SHIVER: 13 Sexy Tales of Humor and Horror

by Liv Morris

  Anyway, yeah, Anne was my partner for the self-defense class. She was putting me in a choke-hold, and when I thought I was going to pass-out, I tried tapping out like the instructor had shown us. Anne wasn’t listening during that part, so she thought I was just encouraging her to strangle me harder. No, yeah, please keep going. I want to die at the hands of an eighty-two-year-old today.

  And that’s the story of how Anne almost killed me.

  After that, we’d become inseparable.

  “Well, I for one, think it’d be hilarious if someone keeled over today. It would make the murder mystery feel real.”

  I burst out in laughter, holding my hand over my mouth.

  “Anne, if you’re killed,” I began in a mock serious tone, “I swear I will avenge your death and find your murderer.”

  She laughed, and then turned around on her chair to face me.

  “You’ll have Sawyer to help you solve the mystery. He’s supposed to be here any minute.”

  My heart rate picked up at the mention of her grandson, but I tried to sound casual as I asked my next question.

  “Oh, is Sawyer going to be here tonight?” I glanced down at my hands spinning circles on her hand-made quilt. I didn’t think I was fooling anyone, least of all, Anne. Even still, something kept me from admitting my serious crush on him.

  “Yes. He promised me he’d stop by before he went to another Halloween party. I thought I had already mentioned this to you?”

  She had, but I didn’t want to appear too obsessed with him. “Do you think he’s bringing a date?”

  The edge of Anne’s mouth tipped up. “You know, I’m not sure. He broke up with that Lisa girl. Did I tell you that?”

  My eyes practically bulged out of my head. “What?! No, you didn’t tell me that!”

  She smiled. “Surprise.”

  ***

  The first time I saw Sawyer, I’d only been working at Paradise Springs for two weeks and I had urine in my hair. Not my urine. No. I was going through rounds during my shift and making sure that everyone was doing okay. I’d just left Mr. Tennon’s room, where he’d thrown a fit about getting a sponge bath. He was one of the high maintenance residents, and I was still learning how to handle him (I’d learn six months later that if you enticed him with the promise of an episode of Baywatch, the man would do anything you wanted).

  Anyway, I was helping Mr. Tennon take off his clothes and as I dipped down to pull his pants over his ankles— I felt it. Urine seeping into my hair and running down the side of my face. I tried my best to stay calm, it’s not like he meant to pee on me. I knew incontinence was something that came with the territory, but it was a low blow to my self-esteem either way.

  Becoming a nurse seemed so much more heroic and adventurous when I was studying in school. I thought I’d be caring for gunshot victims and yelling things like “10 ccs stat!” and “We’re going to have to intubate!”

  Instead, I was standing in Mr. Tennon’s bathroom with my head under the sink faucet, taking deep breaths and trying to calm my anger.

  My hair was still wet and I was patting my face with some scratchy paper towels when I finally stepped out into the hallway to check on my next resident. But, the moment I shut his door behind me, I wished I’d just stayed under the urine stream.

  Because he was right there. The man that I would pine after for the next two years:

  Sawyer.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said, gripping either side of my shoulders to steady me. I’d almost walked directly into him when I’d exited Mr. Tennon’s room.

  His hands dropped back to his sides as I turned to take him in. He was tall, taller than me by a couple inches, so I had to tilt my head back to look up into his emerald green eyes. Those eyes were connected to a face that was friendly, open, and handsome. It wasn’t perfect in the traditional movie star sense, but it made me pause all the same. His brown hair was a little too long on top, and his thin layer of facial hair made him look older than he was.

  “I… have to get urine out of my hair,” I stammered like a simpleton before staring at him for two more seconds and then turning to bound down the hallway.

  After that first day, I chopped my long hair off into a pixie cut and wore a shower cap whenever I was undressing Mr. Tennon.

  The second time I saw Sawyer, I was sitting in Anne’s room during my lunch break. We were sharing a chicken salad sandwich and watching daytime television when there was a knock at the door. Anne told the person to come in, and as the door opened and Sawyer walked in, my mind froze.

  I hadn’t known he was at Paradise Springs for Anne the first time I bumped into him, so to suddenly glance up and see him standing in her doorway really threw me for a loop.

  “Oh, Sawyer! I wasn’t expecting you so soon!” Anne pushed up off her bed and went to greet him as I sat in complete shock. Their hug gave me a quick second to take him in without them noticing, and boy, did I take him in. He was wearing black converse, jeans, and a soft-looking t-shirt that fit him well. He looked to be a little older than me, but it was hard to tell.

  “Yeah, I was able to cut out from work early,” he said, dipping to kiss her cheek. It wasn’t until he pulled away that his gaze finally settled on me.

  The normal reaction would have been to keep eye contact and smile or wave. Instead, I dropped my gaze to Anne’s quilt and ignored his presence all together.

  Did he remember me as urine girl?

  “You got a haircut,” he said, drawing my attention back up to him. He was smiling as he crossed his arms, not in a rude way, but in a relaxed, easy-going sort of way.

  “Yes,” I answered meekly.

  “You know Ruby, Sawyer?” Anne asked, glancing back and forth between us.

  I pushed off the bed and straightened my scrubs.

  “No, I ran into her a few weeks ago, but we didn’t get the chance to meet,” Sawyer explained. “She ran off too fast.”

  At that fact, Anne turned toward me with a look like she was about to reprimand me.

  I squirmed in my shoes. “That was the day that Mr. Tennon had an accident on me, so I was in a rush,” I explained, knowing she’d recall that sordid tale.

  Her brows nearly shot up to meet her hairline and her laughter rang out around the room. “What an interesting first encounter,” she said between laughs.

  Interesting didn’t even begin to cover it.

  “Well, I have to get back to work,” I said quickly, brushing past them and out of the door before anyone could continue the embarrassing conversation.

  The third time Sawyer came to visit Anne, I finally got the chance to talk to him. I was down in the kitchen fixing a meal to bring up to Sandy, who didn’t “take her lunch in the dining halls” like everyone else. I was preparing her plate with all the specific things she’d requested (“I like a little bit of mustard on my sandwich, but not too much, and make sure the mustard is touching the turkey and not the cheese or I won’t be able to eat it”). Sawyer had come into the cafeteria to get some frozen yogurt for him and Anne.

  I saw him out of my periphery, but I didn’t work up the courage to look at him.

  “Ruby?” he asked with a confident half-smile.

  I peered up at him as if shocked to see him. “Oh, hello!” I said, my voice an octave higher than it usually was.

  He smiled wider. “Hi, I’m Sawyer, Anne’s grandson,” he reminded me.

  He even reached his hand out to shake mine, that’s how polite and adorable he was. I was completely out of my element.

  “Oh, yeah, I remember,” I said, reaching out to shake his hand and cringing when I saw a bit of mustard on my thumb. I pulled back just before our hands touched. “Mustard,” I said, reaching for a napkin and wiping it away.

  He laughed as I held my hand out again.

  “Want to try it one more time?” I asked, mostly because I just really wanted to touch him.

  We shook hands, bouncing them up and down for what felt like five minutes before either one
of us thought to pull away.

  “I was going to tell you that I liked your new haircut the other day, but you ran off too quick,” he said as he put his hands in his back pockets.

  “What — me? This — hair?” I could apparently say words, but stringing them into a coherent sentence was another thing all together.

  Sawyer laughed and glanced down to his feet before turning back to the frozen yogurt machine.

  “Well, I better go get some yogurt for my grandma or she’ll kill me.”

  I cleared my throat and turned back to Sandy’s sandwich. “Okay, I’ll see ya.”

  He gave me one more smile before leaving.

  And that’s how it went for the whole first year that I knew him. He’d visit Anne at least once a week, usually on Thursdays. So for one year, every Thursday, I put on a little bit more mascara and made sure I didn’t have anything embarrassing in my teeth in the hopes of running into him. I’d try to bring him up to Anne as casually as possible and try to plans subjects we could talk about if he came to visit so that I wouldn’t look like a blubbering idiot.

  Then one year after I first met him in the hallway, Anne broke the news to me that he had a girlfriend and my school-girl crush started to crack. I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter that he had a girlfriend since we hardly knew each other. But most days I’d wander through my shift at work and think about what it would be like if he suddenly appeared in front of me, single and ready to mingle.

  It wasn’t easy to push him out of my mine, and I hated to admit that my crush had grown even more in the last year, but I’d kept it to myself.

  It was hard to face him when he came to visit Anne. Every time I saw him, I feared his girlfriend would be by his side, but she never was. The whole time they dated, he never brought her to Paradise Springs.

  But apparently now he was SINGLE again, and Anne decided to break that news to me three seconds before his arrival for the Halloween party.

  Just great. I had no planned conversations, I hadn’t practiced talking to myself in the mirror in months, and I could have at least stashed my mouse ears under Anne’s bed.

  I was going to have to kick some grandma ass.

  Or yeah, maybe she’d kick my ass again. I wouldn’t test her.

  ***

  I stood at the top of a ladder trying to hang balloons from the ceiling in the dining hall. The party was due to start in an hour, but no one had signed up for the decoration committee, which had left me as the only back-up available. I’d already blown up two dozen balloons and was feeling the effects of depleting all of my oxygen stores, but the old people needed balloons, because y’know maybe this would be their last Halloween and who was I to stand in the way of their death and one last night of geriatric partying.

  My head felt woozy, and I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to catch my bearings.

  “Sweetie, you don’t look so good up there,” Anne called as she held the ladder for me. I was a good ten feet off the ground, and the longer I hovered in the air, the more I realized that I should have blown the balloons up on the ground.

  “I’m fine, I just feel lightheaded,” I assured her as I tied off the balloon and reached up on my tiptoes to tape it to the ceiling. You know what looks like crap? Balloons stuck to the ceiling in random spots. Once again, I thought of how strange it was that my nursing curriculum had failed to teach me party decorating considering it made up 50% of my job. The other 50% consisted of urine. So much urine.

  “Grandma, they have you on ladder duty?” A deep voice asked from a few feet behind me. I twisted around with enough force to cause the ladder to twist out of Anne’s grip.

  “Ahhhhhhhhh,” I screamed as I tried to grab onto anything around me, but I was only coming up with empty air. My life was flashing before my eyes as that ladder slowly toppled toward the ground.

  “Byyyyeeee Annneeeeee,” I said in what felt like slow motion speech, just as I fell into strong arms.

  “Whoa,” Sawyer said as he steadied the two of us. “Are you okay?”

  AM I OKAY?!

  I am in the arms of my lover. My unknowing lover. I’ve never been more okay.

  “I fell,” I said lamely.

  A smile broke out across his face, and I caught an up close view of straight, white teeth. “You did, and then I caught you.”

  I nodded, connecting the dots.

  “You’re really strong,” I pointed out, appreciating his physique. “Like the hulk.”

  He laughed and then slowly set me back onto my own two feet. If I had thought faster, I would have feigned injury to stay in his arms. Oh weird, my leg just fell off, so why don’t you just carry me around all day? That would have worked like a charm.

  “Sawyer! You made it!” Anne sang as she swooped in and gave him a big hug and a kiss on the cheek. I took the moment to take him in, appreciating his soccer jersey and jeans.

  “Hey grandma,” he said before meeting my eye. “Hey Ruby. Cute ears.”

  I instinctively reached up to feel the fuzzy, gray mouse ears. I’d forgotten I still had them on.

  “Oh hi — thanks,” I said.

  “What’s with the jersey?” Anne asked, eyeing his choice of clothing with an air of judgment.

  Sawyer reached down to hold the loose material between his fingers. “It’s the only thing I had at my apartment that would work as a costume.”

  “So — you’re a soccer player?” she asked, trying to connect the pieces.

  He shrugged. “I guess. This is Liam Wilder’s jersey. He’s a forward for the LA Stars.”

  Anne narrowed her eyes on him. “That doesn’t count as a costume!”

  “I think it does,” I protested. The words were out before I could stop them. Anne shifted her gaze to me and raised her brow, shocked that I actually contributed to the conversation. Sawyer gave me a wide grin.

  “There you have it. You’ve been outvoted, Grams,” he said, patting her shoulder.

  It was always about this time in my encounters with Sawyer that I would excuse myself to get back to work, so I took a slow step backward, hoping Anne wouldn’t notice.

  “No. No, don’t even think about,” Anne said, holding up her hand.

  “What? I have to get back to my shift.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Sawyer’s eyebrows shot up. “Grandma! Let her get back to work.”

  Anne shook her head, staring at me with narrowed eyes. “If Sawyer hadn’t just walked in here, you would have stayed and continued to decorate with me for another thirty minutes. You always just skiddadle as soon as he arrives.”

  My mouth fell open in shock. No she did not just call me out.

  “Grandma,” Sawyer warned again.

  I couldn’t even look his way at that point because the old ho-bag had essentially just spilled all the beans for me.

  “Oh, what’s that?” I said, cupping my ear and pretending to hear something. “Yup, I think Mr. Jenkins is calling for me down the hall. Oh, yup, he just broke his hip. Oh wow, no, both hips. I better go check on him.”

  “Ruby!” Anne called as walked to the door.

  I stuck my tongue out at her when Sawyer turned around. She and I would have a major discussion later, and I’d be sure to stay at least a few feet away from her so she couldn’t put me in another choke-hold.

  When I cleared the door to the dining hall, I stood there for a moment, wondering how long Anne had known about my crush on her grandson. I thought I’d been so sly; I’d never directly asked her about him. I’d wait for her to bring him up and then just piggy-back off of her discussion. I thought I’d covered my tracks flawlessly, but apparently not.

  I leaned against the wall, trying to collect my thoughts.

  Okay, Sawyer is here and you will have to talk to him, I told myself.

  Sure, most of my encounters with Sawyer had been terrible in the past, but I was going to change all of that. Today, we would have an actual conversation that didn’t consist of me slurring my words as I shuf
fled past him. I’d speak slowly and clearly and be the most charming version of myself. Which might only be about one-fourth as charming as anyone else, but it was the best I could do.

  ***

  “Come in, take a packet,” I said, standing at the door of the dining hall beside George as residents started to trickle in. “Come in and grab a packet.”

  “Thank you,” Sandy said with a touch of attitude as she strolled in wearing her spandex costume.

  Gertie walked in a second later, taking a packet and giving my work scrubs another tsk tsk. I groaned and tried to ignore her, continuing to pass out packets as people strolled in.

  I’d done my best to transform the dining hall into a Murder Mystery set, but since I didn’t really know what that meant, I just went with orange and black streamers, balloons, and a bowl of punch with plastic spiders floating on top. As I finished up decorating (once I was sure Sawyer and Anne were gone), George was in a tizzy about how his script would play out. He paced around the dining hall while I set up, repeating the same concerns over and over again.

  “What if no one is committed to their characters?” he asked as I dropped spiders in the punch bowl.

  “They will be,” I’d replied, taking a step back and slipping on some of the punch that I’d spilled on the floor by accident. I landed flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling while I caught my breath. George didn’t even notice.

  “I just want everyone to immerse themselves in the story. If they don’t, this will just be a train-wreck,” he said with a dramatic flare of his hand. All the while I was lying on the ground.

  I’d been lucky to survive the afternoon, and I was still trying to console George as Anne and Sawyer walked through the doorway. Sawyer smiled at me as he walked by. Anne paused, watching him take a seat in the middle of the room, before turning to me.