I said, hoping my voice still sounded calm.

“Unless it’s that one I started in therapy when he told me to write down all the weird stuff happening in the house. I still think he wanted to have me committed. You remember my first therapist?”

“Uh-huh…”

“Anyway, that’s probably not it, because I asked Dad to burn it for me with his next load of paper trash. It was just a purple comp book that says, ‘Journaling Crap,’ or something like that.”

I froze, dropping the book on the desk. Purple. Journal. Crap.

Mike walked through the door behind me at exactly the same time as the notebook shifted closer to me. It only moved an inch or so. Enough that I saw it happen, but I could plausibly be convinced that I didn’t.

“So, what did she say?” Mike asked me, oblivious to what I’d just seen or felt.

“Well, she said to please burn this notebook as soon as possible,” I told him, pointing at it as I stepped back from it.

Jessie, still on the line, said, “Yes, burn it now, please.”

“Oh, yeah! I thought I threw that in the bin last week.” Mike grabbed the purple notebook and tossed it into a green recycle bin sitting in the corner by the side door. “I’ll take care of it once you leave.”

I heard nothing of what he said next. I just stared at the bin and shut the office door behind me, following him and his dolly through the house.

“She also said she needs me home in the next hour.” I didn’t care if he believed me. I needed to be done with this house.

“You’re such a liar,” Jessie said with a laugh just before I hung up on her. I made a mental note to bring her some chocolates as an apology.

To Be Continued…

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“Hm…? What?” I rolled over in bed and turned on my table lamp. Jessie’s eyes were wider than I’d ever seen them, and possibly bluer.

She opened her mouth to speak, then sat up straight and stared forward. A minute of silence dragged by. “I didn’t say that.”

I frowned, looked around the bedroom, checked the clock, then back at my wife. “What? Say what?” I rubbed my eyes as my heartbeat sped up just enough to keep me from going back to sleep, but not enough to clear my mind.

“Don’t. If you’re playing with me, Ed, just don’t. I know you heard it, because it woke you up.”

Great. Super-serious Jessie at three in the morning was never a good sign. She was AWAKE. I sighed, sitting up halfway, propped up by my right arm. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But based on what you just said, how could I be joking with you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice softening as she dropped her head into her hands. “I’m sorry, I’m just so tired. I can’t do this anymore.”

I cleared my throat as I wrapped her in my arms, which oddly always made her cry if she wasn’t already, or cry even harder if she was. “Calm down and tell me what happened,” I said, already contemplating whether it was a good day to take today off work. We both needed sleep.

“It’s this damn house. Everything in it. I just want to be left alone,” she said between sobs.

I rubbed her back slowly. “It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” she said, her body tensing up again. “We have to move out. We have to find another place. Can you take off work soon so we can go look?”

I laughed, wondering if she could actually read my mind. “Baby, just tell me what happened tonight and we’ll figure out the rest.”

Jessie pulled my arm tighter around her, leaned onto me, and wiped her eyes. “Okay.” She took a deep and shaky breath, as if what she had to say was going to physically harm her. “I heard this voice. I was kind of half asleep, so for a second, I thought I was dreaming. Then when you woke up, I knew you heard it, too.”

“Okay…what did the voice sound like?”

“I don’t know, a man? Not a familiar voice, just like a random guy. It sounded and felt like it was right in my ear, but it wasn’t a whisper. It was as loud as we’re talking now. All he said was a name.”

The hair on my arms raised. I wanted her to stop as much as I wanted to know more. “What name? Somebody we know?”

My anxiety rose as Jessie reached for her phone. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Here.”

I looked at her phone as she handed it over. “Charlene?” I read aloud. The note she had open was time-stamped at exactly 3:03 a.m. Ten minutes ago.

“Yeah, but the way he said it made me feel like…”

I put her phone down in front of her.

“…made me feel like he was accusing me of something. Or that he thought I was this person.”

She shivered, so I wrapped the blanket around her and switched on the TV. “Charlene, huh? So, you don’t know a Charlene?”

“No, do you?”

“I don’t think so. Think she was screwing around on him or something?” I joked.

Jessie glared up at me, freezing me in the Blue Stare. “Or maybe he was the one screwing around…before he died.”

“Is this a bad time for me to start deleting my text messages?” I asked, watching her finally crack a smile.

“No, it’s been long enough since we started your life insurance policy,” she said, joking right back. “You’d actually be helping my case.”

“Okay, so no crime shows,” I said, clicking through categories on the TV.

“Comedy. Please,” she said, snuggling in closer.

I turned on a movie for us while already thinking of how to arrange the schedule to make up for a missed day of work.

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 11

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I glanced backward at the surface of my nightstand, reminding myself to grab the car keys as soon as half-time was called. I stood three feet from my TV screen and watched my quarterback evade a sack as he locked onto his target.

“Babe, you want anything from the store?” I called out, dividing my attention as both announcers got louder with each yard we gained.

“Keep going, keep going,” I cheered under my breath, willing the ball to cross that beautiful white line before the clock ran out.

“Uh, yeah. Just grab the...”

“YES!” Touchdown!

“...on your way out.”

I looked around at the bed, the small desk, the shared dresser, and my wife’s night stand before I realized the TV remote I couldn’t find was in my right hand. I muted the game and grabbed my keys.

“Grab the what?” I called back to her, already hearing the impatience she would add to her second response.

“The list,” she said, walking into our bedroom. She pressed a sheet of yellow lined paper against my chest, slid the remote from my grasp, and sighed.

I chuckled at how far she stretched onto her tiptoes just to kiss my cheek, then I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing to see how many dozen cracks I could get out of her back. Just two this time.

“Jeez, I wasn’t ready,” she giggled. “Are you stopping by the old house today?”

Damn. That question sounded like it required a yes, and I badly wanted to say no. “Sure, did you want me to look for something specific?”

“You don’t have to, I was just gonna say to grab the mail if you do. Love you, be safe.”

She stole a second kiss, this time pulling me down toward her. My little fun-size personal assistant. Or boss. Administrator, maybe?

With two bags of temperature-sensitive groceries in the passenger seat, I pulled my truck into our former driveway and left it running. No cars here today, or workers chattering while fixing the roof or the decayed porch overhang.

Just me. Well, hopefully just me.

I called out into the mostly unfurnished, impossibly dark den. “Hello?” The lone recliner chair taunted me with memories of things that used to hide behind and beneath it. “Just grabbing our mail. Anybody here?”

No voice beyond the echo of my own.

I almost wished my father-in-law would pop out of one of the rooms to give me one of those tight handshakes he probably used to compensate for how I towered over him, asking mundane questions I didn’t care to answer.

I sifted through the stack of about twenty envelopes he’d left on the island, looking for my name, my wife’s, or a misspelling of either.

“You forgot something,” said a whisper.

I dropped most of the stack back onto the kitchen island, while five or six scattered onto the floor.

My heart raced. My ears rang.

I stared at the envelopes on the floor the same way I could imagine a seasoned inmate staring at a bar of soap he’d dropped mid-lather.

Like they belonged to the floor permanently now.

I gathered only what letters I knew were ours from the counter and hurried toward the front door.

The handle wiggled twice.

“Nope. Nope. Nope,” I repeated, as if using the words to fuel me toward the alternate exit.

I went back through the kitchen, then through the multi-purpose room we’d most recently called my wife’s office. Her desk still sat in the corner by the window, one of a few pieces of furniture we’d parted with in the move. She’d always complained it was too big for her, and I couldn’t figure out why. Didn’t people want desks to be big so they could put more crap on them?

The composition notebook caught my eye before I opened the side door. I recognized it as a recent one, fattened by sticky notes and daily note-taking; frayed and dirty from traveling everywhere with her. With only a tiny section in the back of flatter paper that remained unused. Aside from a stack of neatly folded gift bags, it was alone on the desk.

I decided it could stay there for at least another day. I made a mental note to text her about it from the safety of the car, or maybe from the nearest traffic light.

Then I speed-walked to the car and got the hell away from that house.

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 10

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That’s where I’ve been. You know how I write about being autistic, like a lot? Burnout kinda comes with the package. She’s my very toxic frenemy who drags me down every now and then.

BUT!!!

In trying to find distractions from the things I don’t have the energy to do, I’ve acquired a new fixation…

Yup. It’s maps.

Pictured is only a sample, but I’m in the process of drawing and detailing a dozen different maps that I will gladly sell for some spare change. If you’re interested, please let me know in a comment or DM. I am willing to entertain the idea of custom maps, but I won’t be able to do a lot at once, and I can’t promise any particular speed. Because burnout. But I’m open to ideas, as always.

I’ll be selling pre-made maps and world-building packages including: outline-only .png files, black and white “coloring page” style, thermal layers for indicating climates, terrains & bodies of water, and even region names.

If you write fiction and need help building your world, but you want something fresh and original, these may be for you. Dungeon Masters! These might also interest you.

Take advantage of my new special interest and buy yourself a world!

Coming soon, based on demand. Speed up the production process by leaving a comment!

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You pick up the glass, and some water spills into the box. You sip from it, but too quickly. You choke. Cough and sputter. Slam the glass down on the box and spill a bit more.

Now the inside of the box is wet, and the bottom of the glass is chipped.

You pick up the glass, take a breath, and sip slowly. Then you gulp down half the remaining water. You’re left parched, so you take another sip. You notice a drip on your foot. Is it a spill from the top, you wonder, or a leak from the bottom? You place the glass inside the box.

You pick up the glass, now noticing a roll of tape and a tube of glue are also inside the box. You shrug, chugging most of the water left, and walk away with the glass. Before you finish off the water, your grip fails.

The glass falls. It bounces a little, and you see a crack in the top.

It still holds a few drops, so you sip them, cutting your lip on the jagged edge. You pick up the tape and place some over the crack so it won’t spread. You set it gently in the box.

You look in the box to see the glass, full of water once more, with its cracked, taped rim and its chipped bottom. You pick it up slowly this time and gingerly slurp from the top. You choke again, but recover quickly. You chug the whole thing and place the glass in the box.

You feel thirstier than ever. You cry for a long time, then reach for the glass. It’s full again.

You lean over the box, lift the glass only to your lips, and sip slowly and carefully. You take tiny sips. Breathe. Take more sips. You feel fulfilled, healthy, energized. You sigh, and the glass falls from your hands.

It doesn’t bounce, or chip, or crack. The whole thing shatters, and the water spills across the floor.

You walk to the box, avoiding visible shards, and you look in. There’s still tape, and there’s still glue. You feel a sliver of glass in your left foot. You decide to pluck it out, and a drop of your blood meets the water on the floor. You feel defeated as you watch the water turn pink, and you cry. And you pray.

And you sleep.

You wake to the same scene, your hopes of it being a dream as broken as the glass. Still, you crawl over to the largest piece and see the chip.

The very first break. This is the bottom.

You take the glue, you begin adding pieces, right or wrong, and you build it back into a cup-like shape. It looks so different. You squeeze your eyes shut and place it in the box. You close the lid for the first time, stifling your tears, and you sleep.

And you sleep.

When you wake up, you feel lively and hopeful. You open the box. The glass is smoothed over like a bone that broke and healed wrong, not like new. You take slow, steady sips, and the glass springs a leak in the middle, forming a tiny waterfall that drips into the box.

You feel better. You feel energized. But you feel older and sadder, too.

It’s then that you realize the glass will never again be completely full.

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The stark silence of my TV turning off woke me up every time.

Mom used to say I was a dangerously light sleeper, especially as a toddler. Then she’d describe a heist-like string of tasks she had to complete in order to leave me asleep in my own bed.

I sat up, a little dazed from two canned margaritas Rita had begged me to drink with her. I needed water.

“Finally,” Pepper said as I emerged from my bedroom in a uniform that matched theirs. “You look like a wreck, are you gonna be able to cook tonight?”

“I think I can flip burgers with a headache. I’ll be fine, as long as I can eat on the way.”

They reached up and picked at my hair, trying to improve it, I assumed. “Will you please let me fix this?”

I removed Pepper’s hand from my hair, gently bringing it down, noticing the black paint on their fingernails that wasn’t there last night. I let go as soon as I registered the embarrassment on their face.

“Not while my head is throbbing,” I replied.

“Your collar is up,” Pepper said, grabbing their keys from the hook by the front door.

I walked to the closest mirror, which was in the guest bathroom, and fiddled with my collar and ran a comb through my messy brown hair. I looked exhausted still, but I couldn’t fix that in the time I had before my shift. When I rejoined Pepper, they were closing the front door and locking all the locks.

“It feels like a side door kinda day, don’t you think?”

I frowned. “You saw something, didn’t you? You saw the chair move or something.”

Pepper shook their head in silence as I followed them to their car.

“Just tell me,” I said, buckling my seatbelt with my eyes locked on their face. They couldn’t even meet my gaze.

“Drop it. If you want me to stop for food, that is.”

I sighed. I needed a car in the worst way. “Yeah, fine.”

I watched Ruby sniff at the ground as we rolled out of the driveway.

“Changing the subject,” I said, “can I ask what the deal is with you and Rita?”

Pepper frowned, glancing quickly at me, then back to the road. “Hmm?”

“I know she can be a little abrasive at times, but…”

Pepper snorted at my statement. “That’s putting it gently. I know she mocks me and calls me names behind my back.”

I sighed. “To be fair, it’s nothing she doesn’t say to your face.” Pepper flashed me a look of disgust. “I guess that’s not much better. But why do you have to feed into it all the time?”

“I feed into it? That’s rich. She’s constantly provoking me and throwing around her giant…”

“Careful,” I warned.

“…attitude. She uses the fact that I won’t fight her to get her way. She does it to you, too, you know.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know, like…” they sighed. “Why does she have to be such a bigot?”

I stared. “Bigot?”

“It’s subtle, I know, but it’s in her tone of voice.”

I reached into my pocket as Pepper pulled up to the drive-thru speaker, hesitating to roll their window down.

“Gary, I know she’s your sister and all…”

“Order me a number nine and a water.” I handed them two crumpled fives, then folded my arms and turned to look out the passenger window.

“Seriously?” Pepper’s voice cracked. “That’s the line?”

I shut my eyes as they ordered my food, signaling that I was done talking. Pepper got the message. It was going to be an awkward drive to our job.

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 9

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Ever wonder why love and anger are associated with shades of the same color?
Love, a fresh-cut rose in full bloom, while anger seethes hot as embers in a furnace.

But does love have to crush you like a stack of bricks?
Does it always ache until it bleeds you dry?

Maybe it’s soft as walking on a fresh-cut lawn on a spring evening.
When it’s new, a dewy patch of clover in the still morning light.

Sometimes it’s the forming rainclouds over dusty gravel roads.
When you just want to be together, but you have to go to work.

It can blind you like a sunbeam through the kitchen window,
Or beam like a sprinkle of daisies you notice at the park.

It can bruise and swell when you’re smacked with betrayal and lies.
When it hurts to think, so you hold tight to the bottle as you try to wash it all down.

Gets dark as midnight when it’s too quiet to sleep because the future is shaky,
And you can feel the void stretching its mouth just wide enough to envelop you.

Maybe after all that, if you’re lucky, it can blush with hope as you agree
To start again from scratch, hopefully make a stronger one this time.

The roaring flame isn’t love so much as passion. Can’t have love, anger,
Fear, or even hatred, without catching a few burns from it.

But if you don’t have passion…
…what’s it even worth?

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“Pomegranate, by far.”

“No, come on,” Rita argued, nearly choking on her beer. “Have you ever tasted the buttered popcorn? Worst flavor ever. You could never trick me with that one. I’d just avoid all the similar-looking ones.”

“Oh yeah? What about the caramel corn or the… uh… lemon drop?”

“Ew, and uh… gross.” I watched her nose wrinkle as she laughed. “Besides, they all have that weird grainy texture to some degree. I’d rather eat an actual pomegranate whole than play Tastebud Roulette with you again.”

I shoved her shoulder, flinching as she balled up a fist to punch me full-force in the upper arm. I wasted no time pulling the claw clip out of her Jet Set Black hair and tossing it across the room as we both cackled.

Three bangs on the bedroom door startled us both, followed by Pepper’s sleepy voice cursing us out.

“Oh, go get a C-PAP mask and shut up,” Rita shouted through the door.

Pepper opened the door, a messy blur of bright red hair popping out of their giant white blanket-hoodie. “You both work nights, just like me. Is it too much to ask to get a little sleep in the early morning hours, or does it need to come to blows?”

My older sister stood up and walked slowly to the door while I cringed underneath my hood, wishing for the power of invisibility. Or even a sinkhole.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear that last part,” Rita turned her head, “can you say it into my good ear?”

I wanted to claw my eyes out and melt into a puddle at the same time. “Rita,” I pleaded, but I knew it was pointless.

Pepper looked at me and then back to Rita. “Not like… literal blows… I just…”

“We’ll be quiet. I need to go to bed anyway,” I said, gathering dishes as I stood up from the bed.

“Okay, thank you,” Pepper said meekly toward me. They avoided Rita’s Blue-Eyed-Stare, but still had to get the last word in as they left the room. “Sleep apnea is a serious condition, you know.”

“Yup,” she responded, slamming her bedroom door behind them. “Bitch.”

I glared at my sister.

“What? Bitch is a perfectly neutral insult; we’ve been over this.”

“Why do you always have to do that?” I asked, rhetorically, shifting the load of dishes into one armful, so I could dig in my pocket. I fished out my portable charger connected to her earbuds case. “Here, I found this in the driveway when we started walking last night. Figured the case needed to charge awhile. You can keep the battery till it’s done.”

She frowned. “Thanks… I’ll talk to her, okay? To them, I mean.”

“What’s the point?” I wondered aloud beneath a sigh.

“Gary…”

I shook my head, looking down to see a brownish crust on the sleeve of my favorite hoodie. My eyes stung with the memory of Mom handing it to me after cutting all the hidden, itchy tags out of the seams.

“Just try to be nicer. You don’t have to be their friend, but you can be nice.”

I went to deposit the dishes into the murky, cold sink water from the night before. A small part of me wanted to just get all the dishes washed and out of the way. A much bigger part of me remembered that every time I stood in that spot, a dark, towering feeling came over me like it was breathing down my neck. It was a similar feeling to when my dad would watch me silently, arms folded, as I loaded the dishwasher incorrectly. This feeling was more menacing, though, and far less judgmental.

I gazed out the kitchen window. As soon as I saw the pink sunrise peeking between the trees in the yard, my body started slowing down for bedtime.

I laughed to myself, saying aloud to no one, “We’re all nocturnal.”

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 8

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I learned to crawl The Wrong Way.

Mom giggled on the phone with her Very Important Normal Friends about the way my knees wouldn’t bend when I crawled, and how I carried my diapered butt high in the air while walking on hands and feet. Stiff limbs, full of concentration. Like a Spider, she’d say.

“I should take a picture, so she’ll remember how funny this is. Maybe I’ll show it to her Future Boyfriends.”

Mom thought I was so cute with my quirks. So cute until I stopped talking, crawling, walking, eating, and developing altogether. My second infancy. Was it another quirk? A temporary sickness? A horrible, life-threatening disease? Was it caused by The Vaccines?

No big deal, Mom saved the day. I had Asthma and Bad Eyesight. She had to shop around, but she finally found me the Right Doctors. It didn’t feel right at first to give a toddler a rescue inhaler, a blaring machine weighing about as much as she did, and glasses so small they were comical, she’d lament. But I was fixed at last. I was Normal Again, and the mundanity could resume.

I learned to gain attention doing tricks for my bullies, as long as I didn’t tell our mom when I got hurt trying to make them laugh. I was so clumsy and stretchy like a rubberband. The bruises were no big deal as long as I got a laugh.

But don’t ask me to perform on cue, because my throat will close up, my face will sweat, and my ears will hear painful bells. I’ll want to run away, but my feet get stuck. I’ll question what would ever possess me to want attention when the cost is so high.

One of the Aunts came to visit once, forgetting I wasn’t a mindless lump in a stroller anymore, not for at least a year or two. She talked about me like I couldn’t hear her from across the room. Mom bragged loudly about my talents and tricks, but whispered about my weaknesses. Only a few Certain People were allowed to know when everything wasn’t perfect.

My aunt approached me like she would a pet. She used a specific voice I’d heard on the insipid TV shows I was told to like simply because they were Age-Appropriate. Her fake voice was so saccharine that my ears revolted and my politeness left my body. My mind scrambled to find a shield against such social torment.

Without looking up from the floor, my preschool-aged mouth spoke a so-called “chilling phrase” I would be reminded of for the rest of my life. After my name escaped my aunt’s mouth covered in syrup, I replied, “She’s not here right now. I’m Jack.”

This was the first time I became my own advocate, and how “Jack” became a nickname for the part of me that is Too Honest and Rough Around the Edges.

I wonder what will happen when the world realizes that Jack is The Real Me and The Other is just The Mask?

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Rita and I crossed the road onto our driveway, our pup leading the way.

She’d retrieved her stash of food and was ready to go eat it in her favorite patch of grass.

My heart pumped audibly in anticipation as I walked by the cars, but all the weird tension from earlier had lifted.

“There you go,” I said as I unhooked the leash from Ruby’s collar and shut the gate behind her. She didn’t look scared, didn’t growl. Maybe our walk actually did help somehow.

I turned to look for Rita, but she was already next to me, opening the gate, petting Ruby’s head, and heading for the side entrance.

When I followed her in, I smelled aerosol air freshener. “Hey, we’re home.”

“About time,” said Pepper, looking through the box of hard seltzer bottles Rita left on the island counter. “Thanks for leaving me exactly one, that’s sweet.”

I smirked and began separating empty bottles into the recycling bin. “Sorry, Ruby needed a walk. We didn’t mean to take so long.”

“Right, well, next time you go for a walk could you maybe pick up the chairs off the floor, shut the drawers, the cabinets, and by the way, the damn front door? Look, I don’t care if you have parties while I’m at work, as long as I don’t... what now?” She followed me into the living room. “What is that dumb look on your face for?”

I touched the knob on the front door, then opened and shut it a few times, pulling at it, checking the screws.

“Gary, what?”

“Sorry...did anything w-weird happen?”

She folded her arms around her slender frame, hesitating. I finally noticed the outfit she’d chosen for bed. A black oversized tee with Eminem’s “Relapse” album cover as the graphic, and my faded red and black gingham pajama pants I’d just re-hemmed.

“I don’t know, I was kinda tired and pissed off at the mess, but I thought I might have seen...” Pepper sighed as I opened the door again, checking the chair’s position. Right where we left it. “Stop it with the chair. You’re tired, I’m tired, let’s just forget it.”

I shut the door, locking the knob, deadbolt, and chain. “You’re right. You must be so tired that you forgot your clothes don’t live in my dresser.”

Pepper’s typically light-brown cheeks flushed redder than her fruit punch hair dye. “They’re just so comfy...”

“They or He?”

“I don’t know. They, I guess. You don’t have to ask every time, weirdo.”

I shrugged. “Sorry about the house. I’m going to bed.”

“Tell Rita she parked in my spot again.”

“Nope, you tell her.” I waved and headed for my bedroom, glancing at the number seventy-one displayed on the thermostat as I passed.

As soon as my head hit the pillow, all the least calming thoughts rushed to the front of my consciousness, competing for my attention. The chair outside that I never actually saw move on its own, but definitely did when I wasn’t watching. The crazy faceless Halloween decoration of an alien or a demon or some generic mix of the two. Then I realized... that house was perfectly in line with the barricade at the center of the bridge where the dog always got spooked. And the source of the nasty smell.

The same smell surrounded me in my bed. Musty, wet, withered. It smelled rotten. Just like the mole Ruby killed and stashed under the porch last year. It must have been under there for weeks before we found it, because she’d shoved it so far in with her nose that she had no way to pull it back out.

I was feeling nauseated again, and now I was shivering. I looked at the digital clock, then immediately bolted out of bed. I knew it was just a horror movie trope, but some part of me truly believed that nothing good happened at three in the morning.

“Welcome back,” Rita said, scooting over on her bed to make room as I entered her room without knocking. She was eating from a package of cookie dough and a pint of vanilla ice cream, alternating with the same spoon, while watching an old Tarantino flick.

I grabbed her spoon and ate some cookie dough. “Have you been to sleep yet?”

“Nope,” my older sister said, handing me the hoodie I’d left in her room the night before last. “I read an entire book before I realized the buzz saw I was hearing was coming from Pepper’s nostrils. Want me to start this over?”

I nodded, pulling on my hoodie and handing her the spoon back. “Want to stay up till sunrise?”

Rita nodded, pointing the remote at the TV while we both ignored the room’s impossible drop in temperature.

To Be Continued…

Jump to Chapter 7

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With those three words hanging in the air, I came to a grim stillness. My heel stopped tapping its rhythm into the concrete, and my fingers stopped picking at the weathered edges of the deck chair onto which my anxiety had me glued. The air itself grew still, as if it felt the weight of the words and refused to carry them any further.

My eyes wandered from his fierce gaze as I sighed, pretending to assess our surroundings, but primarily taking a break from watching his jaw clench repeatedly.

I frowned at the jarring contrast of young laughter and playful splashes in the hotel pool three yards away. I knew I should’ve stayed upstairs and just gone to sleep. My misguided longing to be accepted had tricked me once again into thinking I could go with the flow. I came down here to get in the pool and have fun, not to sit in my dry bathing suit and take this verbal beating from someone who may not even remember it the next morning.

“See?” The sound of the beer can crinkling in his grasp pulled me back into his disapproving lecture. “You can’t even look me in the eye. You’re acting like a quitter, and that isn’t who you are.”

I glared into his left eye with a heat I’d reserved for those at the end of a bridge they’d provoked me to set ablaze.

I gathered my strength, my voice, and my self-respect as I stood from my seat, and said, “Who I am? How could you claim to know who I am when I’m still trying to figure that out?”

He held the bridge of his nose the way he always did when he’d run out of ammunition in the conversation; when it was time to pull the pin and throw the grenade.

“So, you’re finally going to stop blaming all your problems on your mom’s death and replace it with claiming to be autistic?”

All my words left my body, along with the air in my lungs. I could no longer see the shy boy I had befriended decades ago, when we were both so out of place that we had no one to talk to but each other. All the trauma, all the bullying, all the need for validation had suffocated the boy I once knew. Suddenly, I realized he’d been gone long before this. The drunken shell of a man seated before me had crushed the life out of him.

He shook his head as if for dramatic punctuation before saying, “I’m so confused.”

I turned and walked away, knocking over an abandoned drink without care. Over a swell of tears, and through gritted teeth, I said my last words to a former friend. Even though he was incapable of hearing them.

“So am I.”

Support Without Subscribing

Do you have story ideas? Have you written posts that start with “Write me a story about…” that went nowhere? Bring them here!

Click on “Submit Your Prompt” to be redirected to a Google submission form. Once submitted, your prompt, your pen name (this name will be public), and your email will be added to the Prompt Pool. When the pool is large enough, everyone will get a chance to vote for their favorite. The prompt with the most votes will be expanded into a writing project. The prompt, with pen name, will be credited at the top of the finished piece as the inspiration, just before the author’s name.

IMPORTANT: All credit for the prompt you write will belong only to you, and all credit for the piece written using the prompt will belong only to the author of the piece.

Submit Your Prompt

Below are a few suggestions in case your mind just went blank. Feel free to use an option from one or more categories as inspiration, or just wing it. Don’t forget to add your pen name for credit.

Write me a…

vignette • flash fiction story • poem • freewriting passage

About…

describe the main character • describe the main character and the antagonist • describe the main character, the antagonist, and a secondary character

Whose goal is…

to destroy or create something • to avenge or rescue someone • to solve a mystery or crime • to go adventuring or return home • to meet someone new or estranged • to kill or to die

At/on/during…

describe a place or culture • describe a time period • describe an event • describe a sensory experience • describe a mood or feeling

And will face/discover/reveal…

an impossible choice or obstacle • a secret crush or affair • an exceptional talent or othering limitation • a photo, letter, or personal object • a phobia or trauma

Submit Your Prompt

(If it’s a big hit, I’ll post regular polls so that more prompts can be converted into stories. We’ll see how the first one goes…)