Next to her on our stomachs on the top bunk, I grit my teeth. I want to scream at everyone. I want to scream at Hope for not protecting her sister better. I want to scream at Malcolm for suggesting the vacation in the first place so I’d “calm down” about Clarissa. I want to scream at Shelia for not being able to write her own letters. But more than anything, I want to scream at Clarissa. I want to know if she planned this all along when she seduced my husband and tore my family in half. I want to ask her why she couldn’t have left us alone. Instead, I write to a guy named Rob, who I don’t even know, just to calm my cellmate down. This cell, this bunk, and Shelia’s breath in my hair are nasty. I need to get out of here.
I’m cold. They never turn the heat on. I’ve missed my morning shows, and afternoon too. It’s too late to be in the dayroom, and some bitch three cells down stole the Fritos. They don’t let us keep our canteen food in our cells, only in the dayroom. My stomach growls. Shelia fell asleep hours ago and is snoring. I climb down slowly so as not to wake her and lay back in my bunk. Soon, it will be night. I wish we could have a flashlight. Night is when the girls haunt me.
My stomach growls. I can’t be sure if it’s hunger or rage. I close my eyes. I don’t want to be like Malcolm. I hear he’s always getting into fights. I stare at the bottom of Shelia’s mattress. “I’m sorry,” I say to no one and not about anything in particular. Then I put my head in my hands and sob, grateful it’s too late for other inmates to be around.
In my sleep, Spencer rubs the back of my head like Hope used to before the neighbors moved in and made me crazy. Even in my dreams, I can’t escape. I’m supposed to be the mother. I should be the one rubbing their heads and making them feel better, I tell myself, even in my nightmares. I don’t have the energy to argue. My days are too long, cold, endless. I let her pat my head and braid my greasy hair in the almost-dark. I don’t care how long before the guards come. Let’s face it: by the time they come back, I’ll be in trouble for something I didn’t do anyway.
I don’t know how long I sleep or if I slept at all. The days, or nights, are becoming more and more blurry. There are times when I could swear my daughters are standing full bodied and alive in my cell, watching me, torturing me with guilt and regret. Making me crazy. I don’t know whether to feel comforted by it or angry. I wake up on the floor and see the light under the door. I don’t move, hoping the guards will think I fell out of bed or prefer to sleep on cement. When the footsteps are gone, I roll over. My back is stiff, and I wish I’d slept on my paper-thin bed.
Then I see it. I blink. Yes, I’m sure. Hope’s making shadow animals on the back of the door above my head. I squint at her.
“Trick or treat, Mama?” She giggles, pointing to a shadow by the toilet. “Look! Spencer’s here too.”
“I can’t believe Clarissa. She literally moved solely to be next to the men’s prison. All to see Papa,” I say, trying to suck my cheeks in, adjusting my angel costume wings. I don’t want to laugh. Still, it’s funny, torturing Mama like this. I can’t look at Spencer. I keep my eyes set in Mama’s direction. She shivers, back against a cement wall on her bottom bunk.
I’ll have to do something about that. It was more fun when she was on the top, always clutching her back.
“Oh! I can! I think he’s going to propose! Too bad we can’t be at the wedding. We could have been flower girls.” Spencer squeezes her clown nose and pulls out a noisemaker from under her arm.
Honk!
She blows it in Mama’s face. Mama jumps.
“Wouldn’t that have been cool, Ma?”
Honk!
“I’m starving! What’s there to eat?”
Mama covers her ears with both hands. She squeezes her eyes shut, as though it will make a difference. In all this time, she still hasn’t figured out that we ghosts have a way of making ourselves seen no matter what. It’s a phenomenon called manifesting. It’s true, look it up!
“Mama! Talk to us. Do you miss us? Tell us, please.”
Mama hugs her knees to her chest, using her feet to push herself as deep into her bunk as she can get. We move in closer.
“Boo!”
This time, I can’t help but laugh. Spencer looks ridiculous in that clown suit. If I had a heart like Mama’s, I might even tell her. I smile at her. “Scared now, Mama? Don’t be afraid. We’ll be back soon. We’ll get you the greatest souvenir we can find. If you’re really good, maybe we’ll even bring back extra treats. Hershey’s Kisses? Orange soda? Oh! I know! Money for the canteen! Say please…”
Inmate 805820, Malcolm Carlisle
This is torture.
Life sentence. Double murder. No chance of parole.
In thirty-six months’ time, I’ve watched everything I worked so hard for slip away. Clarissa stopped sending money to my canteen not long after Kate wrote to her. Today is three days past Halloween, November 3 if I’ve got my counting straight. I can’t be sure anymore. It’s not like it matters. All I can think about is how to survive, watching my back. I hate it. And those are the good thoughts. What’s worse is thinking about Clarissa.
I need to eat. I’m getting too thin. I stopped working out when my cellmate left. There’s nothing left to do, not without money for the canteen. I almost miss that guy, even his whining. He’d say, “Know what I mean?” after every sentence. Had three teeth. Guys around here called him the snaggle-toothed rattlesnake. Still, he was someone to talk to and laugh at. I’m not laughing now. All I do is sleep. I don’t bother with the dayroom. I keep the toilet clean and drink water from there when I need it. It’s not worth another black eye, or worse, with those bigger guys.
I came up with a plan last night. I have to get out of here or I won’t survive. Today, I’ll try to sneak a plastic knife from the dayroom. Rattlesnake knew how to melt it down and make it a little more useful. Yesterday, I wasted a roll of toilet paper trying to practice setting a fire in the john. I’ve got it now, but nothing to burn. It better not snap. That’s all I know. If it does, I’ll give up all hope. I won’t care anymore. Nothing will matter. Without Clarissa, I can’t even make burritos.
If I could go back, I’d have left Kate before she even had the girls. I’d have met Clarissa in a different context. If I couldn’t go back but could be free of these charges, heck, I’d do anything for that too. I’d even deal with another trip with Kate. Clarissa may hate her, but at least she loved me. She wasn’t the one to stray. On our tenth anniversary, she surprised me with concert tickets. Oh, what a time we had! Her drunk on free wine and me humming along to every song, knowing all of the words, without a care in the world. And those kids, they handled that closet just fine. Imagine that. Hope couldn’t have been older than five. It’s not like the closet was small. How bad could that closet be? They didn’t look unhappy when we sent them there.
They couldn’t have died because of me. Could they? Kate said they’d be fine and we’d bring them back treats. Not everybody can afford a sitter for three weeks. That’s normal. Right?
“Trick or treat? Mama says hi. She said she hopes you and Clarissa are having the time of your lives. We told her how much she visits.” I work my magic, making it appear to Papa that my angel wings have turned black, his favorite color.
Papa ignores me like he always has. I’m not bothered by it.
I yawn, leaning on the side of a concrete wall in his 6x12 cell. I wonder where his cellmate went and if he ever gets lonely. I tell myself not to worry about stuff like that. I’m just a kid. Besides, he deserves this. Papa looks past me, eyeing a shelf a few inches above my head and frowning.
“We thought about bringing you three loaves of bread.” I point to the cooling burrito on a lone shelf. It sits amidst toilet paper and other essentials. “I see you don’t need it. You wouldn’t want to eat like a prisoner. It’s no good.”
Spencer twirls, arms out, around the tiny space in Papa’s cell. He always hated that, how she could never stop moving. He always told her to “calm down.” He glares at her,
telling her to cut it out, and rubs his head. Right above his left eye is a fresh cut, a souvenir from yesterday’s recreation time fight.
“Don’t yell at her! She’s only having fun. She’s a kid,” I tell him, reminding him that ghosts don’t age and that he’s the reason she’ll never change. “If your appeal goes through, you and Clarissa can try again. Third time’s the charm!”
I imagine him wanting to ground me. I remember the time he and Mama left Spencer and me in the closet for a week simply because he “needed time to think.” I smile, realizing he has plenty of time for thinking now, in between the scuffles.
Honk! Honk! Honk!
Spencer blows her clown horn. But Papa doesn’t cover his ears. He lunges for her, banging his head on the top bunk. “Owwww! Girls! Get out!”
“Inmate! Keep it down. It’s quiet hours.” A guard makes his way to Papa’s cell. “I’ll take you to psych. You know I will.”
Papa sits back down and puts his head in his hands.
For a moment, I feel bad. I wonder what it’s like for him, being in here with legitimate thieves who would never say please or thank you. The burrito he made from bartered goods is getting cold. I wonder who he will ask to be excused when he’s done eating it. He looks much thinner than I remember, and his skin is the color of dirty snow. I’m about to tell my sister we should leave him alone when he begins to sob. I stare at him, remembering Spencer in the same position on one of Mama’s benches while he was off with Clarissa. I think of the time I caught them kissing and Mama not being able to leave the house for two months, the time we ran out of food.
I stare at him, gray and worn. Finally, I say, “It could have been different. This is what you deserve. This is justice served.”
Spencer stops honking her horn.
“Christmas is coming. Perhaps Clarissa will visit you. Fill up your canteen and make it so you can buy stamps to write to Mama. Or you could call Grandma. I hear she isn’t doing well.”
He doesn’t answer.
“Okay, we’re outta here. Sleep well. We’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere. And behave yourself.”
Spencer adds, “Remember to miss us.”
I don’t have the heart to tell her he won’t.
“You can be excused. Thanks for asking,” I say, winking at Papa before taking off.
Epilogue
Hope and Spencer paid us another visit a week after Christmas. The only keepsakes they brought back were tales of how great their holiday was and how much they didn’t miss us. Apparently their promises for canteen cash were only for the sake of justice. A week later, they found me hanging from Shelia’s bunk. A week after that, they found Malcolm, face down on the prison yard concrete, his head cut wide open, neck slashed, and all signs of life gone. His blood had frozen into the snow, and it took guards three hours to get him off prison grounds to the hospital. By then, it was too late. And Clarissa? Well, there was no sign of her. She was on vacation with her man of the week, of course.
For three years, the girls haunted us with us with mocking taps into our worst fears. “Mama, Papa, we’re here! Did you miss us?” They’d stand side by side, in our cells, one dressed as a clown and the other an angel, telling us plans of where they’d go next, what they’d eat in Heaven, and how badly Grandma disapproved of what we’d done. They made us see things, too. My cell turned into a closet, the toilet a bucket, and Shelia only the bust a seamstress would use. It was cruel. They did the same things to Malcolm, too. They’d laugh and then tell us not to worry, that all was forgiven and forgotten, but we knew, justice haunts. I’ll never forget the look in their eyes when it was finally over and they saw what they’d done. I hope it hurts them, too.
These days, Malcolm and I are working to rekindle our love. Gone are the prison walls that once kept us apart. So too is the woman who stole him from me. But don’t be fooled. This is no happy ending. Today I have a person of my own to haunt. They say bad shit happens in threes. My daughters haunted us, and now the last is for me. It makes me laugh to play with her mind. Ironically, I get to go on vacation all the time. With Clarissa, it’s always an adventure. She’s currently in Mexico with another woman’s husband. I wonder what Malcolm would think if he knew. Right now, as I dress to pay her a visit, he’s happily munching on a burrito I made just the way he likes them. Clarissa could never do that. Clarissa doesn’t cook. She only eats out. She’d never survive in a prison for women. For men? Well, maybe. She’s good at that…
We’ve been dead for three years now. I know because there’s a hole in my soul that won’t let me forget. To fix it, I watch Clarissa trade up for fatter wallets and bigger diamonds. Then, right when she thinks she’s got the perfect life, I haunt her. I watch her in her hell, wondering why they won’t text back. I follow her on the Internet. I have her convinced she’s being stalked. And sometimes, on holidays, I even show up.
Dead is only a relative term. It’s not what you think it is as a mortal on Earth. Heaven and Hell are like anything. Basically, it’s what you make of them. So for now, Malcolm and I are trying to make a home. We hope to do it right this time. It’s working. Mostly. I’m free now to come and go as I please. It’s all I ever wanted. Well, that, and Malcolm’s full attention on me…
“Mama?”
“What?”
“Will you play with us?”
“Not now. I have places to be. Maybe later.”
“Can I come with you? And Hope, too?”
I smile. “Oh! Well, yes. For sure. Go tell your father we’re having a girls’ day out. We’ll be back later, and we’ll bring him a treat.”
“Can I wear my clown suit?”
“Of course.”
“What about Hope’s angel wings?”
“I wouldn’t want anything less. Go get your sister.”
“Yes, Mama!”
“Oh, and Spencer?
“Yes, Mama?”
“Lock the door. We wouldn’t want your father getting into any sort of trouble while we’re gone.”
About the Author
ERIN LEE is a dark author and therapist living with her family in southern New Hampshire. She is the author of Crazy Like Me, a novel published in 2015 by Savant Books and Publications, LLC. She is also author of Wave to Papa and Nine Lives with Limitless Publishing. She authored Losing Faith (2016) and The Morning After (2017) with Black Rose Writing. She penned The Diary of a Serial Killer Series with Zombie Cupcake Press. Other titles include Alters, Host, Merge, Her Name Was Sam, Take Me As I Am, Just Things, From Russia, With Love, 99 Bottles, and award-winning When I’m Dead. She’s finally learned to write horror with the lights off. Still, she suffers from night terrors.
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Website:
http://www.authorerinlee.com/
Mommy Hold Me
By Kristin Jacques
Chapter One
There was a dead deer on the side of the road.
There and gone in a fifty mile per hour blur. Although it should have been too fast, the details branded the back of his eyelids. The pink-gray tongue lolling out, body bloated in the late summer heat, fur matted with crusted blood. Anthony saw it when he blinked, blink, blink, blink, trying to shake it Etch-a-Sketch style from his head. His fingers tightened on the wheel, his eyes sliding sideways to the silent figure beside him.
She stared out the opposite window, silent and still. He hoped she missed it. Her fingers were splayed over her belly. Still rounded, swollen, but empty. His throat squeezed, unable to swallow at the memory. Her stomach bloated, her sweaty pink-gray face breaking apart. His fingers twitched with the desire to clasp her hand, to hold her somehow, yet the twelve inches between them felt like twelve miles. It felt sacrilegious somehow to grasp the hand over her stomach, to intrude like that. He forced the swallow down, fingers twisting and wrenching the steering wheel, taking the painful desire and placing it in the box in which he held his grief.
Lock it up ti
ght; don’t think about it. Don’t think about that still little face and the bottomless agony in her ocean blue eyes, Mariana’s Trench dark, and twice as deep.
She hadn’t come up for air since that moment. His gaze slid over her again, at the tight line of her jaw, flexing in time to the flex of her fingers over stomach. He prayed she hadn’t seen that dead deer.
His hands ached by the time they pulled into the driveway, fingers stiff, the imprint of his grip gradually fading as he opened the car door. He walked around the car to open her door. She hadn’t moved, still staring out her window with empty eyes, seeing nothing and everything. He couldn’t look at her like this; his box was already close to bursting, and his heart couldn’t take it. Instead, he looked to the house, windows still open, the bedroom light visible. He forgot to turn it off when they left. He gripped the edges of the door, remembering what waited for them in the bedroom. If not for the heat, he would have left her out in the car, certain the house reeked of it. She hadn’t moved yet.
“Hayley?”
The smooth line of her neck flexed with a small swallow; those empty eyes faced him. God, it hurt to look at her. He shoved that hurt in his box, too. He would let it out later, after she finally fell asleep. He held out a hand to her, patient while she looked at it, like she was trying to remember how to move again. Finally, she placed her free hand in his, still clutching herself with the other. He let out a breath and laced their fingers together, ignoring how limp her hand felt in his grip. She shuffled and dragged beside him until they reached the door. They both hesitated, the moment stretched taut, stretched to breaking. Same old cream-colored door, same old house, but inside were memories hiding in drawers and shadowy corners. Memories waited in the stiff and stained sheets of their bed and in the room beside it.
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