by Mav Skye
Deadly Women
3 Tales to Chill Your Bones, Volume Seven
Mav Skye
Contents
Copyright
Free Download
Epigraph
Epigraph
1. Pillow Talk
2. Mantra
3. Dead Sunset Red
4. Awake
Afterword
About the Author
Also by Mav Skye
Bibliography
Deadly Women: 3 Tales to Chill Your Bones, Volume Seven is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Mav Skye
All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please contact the author at the following email address: [email protected]
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suppressing the beast
in a tight black dress
twilight dawns
the Immensity
Mav Skye
i am a bad girl
i hurt good people sometimes
my knife is sharp
tongue sharper
i'd rather be in jail, than
alone sharpening iron
Mav Skye
1
Pillow Talk
Henrietta wrapped her arms about her pillow. “I’m still awake, Charlie. I can never sleep anymore.” Charlie’s body spooned hers. His arm wrapped around her waist, hand pressed against the silky hollow of her stomach. “Charlie, are you listening?”
Silence.
“Sleep. That’s all you do anymore. It’s not fair. It’s never been fair.” Henrietta felt sweat drip down her neck, the base of her spine. She scrunched back the sheets and adjusted her pillow. The mattress was a full size. It was her bed. He had his own room, but he never wanted to sleep there. “Afraid of the dark aren’t you, Charlie? What did you do before you moved in with me, huh? Sleep with dolls?”
Charlie hadn’t been afraid of the dark until he met her. He had told her this once, after she blindfolded, cuffed him to the bed, and inked a black heart into his skin, right above his own heart.
Henrietta pouted. “You liked our romps through the sheets.” She could almost hear his voice now, Jesus, Reta, when romps turn into stilettos and needles it becomes… Its just that I... I feel afraid.
“It becomes what, Charlie? You never finished your sentence. Afraid of what? Me? Little ol me?” Henrietta laughed. She watched the alarm clock tick to 11:59 pm. “Get off me will you? I’m burnin’ up here.”
Henrietta sat up. He remained on his side. His hand slipped down between her thighs. “You always hit right on the money, didn’t you, Charlie?” She rolled him to his back. His head thunked on the headboard. “Ohhh, ouch…” She bit her lip and sat on her knees in the darkness. A thread of city light found its way through the long crack between the curtains. It highlighted his skin, giving him a pale, ghostly look. She swept her hand across his cool brow. He didn’t move.
“Out like a light. Damn.” She snatched the box of cigarettes and lighter off the night stand, then sat Indian style on the sheets, her knee pressing into Charlie’s ribs.
She lit up, breathed in deep, and let out the smoke. “You asked me why I did it. I know you couldn’t speak at the time. But your eyes spoke to me, the way they always do. I mean, yeah, you told me you wanted to sleep with me. Keep your arm around me, so you knew where I was.” She brought the cigarette to her lips. “Did you really think I was going to stick you in the middle of the night?” Henrietta laughed and shook her head. Curls of smoke drifted up into the darkness, disappearing into the glare of city light.
“You know, my kid brother Tony, he caught me doing…things once. It was none of his fuckin’ business. I was out behind the shed, by myself, but he had to be nosy. The kid was always rattin’ me out. Anyway, he promised me he wasn’t going to tell. And thinkin’ about it now, he really meant it. I was a teenager then. And believe you me-” Henrietta flicked her ashes on the carpet. She took another puff. “Teenage girls don’t trust their brothers with secrets. That night, I snuck into his room and put a pillow over his head.”
Henrietta leaned back against the headboard. The cool wood felt good against her hot body. She rolled her head to look at Charlie. “No one ever knew. They thought he’d rolled over and suffocated himself.” She drew the cigarette between her lips and took one last puff.
“So when you caught me with the old man last week. Well, it was sort of the same deal. I could see in your eyes you were too scared to call the police. But I know you would have. You would have ratted me out. Shit, Charlie. You selfish son of a bitch. Why’d you have to go snooping in places where you don’t belong? I am happy with who I am.”
She smooshed her cigarette into the ashtray. “I need to get some sleep. We both know it doesn’t happen when you’re in here with me.” She leaned over and straddled him, his body cold between her thighs. She stroked his black heart, then felt the gentle curves of his face. Charlie would never be afraid again. And he would never tell what he’d seen her do. She had lovingly sewed his eyes and mouth shut.
Henrietta stood, grabbed the bottom of the sheet and gently placed it over his face, his body. Then she rolled him. He flopped off the bed onto a flat cardboard box. She grabbed the edge of the box and dragged it into the walk in closet.
She stood and pressed her hands to her back. Her silky nightgown clung to the sweaty wetness between her breasts. “Things haven’t been the same since you died. The bed is just too cramped with your deadweight in it. So, I’m not sure when I’m going to pull you out again.”
She turned to go. Stopped. Looked back. Dark clothes hung like beasts from poles. “Life is more scary than death, Charlie. You should thank me.”
2
Mantra
One, two, three…
Nails and teeth go beneath.
Hair and gums, unbecomes.
Legs and fingers, let them linger.
Heads and tails flip for sells.
Sometimes, Rhiannon repeated the rhyme in her head over and over. Other times, she hid in the closet, pulled the string light bulb and wrote it on the walls, carefully, inside squares. It calmed her before a big pitch or after one. The sale didn’t matter, it was her nerves, the panic she could feel like an entity. A worm crawling from the front of her skull to the back of it, writhing, wriggling like the legs of a spider after its abdomen had been crushed.
Rhiannon had been to the doctors. They gave her meds. And what did the meds do? Made her put on weight, gave her zits, made her hair fall out, and gave her massive bouts of gas. This made a drastic impact on her sales.
So she’d dumped the pills down the toilet. The sales improved as did her figure, but the worms crawled worse. In fact, they crawled out of her ears at night and had begun to disturb Derry. They told him bad things about her, lies.
Rhiannon stood in her bedroom in a black bra and panties, looking at her face in the mosaic mirror on the wall. She’d made a big sale today. Autumn sunshine streamed in through the window. She should have felt happy. But she didn’t.
She felt hollow. Hollowed out.
A drop of blood appeared on the mirror. She dabbed at it with her index finger wondering where it came from, and as she did, her green eyes transformed in the mirror. They grew long and oval, pinched in the middle like an hourglass.
She drew her fingers to her trembling lips. The hourglass ovals shifted to square blocks sinking deep inside her forehead.
She heard footsteps. Derry’s head moved behind her in the mirror. She wanted to move, but couldn’t. Paralysis. Her own sunken eyes held her captive. She felt a familiar movement in her forehead, a pain, and then the whispers started. Dream or real? they asked.
Rhiannon’s eyes slid forward, taking a new form. Round. The pupil widened, then narrowed into a sharp slit like a serpent’s. Dream? although posed as a question, the worms demanded an answer. They began to crawl.
Perhaps she was dreaming? She hated doubting herself. She hadn’t made it this far by doubting.
A classic Derry fart ripped from the bathroom, then a healthy stream hit toilet water. It was then she knew she was real, here. Rhiannon breathed a sigh of relief even as the worms screamed. Derry kept her real.
“Rhi? Whe’re’s the spa’re bla’nkets?” His Kentucky drawl used to be endearing. “This pl’ace never w’arms up. Brrr…”
Another drop of blood appeared on the mirror, then another. Derry was moving towards the closet. Rhiannon willed her lips to move, her arms to wave, but the worms wouldn’t let them. More blood splatters hit the mirror.
Rhiannon heard the closet door open. The worms laughed at her. They laughed in a high pitched scream.
“Wh’at the hell is this all over the w’all, Rhi? One, two, three, n’ails and teeth…” his voice tapered off.
She blinked once. Twice. Thrice. Suddenly, she was free and the worms were silent.
“I can explain it, Derry! It’s just a little rhyme.”
Derry slowly turned. He glanced her up and down, his eyes lingering at the cleavage in her bra. Her panting excited him. He shifted his pants and met her eyes. “I know you were hear’ang some things awhile b’ack and went to the doct’or. But this shit’s just… cr’azy.” He shook his head, slowly, pointing inside the closet. “It’s the last dr’aw.” The look in his eyes spelled disgust, easily imitated from many daytime drama shows.
“Derry,” Rhiannon licked her lips. If there was a sale to make, it was now. “You…” She paused. “You make me feel… here. What they’ve told you is lies. Don’t leave me now. Don’t leave me alone.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Who’s told me lies?”
Rhiannon shifted uncomfortably, then lowered her voice, “The worms. They’ve told you lies about me at night while you sleep.”
“Ok’ay.” He nodded his head and looked as if in thought.
Rhiannon felt a surge of hope.
Derry tipped his head towards the closet. “Sorry, d’arlin. The last dr’aw. You need to go back to the do’ctors and get re-pre’scribed.” He drew his drawl out to make his point, then turned and went down stairs.
From the stairwell he said, “I’m gonn’a have a beer, then split th’is joint.”
“Damn it. Damn it.” Rhiannon had to do something. She couldn’t just let Derry leave. Sure he was unemployed, mooched off her money, and sat on his rumpus all day watching The Price is Right and Oprah. But there was something calming knowing he was a real lump of living flesh sitting in the Lazy Boy when she came home at night. Everybody needs somebody and she didn’t want to be alone. Not with worms crawling in her head! He kept her real. Why couldn’t he see that? She tiptoed downstairs, watched him opened one last can of Bud Light and flick Dr. Phil back on.
She didn’t know what to do, so she sneaked to the kitchen, crept up behind him, and hit him over the head with a frying pan.
“I think you’ve made the right decision,” affirmed Dr. Phil. Rhiannon agreed and turned the TV off.
What to do. What to do. The worms were crawling, crawling, crawling. Rhiannon snatched a pencil from Derry’s crossword puzzle and ran up to her closet. She wrote the words over and over in their little squares. Her daddy once told her that if she ever got in a pickle to pick up a pencil and write the first thing that came to her mind and that would solve the problem. He also said that if writing didn’t work to pick up the Bible, close your eyes, and wait for the Holy Ghost to fill you up. You’d know that the Holy Ghost was filling you up because it was like a little wiggle in your soul, and that meant that Jesus loved you. You opened up your Bible and pointed at scripture. And whatever scripture you pointed too, that was the Holy Ghost guiding you to your life’s purpose. Daddy had hung himself with his bed sheets from his third floor balcony when she was twelve. All they found was his Bible on the dining table. A verse circled in red where Judas had hung himself. Rhiannon had been in and of out foster homes after that.
Rhiannon didn’t care for the Holy Ghost or the Bible, but she liked to write. She made good grades in college, and she had landed herself a top sales position at ‘Just Skank It! J. K. Crack’s Clothing Massacre’. The stock had doubled since they had brought her aboard five years ago. Doubled! Stores had gone up in every mall across the country. Rhiannon was invaluable.
Heads and tails flip for sells.
Her scribbling became faster, and she tried to slow so it wouldn’t be sloppy. Her greatest fear, if she were to admit it, was the worms in her head were Jesus, but this made her laugh every time. Jesus wasn’t a worm on a cross! And Jesus wouldn’t tell her to flip heads or tails for sales. No sir. He’d tell her to pray. She laughed as she wrote. She laughed and wrote, laughed and wrote, until she calmed. Suddenly, with amazing clarity, she knew what to do. Derry would never leave.
She dressed and went downstairs. He still slept. Rhiannon tied and gagged him, and hit him again with the frying pan for good measure. Then she retrieved her purse from the counter.
Rhiannon went to Lowe’s and bought an electric saw and a filet knife.
Dumping Derry out of the Lazy Boy into the wheelbarrow wasn’t much of a problem. Figuring out where to filet him was. Rhiannon hadn’t a basement. But, the little Yardman 2000 shed did just fine. She had a woodstove and a small vegetable garden for the leftovers, the parts that weren’t in her rhyme. She called in sick to work the next morning. The neighbors thought nothing of her using the electric saw out back. It all worked out just fine. And afterwards, Rhiannon carefully placed each body part in its jar, box or shelf in her closet. Then she retrieved Derry’s pencil and carefully wrote each in its own square:
One, two, three…
Nails and teeth go beneath.
Hair and gums, unbecomes.
Legs and fingers, let them linger.
Heads and tails flip for sells.
As she finished up and closed the doors, the phone rang in the kitchen. She put on her slippers and made her way down the stairs, feeling much better. The message machine picked up. “Derr’ay? It’s your Ma. Where’s m’ay sweet little birthd’ay boy?”
Ma’s Kentucky drawl was annoyin’ as all get out. Rhiannon poured herself some coffee. Black. She thought about her closet.
“You’re alw’ays home,” Ma pouted.
Derry’s little ol’ Ma lived in Kentucky, eons from Washington. They had never met. Ma was frail, sick, practically on her deathbed, at least that is what’s Derry had told her. Rhiannon wouldn’t have to worry about her.
“I wanted to sing Happy Birthd’ay to my little pumpkin pie cake.”
There’s no such thing as a pumpkin pie cake, MA, Rhiannon thought. The worms, awake again, gathered in the front of her head. Gnawing. Gnawing. She spat the coffee out in the sink.
“I’ll just sing it right he’re… Happy Birthd’ay to yoooou!”
The worms gnawed, chewed, spat their way to the back of Rhiannon’s mind. Tears streamed down her face. She fell to the kitchen floor. She pulled her knees to her chest and rocked herself like a newborn. They ate through gray matter, asking question
s. Was this what death felt like? Was she alive? Dreaming? She needed to make the sale, dammit. Needed to make a sale. She wanted Derry back in the living room watching The Biggest Loser and munching Cheetos. She’d know then that she was alive.
“Anyw’ay, I expect you to call me back str’aight aw’ay. Love you, pump’kin.”
The message machine cut off with a loud, “Beep!”
A slight knock on the door. “Sweetheart? It’s Mrs. Doober from next door. I brought you some flowers from my garden.”
Rhiannon wiped her tears. She whispered her rhyme. She had an idea.
Business had picked up. She had a pitch this morning. Where had the week gone? Rhiannon carefully brushed her hair, swept it up in a twist and clipped it. She put in her green contacts and layered on thick eyeliner. She examined herself in the mirror. Serious. Scary. Her eyes shifted feline and her teeth pointed. Her body grew slender like a snake. She closed her eyes and shook her head. Opened her eyes, looked in the mirror again. She looked like her average aging self. Then she felt them, the worms writhing from the front of her skull to the back. Eating away her brain, leaving holes, asking questions. Did the Holy Ghost ask questions? She shivered and shook it all off.
Focus. Concentration. Lipstick.
Rhiannon’s hands shook as she applied the red lip stain. Big sale to make today. Big sale to loose. Heads and tails flip for sells. She thought of what was in her closet on the shelf. Rhiannon turned and threw up into the toilet. She grabbed her lipstick and ran to her closet. Underneath her old hat box, she grabbed a satchel of fingernails and tucked it into the vest of her business suit, breathing deeply. She began to relax. She turned up a notch in her lipstick and wrote:
