Month: April 2023

Ms. Grundy and the Bone Ghosts (3)

Constable Harley O’Shea strolled around Lloyd the bartender’s small apartment above The Village Fig. He bent his thick neck from side to side to leer into nooks, crannies, corners, cubbies. He pulled out a pair of reading glasses and leaned in close to a dusty wooden cabinet of clutter. “You sure do have a lot of stuff, Lloyd. What gives?”

“I like things,” Lloyd answered. “I don’t have many friends, but I have plenty of interests. Is there a law against that?”

Constable O’Shea took note of Lloyd’s attempt at sarcasm. “No.” He pointed to a door off the living room, darkness in the cracked opening. “Is that your bathroom?”

“Yes,” Lloyd answered as politely as he could, but his patience was already wearing thin. He stood behind the constable as the lawman worked his plump body through the doorway of the bathroom and switched on the light. The constable pulled the shower curtain aside to look inside the tub. “What’s with all the different kinds of shampoo, Lloyd? Hell, you don’t even have that much hair.”

“I like to experiment with different brands, fragrances and cleansing styles. I don’t understand what shampoo has to do with…”

Constable O’ Shea raised a hand the size of a thick bone-in porkchop to silence him. “Interference with my investigation isn’t a good idea, Lloyd. Trust me on that one.” He turned and bent with a groan and opened the cabinet beneath the sink. He retrieved a small flashlight from his utility belt and illuminated the dim space. “Am I going to find any feminine products down here?” he asked.

“No!” Lloyd protested. “That’s preposterous.”

“What about boner pills or condoms or latex gloves? Huh?”

“Oh, good grief, Harley! I’m not a swinger.”

The constable stood and there was an audible popping sound that came from his overtaxed joints. Once erect, he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a blue cloth bandana and wiped at his brow. “Whew. It’ so damn hot in here, Lloyd. Why don’t you go open a window.”

Lloyd did what he was told, and when he returned, he found that the constable had migrated to his bedroom. When he walked in, Harley was inspecting the closet. “You’re kind of light in the fashion department, Lloyd. Why’s that?”

“I don’t want to have to trouble myself with too many clothing decisions on a daily basis,” Lloyd answered.

“Like Einstein, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“What’s in the shoeboxes?”

“Shoes.”

“Aw, come on, Lloyd. No one uses shoeboxes for shoes. What you got in them? Dope? Naughty pictures? Laughing gas for pre-coitus huffing?”

Lloyd sighed with frustration. “If you want to know so bad, just look.”

The constable grinned and worked to remove the lids from the tops of three shoe boxes… Nothing but shoes, shoes, and shoes.

“I told you.”

“What about the dildoes and the vibrators? Under the bed?”

Lloyd was insulted. “No! I don’t have those kinds of things!”

But Harley ignored him and had already gotten down on the floor and was training his small flashlight under the bed. “Jesus, Lloyd. Do you ever clean? You’ve got enough wootzoolas down here to build a bear.”

“I suppose some dust is reason to arrest me, too?” Lloyd snapped.

The constable got to his knees and looked up at him. “You’re being too far lighthearted about this, Lloyd.” He wagged a fat finger at him. “But you might want to take this a bit more seriously. I’ll find something.” He stood all the way up at the foot of the bed and proceeded to loosen his gun belt and undo his pants. He let them fall to around his ankles and then stepped out of them.

“What the hell are you doing?” Lloyd said, now growing furious and more confused.

“Investigating,” Harley said, and he proceeded to climb up onto the bed. He stood as tall as he could, somewhat struggling to keep his balance on the soft mattress. Then he took a giant leap and violently bellyflopped into the sheets. There was the sound of something cracking and the bed comically collapsed as if they had time shifted to an old Laurel and Hardy film.

“What the fuck!” Lloyd screamed.

But Harley ignored him as he buried his face into the bedding and inhaled deeper than the deepest depths of space. “Ahh hah!” the constable bellowed. “I’m catching the scent of my own wife’s delicious ass!”

Lloyd grew red in the face and fisted his own head in uncontrollable anger. “Get out! Get out now before I call up the real cops!”

Harley rolled out of the bed and thumped onto the floor like a sack of potatoes. He struggled to get up, but when he finally did, he scooped up his pants and put himself back together. He sniffled, dabbed at his head with his blue cloth bandana and tried to fix his wispy hair back into place with a hand. He looked around at the mess he created. “Wow. Geez, Lloyd. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I was just trying to be thorough in my investigation.”

Lloyd’s pointer finger shook at the end of his outstretched arm. He spoke through clenched, grinding teeth. “Get the hell out of my apartment.”

“Okay, Lloyd. It appears I went a bit overboard here. Things really got out of hand. I realize that now.”

“A bit? A bit!?”

“I’m sorry, Lloyd. It’s just that… Damn it all.” He sighed with a soul full of sadness. “I know Mary is up to something. I thought I had you pegged. It appears I was mistaken.”

“You sure as hell were, Harley. Very mistaken.”

The constable bowed his head in shame and walked out of the bedroom and toward the front door. Lloyd rushed after him. “What about my bed?”

“Oh,” Harley said, and he scratched at his honeydew melon-like head. “I’ll send over a new one as soon as I can. No charge to you, of course. I’ll ding the ding-a-ling taxpayers.” He tried to laugh.

But Lloyd found no humor in any of it. “When?”

“Soon, Lloyd. Soon.” Harley pulled the door open and went out.

Lloyd stood for a moment in shocked silence. He eventually sighed, a calming breath in and out, and put a hand to his forehead and scrunched his face as if he had a terrible headache. Which he in fact now did. Then he heard the muffled, soft voice coming from behind the door of a small closet in the kitchen. A closet the constable had overlooked. Lloyd went to the nearly invisible door and tugged it open. The constable’s wife, Mary O’Shea herself, came tumbling out and fell into the bartender’s arms.

TO BE CONTINUED

By
Aaron Echoes August
Ms. Grundy and the Bone Ghosts (2)

Lloyd the bartender looked across at Mary O’Shea. His eye sockets seemed far too large for his skull. “You know, Mary,” he said. “I’ve been known to satisfy a few ladies in my lifetime. In fact, a couple of the dames were so worked up that they had to be physically scraped from the ceiling of my love lounge… That’s my bedroom, of course.”

Mary did a pffft sound with her mouth. “Come now, Lloyd. Are you saying you want to get with me? Are you actually telling me that you’re the male specimen I should climb aboard for a pleasure cruise?”

Lloyd grinned like a horror movie. His eyes flipped toward the ceiling. “Did you know, Mary, that I take residence right upstairs? Right above this very bar? Why, we could be grinding pelvises in short order.”

“Lloyd!” Mary O’Shea burst. “You’re much too old and gross. And I imagine your breath tastes like baby diaper charcoal and your meat and two veg are most likely shriveled up beyond recognition.”

“Ouch,” Lloyd said. “I may not look it, Mary O’Shea, but I am a human being with a certain degree of feelings. How can you be so cruel?”

She motioned for another pour of whiskey. “I’m sorry about that, Lloyd. I suppose I’ve swallowed a few bitter roots today. It’s that damn Allison Grundy. She has a gift for turning the sweet to sour.”

“Oh, Ms. Grundy,” Lloyd said, his hands on the edge of the bar and his expression one of sympathy yet irritation. “I swear, that woman was born with a puckering pickle in her mouth.”

Mary O’Shea slammed the shot, ran the sleeve of her Navy blue business suit jacket across her mouth, and sighed. She was beginning to wobble with unpleasant drunkenness. “Well, Lloyd,” she started out. “I’m afraid I’ve lost my hankerin’ for a spankerin’. But thanks for everything.” She carefully got down off the bar stool and turned to make her way to the exit.

“You be careful now, Miss Mary,” Lloyd called out to her. “I don’t want to find out in the morning gazette that you wrapped your car around a tree. I could call a taxi for you.”

She turned and waved him off. “I’ll be fine, Lloyd. You don’t have to care for me so much. Focus on yourself for once. Maybe consider consulting a plastic surgeon.”

“A plastic surgeon. What on Earth for?”

“Your skull, Lloyd. Your skull.” And with that she hobbled to the doorway and disappeared into the remains of the day.

With a day off and in his apartment above The Village Fig pub, Lloyd the bartender looked at himself in the singular bathroom mirror beneath a yellowed glow. He grasped his jaw and turned his head this way and that way to study the skull that encased his eyes and brain and teeth and muscles and sinuses and canals and blood. He stretched his wide eyes even wider. The bony sockets did seem too large — as if his death skeleton was forcing an early appearance.

He looked at his teeth. They were small and slightly yellowed but not chipped or uneven. He stuck out his tongue as far as he could and studied the bumpy wet organ. “Uh huh, uh huh,” he clumsily muttered aloud. “What’s a man to do when time is his greatest enemy? I can’t grow younger, Miss Mary O’Shea… Fiddlesticks! Maybe I do need to see a doctor.” He gave up on his self-inspection, turned off the bathroom light and went to the living room and glanced out the window that overlooked the halfway quiet street below.

Lloyd noticed that Constable Harley O’Shea was leaning up against a lamp post and gnawing on some sort of nasty Greek wrap, it was the pale pita that gave it away. And then as if some invisible spirit whispered something to him, he suddenly looked up at Lloyd in the window. The constable’s mouth was agape, his eyes narrowed. Did he know something? Lloyd wondered. Had he been watching, listening to things inside the pub? Did he have a spy set on his wife’s tail? And he thought of her tail. That plump rear-end.

Lloyd moved away from the window and went to the nurse-white neatly cluttered kitchen and fixed himself a cold chicken sandwich with salted cucumber wedges on the side and a fat glass of Ovaltine. He sat at the small table for two that rested between the kitchen and the living room — furniture with function, a wall without a wall. The moment he bit into one of the cucumber wedges there came a loud pounding at his door. He jumped for it was a violent noise, like NCA raid knocking, a battering ram in the ready perhaps.

Lloyd moved toward the door and peered through the peephole. Constable Harley O’Shea peered back. “Open the door, Lloyd. We need to talk.”

Lloyd cautiously opened the door, only about four inches though, and looked out. His heart pounded like a tom-tom. “Yes? What can I do for you, Harley?”

Harley moved closer to the crack and peered in. His eyes danced over the scene inside as much as they could. “I’ve got some questions. May I come in?”

“Questions about what?”

“I’ll let you know when you let me in.”

Lloyd conceded and opened the door all the way and the bulbous constable strolled in. “Thank you, Lloyd.”

“What’s this about?”

“It’s about my wife, Lloyd. I’m sure you know Mary, right?” He paused and grinned at Lloyd. “Of course, you do.”

“Has she been hurt? Is she missing?”

“Why. Did you hurt her? Did you kidnap her?” Harley suggested with a sneer.

“No… It’s just she had a few too many yesterday. I didn’t want her to drive. I just hope nothing bad has happened to her.”

“Is that right? Do you care that much for her, Lloyd?”

“Well, I mean. I would be concerned for any of my customers that had too much to drink.”

Harley O’Shea tried to step further into the house. “Do you mind if I look around?”

“Look around?”

Harley tugged at his belt. His belly had an annoying habit of pushing it down. “That’s right. Look around.”

“Look around for what?” Lloyd was unnerved and wanted to know.

“Oh, you know. Things.”

“What sort of things?”

“Things. Things like maybe a stray high-heeled shoe. Maybe a pair of women’s underwear. Maybe the lingering scent of a perfume. Maybe a lipstick-stained wine glass. Maybe a bottle of personal lubricant. Things, Lloyd.”

Lloyd scoffed. “There’s nothing like that in my apartment.”

Harley shrugged. “Then there’s nothing to worry about.”

“I think you need a search warrant.”

The constable laughed. “Is that right, Lloyd?”

“I’m pretty sure.”

Harley roughly clamped a chubby hand on Lloyd’s nimble shoulder. “Look. We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way would be to just let me have a little look around. You said yourself there’s nothing for me to find. So, there you go. Easy peasy. We both go on with our day. But, if you want me to go through all that trouble of getting a search warrant, well, then I’d have to come back here with a pack of men, and I wouldn’t be in a very good mood, and I’d just have them toss your place good. It would be a horrible mess, Lloyd. Horrible. Now, do you want all your things just thrown everywhere? I mean, especially since you apparently have nothing to hide. What do you say, Lloyd?”

“But I still don’t understand why you want to look around? What am I being accused of here?”

“Well, I suppose I do owe you that… I’m accusing you of messing around with my wife, Lloyd.”

“I don’t think that’s a crime for the law to be involved with,” Lloyd snipped.

“It’s not? I beg to differ, Lloyd. It’s a crime against me. It’s a crime against my Mary. It’s a crime against the sanctity of our marriage. Hell, it’s a crime against the very foundation of a decent society.”

“I haven’t done anything criminal,” Lloyd said. “All I did was do my job. I served your wife drinks and we talked. That’s it. It’s standard procedure in my line of work.”

“Well, Lloyd. Then you won’t mind me exercising my standard procedure. Now, just step aside and let me do my job.”

TO BE CONTINUED

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Morbid Mind Correctional Facility (1)

The Lord of Life sat in a morbid café on a Sunday afternoon unsunny with rain and cold and a gray veil that seemed to cover everything. He was cold and his heart hurt, and his eyes felt like lead as they pointed to the prophetic pink moon that hovered over a landscape of stone and saguaro. He sighed over the carnage playing like a film in the white ball he held in his hand.

Mummy practitioners of velvet voodoo moved through the air like bellows of cauldrons filled to the brim with coffee and lava and all the hopes and dreams of multi-colored birds and souls. The meat meters ticked away, wishes spinning in a velodrome, the whizz of wheels, the pumping of veins encased in skin, the round and round and round of another yellow child at the edge of the city lagoon where the bum prophets read from their Office Depot plastic binder manifestos on all the injustices of the cruel metal world that loves money more than men.

That messy-faced child in the banana gown wanders the world and now sits in the sand on a cold beach beside a cold body of water the size of a sea. The waves churn a lonely beat out there. A repetitive strong lull. The child with the hair the color of the Black Knight exoplanet, the deepest known black in the universe, beset upon her pear warm face, periwinkle eyes behind orange-colored glasses, plastic, venomous, she recalls the ear candle torture at the Victorian red brick home in a place like Boston or New York or Applesauce City in the far northern regions of the upper upperest Michigan.

Someone played the piano in the parlor, soft and melodious notes, while the girl sat on an antique chair with the scent of chaotic history, her head tilted, the gray-haired woman with the scent of a funeral parlor leering above her with the waxy stick of fire. “But it burns, it hurts, it scalds, it gives me nightmares beneath the cloud-raddled moon,” the girl whined.

“Hush now, Rosalina. Hush your overworked puppy mouth and let me proceed with the procedure.” She peered into the girl’s ear canal and grunted. “Ahh, the demons are on the run. I can see them!”

So, under the cover of night and crawling out from the comfort of a warm bed in her attic bedroom and out onto the rooftop where she saw a sea of other rooftops and stars and smoke and gallantly shining lights of gold and green and corpse blue, she ran away to another day… And that is where and when she looked out at that cold body of water the size of a sea.

A woman dressed as a cocktail waitress, a peacock blue fabric that glints in the sun, walks along the same beach slowly, a semi-automatic rifle perched atop her shoulders behind her neck. She is wearing dark sunglasses and a facial smear of makeup. A police uniform type hat rests upon her head, raven-black hair spills out from beneath it and falls down the sides of her face like thin curtains. There is a lost valley in her rosy eyes when she raises the shades. She sees the girl named Rosalina in the banana gown sitting there in the sand staring out at the water. She stops, cocks her head at the wonder of it. “What are you doing here?” she asks in her husky yet feminine voice. “Are you thinking of wandering out and getting carried away to the arms of Neptune?”

The girl named Rosalina rubs at her nose before turning her head and looking up at the woman. She immediately notices the assault rifle. “Are you going to shoot me?” she asks.

The peacock policewoman smiles for a moment. Then she brings the rifle down and into position. She aims it at the girl and peers across the sight. “Is that what you want? For me to shoot you?” Her finger trembles near the trigger.

“Nah,” the girl halfheartedly says. “Shooting kids is so old school. Get it… Shooting kids, school.” She tries to laugh. “It’s just become such an acceptable art form these days. I was hoping you could be more creative.”

The woman lowered the rifle then swung it around to a place across her back. “Okay… I won’t shoot you. But are you lost?”

“Lost? No. I’m not lost. I just don’t want to be found.”

The woman maneuvered her body to be able to sit down in the sand beside her. “Why don’t you want to be found?”

The girl licked her lips before she spoke. “Because they’re so mean to me. They’re trying to burn my brains out.”

“Who on earth would do something like that? Your parents?”

“No. The foster people. I’m with them because my parents have,” and she looked up at the sky. “Gone on to the realm of the other side.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. What happened?”

The girl studied her intently for a moment. “You’re too pretty to be a police person.”

The woman smiled. “I’m not really a police person. I’m a member of the New American Peacock Brigade. We’re anti-government female vigilantes. Do you know what that means?”

“You’re rebellious,” the girl quipped. “You kill based on random conspiracies without any factual basis.”

The woman laughed. “Something like that… What’s your name?”

The girl hesitated for a moment, perhaps still untrusting of the intruder and possible sycophant. “Rosalina. I’m kind of Mexican. What’s your name? Your real name.”

“My name is Magda. Magda Balls.”

The girl laughed. “That’s a very weird name.”

The woman turned to look out at the cold water that is always there, like interstate traffic. “I know… But you haven’t said. How did your parents die?”

The girl looked down between her knees and began to breathe heavily. Then she started to cry and whimpered through the tears, “They were killed in a hot-air balloon accident in Arizona. My pa ended up nearly unrecognizably broken on top of a saguaro cactus. My momma was smashed to pieces on some beautiful red rock. They said the blood blended in just fine.”

“That’s terrible,” Magda said to her.

The girl turned to look up at her and scowled. “Of course, it’s terrible. Dying in a hot-air balloon crash is a very terrible thing.”

“Don’t you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No. I’m a lonely only.” The girl reached into her pocket, retrieved a pack of cigarettes and tapped one out. She stuck it in her mouth, reached into another pocket for her lighter and set flame to the tip. Her lips clamped down on the white stick and she drew in a drag. Exhaled. Coughed.

Magda Balls was slightly shocked. “Do you really think you should be smoking? How old are you?”

“I’m 10.2… And I don’t need a lecture from an anti-everything female vigilante.”

Magda Balls put her hands out in the air in a gesture of backing away. “Okay… Sorry. I suppose it’s none of my business.”

“Right. It’s none of your business.”

“So, are you just going to sit out here forever? Do you have food? Clothes? Anything?”

Rosalina motioned her head toward the Lidsville backpack in the sand. “I’ve got what I need for now. I’ll just steal stuff if I need anything else.”

“And I thought I was rebellious… Or at least you did,” the woman said with some confusion.

“Right. Whatever.” The girl took another drag off her cigarette and exhaled and sighed at the same time before tossing the cancer stick in the sand. The red-hot tip glowed momentarily and then blacked out completely like a vaporized thought. “I guess I should probably move along.” She stood, brushed the sand from the various parts of her, and reached down for her backpack. “It was nice meeting you I suppose. Good luck with your ridiculous reign of terror.”

“Wait,” Magda called out.

The girl stopped and turned. “What is it?”

“My place isn’t too far from here… If you want, well, I have a pretty comfortable couch. You’re welcome to it until you figure things out. I mean, I just hate to leave you to the dangers of the world.”

Rosalina scrunched her face as she thought about it. She looked all around, and the world did seem very big and scary to her. She knew she was tough, but maybe she wasn’t tough enough.

Magda could hear the wheels turning inside the girl’s small head. “I have Netflix and internet and lemonade and nuts and board games and bubble bath and… I suppose I have everything you could need or want.”

“And you’re not going to try to burn demons out of my brain?”

Magda stood. She was tall compared to the girl. She reached out her hand and cupped Rosalina’s chin. “Absolutely not.”

TO BE CONTINUED

By
Aaron Echoes August
The Gravy Canoe of Wild Wyoming – 9

Photo by Negative Space on Pexels.com

Carrie Gould in her tight red dress resembled a hot stuffed pepper oozing melted cheese as she sat across from him at the Rambler’s Ranch Buffet on the traveler’s edge of Berlin, Wyoming.

Steel Brandenburg III couldn’t believe his eyes as he looked over at the enormous platter in front of her — a massive mountain of mashed potatoes with gravy, pieces of fried chicken, a thick ham slice, fried shrimp, catfish, hush puppies, golden corn, yam wedges, three buttery rolls, pasta salad, cottage cheese, pickled beets, peach halves in heavy syrup, fried okra, a slice of pizza, two tacos, orange gelatin with fruit cocktail pieces inside, and along with it all, an extra-large lemon-lime diet soda.

She seemed oblivious to his presence as she shoveled and slurped and smacked and swallowed like a farm animal. Steel forked at his salad and ate some of it. He chewed a radish. He cleared his throat because someone just needed to say something. “Can I ask you a question?” Steel said.

Carrie Gould suddenly looked up at him, her mouth still moving in a chewing motion. She wiped at her oily lips with a paper napkin and smiled. “Yes, darling. Anything at all.”

“How much do you weigh?”

She coughed and sputtered a bit. She hadn’t expected such inappropriate bluntness. “How much do I weigh?” she repeated.

“Yes. I’m curious. I watch a lot of My 600-Pound Life because I’m always just so fascinated about how people let themselves get to such an awful state. And frankly, it makes me feel better about my own life… You know, seeing others in such dire circumstances. It makes my failures seem far less potent.”

Carrie Gould was mortified. She looked down at the pile of food in front of her and sighed deeply. “Do I embarrass you?” She looked around the room and in her own mind it seemed like everyone in the Rambler’s Ranch Buffet was staring at her, judging her. But in reality, everyone was lost inside their own little bubble of emotional pain, mental anguish, and physical discomfort.

Something twitched between Steel’s legs and his stomach smiled up from its pit. “Not at all.” He leaned in closer to her. “Truth be told… I’m imagining what you must look like out of that dress. Mmm… The thought of all that plumpness sprawled out before me.”

Carrie Gould blushed and stuffed an entire buttered roll in her mouth. “Oh, Steel,” she said once she swallowed. “You’re just saying that to make me reconsider the lawsuit and the pressing of criminal charges. No one would ever imagine that. Not ever.”

Steel sipped at his iced water with floating lemon wedge. “No, it’s true. I’d like to see you whaled out on my bed completely naked… And I’d like to feed you an entire pumpkin pie with a bucket of whipped cream.”

Carrie Gould’s hand jerked unnaturally, and her glass of soda tumbled over, and the liquid raced across the table. “Oh, shit,” she whispered loudly. She grabbed up a wad of napkins and worked to absorb the spill.

Steel grinned. “I bet you cause a lot of spills.”

She beamed at him. “Why are you being like this? It’s a bit over the top.”

“Aren’t you glad I’m interested?”

“I was hoping for some romance, not straight up gross pornography. I’m not a circus act. I want a relationship, not a one-time fling.”

Steel rattled his fingers against the large plastic maroon cup of lemon water. He turned his head and sighed.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Plenty of things. But you never answered my question… How much do you weigh?”

Carrie Gould leaned back and puffed out her puffy mouth. “Five-hundred and forty-eight pounds.”

Steel jerked forward. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Don’t make fun of me.”

“I’m not… I want to see it. I want to see all of it. I want to bounce up and down on it.”

Carrie Gould scowled at him like an evil witch. She grudgingly pushed herself away from the table and got up and walked over to the dessert bar. She piled a wide bowl high with cherry cobbler and then went to the ice cream machine, pulled the lever, and slathered the cobbler with a turd-like glob of vanilla dairy treat. She went back to the table and sat down and worked the cobbler into her mouth without looking at him.

Steel snapped at her. “I said I wanted to feed you pumpkin pie… Why did you go ahead and get dessert?”

Still without looking at him and with her mouth crammed full of cherry cobbler and vanilla dairy treat she said, “I have a mind of my own, Steel. Get used to that fact if you want to be with me.”

“Be with you?”

“I’ve decided to up the stakes,” she began. “You’re going to be my boyfriend. My steady boyfriend. We’re going to have a completely exclusive relationship. And I’ll give myself to you when I’m good and ready and when the Lord lets me know the time is right. Until then, you will support me emotionally, day and night. You will be available to me when I need you, not the other way around… Do it, or I’ll sing like a bird.”

“Wow. Threats. So, I get nothing out of this so-called relationship that you’ve just suddenly created? That seems unfair, and I’m not sure I’m willing to do that. Doesn’t seem very Christian of you either.”

“You leave the Good Lord out of this… I’m not the one with my backside on the line. This is all because of your actions, Steel. None of this would be the way it is if you hadn’t pranked me with that trick gum. Now, you pay the price.”

“But I’ve already made it clear that I want you… In a very bad way.”

“Don’t be so disgusting. And I’m not a plaything to satisfy your sick desires. I’m a human being with feelings and needs.” She suddenly and uncontrollably released a giant, long-winded belch that echoed throughout the restaurant. Horribly embarrassed, she covered her face with her hands and sank down in her seat.

“Here piggy, piggy, piggy,” one of the other restaurant patrons called out from somewhere. There was a communal cloud of laughter.

Carrie Gould peeked out at Steel. Tears were streaming down her face. “Let’s just get out of here,” she said.

TO BE CONTINUED

By
Aaron Echoes August
Ms. Grundy and the Bone Ghosts (1)

The street ran through a neighborhood drenched in summer. At one end it crested slightly toward a hopeful, golden horizon smeared with emergency room gauze. It was a quiet street mostly save for the children that came out of the boxes to play. The boxes lined the street on both sides and had windows and doors and chimneys and yards of green grass and flower beds and bird baths and one even had a mysterious round green orb that sat atop a pedestal with futuristic soft curves.

The old woman who owned this particular box, a red box with a white fence, well, her name was Allison Grundy and Allison Grundy spent a lot of time in her yard holding a green hose like a snake and watering things. Allison Grundy liked to wear a straw hat and dark sunglasses. She usually held a cigarette in the hand opposite the hose hand, the drooping ash half the length of the entire cigarette itself until it just fell. She also liked to look at her green orb as it sat there so peacefully, shining like it did. She would hold her face close to it and her eyes widened as they drilled though the shimmer and into a land of future fortunes. But her concentration was then often disrupted by the sounds of play. The youngsters with their whistles and their shiny bells and their harvest balloons and toy bazookas. It all soured her soul, like lemons in vinegar.

Allison Grundy didn’t care for noise and mischief and if any of the neighborhood children were up to any mischief at all, which of course they usually were, she would go right inside her red box, lift the yellow phone receiver from the wall and dial the constable. “Those kids are going to end up killing someone,” she would complain. “They’re rowdy rebel rousers the whole lot of them.”

“Now, now Ms. Grundy,” Constable Harley O’Shea would say on the other end. “They’re just kids. And kids get a little wild sometimes. Why don’t you just draw the curtains so you can’t see them and settle in with a nice cup of hot chamomile tea. Play that album you like. What is it? … A Farewell to Kings by Rush.”

“Yes, yes… But it’s the middle of the day,” she grunted with the hoarse voice of a smoke addled horse. “They shouldn’t be allowed to ruin my life, constable. It’s your job to keep the peace now, don’t you know.”

Constable O’Shea released a big sigh from the depths of his big belly. “Please, Ms. Grundy. You must understand that it’s all part of living in a community. If you don’t want neighbors, then perhaps you should consider moving to that isolated farmhouse on the edge of town.”

“The old Grady place?”

“That’s right. It’s still for sale. Very private. Very quiet. No neighbors and no young ruffians running about. Consider it, won’t you? I’ll talk to my wife. Bye now. I’ve got to run.” He hung up.

Allison Grundy stared into the receiver as if she might be able to see him deep inside there. When she finally realized she couldn’t, she slammed it into its holding place. It was right after that when a rock came flying through one of her front windows. The cacophony of broken glass made her drop to the floor in fright just like she did in the days of the war and the screaming bombs that fell from the dark sky. “You little bastards!” she howled from her position of defense. “You’ll pay for this you little bastards!”

Mary O’Shea, wife of the constable and part-time real estate agent, pulled up to the old Grady place and shut down the car. She addressed the condition of her face in the rear-view mirror. She reached into her purse for her latest lipstick. Her eyes caught the looming figure of Allison Grundy as she applied the redness to her mouth. The old lady was up on the porch and peering in through curtainless windows.

Mary O’Shea got out of the car and braced herself. She took a deep breath and called out. “Hello, Ms. Grundy. What do you think so far?”

The old woman grunted. “It needs a lot of work. I’m not sure I’m up to it. I’m without a man these days.”

Mary O’Shea smiled. “Some fresh paint would make a world of difference. And I’m sure you could find someone to hire. Would you like to go inside?”

Allison Grundy didn’t answer right away. She was too busy looking off at the vastness that surrounded the place. It was indeed isolated on its grass-swept hill, a wide bulge in the Earth that afforded one a wide view of the varied surrounding landscape. It frightened her somehow. There was so much distance. She sighed. “I’m not sure if it’s for me,” she said. “There’s an awful lot of nothingness.”

Mary O’Shea grimaced in her own guts. “But I thought that was what you wanted. Isolation. Quiet. Is it not?”

Allison Grundy craned her neck upward. The house was three stories high with a pointed turret in one corner. A peeling white. Dusty windows. Disjointed shingles. Dwindling memories of other lives lived within its walls. “It’s an awful big place. Hollow. End-of-day doldrums in the face of a falling sun.”

Mary O’Shea went for the lockbox on the door and worked it open to retrieve the key. “Plenty of room for you to spread out,” she said, trying to remain positive despite the fact she felt like biting the old lady’s head off and spitting it out over the edge of a sea cliff. She pushed the door open, and they moved inside. “There’s been some walls removed to provide for this wonderful open concept. Isn’t it just grand?”

Allison Grundy’s head moved around like a cat following a laser pointer. “It’s somewhat obscene,” the old woman commented.

“Nonsense,” Mary O’Shea replied. “I think you deserve to live lavishly, seeing that you’re…”

“That I’m what… Old? Near death? About to climb into my coffin for an eternal nap?”

“Of course, not, Ms. Grundy. I meant that, well, you deserve to spoil yourself a little.”

Allison Grundy peered up the grand staircase in the center of the main floor. “I could slip upon and fall down these velvet steps and break my neck,” she said. “And no one would ever know.”

“Oh, Ms. Grundy. Come now, don’t be so bleak. Would you like to see the chef’s kitchen? All the appliances are new and oh so shiny and bright…”

The first thing that Mary O’Shea did as she drove away from the old Grady place was light a cigarette. She cracked the driver’s side window and exhaled. The wind sucked the smoke away. “Crazy old bitch,” she said aloud to herself. “I hope she does fall down those stairs and break her neck. But then again, I’m sure she won’t even make an offer.” She shook her head at herself for talking to herself. She reached for the power button on the in-dash stereo and pushed it. An old Led Zeppelin song filled the car — Black Dog. Mary O’Shea suddenly wanted to have sex with someone. Anyone. She raced back to town and a place called The Village Fig. She parked her car a block away and walked. When she pushed the pub door open and allowed the light of day in, it was as if she had startled a coven of sleeping warlocks. Heads turned. Eyes squinted. Someone said in a surprisingly polite voice, “Hi there.”

The animals inside sniffed the air as she walked toward the bar. The bartender stepped out of the shadows and stood like a well-dressed mummy. His name was Lloyd and he looked dead, but he wasn’t dead. “What can I do you for, Mary?” he asked. His grin foretold of bad times perhaps.

She looked to her left. She looked to her right. She turned in a full circle and swept the entire scope of the pub with her Irish eyes. There were men everywhere and every one of them was looking back at her. She felt a pulsation between her legs.

Mary O’Shea turned back to Lloyd and smiled. “A whiskey on the rocks,” she said. She climbed into a barstool, retrieved her cigarettes, and lit one up. She exhaled her second puff directly above Lloyd’s strange head as he set the shot glass down in front of her and poured from a green bottle. Mary O’Shea snatched it up and tossed it back. She slammed the glass down and said, “Hit me again.” Lloyd did as he was told, and she threw that shot back as well. “Again,” she said. Same, and the same. “Again… Again… Hey, Lloyd,” she leaned in and whispered but spoke loud enough for anyone near to hear. “Can you recommend a good man? I mean, one who’s in here right now? I’m aching for a breaking.”

TO BE CONTINUED

By
Aaron Echoes August