by Lance Murphy
Penny For Your Thoughts
An Intriguing Short Story
Lance Murphy
Penny For Your Thoughts is a work of Fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
An Original Short Story by L.T. Murphy
Copyright © 2015 by Lance Murphy
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
About the Author
One
I laid underneath the bunk bed with my pajamas soaked in my sister’s blood for so long, I had unknowingly fallen asleep. The comforting flannel material of my pajamas now stuck to me like a second skin thanks to a mixture of sweat and cold blood. No longer did the patterns of happy yellow tigers mean anything pleasant to me. Instead, they were replaced by little red demons that seeped into my dreams. I simply laid motionless as my thoughts embellished my dreams with the demonic fervor that only Satan himself could deliver. My heart began to race as if it were a stallion in the wild as I began to dream of my own hellish demise. I was racing through a densely wooded area inside of a darkness that mirrored an abyss. In neither direction was I able to even see the minutest glimpse of light, but I could hear them. Their blood thirst cried out from their loins with the volume and command of a lion’s roar. As I stumbled across a displaced tree, limbs and scattered leaves, my rustling gave a perfect blueprint to my location. I tried earnestly to increase my speed, although with my every step they became three steps closer to me. I knew that I was going to die by their hands. I knew that it would be slow and tedious, just as one would prepare a fish for a feast. As I came upon a shallow creek bed with immensely murky waters, I jarred awake as I felt a hand tightly grasp my neck.
Just as my eyes began to open I heard the voice of a rookie police officer,
“Wait, someone is under the bed”.
I could fully sense that he was a rookie due to the unsteady undertones of his voice. My talent for “knowing” things wasn’t exactly something I asked for and on several occasions it saved me from trouble, but this time I cursed it. Another officer asked the rookie whether I still had a pulse. In turn the rookie instinctively reached for my wrist, prodding it with two fingers in order to find a sign of life,
“Hey, are you okay?”
Blinded by strings of blood in my left eye where my face was pressed against the cold hard floor, I saw a thin, brown-haired guy with glasses leaning in towards me, and I heard a woman’s voice over a crackling loud radio,
“Is everyone in the house dead?”
The rookie who found me quickly answered,
“No, there is a young boy here. He is still alive, but it looks like he’s going to need medical attention”
Medical attention? Yes, that’s exactly what I needed. They might as well add electro shock therapy and a white restraining jacket after tonight. Surviving the shrieks from what used to be my family without losing control over my bladder probably means that nothing would be able to phase me. Before I fell asleep I watched how the blood from my sister’s body flowed towards me as if I were a liquid magnet. Her eyes and mouth were open, fixed in a gawking expression. A piece of her skull was missing, exposing a chunk of her brain and to make matters worse she was looking directly at me. Her hazel eyes no longer danced with joy, but now stole pieces of your soul. I could not take my eyes off of her. She resembled a feast for vultures and no longer the girl that I called sister. There was only a desert like dryness left to her. What should have been tucked away beneath her bones was now on a morbid display. There was more of her blood in my flannel pajamas than what was now slowly dripping from her jagged cranial fractures.
The rookie officer began to gently pull me by the arm with the intent to get me out from underneath the bed. The chubby cop yelled,
“Wait, you can’t do that! Let’s move the bed, we don’t know if he’s injured.”
The rookie nervously tried to explain his actions but was cut off by his more experienced and robust partner.
“Here, let’s move it this way”
I smelled fresh blood, much like the smell of animals gone to slaughter. I saw the round officer use his foot to move my sister’s body out of the way. I still had fear in my eyes and they sensed it.
“You’re going to be alright buddy, help is on the way, it’s all over now”
The rookie cop began to look me over, as his robust cohort inquired,
“Is he injured?”
“Hard to tell, there’s too much blood. Did anyone hurt you big guy? Does anything hurt?”
I remained speechless. I felt the spirit of death all around me. My house has never been this quiet before, except for when everyone was asleep, which in this case was a permanent scenario.
My name is Cody Frazier and my entire family has been murdered. I knew this was going to happen and this is why I chose to sleep underneath the bunk beds last night, because I knew they would be coming. I tried to warn my dad and my Grammie, but no one listened. I guess the fact that I’m only twelve years old ensured their ignorance towards my warning.
“Hey, can you hear me talking to you?” said the rookie.
“Maybe he’s still in shock. If your entire family was murdered, you’d be in shock too,” chubby said sarcastically.
A lady entered the room with a pencil and notepad followed by some guy taking pictures of every damn thing in our house.
“There is one in the kitchen, one in the living room, a dog in one bedroom and two in here.”
She had to take a moment before she could continue, partly due to her attempts to restrain her dinner from coming back up and making sense of the surreal situation.
“I’ve never seen anything this horrific in all my years on the force.”
As I lay there looking up at the water hole in the ceiling, I wondered what it would be like to smell Grammie’s cinnamon oatmeal cooking in the morning, just once more, or hear my dad scream at me for forgetting to take Goldie out in time after she’d pooped in his favorite chair. I’d even settle for arguing with my sister over who has to do the dishes. I’d give anything for that right now. But instead I’m here with cops all over the place, my family dead and I’m left to wonder what is going to happen next. Will they come back for me? Will I be placed in a witness protection program? Will I be an orphan? Or will my estranged Momma take me in, even though she hasn’t spoken to my dad in years. She never forgave him. If only they had listened to me then everything would be back to normal. Why didn’t they just listen to me?
Unfortunately these questions didn’t matter anymore. I was alone. All that surrounded me were the faces of strangers and walls covered with natural red paint. The cool from the dilapidated air conditioner lurked in the air and I could hear Grammies favorite television show still playing in her room. My dad would always try to save energy and turn it off in the middle of the night.
The ambulance that came to escort me didn’t take very long and they carried me out on a stretcher as if I were suffering from a fatal wound or something. Everything turned into a blur. I didn’t pay attention to the conversation between the paramedics and the rookie officer, neither did I respond to their questions. All I heard could hear were echoes of terrifying screams. To make matters worse I didn’t need imagination to combine picture and sound as the events played out, I witnessed every detail.
I welcomed the cool su
mmer breeze as the medics carried me across the front lawn. The whole neighborhood had already gathered for the spectacle, no doubt hoping to find something to tell their co-workers in the morning, especially Ms. Ruth. I can anticipate her talking to the local reporters. She’s the Barbara Walters, the Diane Sawyer, and the Lois Lane of Blairsville. She’s a chatterbox, the mouth of the south, that ole windbag….well I think you get the picture.
Red and blue lights covered the otherwise starless sky and I couldn’t bring myself to look sideways. Even though I wasn’t butchered with the rest of my family I felt dead. My mind was everywhere and nowhere, stuck between where I was and where I was going. Nothing made sense anymore.
Two
The journey to the hospital was a long, uncomfortable and silent ride. As I sat in the back on a gurney, I realized that an ambulance is no more than an enlarged taxi. For the life of me I couldn’t make out in my head why I was going in the first place. I was completely fine. What was the big deal with this place? Everyone is running around like headless chickens, rolling out the red carpet each time a new fancy taxi pulls up to the closing doors.
As I entered the hospital I was greeted with a frost that should have been reserved for the morgue. It was clean, but it reeked of sterile death. The cool night’s air would have provided me with more warmth, attention and compassion than the monotone, frosted walls of this building that simply housed the sick; because it was quite obvious that it offered little to no help to them. This was made more than evident to me by the man on my right who seemed to be channeling the grim reaper through his hollowed breathing.
If someone doesn’t come and see about this old man, he may just say his last good byes right here and now. His hair was as bright as snow and he’s complaining about how incompetent the doctors were and how he wasn’t at all happy with how long he’d been waiting. He went on and on. I really didn’t believe a word he said.
A pregnant lady who looked as if she would pop any minute was staggering up the hall with a long pole attached to her arm with a clear bag dangling from it. She got a lot of attention and favoritism from the nurses, no wonder the ole guy was complaining. He keeps looking over at me with that “look” on his face.
It was wrong and made for a variant of uncomfortable glances, but I could not help but to gaze wide eyed at the pain reddened woman as she haunted the hallways with her brimming belly of baby that was not conceived out of love, only selfishness. My eyes began to gloss over her as my mind wondered why her delivery of life was more important than the impending loss of life that was happened right beside me. Why is she not hiding in a back room in shame? She knew that she was bringing forth another seed that would further her motives to milk the government for more money, but the fear radiating from my entire being kept my mouth from warning a soul. I am desperate to see the good in people, but that hardly ever happens.
I could literally see the worn spirit of the old man leaving his body when I heard,
“Can you tell me your name...How old you are….? On a scale of one to ten, how bad is your pain?”
I couldn’t believe this guy was talking to me like I was a four year old. It’s not that I hated the people that were so eagerly trying to help me, because the rookie cop, the paramedics and the doctor showed general signs of concern. But what they didn’t understand was that I’ve already been here. For most of my life I had experienced the same thing twice, once in my head then again in reality, but tonight was just too much. When the doctor realized he wasn’t going to get any information out of me he pulled one of the nurses to the side.
“Page Dr. Jenkins will you?”
Dr. Jenkins was a child psychiatrist with flame red hair and a sensitive smile. She would be standing by my bed within thirty minutes after receiving the page from the nurse, just like the doctor ordered, telling me about what just happened. This is my second nature. Sometimes I think that I create my future as I go along.
Like clockwork she was there, placing her car keys on the table next to the stretcher and gently squeezing my hand as she settled on the side of my bed. Her eyes glowed with an emerald green and it was obvious she took her job personally and seriously.
“Hey there. My name is Emily and I’m here to talk to you about what happened tonight. Is that okay with you?”
She didn’t plaster a fake smile across her face like most people would when it came to breaking bad news. Emily remained sincere and as understanding as possible. However, I still couldn’t bring myself to say a word. Maybe I was still hoping that everything was a bad dream and by hearing myself speak would make it all true somehow. If I remained silent long enough then everything might go back to the way it was.
Emily was fumbling over her choice of words, constantly looking at my hand she was still holding in search of the right words to say.
“Your family was hurt tonight. They were………um……..they were hurt by some bad people and……”
She was going to start tearing up any second now. More specifically, she was going to tear up right after the third fumbled sentence. I knew this of course, but she didn’t. So instead of letting her finish I just squeezed her hand in return, a sign that I knew what was going on.
Emily was great at what she did because of her genuine concern, but sometimes it made everything so much harder. A sense of relief washed over her and she looked into my eyes with a newfound hope for progression. Because I wasn’t up to talking, she was making me feel somewhat guilty somehow. Luckily the text message that was about to come through on her phone would buy me some time. I let go of her hand and reached for her phone that was on the table. Naturally she was startled although she didn’t stop me. I placed the phone in her now empty hand. Emily just kept staring at me with a puzzled expression. Before she could say anything the message came through. Needless to say she was confused for a second and didn’t react immediately. When she finally snapped out of her daze she started reading the message. Just as she wanted to replace the cell phone back on the table, she realized that she didn’t finish up things with her previous patient.
“How did you……?”
Emily desperately wanted to figure out what just happened, but the ole doc came back in to talk to her. What a relief.
After Emily’s talk with the ER doctor, I had the privilege of someone pushing my bed into yet another room. I wanted this night to be over, but it seemed to never end. This room was very small, cold and dim. All of a sudden I smelled cinnamon and pine, definitely a chick’s office. Ms. Emily still had this startled look on her face from the text message mystery that she just couldn’t quite figure out. She sat behind a large wooden desk, much like the teacher’s desk at my school. As she took her seat, I couldn’t help but to think of how I witnessed the old man’s spirit elevate from his morbid body. I guess he wasn’t lying after all.
“What has happened to you was very traumatic”, she said. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
I shook my head, “no”.
“Okay…..ah……well…”
Ms. Emily continued to rattle on and on about the proper way to deal with emotions and accepting things that you cannot control, yadda yadda yadda. She talked more than Ms. Ruth and I thought that no one could out-babble her. She talked so for long that I felt my chin slightly touching my chest when I heard the screech of the door opening.
“Hi, I’m here to transport the kid to the station before social services comes for him, we need to ask him some questions”
“Well okay, good luck with trying to get him to talk, I’m sure not having any success”, she says. “But before you take him, can I speak to you for just a moment? ”
About 15 minutes of them talking, I fell asleep, knowing that my next stop would definitely be the police station.
Three
Sure enough, a police escort was waiting to take me to the station when I woke up. I knew what they would be expecting from me and it didn’t take any clairvoyant power to figure that out. Unfortunately for t
hem I wasn’t very helpful, given my continued state of silence. Detective Tanner tried his best to ask the uncomfortable questions in the most considerate manner, but the whole conversation ended up with him being frustrated. I also knew how it would play out if I told Det. Tanner that I knew my family was going to be murdered. My knowledge of the whole scenario would pretty much ensure my place in the nuthouse for a few years. They’ll write it up as stress and delusion instead of taking me seriously. Finally, Tanner gave up and told me to wait for social services. He said this with such conviction in his voice. As if social services was my punishment for not talking. When I become a cop and get my cool cop car, I won’t be unkind to kids. All cops can’t be bad.
I saw a well-suited cop heading towards the office where I was sitting. He was wearing a pressed blue suit, tailored to fit, nothing about him looked cheap. He had a lifetime of experience on his face and a shiny baldhead that rested perfectly underneath the bill of his cop hat. Chief Daniels gave me a wink and a smile as he passed me on his way to Det. Shines’ desk. Shine was finishing up a conversation on the phone, but Chief Daniels didn’t care to wait for the conversation to end as he loudly stated,
“Here’s our Man of the Year!”
Shine just glanced up at Daniels with a satisfied look and politely lifted his hand, signaling Daniels to give him a second.
“Yes, I love you too honey. Remember that it’s doctor’s orders that you get some rest. Kiss the boys for me; I will be home in a little while okay? Bye now.”
As he hangs up the phone Daniels takes a stand next to Shine and throws his arm on his shoulders, speaking to Shine’s new partner,
“You know Baxter, your new partner Shine here, may very well get that award this year”. He then turns his attention to Shine.
“We’re all very proud of you son, you deserve it.”
It was obvious that Shine liked the attention he was getting and simply replied, “Thanks Chief.”
