Horror Story

This is the flash fic that I wrote for Horror at Hannah's - she posted the winners today and it was so much fun reading them - whooooa, shivers!!!  I've never written horror before so the push to write something different is always a bonus for me.  I really enjoyed it!

NUMBERS

Saturday

Breathe. Breathe in, breathe out. Gwen Evens convinced herself that she could slow things down, postpone the baby’s arrival through the night, at least until a gut-wrenching contraction made her grip the door handle with the same white knuckles that Tom had on the steering wheel.

When they arrived at Mercy, Tom snapped at one of the orderlies dressed in teddy bear scrubs, “Has anyone…?” But he knew by the way they avoided his panicked gaze. In the maternity ward, Gwen was examined and hooked up to IVs and monitors. Dr. Paulino arrived within the hour. Disappointment fleetingly graced his features, replaced quickly by a mask of hope. He squeezed Gwen’s hand and looked at his watch. “It may take time. We’ll go slow.”

But baby Joshua had other ideas. Two hours later, he came into the world and sucked enough air into his lungs for one great howl. The unfathomable silence that followed was quickly broken by another wail, a harrowing moan that filled the entire ward the way that only a grieving mother’s voice could.

The night breeze through the car windows blew Becca’s hair across her shoulders. She nestled into the backseat and wondered if Dave noticed. He leaned forward, telling Christian and Abby the three-legged cat joke that he had told her twice already, but she smiled when his hand slid between her knees.  Abby rolled her eyes at the punchline and reached toward the radio knob as they began to lose the station. 

“Where the hell are we?  I have to pee.”  The smoke Abby blew out her window came right back through Becca’s behind her.  Becca coughed under her breath at the sweet, pungent cloud.  She didn’t smoke that stuff, but she didn’t know Abby well enough to say anything.  Dave’s best friend Christian had only been dating Abby for two weeks.  He was the one who had planned the road trip.

As if on cue, they drove past a large white sign.  Dave waved his bottle at Christian.

“Dude!  Back up.  What’d that say?”  Christian hit the brakes and they all bounced forward.  He revved the car backward and stopped at the sign.  It was old fashioned, made of wood, painted white with black lettering. 

Welcome to Balance, Nevada.  Population 2,653.  A nice place to live.

“Hope I don’t have to take a balance test,” Christian snickered.

“A nice place to live?” Abby snorted.  “A sucky place to drive through.”

Dave smirked and squeezed Becca’s leg. “I don’t know.  Plenty of open space, nice long grass, lots of privacy…” He leaned over and kissed her. 

“What’s that one say?” Becca glared at the back of Abby’s seat in front of her, willing her to shut up.  Christian stopped the car again, next to another wooden sign.  He squinted and read it out loud.

“The land is to be allotted to them as an inheritance based on the number of names.

Numbers 26:53”

“Aww, man,” snorted Dave, “It’s one of those towns.  Hide the children, Jackie Sue, them there e-vil kids’ got al-kee-hol!”  All four of them laughed and Christian gunned the engine and roared up the road.

“Teenage heathens!” Dave gasped, “Batten down th-“  But no one battened down anything before the radio Abby was tuning emitted an ear-splitting screech and the gold clunker driven by Tom Evens plowed directly into her door.

Gwen’s eyes narrowed as ambulance lights reflected on her hospital room window.  Not now.  Not a mere three hours later.  She tore the IV from her arm, but the alarm it set off beckoned a nurse before she even got out of bed.

“No, you don’t.  You need to rest.”  The nurse’s grip was strong and before Gwen could protest, a needle was thrust into her arm and the room began to swim.

____________________________________________

Sunday
 

It was an itch that brought Becca back to consciousness.  An incessant itch on her right foot.  She needed to scratch it.  She willed her tired eyes to open, but her eyelids felt like lead.  After a few moments, she made them part slightly, looking through her sticky lashes like an insect in a Venus flytrap.  Something was wrong.  She couldn’t move.  Couldn’t move, but she could see the woman standing in the doorway.  She tried to speak, but her lips were concrete.  Exhausted, her eyes rolled back and she gave in to sweet darkness.

Gwen sat in the chair next to the girl.  The girl who had survived the car accident that had killed her husband and two other teenagers.  The girl’s eyes fluttered open again and she pulled confusedly at the restraints on her wrists.  Gwen smoothed the girl’s hair and sighed at the pained moan stifled by the tape on Becca’s mouth.

“It’s Sunday, dear.  There are no doctors.  We don’t work on Sundays here.  It’s a day of rest, of course.” The girl’s eyes widened and Gwen smiled, nodding toward the curtain that split the room.

“Don’t worry, though.  The car accident was last night.  Saturday.  So there was time to balance before Sunday.  I’ll have to try to keep that one alive through the day.  Might not be easy, but I don’t know where we’ll get anyone else, and you know what happens if we’re out of balance.” She got up and drew back the curtain. Becca could barely make out Dave’s mangled body.  Was he missing an arm?  Machines clicked beside him but he couldn’t possibly be alive.  Could he?

“You’ll get used to it here,” Gwen’s wistful voice pierced the fog in Becca’s mind. “I’ll raise you like my own.  He can be my Joshua.  I doubt he’ll tell me any different.  And you, my dear, let’s call you…” but Becca couldn’t focus any longer.  As her eyes closed once more, an image flashed behind her eyelids.

“The land is to be allotted to them as an inheritance based on the number of names.

Numbers 26:53”

Welcome to Balance, Nevada.  Population 2,653.  A nice place to live.

Curiouser and Curiouser

For this week's Sunday Scribblings prompt, "curious":

 ______________________________________

“Curiouser and curiouser!” cried Alice (she was so much surprised that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).

The Mad Hatter eyed her, with a moment of stark lucidity. 

“How much curiouser can you be, child?  Unless it is a contest with oneself, it really is rather ludicrous to continue to heap curiosity upon itself.”

With that, he removed his rather large hat from his rather large head.  Alice wondered how his pencil neck supported such weight, and then stopped wondering just as quickly.  Perhaps he was right.  It was not her neck bearing the weight, after all.  What did it matter? 

The Hatter’s head began to shrink.  His hat took on a much more reasonably tophattish nature.  He looked quite like… like the men who worked with Alice’s father at Christ Church. 

As alarming as it had been to see the Hatter the first time, it was twice so somehow to see him transform, each quirk smoothed into the Average Man.

“Very good, child,” he nodded, sipping his ordinary black tea from his ordinary white cup.  “You are growing up.”

I'm Not Superstitious, But Bad Things Do Seem to Happen in Threes

I'm really not.  I'll pet black cats, walk under ladders, step on cracks.  I mean, I don't go out of my way to do those things, but I'll do it.  Probably the most superstitious thing I ever did was pass on buying a house with the address 13 Elm Street, lol. :)  That was pushing it a bit, even for me.

I have noticed, though, that the "Bad Things Happen in Threes" superstition tends to hold true.  Ok, you can really kind of reach and find 3 misfortunes that happen at once and make it true, but I tend to notice that it was true after the fact rather than waiting for the second or third hammer to fall.

So today, I took off work (sub plans are a bear to write, by the way, and I had to go in this morning anyway to make all the copies and stuff) to take poor, sick Curly Jones to the doctor.  She has had a nasty, wet cough and has been complaining of ear pain.  Tootsie Roll was Ear Infection Queen by the time she got ear tubes at 15 months, but CJ has been pretty lucky about avoiding this particular malady.

Anyway, I went to the dr expecting a diagnosis of ear infection.  Which she got... doubly (both ears are infected).  And the doctor said she is wheezing on both sides, which means we went home the proud new owners of a nebulizer along with some pretty potent antibiotics.  So it never occurred to me that I should be waiting for a third issue, but a little while after we got home, I went in the laundry room to get a load of wash started.  Antsy little CJ did not stay 5 feet away on the couch in the den, but instead followed me in and decided that opening the dryer would be fun.  You know how dryer doors stick... on purpose?  Well, she yanked really hard and it came flying open.  Right into her face.  Enter massive nosebleed.

Fortunately, CJ is one happy kid and was not overly phased by nasty Amoxicillan ("This medicine is good!"), 10-minute stints with the nebulizer mask on her face ("Tell me a story, Mommy."), or massive nosebleeds, apparently ("Am I still blooding?").  Definitely a trooper.

On a funnier note, tonight Tootsie Roll and I were reading Gooseberry Park and in the middle of a chapter, she stopped reading and said, "She started a sentence with the word 'and'?  That's very unusual for someone who is a professional author."  Ahh, T-Roll.  My consummate rule-follower! ;)

Merry Thanksgivween

We were at Target today, buying all sorts of necessary things like shampoo and hand soap and laundry detergent (amazing how we get low on all things soapy at once) and I remembered that I had to check the Halloween aisle for a Little Red Riding Hood cape.  My class does fairy tale plays every June, and every June I think to myself, "I have to remember to look for a Red Riding Hood cape this Halloween."  And this year I actually remembered!  So there I was, in the Halloween section of the store (which was surprisingly still decently stocked), and there the Target Team was, hanging up hundreds of Christmas wreaths.  One of the Halloween aisles has already been reassigned to spare Christmas tree lights, decoration hooks, and boxes of cards.

Hrm.  This totally weirds out my mojo.  I'm not a huge fan of Halloween, actually.  I love how my first graders get all excited (we don't dress up in school, but we have a big Fall Fest day of activities) and totally enjoy dressing my girls up for their dance class, for the Masquerade Ball at night at my school, and for trick or treating.  But when it's all said and done, I'm like... ok... put it all away... let's move on.

We host Thanksgiving at our house, and I do love it (Target seems nonplussed, although they did have more in autumny candles and yellow/gold/red housewares).  We have both sides of the family over and everyone brings stuff, and it's just a wonderful day.  Yes, it's a lot to do (I clean the house and set everything up, Handsome Hubby does the cooking), but there's just a feeling when everyone is sitting together and chatting and eating that you can't replicate.

But Christmas is the holiday I love the most.  Just the love and peace and togetherness and time off from work to hang out with the kids.  We have so many holiday memories.  I already have the kids' Christmas dresses and shoes (thanks, Target, for red shoes in both size 8 and 1 1/2) and have their portraits scheduled.  So I guess Target and I aren't so far off in our thinking.  It's just weird to see it all together, skeletons and fake pine wreaths...

Random Cuteness

From before dance class today :)

Remembering Our Babies

October is Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, and Oct. 15th specifically is PIL Remembrance Day.  (The banner above is from the official site for Remembering Our Babies).

Today is an Angel Day for me.  October 21, 2006, was the due date for my Lily, who I lost early at 8 weeks.  She would have been 4 today.  Earlier that same year, May 17th, 2006, was the due date for my Conor, who I lost at 6 weeks.  He would have been 4 this year as well.  My two losses were five months apart, and they were between my two happy and healthy baby girls.  I had no problems with Tootsie Roll's pregnancy.  After my miscarriages, I was put on meds to help ensure that Curly Jones' pregnancy would make it to term.  The doctors told me that they usually don't treat anyone until they've had three miscarriages.  I pretty much didn't accept taking my chances on a third.  They drew 21 vials of blood to do testing and found very little in terms of cause, but they put me on Metformin (which is an insulin regulator, they thought I maybe had PCOS) and progesterone.  Curly Jones' pregnancy was healthy and uneventful, thankfully.

Miscarriages have a strange stigma.  People don't talk about them much but they are something that many of us have gone through.  Even early ones like mine are completely devastating, and you need to grieve.  After I took a few days off with my first one, I returned to work and my principal at the time (a woman) said to me, "It happens to lots of us.  Get over it."  There are a lot of wrong things to say to a grieving mom.  This is one.  Also wrong is for the OB's receptionist to be telling you jokes as she schedules your d&c.

I have grieved and I have some remembrances for both of my losses.  Today, I remember Lily and Conor both, and I send a prayer out to any of you who have experienced loss.  There is a lot of support out there.  If you are trying to support someone who has experienced loss, please reach out to them.  You don't have to say anything but you're sorry and you're there if they want to talk.  It means the world, since so many people say nothing because they don't want to say the wrong thing.

The following is from GrieveOutLoud.org:

“Every single day in the US, 2,000 women lose a baby to pregnancy/infant loss. That’s 700,000 a year, a third of every female in this country. So why does no one talk about it?

In honor of October 15th, National Pregnancy/Infant Loss Remembrance Day, we are opening up the conversation. We are “putting a face” on miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss. We are sharing our faces, and declaring to the world, “I am not ashamed to talk about my baby.”
The goal of the I AM THE FACE campaign is simple: to spread awareness of pregnancy/infant loss, and raise support for those who are affected by it. With your help, we will raise $2,000 for the 2,000 women who experience the loss of a child every day. $2,000 for 2,000 faces.

I have gotten some very lovely and tasteful remembrance jewelry at My Forever Child.

Love to Conor and Lily and all Angel Babies today and always.

Is My First Work of Horror a Horror Show?

Lol... I have no idea!  I just finished my flash fiction for Horror at Hannah's, and never having written horror before, I have no idea what to think.  Is it passable?  Does it suck?  I guess I'll find out soon!  Trying to have a few people read over it for me before I submit. Hubby told me he got chills, but didn't have any suggestions other than fixing a typo (lol).  I haven't gotten a WiP to the Crit Partner stage yet, so I don't have a tear-it-to-shreds bud just yet. ;)  And flash fic doesn't offer much wiggle room - My 1,000 words or less story is 1,000 words on the nose.  Go me!  Or something. ;)

I'm not a huge reader of scary stories.  I like suspense, but not a ton of gore.  I read a couple of John Saul books a few months ago and they were sort of suspenseful but icky.  I'm not a big Stephen King fan; I actually really prefer his non-horror books like The Green Mile.  The Eyes of the Dragon is my favorite by him, and it's fantasy.  I liked The Ruins, even though it was kind of silly.

Hmm.  What are your favorite books that are suspenseful or scary but not overly gory?