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Black Comedy, Creative Writing, Culture, Fiction, Imagined and Real, Photography, Short Stories, Society

Morlockowoc

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There stands a window of gray, impenetrable. Clocks sway like soldiers’ hooves. The popping of the bombs as they hit the ground wails on and on outside. A flagship mothership spins like a top in the sky. Beams of fire rain down. The extraterrestrials have finally decided enough was enough. Earth had to be eliminated. The humans were tainting the universe with their bric-a-brac ways.

Years before, inside an auto parts store in Morlockowoc, Wisconsin, a new employee named Finnian Lake stood behind the counter. He was so nervous he was shaking. He didn’t know anything about auto parts, yet there he was. How? Why? Societal pressure to earn money. Familial pushing. A jackass father-in-law who thought he was George Jones. He had entrenched in Finnian that it was in his best interest to get in on the ground floor of an up and coming auto parts chain store. The company eventually went under due to poor management.

“But I know nothing about auto parts,” Finnian tried to tell him.

The father-in-law looked at him with disgust. “Then learn.”

On his very first day, someone called the store wanting to know if they had a certain engine in stock. “An entire engine?” Finnian asked. “Don’t you maybe just need some windshield washer fluid?”

The tool on the other end of the line rattled off some numbers, some dimensions, some code. Finnian scrambled through a thick catalog to try and find what he was talking about. He waited a few minutes. “Nope. Sorry. We don’t have it.”  But maybe they did. Finnian had no clue. He didn’t ask anyone else. He just simply gave up because to him it was all utter bullshit.

Years later, it was a blustery Sunday in Morlockowoc, Wisconsin, and Finnian Lake was inside a Piplee’s fast-food restaurant eating a spicy chicken sandwich and fries with an orange soda. He was suddenly bamboozled by a loud commotion up at the front registers. A woman was arguing with one of the managers about how her order was all messed up. She was being real nasty about it, but the manager was being nasty back.

He was a big black guy who barely fit into his uniform and Finnian thought to himself how much he resembled a professional wrestler—The Fast-Food Force of Evil they would call him—and then the customer came on with a barrage of racial slurs and that’s when things really went up a notch or 13.

This was when Finnian retrieved his Canon EOS R10 mirrorless camera and began filming. He was shocked as the manager dragged the screaming woman outside to the parking lot. He smacked her around with his big hands a few times until she fell to the ground. He kicked her in the gut. He then picked her up, lifted her high over his head, and body slammed her onto the pavement. One could almost hear the crunching of bones. She barely moved after that.

Finnian went out to the parking lot and joined the gathering crowd looking down at her. He pushed in and stood right above her; the camera zoomed in on her aching emotions. She was all whacked up and battered and moaning like a bitch. “Seems like you got what you deserved, misses,” Finnian said to her, and he dropped his drained paper soft drink cup down on her. Some of the other people clapped and cheered and Finnian smiled to them before getting into his car and driving off.

When he got back to his small abode of yellow brick that rested in a nice neighborhood near the shore of one of the Great Lakes, he set up his Canon EOS R10 mirrorless camera and other vlogging equipment in the front room. His latest episode on Tik Tok would be about the woman being body slammed in a fast-food restaurant parking lot. Great stuff, he thought. Really great stuff. There’s nothing like witnessing the pain of others. Especially when it is perfect strangers in agony, he oddly thought.

He edited the footage he had shot earlier and then went to work recording his introduction. He took his stance and smiled at the camera. “Hi guys, welcome back, Fabulous Finnian here. I’ve got some crazy ass footage for you today. That’s right. Seems one of the manager’s down at Piplee’s doesn’t take too kindly to unruly customers who complain about chicken and berate him with bigoted slurs. Check this out… Whoa. Slam. Damn! But if you ask me, she had it coming to her. She was being a complete racist bitch! Just goes to show, it doesn’t pay to be a whiny asshole. Thanks again for watching, guys. Make sure to share, subscribe, and have a great day.”  

“Now this,” he said to himself proudly. “This is what I was meant to do… Not struggle to sell god damn auto parts!” he said that last part with gusto and then flipped up his middle finger in the direction of bad memories.

He packed up his video blogging gear and stowed it away in the proper places because he was an organized person. He sat down in a chair in the front room and looked out the window. It started to rain and so he decided to take a walk. He filled his backpack with imported IPAs and a ham sandwich.

He went out the front door and across the street to the nearby park. The rain was overly wet and slightly cold. He went down a hill and across an open field of neatly cut grass. At the other end was a clump of forest. He wandered through the trees, paused beneath a wide bough to get out of the rain for a moment. He went down a steep hill and came out to the shoreline of one of the Great Lakes. The rain was filling the basin even higher. Waves wrapped around themselves, dropped, spilled their energy.

He found a large, white rock that resembled a table and sat down on it. He reached into his pack for a beer and cracked it open. He took one long drink until the can was completely drained. The rain lessened and felt warmer. The sun was trying to force its way through the gray clouds. Birds were chirping. Ambient cyberpunk meditation music dripped from the air. It reminded him of Blade Runner. He wondered if he was merely a Replicant.

“A replica of what?” he asked the gods of the mountain. He reached for another beer and drained that as well. He unwrapped his ham sandwich and ate it. Sea birds tried to make a dive for it. They were white angels with horizontal wings, squawking, demanding, chittering like loaded dice.

Someone suddenly appeared on the surface of the water. They were walking toward him. It was a large man with a scowl. He glowed. He stepped onto the shore. His feet were bare and wet. “You!” he said to Finnian, and he pointed. “You bamboozled me years ago when I was trying to find an engine for my truck. Why did you lie to me!?”

“What!? What!? What is this!?”

“You once worked in an auto parts store here, did you not?”

“I did, but only for four days.”

The engine ghost man laughed. “Figures! You sucked at it!”

“I’m sorry I deceived you… I was so far out of my element that I barely existed.”

The engine ghost man came over and sat upon the rock with him. He sighed, looked at the empty beer cans on the ground. “You litter, too?”

“I was going to pick them up and pack them out. I would never do such a thing to this glorious place.”

They both looked out at the churning, wet water. “Where did you come from? How did you do that… Walk on the water,” Finnian wanted to know.

“There’s no special trick to it. You’ll be able to do it once you’re dead.”

“You mean I can walk wherever I want, and I won’t drown?”

“As long as you don’t want to, you will not drown.” The engine ghost man looked at him. “You know that truck ended up rotting away in my driveway because of you.”

“I’m sorry. I really am,” Finnian said. “I was pushed into it by oppressive forces. I should have never been there. Believe me, I suffered greatly for it.”

“I’m sure you did. But none of that matters now… Hey, do you have any more beers?”

Finnian reached into his pack and pulled one out for him. “Here you go.”

The engine ghost man studied the shiny can. “Hmm, high gravity. Excellent.”

Finnian thought for a moment, and then asked him. “Do you want to come back to my house and watch a bitch get body slammed?”

The engine ghost man chuckled through a tilt of the beer. “You bet I do.”

END

By

Aaron Echoes August

Chiller, Creative Writing, Culture, Fiction, Popular, Short Fiction, Short Stories

The Grape Apex

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Photo by Caio on Pexels.com

It was a greasy Sunday morning and there was a chill in the air for it being May. We pulled into the Walmart parking lot, it being dawn. Some stars remained in the bruise-colored sky. A few cars idled in their spaces. Someone was shouting. There was a warm sick feeling in my guts about how terrible life could be so early in the morning and here we were about to feed the terribleness by stepping out into a world full of people who didn’t feel much for each other, but instead they just liked to feel each other physically like creeps.

There was a man or maybe it was a woman, but it was hard to tell because they were dressed in all black, like in a long gown, and their head was on a fire; it was a head of orange flames and the flames sort of trailed off to one side because of the breeze in the air. This person on fire was pushing a shopping cart and when they turned in a certain way to unload their things into their car, I realized the head on fire was nothing but the sun creeping up on them like a silhouette.

And this is why we were at Walmart so damn early in the morning—because I was having trouble taking breaths and I was seeing things, too, and even sounds were becoming onto me something strange. Momma decided I needed some sort of over-the-counter medicine or maybe just a good walk beneath the bright lights, but I didn’t believe any of that nonsense. I tried to tell her I needed a real doctor because I really thought I was completely losing my marbles… Green, glass marbles, like eyes, falling out of my head and crashing to the ground and shattering and then I’d be blind.

And momma squeezed my hand as she dragged me to the entrance of the store and she looked down on me, spirit wholly crushed as usual, and she said to me, “If all else fails we can be prayer warriors and the man upstairs will hear us and make me all better… But I was so confused because I never saw no man upstairs. No one is truly upstairs except our lodger and his name was Jarrod Peeps and he was a strange bird, but after daddy ran off momma said she needed a lodger for extra money.

I thought Jarrod Peeps was a creepy name and he was creepy and his name did fit him because I often saw him, the door to his room slightly cracked, peeping out into the hallway, especially early in the morning when everyone was running around trying to get ready for going to school and we would be scrambling and fussing—that being me and my younger brother Jamison and my younger sister Revvie and me, that being Sharpe, and I’m a boy in case you were wondering. Maybe you even weren’t wondering. I don’t know.

But like I was saying, this lodger, Jarrod Peeps, which was probably a made-up name because I believe he most likely had a shady past. He was a mostly quiet and nervous man who came and went to his job and whatever else he did out in the world without much turbulence. Momma liked him because he always paid his rent on time, and he could also be around for us kids at night if momma had to run off to do something like go drinking or be with a man. Jarrod always wanted to play that Barrel of Monkeys game with us because he said he liked the feel and smell of the plastic pieces, and that the “mechanics of the game help me with organizational skills.” Yep, he was a strange bird all right. His job was working as a carpenter, and he always smelled of sawdust. He helped build all the new houses going up on the edge of town.

But that is that and this is this… Momma dragging me into Walmart on a greasy Sunday morning in May because I’ve got problems. What the hell did she think was going to make me better? Grape-flavored cough syrup? I don’t know.

Once inside, the store had that collective stench of all that’s wrong with humanity. Personally, I always preferred the smell of Kmart because it had that added tang from the popcorn popping at the snack counter in one of those silver circus machines. But our Kmart shut down and they turned it into a megachurch, and I suppose it doesn’t smell like popcorn in there anymore, but I can’t say for sure because we’ve never been inside. But then again, I can imagine Jesus siting around up there eating some popcorn and listening to all these people talk about his life and how we should all live because of it, and I bet Jesus would just be tossing back that popcorn and shaking his head at all the stupid things we’ve become through the twisting of his intentions.

Momma took me straight to the pharmacy counter and asked the woman there what she would recommend for a crazy child. She just looked at my momma like she was the crazy one. The pharmacist came over and started yelling at my momma for taking space in the line from real customers. My momma fumed and called him a “prick”, but I figure he was just trying to do his job but, in the end, I still felt crazy, and momma felt defeated.

I told my momma that I might feel better if she took me to the toy aisle and let me pick something out. Sometimes getting something from the toy aisle gives me hope and purpose and a reason to live onto the following day. I always loved the toy aisle at Kmart, it gave me a good feeling in my guts sort of like bursting out the door of the house on those few first days of spring and there’s only a few patches of dirty snow left, and all the grass is pushed down from the weight of January’s crush, but you can smell that it’s coming back to life. It always comes back to life. I dread the day the grass doesn’t come back to life. I wonder if anyone else ever feels like that.

I wanted a plastic model car to put together. I wanted it to be one of those cars from back in the day that old men like. I found a ’57 Chevy and I liked how the box felt in my hand. I imagined how all the plastic pieces were in there and how I’d glue them all together and put on the tires and paint it red. It gave me a reason to stick around awhile. I know that it sounds crazy pinning all my hopes for a sustained life on a model car kit, but that’s how I was, maybe still am.

My momma went off to find some shampoo or something and she told me to stay right where I was and so I did stay in that same aisle, and I walked up and down it real slow and I watched other kids looking at all the shiny new toys and some kids were getting what they wanted, and others were being yelled at for wanting things they supposedly didn’t deserve. One lady kept saying to this crying little girl, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” I felt really bad for her because she was nearly choking on her own tears. All she wanted was some stupid doll and her mom refused. Why? What’s the harm? I glanced into the cart they had, and she had all sorts of crap for herself. Nothing for the kid. I imagined popcorn-eating Jesus being real upset about that.

The aisle cleared out again and I was all alone, but then this odd man came down the along and he was looking at puzzles, but he kept glancing over to me and smiling really weird. I didn’t like it. He gave me the creeps, and then he walked near me real slow and reached out his hand and touched me on the rear-end and I jumped away and looked at him. I couldn’t say nothing to him. It just wouldn’t come out. He just stood there and leered at me like I was some sort of little rump roast he wanted for dinner. He was creepier than Jarrod Peeps and he wouldn’t go away so I ran. I ran to find my momma. But I couldn’t find her anywhere. She said she was going to be over by the shampoo, but she wasn’t there. I started to panic. I kept looking over my shoulder and the man who touched my rear end was lurking there in the distance and he was tossing me uneasy glances.

I set my model car down on a shelf where the bathroom towels were, and I ran for the exit. Once I was clear of the Village of Idiots, I searched the parking lot for our car, but I couldn’t find it. I wandered up and down all the aisles. I almost got hit by one crazy driver who apparently couldn’t fathom the fact surrounding the necessity of slowing down in a Walmart parking lot. They blew their horn at me like it was my fault for existing. I often felt like that, though. That for some reason I should feel guilty for existing. How does a 10-year-old kid end up feeling like that? I don’t know.

I decided to go hang out by the front of the store and wait for my momma to come out. It wasn’t long before the man who touched my rear end appeared holding a lone plastic bag. He saw me there and smiled. “Hi there,” he said. I wanted to run but felt frozen to the ground like in a dream.

He reached into the bag and pulled out the model car I had picked out. “I got this for you,” he said, and he moved it in my direction.

“No thank you,” I said.

“Oh, come on. I know you want it. Just take it.”

I reached my hand out toward it but then I thought about how awful I’d probably feel the whole time I was putting it together. I pulled my hand back. “No. I don’t want it now,” I told him.

“Are you sure? I could help you put it together.”

Misery deepened by the minute for me. But then the man violently jerked forward and fell to the ground. In his place was my momma standing there holding a big bottle of shampoo that she had used to club him with. The man groaned down on the pavement. I leaned down and took up the model car. While I was down there, I said to him, “You shouldn’t be touching rear ends in this here ghastly Walmart, mister. And I’ll take this model car after all and never think of you again.”

I got up and looked at my momma. “Let’s go, crazy boy,” she said to me. “Let’s go home and put you in your room and preserve your life for a while longer. That sound okay?”

“Yes, momma,” I answered, and it did.

END

By

Aaron Echoes August

Dark Humor, Episodes, Fiction, Mature Themes, Religion

Ms. Grundy and the Bone Ghosts (5)

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Mary O’Shea blundered into the house and kicked off her shoes. Her husband, the constable, was sitting in his relaxing chair in the front room and staring out the window while he sipped on a glass with three fingers of Jameson Whiskey inside it. “Where have you been?” he called out without even glancing over at her as she stood in the mysterious shadows.

“Working,” she huffed.

“Working hard?” Harley scoffed.

“I always do,” she replied.

“I bet you do.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she said, stepping further into the room.

He finally turned to look at her. “How’s Lloyd?”

She shifted nervously. “Lloyd?”

“Lloyd the bartender from The Village Fig. I paid him a visit today.”

“Why would you do that?”

“Because he’s up to no good, that’s why. And so are you.” Harley O’Shea sat his glass down on a side table and got up out of his chair. He sauntered over to where she stood and looked her up and down. He sniffed at her. “I can smell him on you,” he said. “You smell like his place. I have a nose like a bloodhound.”

She backed away from him. “And a face like one, too.”

Harley roughly grabbed her by the arm and ran his nose all over her, inhaling her like a vacuum would a dirty carpet.

“What on Earth are you doing!?”

“Inspecting my wife,” he answered. “You do remember you’re my wife, right?”

“I need to shower,” she said, and she started to walk away, but Harley clamped a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“Wait. Get undressed right here,” he ordered.

Mary protested. “What!? No. I will not.”

He jerked on her arm. “Strip.”

“Harley, you’re hurting me.”

“And I’ll hurt you a lot more if you don’t strip right now… And then I’ll arrest you.”

“For what?” she seethed.

“For adultery,” Harley told her, and he was dead serious.

But she just laughed at him and tore away from his grip. He quickly grabbed her by the back of the neck, but she countered with a quick, hard knee to the groin. Harley stumbled back, clutching his precious jewels. “You bitch,” he hissed.

“Don’t ever put your hands on me again,” Mary said, a stiff finger in the air. “Ever!” She turned away from him and went to take a shower.

It was Lloyd the bartender’s day off and he had decided that what he needed was a good walkabout in the woods. But first, he decided, he wanted to stop off at the church on the edge of town to see if he could get a few minutes of Father Oban’s time.

The church was a small stone relic from another time and that gave Lloyd some peace in his guts for he has always had an appreciation for the warm aesthetics of divine architecture. He pushed on the red door, and it creaked. He was greeted by the scent of burning candles and old stone and old wood and the remnants of funeral incense.

There was a large figure kneeling in one of the front pews and they were looking up at the big cross with ripped up Jesus on it. A head turned when the figure sensed Lloyd’s presence. He motioned at Lloyd to come forward.

Lloyd walked forward and shuffled into the pew and sat down next to Father Oban. “Hello, Father,” he said. “I was hoping I could speak with you.”

Father Oban moved up into a sitting position. “Absolutely,” he said, and he turned to look all around at the empty church. “As you can see, I’m not very busy… Is something troubling you?”

Lloyd took a deep breath and came right out with it. “I think I’m having an affair with a married woman.”

“You think you are?”

“I mean… We’ve been flirtatious. She’s been to my apartment.”

“I think you know exactly what I’m going to say… Do not tread on another man’s land, Lloyd. You must resist temptation.”

“But she’s unhappy with him. I’m sure he’s awful to her,” Lloyd said.

“Lloyd, my advice would be to step back from this situation. They need to resolve it their problems, not you. The outcome, no matter what it is, must be facilitated by them. If I were you, I’d keep my distance… For now, at least.”

“But I’m lonely, Father.”

Father Oban, who was a large man with a golden color, clamped a hand onto Lloyd’s thigh. “I know loneliness as well, Lloyd. We all do at some point in our lives. It’s a constant in the human condition, I’m afraid. But you cannot allow loneliness to be a catalyst for sin. You must find ways to cultivate this loneliness so that something new and green and positive begins to grow.”

Lloyd looked at him as if he didn’t understand anything he just said. “You mean… Like a hobby?”

“Sure, a hobby,” Father Oban replied.

“I have a stamp collection I haven’t touched in years. Maybe I could get back into that.”

“Stamp collecting, huh? Seems like a noble pursuit,” the priest said, and he moved his hand higher up on Lloyd’s thigh.

Lloyd glanced down at it for a moment. He found it to be a strange sensation. “May I ask what you’re doing?”

“Lloyd?”

“Your hand. It seems to be creeping up to somewhere it probably shouldn’t be.”

Father Oban pulled his hand away and embarrassingly smiled. “I’m sorry, Lloyd. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“It must be hard not to be able to be intimate with others.”

Father Oban sighed. “It’s part of my oath, my commitment to God. But yes, it is a struggle.”

Lloyd then reached out and took the priest’s hand and placed it on his thigh like it was before. “It’s okay if you want to,” Lloyd said, and he moved closer to Father Oban and they sat like that together in the empty, quiet church for a long time.

TO BE CONTNUED

By

Aaron Echoes August

Comedy, Dark Humor, Fiction, Humor, Might Want to be Mature, Short Fiction

A Restless Vessel

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He was feeling restless in his overheated testicles on that day when everything changed.

The man named Steeple resembled a yellow wooden pencil as he shimmied down the sidewalk and away from the store on Story Street that sold mostly women’s lingerie and unmentionable undergarments. One of the clerks in the store had caught him grotesquely fondling frilly panties that were displayed like religious pamphlets on a table in the center of the store. He had been quite brazen about it, too—whispering unspeakable things and moaning. The clerk forcefully asked him to leave.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy I’m in trouble,” he said aloud to himself in a sing-song kind of way in his getaway. He walked rapidly, his long legs skating along awkwardly, arms pumping, elbows cocked out to the side. He kept turning around to look to see if anyone was following him. His head spun in all directions as he scanned the cityscape for a fresh poppin’ police cruiser tailing his ass. There were none.

He ducked into a small park and hid behind a tree. He suddenly had the urge to make pee and he undid his zipper and let it out. A woman holding a small child by the hand saw him as they passed by. “What are you doing!?” she cried out. She whipped the child around so she wouldn’t be able to see him.

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy I’m really in trouble now!” the man who resembled a yellow wooden pencil said, and he quickly zipped up and scurried off like a frightened small mammal.

“You’re a pig!” the woman called out after him. “You should be behind bars!”

Steeple started to run, tripped, and fell, and then hurriedly got back up again. He had ripped his pants when he fell and could hardly stand it. He went straight off to see Mr. Calypso, the tailor on Harding Street.

A small bell attached to the door jingled when he walked in. “Hello… Mr. Calypso! Are you here!?”

A short man with flowing white hair and a big white moustache wriggling beneath his swelled nose emerged from the back of the shop. “Oh, hello there, Steeple. How are you?”

“I’m having a rough day,” Steeple replied. “A very rough day. And now my pants are torn… Right here in the knee.” He displayed the rip to him.

“Oh, my,” Mr. Calypso said, and he came out from behind the counter to take a closer look. “Take them off and I’ll get them fixed up for you.”

Steeple looked around the dim shop. “Right here? But people will see me in my underwear.”

Mr. Calypso bent his head down and looked at him judgmentally over the top rim of his glasses. “Do you think I have that much business?” He waved a hand in the air. “No one will come in, but if it makes you feel any better, you can come sit in the back with me while I work. Okay?”

“But then you’ll see me in my underwear.”

Mr. Calypso shot him an annoyed glance. “It’s underwear, Steeple. Everybody wears underwear. If you want, I’ll take my pants off, too. Then we’ll both be in our underwear. Okay?”

“That’s fair,” Steeple said, and he followed the old man to the back of the shop and the area where he did all his work.

“Now,” Mr. Calypso began as he undid his pants and stepped out of them. “I’ll just sew on a patch, okay?” He folded his own pants neatly and set them aside before spreading Steeple’s pants out on a broad table. He sat down on a stool and clicked on a light and went to work repairing the pants. “So, what’s this about a rough day. Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Just between you and me?”

“Just us, my friend.”

“I got caught messing around in the women’s lingerie shop.”

Mr. Calypso suddenly stopped what he was doing. “What? What kind of messing around?”

“I was just touching the women’s underwear.”

“More god damn underwear! What’s with you and underwear?”

“Yours are funny looking, by the way.”

Mr. Calypso looked down for a moment at his plain white briefs. “Never mind that!”

“Have you ever touched a pair of women’s panties?”

 Mr. Calypso chuckled as he went back to fixing Steeple’s pants. “It’s been a few years.”

“They’re so nice. So soft and lacey and… I just can’t help it. I mean, men’s underwear are like tool bags, whereas women’s underwear are like cradles full of lullabies.”

Mr. Calypso looked at him strangely and shook his head to cast off the words Steeple just uttered. “And so, what happened? You were touching them and then what…?”

“The lady that worked there, she like, yelled at me to stop and I ran out of the store.”

“Well… I don’t think they’ll send you to prison.”

“And then some woman and her kid caught me peeing in the park. That’s when I ran off, fell, and ripped my pants.”

Mr. Calypso laughed out loud. “Oh, my. You have had quite the day. Ooo hoo. Anything else?” 

“No. Not yet.”

“Come on,” Mr. Calypso said. “Don’t be so glum. It could be worse. It can always be worse.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I am right. I’m always right.”

They were silent with each other for a while as the tailor finished his work on the pants and then presented them to him. “Good as new,” he said.

“Thanks,” Steeple said, and he hopped off the stool where he had been sitting and put the pants back on. “What do I owe you, Mr. Calypso?”

“Don’t worry about it… Think of it as the one good thing that happened to you today. Free pants repair. I know it’s been bleak.”

“I appreciate it… I’ll see you around.”

Steeple walked out of the tailor shop and went up two blocks to a coffee house. He ordered a regular coffee and a piece of cherry pie. He sat in a small booth by a window. He sipped at his coffee and poked at his pie with the tips of the fork tines. “Oh, boy, oh boy, oh boy, I’m a damn fool,” he whispered to himself. 

A moment later something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was a red balloon floating listlessly in the air. He followed the white string down and saw that it was tied around the wrist of a young girl. It was the girl from the park, and her eyes were boring into him like the gigantic drilling machine in the movie At The Earth’s Core.

The girl tugged on her mother’s sleeve and when the woman realized who it was, she thrust out her pointer finger and yelled across the restaurant, “That’s the man who made pee in the park! Security!”

Steeple panicked. He roughly got up from the table and ran out of the coffee house without paying the bill. He ran and ran and kept on running. A police cruiser eventually rushed up beside him; it’s lights suddenly illuminated and there was the blurp blurp sound of warning.

Steeple could run no more, and he hunched over and placed his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. The new patch felt strange against his palm. He could see the officers approaching. Then once again from the corner of his eye, something caught his attention. There was someone sitting in the back of the patrol car. It was Mr. Calypso the tailor and he was scowling back at him and wagging a finger of shame in Steeple’s direction.

“Oh boy, oh, boy, oh boy,” Steeple mumbled as the officers of the law roughly put him up against the outside wall of a building. “It was all just a trick. Life is nothing but a trick.”

END

By

Aaron Echoes August

Death and Life, Episodes, Fiction, Novel, Novella, Novelette, Serial Fiction, Western

The Cowmen (Three)

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Inside the Camaro Saloon, Arno got caught up in an uneasy game of poker with a scroungy bunch of other cowmen. He sat at the round table topped with worn, green felt and a pile of chips in the center of it. His back was to the window, the scurrying of the mud street behind him. His eyes scanned the semicircle of faces studying their hands. He was already down a few bucks.

“So, where are you from anyhow?” one of the others asked him, looking up at him with suspicion. “I’ve never seen you in town before.” The man looked like a haggard leprechaun dressed like an overworked rancher.  

Arno’s answer was simple and to the point. “Up north.”

“Up north is a mighty big place, stranger,” another player said just as he folded his hand. He was a young, studious looking man with glasses and wearing a clean, white shirt.

“That it is,” Arno answered, but he was more focused on his cards. He laid down a full house. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about,” he said, laughing, and he cupped his rough hand around the small pile of chips in the center of the table and pulled them to him. He smiled at the others over his win.

“Damn it all to hell!” the one that looked like a haggard leprechaun said. “I’m done.” He got up and walked over to the bar. A couple of the others did the same leaving only the young man and Arno at the table.

“Thought I saw you ride in with another fellow. Where’s he at?” the young man asked.

Arno glared at him. “You sure seem to have a healthy curiosity about me, us. What gives?”

“Nothing. I just like to know who’s coming into my town. I’m the sheriff.” The man pulled on a vest that revealed his badge. “Sheriff Payne’s the name.”

“Is pain your game?” Arno said with a mocking chuckle.

“I don’t find that funny, mister.”

Arno adjusted his manner. “Sorry… But I gotta say, you’re awful young to be sheriff.”

“I may be young, sir. But I’m full of spirit when it comes to upholding the law. I take my job seriously.”

“Congratulations on all your success then,” Arno said, and he started to get up. He extended his hand across the table and the sheriff got up as well and returned the gesture.

Arno introduced himself. “Arno Pyle,” he said. “I suppose I should go round up my partner. Any suggestions on a good place to stay for the night?”

The sheriff nodded out the window and across the street. “The Saint James is about the best you’ll get,” he said. The sheriff fastened a hat to his head and began to walk toward the exit. He turned. “Enjoy your stay in Sudan, sir. I hope we don’t meet again.” He walked out into the nearly dying light of day.

Hosea politely sat at the table in the kitchen as she prepared him a lemonade. The room smelled like fruit in a cool cellar. He looked around at the warm comfort of the place. It was neat, clean, orderly. “Do you live in this big place all by yourself?” he asked her.

Sadie turned for a moment. She was well put together, soft features, bright. “It was my father’s. I took it on after he passed. But yes, it’s all mine and just mine,” Sadie said.

“Don’t you ever get scared,” Hosea asked.

“Scared?”

“You know, of being alone in the house. Especially at night. I mean, I would be. I don’t like to be all alone in big, dark places.”

She brought a pitcher and a glass to the table and set them down before him. “Help yourself. Care for a scone?”

“What the hell’s a scone?” Hosea wanted to know as he poured himself a glass of the lemonade.

“She laughed at his question. “It’s sort of like a thick cookie.”

“Sure… But like I was wondering. You don’t get scared all alone in a place like this?”

“You sure seem interested in my tolerance for fear, Mr. Hosea.”

“It’s just Hosea.”

“I’m used to the big house. I feel at peace here. I don’t feel any fear.” She came back to the table with a small white plate and a scone sitting atop it. “Here you go. It’s cranberry.”

“Thank you, mam. So, there’s really no one else that lives here?”

“No,” Sadie said. “You seem very surprised that a woman could take on such a task as living in a big house by herself and keeping peacocks and making scones and lemonade. I’m quite capable of it all, Hosea.”

“Well, then you’re a stronger person than me. I suppose I just have a nervous constitution. I carry a lot of fear and doubt with me. The way the world is turning these days, faster and faster, it’s hard to find someone or something to trust, to believe in.”

Sadie came to the table and sat with him. She nodded her head. “I suppose that can be true… If you focus on it. I try not to. I try to focus on my life here and my peacocks and just trying to be a good person.”

“And no fear, huh? Not even in your dreams?”

“I can never remember my dreams,” she said. “So, they don’t really affect me.”

“I always dream about being inside one of those big fancy factories they’re starting up these days for the manufacturing. I’m always just wandering around inside, and the machines are making noise and the tired and oily people are working and no one ever looks at me or talks to me. It’s like I’m invisible but I’m not. I always see the big windows that let in light, but you can’t see through. Block glass is what I think they call it… There’s light but nothing is clear. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“I can’t say I do.”

“Anyways… I always end up in an office or something like that in the upstairs part where the big shots run the show, and I’m all by myself and there’s this weird contraption on a desk that looks like a typewriter, but it isn’t a typewriter because it lights up and shows me pictures when I tap the keys…”

Sadie was entranced as he talked. He was such an odd man, she thought. “What kinds of pictures?”

Hosea flashed her a little grin. “Pictures of peacocks.”

She jerked back in surprise. “That’s strange. Very strange.”

“It is strange,” Hosea agreed. “And that’s why I wanted to know if you ever feal fear.”

She stared at him for a moment. Hosea’s face had lost its innocent and trustworthy look. “I think I’m afraid now,” she whispered.

Hosea’s right hand suddenly shot forward and grasped her by the neck. He stood and forced more pressure down upon her throat. He squeezed and squeezed. She struggled to try and pull his hand away, but it was useless. He was too strong. Her face was contorted, she gasped, her skin turned color, she went limp, and then he released her to the floor.

His heart beat wildly in his chest as he looked down upon her. A clock ticked away on a shelf and then struck the high five hour. He quickly moved about the house to find and pocket things of value before vanishing from the house to return to Arno.

TO BE CONTINUED

By

Aaron Echoes August

Creative Writing, Episodes, Fiction, Popular, Serial Fiction, Society

The Morbid Mind Correctional Facility (3)

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Photo by Kristal Tereziu on Pexels.com.

Magda Balls looked at her two new guests, her back was up against the stove in the kitchen, a cigarette smoke stream trailing from her shapely hand. Rosalina and the Huffing Man were sitting at the table in her lakeside bungalow eating tomato soup and oyster crackers. The man had an iced tea to drink, the girl a milk.

“Did you know MILK in Dutch and Norwegian is MELK,” Magda said, looking at the girl.

Rosalina crinkled her nose. “Huh?”

“MILK is pronounced MELK in both Dutch and Norwegian… I’m studying new languages.”

The Huffing Man wiped his mouth with a paper napkin and looked at her. “I spent some time in Amsterdam, but I never drank any MELK there.” He just as quickly went back to eating his soup and crackers.

“They have naughty peep shows in Amsterdam,” Rosalina said. “And marijuana is legal. Did you get high and look at boobies?”

“No,” the Huffing Man insisted. “I was there on business… Back when my life wasn’t a shattered mess, or was it?” His thoughts trailed off into the air and he watched them bounce away.

Magda laughed at the girl. “How do you know about all that?”

“I know a lot of things. I read, surf the net, watch movies, things like that. I’m very worldly for 10.2 years old.”

“I can tell,” Magda laughed. “If you two don’t mind, I’m going to hit the shower. Make yourselves at home.”

The Huffing Man looked up at Magda and gave her a shy smile. His face, with its sandpaper sheen, was tired and haggard. “Thank you… For the food and for helping me out.”

Magda smiled back. “You’re welcome.”

Rosalina plopped herself down in a comfy couch in the front room and played with a remote control. The Huffing Man joined her. She looked over at him sadly. “Can I ask you something?”

“I suppose you can.”

“Why do you huff gas?”

He sighed. “Well, it’s a long, sad story I’m afraid. I don’t want to trouble a young girl with such adult things.”

“It’s okay. I can handle it. I’m very mature.”

“Well, let’s just say I have a lot of personal problems.”

“Like what?”

The Huffing Man laughed at her innocent inquisitiveness, then sighed. “I feel incredibly invisible to a lot of people in my life. I suppose I don’t feel very loved.”

Rosalina looked down. “I know what you mean. I don’t feel very loved either. That’s why I ran away from my foster parents.”

“Foster parents?”

“My Pee and Em were killed in a hot air balloon crash in Arizona.”

“Pee and Em?”

“My dad and mum. I got the words from A Clockwork Orange. It’s my favorite movie. It’s part of this weird language they speak that’s sort of like Russian slang mixed with Old English. I bet we can find it on Netflix or HBO if you want to watch it with me.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“What! Where have you been, living under a rock?”

“Yes, I suppose I have been.”

It’s a brutal and satirical look at the crisis of crime and subsequent punishment in a withering dystopian society… The story revolves around the strange life of a young hoodlum and his gang of droogs. But it goes far beyond that. It’s a mind fuck, really,” Rosalina said. “A total mind fuck.”

“Oh, really? I’m intrigued.”

Rosalina excitedly sat up on the edge of the couch and scanned through channels until she found the movie. “Here it is!”

The Huffing Man gestured with his head toward the sound of the running shower. “Do you think she’ll be okay with it?”

“I don’t think she’ll care. She’s pretty cool.”

“All right then. Fire it up.”

“Doobie doo,” Rosalina said with a giggle.

“Huh?”

“Just watch.”

The chilling close-up image of Alex DeLarge in the Korova Milk Bar suddenly appeared on the screen. The gonging synthesized opening soundtrack filled the room.

There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie and Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milk Bar trying to make up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening. The Korova Milk Bar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet, or synthemesc, or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence…

Rosalina looked over at the Huffing Man and his eyes were wide with wonder. “Freaky, huh?” she whispered.

“I’d say,” he whispered back.

Magda Balls came into the room with wet hair and fresh summer clothes that clung to her tall, svelte body. “What are you two watching?”

“A Clockwork Orange,” Rosalina told her, and then she pressed pause on the remote. “But we can’t have disturbances. We need to fully concentrate on the film in order to absorb all its subtle nuances.”

Magda laughed. “Okay. I’ll just go out onto the deck and read then. That okay?”

“Sure,” Rosalina said with a shrug. “It’s your house.”

“That it is,” Magda said, and she smacked her lips, grabbed a book off the coffee table and slipped outside.

Rosalina resumed the film and the Huffing Man relaxed into the couch. He watched the movie as its bizarreness unfolded and even though the pictures on the screen were mesmerizing, he couldn’t help that his mind drifted away to his own inner turmoil. He tried to turn his head and look at the girl beside him, but his neck seemed inoperable, he seemed frozen, felt dead almost. He wondered if he had finally done enough damage with all that gas huffing.

The film was long and when it was over, the Huffing Man got up off the couch and stretched. He glanced out through the glass of the veranda door and saw that Magda had migrated to a short dune on the beach. He looked at Rosalina. “I think I’m going to go take a walk… In the other direction.”

“Okay,” she said, as she skimmed through channels in search of something new to watch.

“Would you like to join me? I mean, you can’t just watch the television all day. Maybe we can find something to eat.”

Rosalina pressed the power button on the remote and looked up at him. “You’re right. And I should come with you… To keep you on the straight and narrow. Because, I hope you weren’t planning on running off to huff some gas.”

“No. But it doesn’t feel good not to huff.”

“I’m sure it sucks, but you’ll feel better,” the girl said. “I’ll help you ride the rough waves out.”

“That’s awful kind of you,” he said with a genuine smile. “Shall we?” He reached out to grasp her hand at the door and she took it.

TO BE CONTINUED

By

Aaron Echoes August

Black Comedy, Dark Humor, Fiction, Mystery, Oddball, Strange

The Celestial Salad Bar (Two)

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Photo by Cats Coming on Pexels.com /

Albom Riff handed over the cash for the room at the Robin Hood and took his key. It was a real key, a brass key, attached to a yellow piece of plastic shaped like a diamond and with the room number 9 etched into it. “Thanks,” he said to the woman behind the counter, and to number 9 he went.

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked out the window at the cold, gunmetal, western town with its hints of beauty, isolation, mystery, loneliness. Loneliness. He was lonely. But no one knew it. He thought about Hollywood Helen on Wheels at the J-Bob’s restaurant and wondered if he should call her. He dug out the piece of paper with her number and looked at it. Maybe she could help him figure out why his driver’s license claims he’s a resident of Raton, New Mexico. How can that be? he wondered. “I’ve never been here in my whole entire life,” he whispered aloud to himself.

The room phone suddenly rang, and Albom nearly jumped through the ceiling. It was a clanging, obnoxious ring that broke the pure silence catastrophically. He went to pick up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Did you enjoy the salad bar, Mr. Riff?” The voice was deep and slow, like a dangerous cover up.

“Who is this?”

The line went dead. Albom hung the phone back up. He went to the window and peered out. There was a man standing on the edge of the parking lot. He wore a black jacket and sunglasses. He seemed to be staring right at him, Albom felt. He moved to the door and opened it. The mysterious man had disappeared.

 The phone rang again. Albom rushed to answer. “Hello!”

It was the man with the deep voice once again. “What was your favorite item on the salad bar, Mr. Riff?… The iceberg lettuce perhaps? Do you know what happens to icebergs, Mr. Riff?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “They fall apart when the heat is on.”

The line went dead once again.

Albom marched back to the J-Bob’s, a haunting howl from the bottom belly of the city followed him there. He found Hollywood Helen on Wheels at the salad bar, and she was just standing there still as stone and staring.

He took hold of her wrist, and she suddenly came out of whatever hypnotic state she was in and turned to him with a look of fear and surprise. “What are you doing?” Albom asked her.

“I was… I was looking at the salad bar.”

“Why?”

“It’s part of my job,” she answered. “I must make sure the items are well stocked and appear fresh. It’s very important work.”

“There’s something weird about this salad bar,” Albom said, and he pulled her over to an empty booth and they sat down. “What the hell is going on around here?”

Hollywood Helen on Wheels stared at him with a blank expression. “You just couldn’t wait to see me again, could you?” Then the stiffness of her face came undone and she smiled. “Do you want more salad bar?”

“No. I want to know if you’re fucking with me!”

“What!?”

Albom retrieved his wallet from his pants and pulled out his driver’s license. He slapped it down on the table before her. “Why does my driver’s license say I live here in this town?”

She picked it up and looked at it. Her eyes shifted to Albom for just a moment and then back to the license. “Wait. You live here? I thought you were from somewhere else. You sure did make it seem like you were from somewhere else.”

 “Somewhere else,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“It’s a song… ‘Everyone I love lives somewhere else.’”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“And someone strange called me at my motel. Twice. And there was a man outside in the parking lot. I think someone’s watching me, following me.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know, but I really believe this all has to do with your god damn salad bar. What else do you know?”

“I don’t know anything. Maybe you’re just crazy. Hollywood Helen on Wheels got up out of the booth. “I have work to do,” she said, and she walked off.

Albom Riff leaned back in the booth for just a moment before his eyes were drawn back to the salad bar in the center of the restaurant. It appeared to glow. He heard Tibetan meditative music in his head. Then a voice repeated the word “Iceberg, iceberg, iceberg…”

Albom quickly got up and rushed over to the salad bar. It glowed delicious before him. He snatched up a white plate and began crazily filling it high with iceberg lettuce from the large clear plastic bowl set in a swamp of crushed ice.

Hollywood Helen on Wheels noticed him from afar and called out to him, “Hey! You have to pay for that.”

He swept an annoyed glance toward her. “Oh, I’ll pay for it. I’ll fucking pay for it!”

Heads turned in the restaurant as joyful cowboy music softly played overhead.

Albom topped his lettuce with croutons, sunflower seeds, bacon bits, some shredded cheese, black olives, pieces of hard-boiled egg. He ladled orange French dressing over the top of his little salad mountain and watched it run down the sides like lava flows down the side of a volcano. He set that plate aside and grabbed a clean one and began to fill that with other salad bar items: Tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, oiled mushrooms, a spiral pasta salad, pickled beets, banana peppers, cottage cheese, cling peaches, gelatin with grapes set inside that looked like monster eyeballs, and finally a clumpy potato salad.

He took both plates back to the empty booth and sat down. He waved a hand in the air to catch the attention of Hollywood Helen on Wheels. “Excuse me miss? Could I get some service over here?”

An exasperated Hollywood Helen on Wheels approached the table with attitude. “Just what the hell is your problem, mister?”

“I don’t have any silverware, or a napkin, or anything to drink.”

She glanced at the two heaping plates of salad bar food. “I sure hope you plan on eating all that. Be a god damn shame to waste all that. That’s enough to feed four people. You should be ashamed of yourself. Pure gluttony.”

Albom pointed at her. “Look, I’m telling you. There’s something about that god damn salad bar that isn’t right… And I’m looking into it. There’s also something not right about this whole town and why I’m here. And I’m looking into that, too.”

Hollywood Helen on Wheels scoffed with a chuckle. “What are you… A salad bar detective?”

Albom Riff laughed out loud. “That’s a good one, baby, but you’re not wrong. Now can I please get some silverware and a Coke.”

TO BE CONTINUED

By

Aaron Echoes August