by Wilson, Jay
~
The next day, the boy walked home on his usual route. He stopped at the flowerbed and sniffed the flower that the bee had previously landed on. He looked down at the oily spot on the concrete where he had killed the bee, and smiled.
"Stupid bee." He said, and then continued toward home.
As he passed a large tree, someone said, "Hey you."
Clifford stopped and looked around. The street was empty and no one was around for as far as he could see. He furrowed his brow, combed his hand through his red hair, and continued to walk.
"Hey, kid. Over here."
"Who's there?"
"The tree, genius."
"Wow, a talking tree?"
"You got it." The tree said. "Hey, I got a question for ya. You like experiments, right?"
"Heck yeah I do!" The boy exclaimed and threw his hands excitedly into the air.
"I know, I know. That was a pretty good experiment you did yesterday. You got some talent!"
"Awe, gee, thanks, dude... er tree-dude."
"What to help me with an experiment?"
"Yes! What is it?"
"Well, I was just curious... in school do you write a lot?"
"Yeah, my teacher tells me to but I don't like it because it makes my arms tired."
"I bet they make you read books, too."
"Do they ever! Sometimes I wish I could take my eyes out!"
"What do you think it would be like if you didn't have to?"
"That would be awesome! I could just have fun all the time."
Two large branches appeared from the leaves, reached down, and picked up the boy. He squirmed, but the tree held him still, and tugged hard on the Clifford's arms.
"Hey, what are you doing?" Clifford cried, trying to pull his arms out of the tree's grip.
"Science," the tree replied.
The Black Ooze
The night I met Cocoa was the night my life changed forever. I sat in a lonely booth at the Blue Dog bar where the stench of burning tobacco, cheap cologne, and alcohol was ever present. I had my head propped up by my hands, and I stared down into the empty glass that once contained a cheap watery beer. I suppose some might say I searched for some profound truth written in the traces of foam lining the base of it, but the reality was that the server was taking too long to bring me a new one and I wondered what held her up.
I wasn’t very social, especially in a bar, so I usually kept to myself. I just wanted to sit there and drown my sorrows. Besides, I was sure no one wanted to spend the night with me, a man burdened by an unknown emptiness, one that had been eating at me for months. I could barely keep the frown off my face. Forget even trying to keep a smile on it.
As I searched the room, I listened to nonsensical drunk conversations and to women laughing at stupid jokes told by men trolling for a one-night stand. It was always interesting that women knew why many men were at bars, and yet they themselves perpetuated it by giving them the attention they desired. I never understood it.
When my gaze reached the door, it opened, and the bell hanging at the corner jingled. I placed a silent bet with myself that some kind of hussy or douchebag would enter that we might be able to add to the list of people that make it hard for normal people to date. It turned out to be a woman, but she was certainly no hussy. As I would come to know, she was far from it.
She was the tallest one in the room, though she was physically short. She had dark brown hair that shimmered in the light of the neon bar signs, and a crisp mocha complexion that made me salivate. She glanced my direction, and smiled—that’s what ended me. The smile. Her entire face lit up, and after a short moment of watching each other as the sands of time seemed to slow, she managed her way to the bar.
“Woah.” I said to myself as the server finally replaced my beer.
The room around me seemed to disappear. I watched her stand at the bar, and I probably even broke some kind of record for creepy stalking. I can assure you that I have never once stalked a woman, but something preternatural about her drew my attention. She was sexy, sure; those incredibly tight jeans, the boots, and that thin black Tool t-shirt probably had a lot to do with it, but there was something else—something more.
While she ordered her beer, she’d glanced over her shoulder a few times. At first, I thought she was just looking for someone she knew, but her eyes always came back to mine. Once, twice, probably more if I hadn’t lost count. I looked behind me to make sure I wasn’t crazy, and she assured me that I wasn’t when she grabbed her drink, and sat down across from me.
“Hi, I’m Cocoa.”
“Uh, hi.” I said, furrowing my brow and wondering why she was even talking to me. “I’m Cory.”
Her smile grew even bigger, and she said, “Hi, Cory! Couldn’t help but notice you looking my direction.”
“Oh, that. Sorry, I’m not usually like that.”
“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind. I’m actually here looking for you.”
Is that some cheesy pick-up line? I wondered. Even if it was, it worked. Of course it did. I was a man, and men hardly ever walked away from women.
When I opened my mouth, probably to vomit words I might later regret, a loud boom interrupted me. It sounded and felt as if a plane had crashed in the woods outside the bar. A few drinks toppled, some of the lights above swayed, and a couple people latched onto someone nearby to keep steady.
“The fuck was that?” I said. I didn’t expect an answer, but I got one.
“They’re here.”
“What?”
“Do you trust me?”
“I don’t even know you.”
“You have to trust me.”
“I don’t have to do any—” I began to say before she latched onto my wrist.
There’s an intense feeling you get when someone you love touches you, and when Cocoa touched me, I felt as if I’d known her all my life. It was as if she was someone I deeply cared for, and the trust was there. I don’t know how but it was there, and it was strong.
“We need to go.” She said, and for some reason, I agreed.
Cocoa yanked me from the booth, and we shuffled toward the door. When she threw it open, I expected to see a full moon and a thick dank forest sitting quietly, but instead there was all of that plus a raging fire spitting cinder and smoke into the air.
“What happened?”
“You’ll see. We have to go.”
As I stepped through the door, a woman screamed from inside the bar. I looked back, and there was a woman grabbing her head. The man next to her laughed instead of helping her, and as Cocoa pulled me away, the woman’s eyes began to bleed. Then blood came from her nails and her ears. Finally, she crumpled to the ground, and silence fell across the bar. A moment later, everyone started screaming.
I hadn’t realized that I stopped until Cocoa jerked me, and I started running with her again. We headed toward the fire, but all I could think about was the things that happened to the people in the bar.
“What the hell happened back there?”
“Dakhor.”
“What?”
“God, I wish you would remember.”
“Remember what?”
She didn’t reply, but when we reached the fire, I’d forgot what I asked. Something covered the forest in some kind of black ooze. When the fire light hit it, there was a blue tint shimmering from the surface, and it seemed to grow.
“What is that stuff?”
“We don’t have time. We have to touch that over there.”
“What?”
“That glowing thing.” She said, and pointed to her left.
“I’m not touching that.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes, but I really don’t know why.”
“Then come on!” She said, and pulled me into the black ooze.
If I hadn’t tied my shoes so well when I left the house, the stuff probably would’ve pulled them off. It was as if we were walking through some kind of glue.
When we reached
the glowing orb, she stopped and said, “Ready?”
“No.” I said, but she forced my hand onto it. I tried to pull away, but I couldn’t.
“I’m stuck.”
“I know.” She said, and then touched it as well.
Nothing happened at first, but then the orb pulsated, becoming brighter and brighter with each one. Finally, a field of energy surrounded us. The intensity of the light forced me to close my eyes, and the world around me began to shake. I suddenly felt as if I was in a vacuum, and I screamed with unequivocal terror.
Everything suddenly stopped, and I honestly thought I’d died. I didn’t want to open my eyes for fear that I might find myself floating in an endless darkness, where no heaven or hell existed, just a lonely empty nothingness.
I felt a hand softly touch my arm, and I flinched. It caressed me for a moment, and then Cocoa said, “You can open your eyes. It’s over.”
I cracked my lids open, and she was right. The forest had returned to normal. No ooze. No orb. No fire. Just as it should be. I didn’t think I could speak because I was still incredibly terrified, but I managed to find my voice.
“What the hell was that?”
“About ten years ago we were approached by an alien race. It told us that if we didn’t help them, then our race and theirs would be doomed.”
“We?”
“Yeah. Believe it or not, we know each other.” She said, and moved closer. Cocoa put her small hand on my face, and softly caressed my cheek with her thumb. “After they infused us with some kind of power, we passed out. I woke up, and could barely remember anything about you, my life, or what happened.”
“So, how did you know to find me?”
“Well, they contacted me again, told me that it was time, and explained everything to me. I didn’t believe them, but then they returned my memory to me.” She said, “This was the place they said it would happen, and that I would find you here, drawn by the power they gave you.”
“This is all just too crazy.”
“Well, let’s get out of here. I can tell you all about it when we get back to our house.”
“Our house?”
“Yeah. We’re married. Have been for a while. Let’s go.” She said, and smiled.
Black Widow
The musty smell of the garage only got mustier the farther back Alan walked. It had been a few months since he first considered cleaning the carport, and he’d finally taken the time to get it done. It felt good, like he was finally being useful.
The water heater clicked on and made a low rumbling sound, and a moment later the pilot light ignited the burner. It didn’t last long, though, because it was broken. A few seconds later, it sputtered, coughed, and the burner went out.
This place is such a shithole, he thought.
He guessed his wife was trying to take a shower. She had maybe three minutes of barely warm water before little slivers of ice showered her. The rental house they had been staying in had many things wrong with it, but the lack of consistent hot water was the worst.
The place was actually one of the many reasons they fought about things. He had at one time held an extremely well-paying job, but they laid him off, which forced them to sell their home and move into a rental that the property owner failed to keep in good condition.
To add to the problematic living conditions, his wife paid most of the bills, and he helped when he could, but his job as a security guard paid only enough for gas and other odd items. The tension between them was mostly financial, but it was a very strong cause for irreconcilable contentions.
Alan picked up a large cardboard box. It wasn’t heavy, but it smelled like mildew and old gym shorts, which was bad on top of disgusting. He set it down in a pile he mentally labeled as the one he’d forgo searching and just toss in the trash.
He picked up a few stray articles of clothing, and threw them into the same pile. They were ones he’d worn not long ago, but ever since he’d grown at least seven inches horizontally, they no longer fit him. Yet another lovely side effect of having lost his job. The stress made him thicker, and it further resulted in him feeling terribly insecure and self-conscious. He often wondered if his wife would leave him for a more fit man that could provide better for her.
The next thing he picked up was a shoebox secured shut by a thick rubber band. The label embossed across the side of the box read Giuseppe Zanotti, a brand neither he nor his wife could afford without taking out a loan.
I haven’t seen these before, where did they come from, he thought and furrowed his brow. Then he remembered he and his wife went to dinner two weeks ago. She’d dressed up in a sexy black sequin dress and a pair of shiny new heels he didn’t recognize. He’d even asked her if they were new, but she told him they were just an old pair she never got the chance to wear.
The box felt a bit weighty, as though the shoes were still in it. Even though he knew that curiosity murdered cats on a regular basis, he couldn’t help but wonder what was inside. So, he removed the tan band holding it shut and pealed the top off.
He didn’t find shoes inside the box. No, what he found were four green bricks of cash, each labeled $10,000. His heart beat hard, sending waves of lumps into his throat that seemed to kick his Adam’s apple around like a soccer ball.
Alan set the box down and picked up one of the stacks. Hesitantly, he began to flip through the greenbacks. He expected them to be a thick wad of singles sandwiched between two crisp hundred-dollar bills, but instead they were all crisp one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Where the fuck did this come from?” He said to himself, disbelieving that he was still in reality.
He examined the box, and below the other three stacks was a small pink envelope. He grabbed the corner and pulled it out. There was no writing on the front nor the back, so he opened the flap and pulled out the snugly placed card. One side was blank, but when he flipped it over, he found a message embossed with gold lettering.
He read it aloud, “For you, my love, to take care of the problem so we can finally be happy together.”
There was no signature at the bottom to tell him who it had come from, and he checked the other side to be sure—it was still blank.
She finally decided to leave me, he thought.
He tossed the letter back into the box along with the stack he’d picked up, and took the whole thing. He charged into the house, and up the stairs to the master bedroom. When he approached the door, it was slightly ajar.
He heard his wife talking, so he peeked in. She wore a dark blue towel, and her wet hair fell all over her shoulders in thick crinkly strands.
She said, “No, he knows nothing about it. If he did, he would’ve said something.”
A pause. He moved closer to the door.
“I’m positive. I have the money, now. Can you do it tonight?”
Another pause, and he looked down at the cash.
“Good, I can’t wait to get this over with so I can finally be happy again. We’ve had nothing but problems since he got laid off.”
Another pause, and he began to shake with anger and sadness.
“I know, I thought about divorce, but I think this way is better,” she said, and picked up a paper from the desk next to the window. “Yeah, of all the places, I kept it in a shoebox in the garage. He always talked about cleaning it out, and never once touched it, so I figured it was a good spot to keep it hidden.”
A final pause.
“Trust me, he won’t see it coming.”
When she hung up the phone, his emotions had already boiled into a fiery amalgamate of bile and fury at the pit of his stomach. A sudden sickness washed to the shores of his esophagus, and before he knew it, he dropped the money and charged into the room.
“Alan, I thought—” she began to say, but he quickly wrapped his hands around her neck.
As he squeezed, he scream, “Trying to fucking have me killed? Couldn’t just divorce me like everyone else? Don’t have enough fucking money in that goddamn shoe
box?”
The towel unwrapped and fell to the floor. She kicked, coughed, and dug her nails into his arms. She pulled hard on his wrists, but he squeezed harder and his hands sunk deeper into her skin.
“I loved you!” He screamed as tears fell impetuously from his eyes. “I can’t believe you’d do this to me after everything I’ve done for you!”
It didn’t take long for her to fall limp. He breathed heavy, and he finally let go of her. His hands burned and shook, and his skin contained small pink and puffy scratches from her struggle.
He ground his teeth with the anger that still flowed effortlessly though him. He looked down at the paper she’d dropped when he grabbed her, and kneeled down to pick it up.
It read, “Dear Mrs. Fletcher, welcome to the community! Once you make your initial deposit of the agreed upon $40,000 by way of escrow, you and your husband will be ready to move into your new home! Please contact the sales office for further information regarding your purchase.”
Santa’s Gift
Mikey opened his eyes to a mostly dark room. The moon cast a subtle blue glow that lined everything with a touch of silver. He hadn't known right then what had brought him out of his slumber, but when he looked at the ceiling, he saw it.
Normally the moon cast an elongated shadow of the window with four irregular shapes representing the four squares on it. However, one of the squares had an oddly fuzzy shape inside of it. When he looked at the window, he saw Santa Claus.
"Santa!" He exclaimed as he jumped out of bed.
Santa put his finger to his own lips to hush him. He then pointed his satin, maroon finger at the lock. Mikey ran to the window, disengaged the lock, and pushed the window up.
Mikey stepped back as the man entered the room. Santa wasn't as rotund as Mikey had expected him to be, but he had the right look otherwise. Maroon coat and pants with white trim feathering the edges, maroon gloves, silver spectacles, rosy cheeks, black shined boots, and a black belt with a large golden buckle. His giant silver beard seemed a little thin, but it looked all right.
