Horrordailies 2019

Uncle Percival’s Birthday Present

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Seattle Washington

October 31, 1960

Dora June wasn’t an exceptional 14 year old and she wasn’t unexceptional either.

She was just sort of always there, like that box of baking soda you put in your fridge and you forget about it until one day when you’re looking for the mayo or maybe some something cold to drink and there it is and you say to the faded box of soda, ” Hey, where did you come from?”

It wasn’t the greatest place to hold in the world or in your own family, but Dora June didn’t seem to mind her almost non-existent status. She thought of herself as a Ghost In Training. Plus it was always fun to sort of see that look of confusion when people had when they realized Dora June was standing right there and for some reason they just didn’t see her.

It’s like when you’re picking your nose because you really, really have to do it and think that no one is looking, but TA DAH, they are.

So when Dora June asked her Mother if she could have a party, a Halloween party with maybe five of her friends and party food and games, Wilhelmina looked up from her cup of coffee- which she thought she was drinking alone in her kitchen in genuine shock.

First of all, she was surprised Dora June had any friends and second of all- she couldn’t shake the thought because it nagged at her-how long had Dora June been standing there watching her drink her coffee before she looked up and noticed her?

Dora June’s little brother, who had just turned 13, right after Dora June turned 14 was named after their Dad, Sydney.

Everyone called him  S.J.

S.J. was the type of kid you noticed- he was always jumping his bike over ramps at the end of the street that he and his friends built. He never walked, he trotted and ran and one summer he even found a dead body in the woods behind their house.

The ladies in her Mom’s Coffee and Cigarette Clutch called S.J. a charmer and joked about marrying him off to one of their daughters and S.J. would say something back like he’d rather marry one of them…ha.ha.ha.

Dora June, the Ghost in Training would be standing right there the entire time her Mom’s friends gushed over her brother and she wondered if any of them would look at Dora June and make a joke about sons who she could marry one day.

She would hitch a sigh and guess not.

Dora June, the Ghost in Training did have friends- she had met three of them at the library and the other two when she was out looking for tadpoles at Lake Townsend.

Alice and Gerty, Irene, Gordon and Freddy and Dora June weren’t outcasts, they weren’t bullied, nobody pranked them or egged their windows or tp’d their trees . For anyone to do that, they’d have to notice you and nobody ever seemed to Dora June or her friends.

That Halloween though, the night of Dora’s Party was the night all of that changed.

Halloween treats like cookies and candy were set out on the tables in festive bowls shaped like pumpkins and cauldrons around the living room, there was more food set on serving platters and trays in the dining room and there were pumpkins on the porch and in front of the fireplace.

Dora June had done most of the work herself and she even hung up cutouts of witches and black cats.

But Dora June and her guests weren’t interested in the food, or the decorations. They didn’t even bother to dress up in costumes.

When Dora June was sure her parents had retreated to their bedroom for the evening after the last Trick or Treater stopped by and the porch light had been snapped off ( more then likely they had forgotten Dora June and her friends were even in the house ) Dora June went up to her bedroom and came back down with a box in her hands.

” It’s here.” she set the box, which was wrapped up in bright slick paper decorated with cakes and candles and a topped with a bright yellow silk ribbon, on the dining room table.

Freddy reached out and touched the elaborate silk bow. ” It was a birthday present? ”

Before Dora June could answer, the front door opened and then slammed and S.J and two of his friends walked in- one was a girl in braids. Dora June saw that S.J.’s other friend looked like a taller and somewhat hairy version of the girl in braids. . Her brother Dora June guessed.

They were all holding pillow cases and plastic pumpkins full of candy that were no doubt the property of some very broken hearted Trick or Treaters-S.J when you came right down to it was a jerk.

The three of them sort of slunk through the living room and into the dining room and were about to grab some food when S.J. noticed the present on the table.

” Your birthday was last month. Have you been sitting on that all of this time?” S.J. asked in the smarmy tone of voice he used when he offered to run away with one of their Mother’s friends and marry her.

Dora June laid her hand on the still wrapped present. ” No, I haven’t been sitting on it. Does it look like an egg to you? Do I look like a hen to you? Why don’t you leave S.J.? I don’t want you here. Not tonight.”

S.J.’s friends looked at him expectantly. They were sure he was going to take his weirdo sister down in flames. But he didn’t. He just motioned for them to follow him back to the kitchen.

Dora June followed them and shut the kitchen door behind them.

When she came back to the dining room she sat at the head of the table and her friends took seats after her. ” This is a present from my Great Uncle Percival and his wife Mariana Mote.”

The table had been set with punch and cookies and finger sandwiches cut into pumpkin shapes. Dora pushed her plate to the side and made room for the gift. ” Great Uncle Percy told my Grandfather to give it to me for my 14 birthday, but that I shouldn’t open it until Halloween. It’s been in my closet in the top shelf.”

Her guests sat patiently as Dora June continued. ” Well, as you know my Grandfather died 3 years ago and Uncle Percy died before I was even born, but Grandpa told me where my gift was and said Uncle Percy knew he could count on me to keep my word and wait until Halloween of this year to open it.”

Dora June added. ” And use it.”

” Why tonight?” Freddy asked, why couldn’t you actually open it on your birthday?”

For the first time, maybe in her entire life Dora June let a little ripple of emotion move across her face. ” Well, it was on Halloween night that Uncle Percy died performing his famous magic trick, the Burning Coffin. Aunt Mariana died trying to save him.

Dora June’s friends had wished over the years that they could have had an Uncle Percy who had been a famous magician who had performed in places like Egypt and New Orleans , Mongolia, Italy, Canada and Peru and even in Chicago- (which is where he and Mariana died back in 1939) and that they had his posters designed and printed by Percy’s oldest brother Lewis, hanging up in their rooms the way Dora June did.

They were sure she had some of his props and costumes too, but she hadn’t shown them those things, yet.

Dora June began to carefully unwrap her gift and when she was done she folded the paper and wound the ribbon around her wrist.

They all looked down in front of Dora June.

The box was long and thin and unlike the wrapping paper, the yellowed slightly damp box showed it’s age and it turned out to be as fragile as it looked because the box fell apart when Dora June pulled the lid off of it.

She carefully lifted something out lightly wrapped in what turned out to be a delicate lace veil. Then she set her gift on the table.

” Where is the rest of it?” Gerty asked.

Dora June shook the veil and something fell free and landed on the table with a little thunk.

It was a planchette , and it was not molded from plastic. Not this planchette. It was molded from something a little more earthy.

Dora June’s gift was a Ouji Board.

” Do those really work Dora June? ” Irene asked as she reached out and touched the side of the board.

Dora June moved the board a little closer to Irene and nodded. ” Go ahead, You can touch it. Look. See? This board has all of the letters and numbers carved into it, it’s not painted like the common everyday ones you can by in the store. ”

Gordon added, ” Yeah, the toy store. They stack them next to the Monopoly ”

” This, ” Dora June said ” is the real thing if it’s from Uncle Percival and Aunt Mariana”

They all moved closer to the board.

The edges of the board were scorched and so were the edges of the letters and numbers.

” It smells like smoke, ” Gerty told Alice and they all agreed.

None of them were surprised.

” So who are we going to- you know. Summon?”

Dora June thought for a moment. ” Well. It’s Halloween. So I think I’m going to summon an evil spirit. It’s Halloween. It’ll be like shooting fish in a barrel. The world is full of them and ghosts tonight and no way can we miss if we aim for one of them.”

” Makes sense.” they agreed

They took their places at the table and just as they placed their fingers on the planchette and Dora June called out her invitation to the dark spirits of Halloween to join them, the lights flickered and then went off.

A second later they flashed back on.

Dora June worked her jaw from side to side.

She went on:

” Who is here with us? ”

WE-ARE

“Are there evil spirits here with us tonight?”

YES YES YES YES YES YES

The planchette flew from under their fingers and took it’s own place at the left of the board. It was a second, just a breath after it came to rest, the lights in the dining room and living room flashed began to madly off and on , the basement door banged open and shut as if it trapped in a hurricane and in the middle of the flashing lights and banging that was now coming from the walls too, Dora June jumped up from her seat and slammed her hands on the table and screamed ” Damn it SJ! Cut it out!”

SJ and his friends fell through the kitchen door and landed in a heap in the dining room.

He took a breath to stop himself from laughing and then he took his sister down not one but by an entire factory of pegs exactly the way his friends had expected from him earlier in the evening

” Who is here with us? ” Could you have asked a dumber question? And you got an answer right? None of this stuff is real. You guys moved that bone thing around with your own brain waves or something and I know that’s true because you got a boring stupid answer that matches your stupid boring face.”

S.J. and his friends were laughing at them, for the first and only time her brother ever really saw her, he looked at her and laughed so hard he wet himself.

Dora June was about to take the board off of the table and bash it across her brother’s face when a tall man and woman with long dark hair and soft caramel colored skin flared up, like a flame on candle hit by a cool draft, from the shadows at Dora June’s feet.

The man rested his hand gently on Dora June’s shoulder and Aunt Mariana said, ” She received an answer to her question. There are evil spirits here tonight. Three of them. I suppose her next question to us will probably be-”

“What she wants done with them. ” Uncle Percival said.

The Broken Sky

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Doctor Cooper suggested to Flora’s parents that they go outside to the little park across the street and have a chat while Flora freshens up. They could all do with a little fresh air she said with certainty.

Flora’s parents followed Doctor Cooper out of the Center and into the fresh air and open spaces that the Doctor felt would do them all a world of good.

Flora’s Mother looked up into the sky- it should have been a beautiful sky, a beautiful day above them and all around them but today the world seemed dark and muddled.

Instead of feeling like the soft white cloudy sky, tinged with just a little pink as it was at this time of day, went on forever it felt like it was crashing down on them.

” There is no good way to put this. We know this, don’t we?”

Flora’s father nodded. ” It’s killing her. Isn’t it?”

Doctor Cooper wouldn’t have been that blunt. ” It’s metastasized . I am sorry.”

The sky seemed to drop down a little more and it felt unseasonably warm. Funny. It was like this a few years ago, the last time that the Universe and Flora’s own body turned on her.

” I suppose we could pray.” Flora’s Mother suggested. ” I mean, it can’t hurt. Can it?”

Flora’s Father scowled. ” Yeah. Well. Go ahead and through a few Hail Satans in there too while you’re covering all the bases. That won’t hurt anything either”

Doctor Cooper wanted Flora’s parents to focus.” Listen. Your daughter is a fighter. This has beaten her down hard, but she’s been through this before. We thought she wasn’t going to make it the last time. But she did.”

Flora’s Father saw his daughter drifting towards them- God, it looked like she was disappearing right before his eyes. His poor baby who should have had nothing but time to waste and enjoy looked so tired. Nobody that young should look the way his daughter did.

But she was sick and there was nothing he could do to help her.

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That winter, Flora waited for her last breath, she waited for the darkness to work its way into her and she wondered if she would feel like she was drowning from the inside out- like the last time.

Only instead of drowning from the inside out, Flora woke up a little more each day.

It didn’t happen all at once.

One day she woke up and felt a little hungry. A few days later she woke up with her alarm and she made her way to her family downstairs and they actually had breakfast and even lunch later that day.

Then on her own she went to the creek down the trail from their house and she waded around in the stream and she looked up and the sky looked a little brighter.

Nobody knew why Flora recovered- her Father would say it had something to do with the prayers Flora’s mother offered to any God who was listening and Flora’s Grandmother thought it was the Creek that finally brought Flora back- all of their guesses were just as valid as the last one that was offered, but it didn’t matter because Flora lived and she grew as strong as the Creek she visited every single day.

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Flora grew up and she had children and Grandchildren and even Great Grandchildren.

She went to her Creek everyday and waded in just up to her knees and FLora let the cool water and the little creatures that lived in it swim and nibble at her toes and she always, always kept her face up towards the sky.

Truth be told, the beautiful sky and the lights shining from it were the only things she would have missed had her illnesses taken her away. She would never admit that to her family but it was true.

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When Flora was very old and when it was her time to go- she looked up and she saw the sky. Of course her eyes had been weak for a few years but she could still see a bit of the light from it and she since she had been doing since she was young she always kept her face up towards it.

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In those last few minutes Flora was with her family she looked up and the sky was blazing with light, beautiful light swimming with colors.

She reached towards it with one hand, then she raised both of her arms up and then she flew.

The sky broke apart where Flora sailed through it. In a single breath she turned into a stream of color, wrapped in the coolest of breeze and she flew, and she swam and she heard the wind roaring all around her-

but the wind was made up of words that Flora could never have understood and what it said was-

” I think he saw me in the end.” His name was Phil and his daughter gently closed his eye lids with her hand. ” I saw it in his eyes, he could see. Don’t you think so? ” Phil’s daughter asked her family.

Gathered around his bed were Phil’s family who never once left his side when his brain cancer came back and robbed him of his vision early in his disease and took him away a month later.

Phil’s sister put her arms around her niece and hugged her.

Phil’s son had been standing on the other side of his Father’s bed and he had looked down at the same time into his Father’s face when his sister did.

It didn’t seem to Phil’s son like their Father was taking anything into his wide open and focused eyes as he looked over his son’s shoulder and out the window

It looked more to him like something was breaking out.

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Baby Tahnoose

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Back in the day when Star Trek first aired and there was no way anyone could tell you what the entire episode was about in the first 5 seconds and jokes about the crewmen in redshirts were still far in the future, the biggest, the best, the doll every little girl worth her salt asked for that Christmas was Baby Tahnoose.

Baby Tahnoose had bouncy blond curls and ivory skin and huge unnaturally blue eyes that were painted onto her plastic face along with her improbably pink lips by a machine the factory workers in Iowa called, for no particular reason, Shirley.

Baby Tahnoose had been modeled after a real girl name Dennie Cahill and she came in a box with an extra fancy dress and buckle shoes and a brush with a cat stamped on it’s handle.

Most people would never know that Dennie ( nicknamed Tahnoose ), the beloved child of the Cahill Family, the child whose face was the face that embodied the perfect child had smothered her new born baby sister because Dennie was a true psychopath by the time she was six years old and guess what- she didn’t need a reason for what she did and she never really gave one.

Anyway, Baby Tahnoose was the toy that every little girl in America wanted under her Christmas tree that year- most of they would have said they’d kill for one, which is pretty funny when you think about it.

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The very same year that Star Trek and Baby Tahnoose made their debuts Gail and Sam Burns lived in a new house in a new subdivision called View Ridge where the yards and foundations of older homes had been buried under concrete and a school and a church and the new City Hall had been built over their remains.

Everything about Gail and Sam’s was life was executed to perfection- from the shade of Gail’s bleached blond hair, to the Martinis that Sam mixed for their friends when they came over to sit by the Pool when the evenings were perfect for that sort of thing.

Their daughter, Marina had been crafted to perfection too- not a hair on her head was ever out of place, her knee socks clung obediently to her calves her dresses never got wrinkled her shoes were never scuffed.

So when Gail saw those adds for that doll, that doll that was crafted to represent the perfect child…she just new they had to have one under their tree too.

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Later on Christmas morning Baby Tahnoose took her place on a white canopy bed in the most perfect bedroom any little girl could have wished for.

The walls had been painted the faintest shade of pink and the pictures hanging from them were in simple white frames and the window was covered with lace curtains.

There was a music box on the dressing table with a ballerina that popped up and started to dance when you opened it- the box contained real jewelry- little pearl earrings and a necklaces with tiny gold crosses and flowers and a charm bracelets all them came from the finest jewelry store in Evanston

The shelves were lined with beautifully illustrated story books ( hardcovers of course ) and stuffed animals ( rabbits and ponies and bears ) all of the animals were as bright and colorful as the day they were brought home from the toy store.

The room was perfect absolutely perfect.

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A few days after Christmas Gail was in Marina’s room. She had just finished making the bed and after several failed attempts finally found the perfect pose and the perfect spot to place Baby Tahnoose when Marina appeared at the door and cleared her throat.

Gail spun around, ” What’s the matter, are you coming down with a cold?”

” No. I fell when I was coming home from Maggie’s house and I skinned my knee. See?”

Gail looked down and saw that her daughter’s knee had indeed been scrapped and her white knee sock was sprinkled with blood.

” Maggie’s Mom put a band aid on it. I thought that was kind of her, wasn’t it?” Marina said with the same colorless voice Gail used.

Gail looked at the band aid and winced.

” That won’t do Marina, it will not do. Come with me and let me fix that.”

Marina looked down and then she saw what her Mother saw.

The band aid was crooked.

” Let’s go to the bathroom and fix this. Right now. Right this instant.”

Gail brushed by her daughter and Marina followed her down the hall into the bathroom where a few minutes later the water in the tub started to run.

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View Ridge for almost 20 golden years was the neighborhood that was the jewel in the crown of Evanston- and then people started to move away because Ferndale had a bigger and better crown and along with many of their other neighbors Gail and Sam left too.

They were long gone when Gail’s perfectly crafted home was pulled down to make another perfect house for another perfect family. Only on the final walk through one of the demolition crew was up in the attic and found something wrapped in plastic and bedspread covered with a daisy print and mold.

He pulled some of the wrapping back and he stopped when he saw a sock and a band aid still attached to a small mummified leg.

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Gail and Sam moved away to a brand new house in a brand new suburb and their lives spun on with clock like precision.

Gail’s hair is still colored to perfection, Sam still serves his drinks mixed with skill and their house is decorated and furnished to showroom standards and upstairs in their daughter’s room their child, their perfect child crafted and created by a machine named Shirley in Riverside Iowa stares out of her lace covered window and I think that if Baby Tahnoose has a single thought in her perfectly crafted head, she’s probably very glad she will never skin her knee.

The Dinner Party

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Some people will proudly say that they are big picture people, others say they pay more attention to the small details.

And then there are people like Gaia Bianchi and Kip Massey

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The card came in on Halloween- actually it came in two weeks before Halloween but Gaia and Kip didn’t check their mailbox very often- who does now days- and there it was.

Early in the day for Gaia but mid afternoon for the rest of the world, Gaia had toddled down the tree lined gravel driveway to the mailbox at the end of the drive in her ginormous platform shoes, puffing on a cigarette-unfiltered-because about a thousand years ago it was cool to smoke unfiltered smokes and Gaia  still cared about things like being edgy and cool even in the nearly comatose lakeside town where she ended up after Kip told his wife he was leaving her.

Upon her arrival in Townsend most of their neighbors ( her new neighbors, Kip was from Lake Townsend ) had been underwhelmed by Gaia’s  acerbic wit, unfiltered cigarettes, and her vague references to being a hot number back in the 60’s- the kind of number that only Italian girls ( now matronly in Gaia’s case ) like her could pull off.

Gaia offered those chestnuts, those little tasty tidbits of her life  to her unwilling audience whenever she felt like the conversation needed a lot more of her in it and a little less of anyone else.

The envelope in Gaia had pulled from the weather beaten  box was addressed to Gaia Bianchi and Kip Massey in fancy script and the Christmas tree stamp in the corner was crooked. It was postmarked from Lake Townsend which was where they have lived for almost 6 years.

As she puffed smoke out of one corner of her mouth and tried to not fall off of her shoes as she  waddled back up to the house, Gaia fished the envelope with the Christmas tree stamp out of the center of a giant wad sales circulars where it was stuck between few bills . The bills still showed up periodically because she wasn’t ready to go paperless where those were concerned.

Besides, she couldn’t get on line most of the time to take care of her accounts. It turned out that those stories about porn sites being loaded with viruses were true so her laptop was almost always frozen up and she was pretty sure Kip’s was in the same position.

Their taste in literature was the same, that was one of the things that spoke volumes about what brought them together and Gaia knew it was what held them together. Well. It wasn’t love but truth be told, Gaia thought love was a word you mindlessly tossed into the air when you were walking away to newer and better things.

And people.

When she got back to the house she headed for the kitchen which was the smallest room in the house. Gaia  bitched about it to anyone she could bitch to  because she said there wasn’t enough room for her to really cook and express herself but there were no plans to change it because what Gaia said she could do and what she willing to do were always two different things.

Plus she actually hated to cook, but Gaia played her new found role as Hot Italian Mama to the hilt for the few people she knew in Lake Townsend and saying she hated a kitchen may have cost her some cred- which as we have established, is very important to Gaia who had never been outside of Kansas until Kip came  back and took her away.

She threw the bills and invitation on the kitchen table and tossed the rest in garbage can under the sink. A few flyers fluttered to the floor and she let them stay. Kip would take care of that. True love, Kip would do anything for her.

Absolutely anything.

Right now she wasn’t interested in Kip’s love, she was interested in the envelope with the fancy writing and in lighting up another smoke.

She picked up the envelope. It was cool to her touch and it felt like linen, not paper.  Heavy and unbending, it was cream colored card trimmed in gold. She popped open the seal pulled out the card and written in flowery script on the face was:

RSVP

Will be joining you for dinner.

( I will be positively starving after my long trip back )

See you on the 31st!

Muriel

Gaia stood at her sink with her cigarette clenched between her teeth and she looked out of the window past the garden ( that Muriel had planted and filled with white flowers so that the yard would glow at night- like marble tombstones Kip told her ) through the trees ( that Muriel’s Great Grandfather had planted and where one nearly crushed him to death when it toppled over in a windstorm ) and to the lake where Muriel’s Father had almost drowned when he was eight years old and she wondered why Kip’s ex-wife was accepting an invitation to a dinner she hadn’t been invited to.

Among a few other details like there wasn’t a dinner party and even if there was Muriel effing Crawley would not be effing invited- that was for effing sure.

Besides, she and Kip didn’t do any entertaining, not since that first time.

Not even a week after she moved into Muriel’s house, Gaia and Kip had hosted a housewarming party  that was  not destined to be the hit of Townsend’s social season because  throwing a party in a  house that had belonged to your lover’s wife’s family home of over 100 years was not the best idea to have ever occured to anyone the entire  history of humankind.

Kip waited until after dessert to share he and Gaia’s story.

Muriel, as the story Kip told the story to their guests that night had walked away from the house the night Kip told her he was leaving her.

When he paused, Gaia looked at him and with a pained expression  breaking out from under a ton of makeup expensive makeup.

At the pause,  coupled with what have been a closeup shot on a movie screen of Gaia swaddled in cigarette smoke, some of the the neighbors did recall seeing Muriel standing in the garden looking out towards the lake and they were sure she was crying.

Then Muriel was gone Kip said as he wiped a tear from his eye ( which unlike Muriel on the last night in the garden, NOBODY actually saw ) and she left behind her daughters.

But there was a reason for her erratic behavior. Kip to a breath and cast his eyes heavenwards and before began he begged them to understand that Muriel,  poor sweet Muriel- who was dear to them all, had a lot of problems, mental ones ‘ and that he was sure Gaia  would help him and ‘his girls’ get over the horrors that tore apart poor Muriel’s mind and had ultimately torn the family apart.

Muriel’s crippling mental problems turned out to be news to everyone who new Muriel for her entire life and the freeze, as it were, was on.

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” Kip! ” she yelled and then she screamed. ” Son of a bitch, KIP! Get in here!”

Kip slunk into the kitchen and he new better then to ask ‘what’ or make any sudden movements because Gaia was in a mood.

” What the HELL is this?” Gaia spat her cigarette into the sink and then threw the invitation to Kip.

The invitation fluttered to the ground between them.

Kip went to the invitation that was now facedown on the floor and he picked it without actually looking at Gaia but not wanting to take his eyes off her. When he was satisfied she wasn’t going to brain him with a heavy object ( she had insisted on serious kitchenware even though she never used any of it) he looked down to the invitation and read it. ” Where did you get this?”

” I pulled it out of my ass. Where do you think I got it? It came in the mail.”

Gaia’s  face was flushed and was that a tinge of blue on her lips? Was she having a heart attack? She was pushing 75 so Kip was sort of hoping she was because the cluster fuck that he was holding in his hand was more then he wanted to deal with and Gaia keeling over would give him an out of this very uncomfortable situation.

” It’s a joke or something. ” Kip offered. ” Maybe one of the girls sent it.”

Kip’s daughters, June and Inez had sent a Sympathy Card covered in flowers that read; “Thinking of you in these difficult times.” and a funeral wreath with a ribbon that said, “One day we will remember you with wonder, not grief. “ addressed to Kip after he married Gaia and he hadn’t heard from them since. It had been assumed that they would never hear from them again.

” I can’t believe the nerve of that Bitch!”

Kip worked his jaw open. ” You know Gee, there is a bigger issue here.”

” Really like what? What could be a bigger issue than that bitch thinking she can just walk in here like she, like she still owns this place and you. You promised you’d get rid of her. And now here she is showing up for dinner.”

Gaia was waving her hands around and throwing her head back and stomping back and forth across the wooden kitchen floor in a tidal wave of fury- a few years ago Kip thought that it was sexy when Gaia  threw one of her passionate tantrums. Now he just wondered if it was possible for her to bust an artery in her brain and have an aneurysm.

” You need to focus Gee. Muriel just invited herself over for dinner, that’s not the issue here.”

” That’s exactly what this is about!”

” Gaia! Listen to me. Muriel didn’t send this. Use some common sense. Will you?”

Kip’s phone started to ring. He pulled it from his pocket swiped the screen without looking at it and put it face down on the kitchen table.

” Who is it? Is it her?”

Kip’s jaw dropped. ” Are you being serious right now? Of course it-”

Gaia snatched up the phone, looked at it and then she slammed it back on the table.

Now the phone was vibrating angrily against the table and it sounded exactly like a bee trapped in a spider’s web.

Kip  grabbed it off of the table top before Salina could get her hands on it and hit the answer icon. ” Who is this? Who the Hell is this REALLY.”

Gaia threw her cigarette into the sink and then she lit up a fresh one.

Kip turned his back on Gaia and then he answered the phone. ” I know. I see. What time? Now? Well. If you must. Yes, yes. He pushed passed Gaia and he walked down the hallway to the front door.

He pulled the door  open after a couple of tries and before he walked out he called back to Gaia, ” Big picture we really should have looked at the big picture here.”

The door swung shut behind him as Kip stepped out into the gathering darkness and as it did he caught a whiff of Gee’s cigarette smoke and then it was gone.

Ahead of him, Muriel Crawley, whose family had owned this house for over 100 years and couldn’t be separated from it, not even  death was walking up her driveway –

with the knife that Gaia had bought for Kip to use to prove his love to her still embedded to it’s hilt in Muriel’s chest.

Good thing Muriel made it for by dinner Kip thought to himself ( or maybe he screamed it out loud ), because she did look

very hungry.

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