WEP: Deja Vu and Voodoo

Write…Edit…Publish (WEP) is an online writing community now partnering with the Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG). We post the third Wednesday of every second month. WEP challenges are open to all. 

I don't really like horror, so I took the prompt in a different direction, and wrote a short story from my Pismawallops PTA mystery series. You'll only get the "deja vu" part if you read Death By Trombone :)  I managed to hit 1000 words exactly, exclusive of the title.

Deja Vu All Over Again

“We’ve been over this, Kitty. With my new job at the library I don’t have time for everything. I really can’t do the Fall Formal.” I crossed my fingers as I said it; I worked a great deal less at the library than Kitty did at their gas station.

“We have been through it all before.” Kitty didn’t sound like she agreed with me. She sounded like she was laughing at me, or humoring me, which was worse. “You can afford one evening, and the library isn’t open Friday nights. Well, plus some time to decorate. Come on, JJ. You know I depend on you.”

Dang. She was invoking our friendship and all our shared history. How could I say no?

I made one last attempt to weasel out. “You know I hate how loud the school dances are, Kitty.”

“Wear earplugs,” was her heartless response.

I finally cut to the real issue. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time I chaperoned a dance?” That actually silenced her. We were unlikely to forget the body I’d found while taking a phone call behind the high school gym.

“You win.” Kitty sounded so contrite I almost felt bad.

I had to be supportive in my turn. “I’ll find you someone to help, or I’ll come myself. I won’t leave you in the lurch.” I knew as I said it that I’d probably end up doing it myself, but Kitty had been right there for me when I found that body. Finding volunteers was almost more painful than finding bodies, and nearly as rare. Staying in the gym through an entire high school dance might drive me crazy, so I was motivated.

*
Motivated or not, even I couldn’t accomplish the impossible. The day before the dance found me in the gym, swathed in bunting and strings of fake colorful leaves. Our local evergreens didn’t provide the desired ambiance, so we hit up the party store on the mainland for an affordable substitute.

I took another swig of my coffee—cold—and considered the logistics of affixing plastic leaves to cinder-block walls. There was only one logical solution, and the ringing of my phone gave me the excuse.

“Brian!” I summoned my son and his best friend. “You and Justin get started hanging this stuff. I need to answer this call.”

I headed for the front door, phone in hand. Not even to escape the decoration would I go out the back door. It was out that door, while decorating for the Senior Prom the previous spring, that I’d found the last body. I took my call and waited while a bevy of teenaged girls hauled in a giant basket of plastic jack-o-lanterns. In all the noise, I couldn’t make out who was on the other end of the call.

“Hang on! Let me get somewhere quieter!” The breezeway in front of the gym was still crowded with kids, so I headed around the side of the building, not thinking about where I was going.

“So have you taken up a career in steam-fitting?”

I knew that urbane and sarcastic voice, and snapped, “What do you want?” My Ex didn’t deserve a polite response. “I’m not letting you off the hook. I want the money you owe in my account by the end of the month.” Good God, I thought I was done battling with Allen.

“I really don’t think you—” he began, but I didn’t hear any more. I was too busy tripping over something in the near-darkness, and I didn’t like what it felt like. I gasped, but contrary to Allen’s later claims, I did not scream. I did hang up on him in the process of trying to find the flashlight app on my phone, but I assure you it was entirely unintentional. Well, mostly.

For some reason my hands were shaking. It was pretty cold out there; an October night on Pismawallops Island can be pretty chilly and damp. That must have been why I shook.

When I finally got the light on, I wished I hadn’t.

Someone was stretched out face-up on the ground, eyes open and unseeing.

*
Kitty told me later that I screamed, though I know she was exaggerating.

Ron told me I phoned him.

A dozen people told me a dozen different stories about what happened next, and I don’t remember any of it.

I must have called Ron, though, because the next thing I knew, the police chief was holding me in his arms and repeating my name.

“Huh?” It wasn’t a very articulate response, but it must have been better than he’d been getting, because he stopped saying my name.

“It’s okay,” he said instead.

“No, it isn’t,” I pointed out. “It’s another corpse. What killed this one?” I didn’t really want to know, but I was determined to appear calm, and settle all the people who were hovering around as though I needed help.

“Clear out, all of you,” Ron took care of the problem for me. “Don’t you have a gym to decorate or something?”

“You just want to get her alone,” someone quipped. It was probably either my kid or Kitty’s.

“Darn right I do,” Ron growled. “Now go!”

They went, and I assumed Ron would move into investigator mode, but he seemed to be a great deal more interested in investigating me than the corpse I’d tripped on.

“Stop that.” I pushed him away, though in general I liked the way he kissed. “Don’t you need to figure out who killed him?”

“I believe that would be Archie McPhee,” Ron said.

“Huh?” It took me a minute to recognize the name of the famous  purveyor of magic tricks, gag gifts, and tasteless practical jokes. Then the lightbulb went off, and I flipped on my flashlight again. Steeling myself, I brushed off Ron’s hand and took a closer look at the “corpse”. Someone had left the price tag on the left cheek.

I really hate Halloween.

###

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2018

 As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated.

Critique guidelines: FCA





Like it? Want to join the fun, or read more stories?

Middle Grade fiction: Castle Hangnail

 

Title: Castle Hangnail

Author: Ursula Vernon

Publication Info: Penguin Young Readers Group, 2015. 386 pages.

Source: Library digital collection

Publisher’s Blurb:

When Molly shows up on Castle Hangnail's doorstep to fill the vacancy for a wicked witch, the castle's minions are understandably dubious. After all, she is twelve years old, barely five feet tall, and quite polite. (The minions are used to tall, demanding evil sorceresses with razor-sharp cheekbones.) But the castle desperately needs a master or else the Board of Magic will decommission it, leaving all the minions without the home they love. So when Molly assures them she is quite wicked indeed (So wicked! REALLY wicked!) and begins completing the tasks required by the Board of Magic for approval, everyone feels hopeful. Unfortunately, it turns out that Molly has quite a few secrets, including the biggest one of all: that she isn't who she says she is.

This quirky, richly illustrated novel is filled with humor, magic, and an unforgettable all-star cast of castle characters.

My Review:

Oh, this was just what I needed! Reality has been pretty horrific lately, so I wasn't inspired to read a truly scary book for our Great Middle Grade Reads October BOTM. I was happy my choice won, and when I started reading I knew we'd gotten it right. The description of Castle Hangnail which opens the book plays delightfully off every gothic pile you've ever read of, with the minor distractions of cheery dandelions in the "blasted heath" that surrounded it and a stray teacup by the front door. 

And the minions! They are the most delightful collection of misfits to wander the pages of absurd fiction, topped only by the absurdity of the 12-year-old Wicked Witch who shows up to become master of the castle.

The book, in my opinion, found exactly the right balance between the laugh-out-loud moments and some real peril, not to mention some very grown-up threats to Castle Hangnail (frozen plumbing? It takes a genius to make that both a hilarious problem and an existential threat). Yes, there are incredibly serious problems facing Molly and the castle minions. But the author doesn't let that stop her making the solutions as absurd as the idea of a minion made of steam. I didn't even think that the nod to mean-girl issues damaged the story, and I hope very much that Molly will be returning to the castle in a sequel.

My Recommendation:

A perfect Halloween read for kids from 7 or 8 up. I think it would be wonderful to read it aloud to the kids. Maybe I'll have to set up a Skype session with my boys... think they'd like that in their college dorms? (In fact, this kind of reminds me of the Hank the Cowdog books we used to read to the boys, with their mix of slapstick little-kid humor and more sophisticated jokes that the parents can get without comment).

Full Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of Castle Hangnail from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."    

Halloween Bonus!

One more Halloween story from the archives, to celebrate the holiday. This one's from 2013, in 970 words.

Be Careful What you Read on Halloween

Don’t read fairy tales on Halloween.  Just don’t.  Trust me on this; I know what I’m talking about.

My name is Cara, I’m ten years old, and I like fairy tales. Correction: I used to like fairy tales. Mom is always saying fairy tales are good clean, safe reading for a kid like me, and things half the books out there are too violent, and half are too mushy. I kind of agree about the mushy part. Yuck. But none of the books she rants about is half so violent as Grimm’s fairy tales, and Mom ought to try reading them sometime.  But not on Halloween. Let me tell you.

It was while I was reading Cinderella that things began getting weird. I took a break to light my jack-o-lantern, and when I opened the lid a bunch of mice jumped out and took off, then sort of vanished. That was bad enough. I mean, mice are kind of cute, but not in my room, and not in my pumpkin. At least they hadn’t eaten it.  And if they vanished I wasn’t too likely to find them in my bed later.

But it was “Little Red Riding Hood” that pushed matters way beyond funny. Odd-funny, I mean. Even the mice weren’t laugh-until-you-wet-yourself funny. Just weird. I don’t really like scary stories, and I hated it last summer at camp when all the girls started telling ghost stories, even though they were mostly stupid. But I believed Mom about fairy tales being wholesome, and figured the Big Bad Wolf was scary enough for Halloween. And he was. Oh, yes. But he wasn’t all I got.

By the second page, when Little Red Riding Hood was walking through the dark and spooky forest to take her basket to her Granny, I could see—well, almost see—something out of the corner of my eye. When I turned to get a better look, it vanished. But long before we reached the cottage, I knew what it was. The wolf was there, watching.

I tried to stop reading. This was more spookiness than I wanted, especially on Halloween. But the book wouldn’t close. My eyes kept tracking the words, and the almost-seen wolf grew larger and more real. Then I got to the gory part. It would have been bad enough to watch the wolf swallow Granny whole. And if I’d stuck with the original Grimm tale where they kill the wolf and everyone stays dead, it might have been fine.

But Mom had decided that the Grimm fairy tales were too grim, and bought me a book of the prettied-up stories, where everyone lives happily ever after (except the wolf; he gets the axe either way). That was what I was reading, but the other story was in my mind, too. So I got it both ways.

By now I wasn’t even reading, anyway. I was just starting at the page and watching the story unfold in the corner of my eye. I wasn’t scared yet, not really. I thought it was some cool special effect they’d put in the book. They work so hard these days to make books compete with computer games.

I didn’t get really scared until Granny climbed out of the carcass of the wolf, which is what she does in the modern, non-scary version. They never talk about how that works. I mean, I’m pretty sure my book implies that the wolf swallowed her whole and she just sat in there alive until the woodsman let her out. Never mind how she managed to breathe in its stomach for a half hour or whatever. In Grimm, she doesn’t come back out.

Anyway, I should have known better, because that cleaned-up story doesn’t even make sense. No one could live in the belly of a wolf for a half hour, even if it swallowed her whole, and why would it? No, the reality was quite a bit different.  The wolf ate Granny. Not totally in little bits, but she was dead all right when she went down the gullet. Because he really was a giant wolf, totally unreal but there he was, or wasn’t, but I saw it, as long as I didn’t look.

He ate her. Tore out the throat, took a few bites here and there, and only then swallowed her mostly whole. So the Granny the woodsman set free shouldn’t have been alive, and she wasn’t. But she was awfully lively for a dead woman. An un-dead woman.

That was too much for me, and I finally managed to tear my eyes away from the book.

The images of Little Red Riding Hood and the woodsman vanished. But the body of the giant wolf stretched across my room, occupying most of the floor. And Granny stood there, bloody and undead.

Then she spoke.

“Brains.”

I screamed. The zombie Granny and the wolf—who also seemed to be showing signs of un-life—were between me and the door, so I went out the window. It’s a good thing my room is on the ground floor, because I’d have done the same if it had been the tenth floor.

But I didn’t think to slam the window shut behind me. So now she’s out there somewhere, Zombie Granny and maybe the wolf-zombie too. I wonder if he’ll eat her again, or if now that they’re both zombies they’ll work together?

I ran like crazy, right to the kiddie Halloween Carnival at the church on the next block. If I’m not safe here, I’m safe nowhere. And no one will believe me, but I’m not leaving here until morning. If then.

I can hear a scratching at the door. Can zombies even enter a church? 

I am never reading fairy tales again.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2013
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

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 In particular, Book 3 of the Ninja Librarian series is coming out Nov. 28! Preorders are now available from Amazon and Smashwords for the ebook. Preorder the paperback directly from this site and we'll pick up the shipping costs!

 

Flashback Friday: A Halloween Story

I missed it last month, but here it is, Flashback Friday AND time for my Halloween story.
Which is cool, because I have some favorites that fit, and I'm happy to give one another airing! In fact, I found more than one, so I'll be  posting another Halloween re-run on Monday, since that's the actual day.

For today, in just over 900 words, from Halloween 2012:

Furballs

It should have been just another day. Get up, get dressed, have breakfast and go to school. Malkina ran into the first snag as soon as she tried to pull on her underwear. Reaching behind herself, she felt the furry protuberance. Mystified, she moved to the mirror--a full-length mirror her mother insisted she have in her room, but which Malkina mostly ignored. Why should she even look, when she was so hopelessly ordinary? The most ordinary girl in the fifth grade.

Kicking aside a modest pile of books and dirty laundry so she could stand in front of the mirror, Malkina twisted and turned until she saw herself. Saw the long, striped, furry tail she held with her left hand. The tip of the tail twitched and she dropped it, jumping away from the mirror.

“I think I’d better wear a skirt today,” she muttered, turning back to the closet.

The next shock came when she began to brush her hair.

“Ouch!” The brush had hit something awfully sensitive. Again she explored with her fingers first, afraid to look. High up on the left side of her head, a furry wedge emerged from the tangled hair. She didn’t even have to look in the mirror to know there was a match for it on the other side.
Ears. Cat ears, and a cat’s tail. Suddenly panicked, Malkina shook off a slipper and checked her foot.  Still reassuringly human.  Dashing across the room, brush forgotten in her hand, she inspected every inch of herself in the suddenly-useful full-length mirror.

Everything seemed to be, well, ordinary. Everything except that tail, and the furry little ears. Watching carefully in the mirror, Malkina finished brushing her hair, mounding it over the ears and holding a big wave in place with hair gel.

At the breakfast table, Mom didn’t notice anything. She never did. Half asleep, interested mostly in her coffee and getting everyone fed and out the door to the bus, Mom never really fully opened her eyes until mid-morning.

Malkina’s older brother noticed, though.

“Whew!” Bob whistled. “Got a hot date or something?  I can’t remember the last time I saw you in a skirt.”

Bob could be so annoying. For one thing, he’d gotten a nice, normal name, not like Malkina. For another, he couldn’t seem to stop teasing her. He still thought she was a little girl, and that comments like that were funny.

“Just thought I needed...a change,” Malkina said. “In a rut, you know. Always the same.”

Walking to the bus stop Malkina found that the tail caused some trouble. She’d had to pick a fairly long skirt to cover it, but the tail, unable to wave the way a cat’s tail should properly wave, twisted around her legs and threatened to trip her.

When she got to school, things got both better and worse. Better, because her best friend was waiting just inside and grabbed her in a hug. Worse, because Adrianna was dressed much like Malkina.

Malkina whispered, “You too?”

Adrianna nodded, looking scared and excited at the same time. “It worked! Our incantation worked!”

“But that was just a joke! Magic doesn’t really work,” Malkina objected, evidence to the contrary twitching beneath her skirt.

Adrianna shrugged. “Guess maybe it does.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Have the best Halloween costumes ever, for one thing!”

“But I can’t even sit right! The tail’s in the way, and when I brushed my hair, it hurt my ears.”

“We’ll work it out.”

During the math test that followed morning recess, Malkina began to find the advantages of being part cat. She always panicked a bit on a test, but when she put her hand up to her head, her fingers found an ear. She scratched lightly behind it, the way she did with the neighbor’s cat, and felt calmer at once. A twitch or two of her tail made her happy again when she got her Social Studies paper back with a lot of red marks. Maybe this wasn’t so bad.

#
It wasn’t until they were out trick-or-treating, dressed in black leotards with real tails and ears protruding, that the girls remembered they’d worked more than one incantation.

They were three streets over from Malkina’s house, trying to decide if they’d knock on the Burdocks’ door or skip it. They usually had good treats, but Max Burdock was the biggest pain in their class.  Such a big pain that. . .

“Uh-oh,” Adrianna muttered. “Do you suppose. . .?”

Malkina felt her tail expand as the fur stood on end. They had followed up the incantation that gave them cat features with one to turn the annoying Max into a pig. And he hadn’t been at school today. Was that because he had a curly tail and a snout? Would his parents guess who’d done it and get them into trouble?

Caution came too late. They were at the gate, and from behind it they heard a dreadful snorting and snuffling. Malkina remembered that they had called Max a big pig, when a huge boar, with tusks as long as her arm, burst from the yard. She had time to remember a few of the other things they’d included, giggling, in their incantation, as they girls turned to run from the giant, red-eyed, fire-breathing demon they had turned loose on the neighborhood.

This can’t end well! Malkina thought, despairing.

It didn’t.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2012
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Flashback Friday is a blog hop! Jump around and visit some of the other participants!

Photo Friday:Halloween

I have no stories in me today. So...how about some more pictures? In honor of the approach of Halloween, I'll toss out some themed shots.

Where it all begins, perhaps? Being beamed down by the mother ship.

Other nasty creatures come along:

But the aliens look happy and normal under a blue sky. And why not? We all know that horror stories happen on dark and stormy nights, right? Just pretty pumpkins and innocent children in the sun.

But soon the alien creatures are eviscerating innocent squash.

And the next thing you know, your home is taken over by this:

Or this:

And it takes a sinister turn:

Who knows what mayhem the aliens will wreak?

And in the end, it all comes to this, as the aliens move on, leaving their mark behind them.

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Friday Flash: Witching Weather

Continuing with my theme of spooky stories for October (or at least a bit out of the world stories), I present a bit of harmless Halloween fun. Or is it?  You be the judge.

This story stands alone, but Chuck Wendig has a challenge this week to write the start of a story, for others to finish. And it occurs to me that this could also be just the beginning, so I'll link it in there and see if anyone bites. And if not...there it stands.

Witching Weather

“Fog’s rising.” Jack made the observation in a detached sort of way, not sure if it mattered.

“More fun that way,” Jill answered. If he was unsure about the weather, she was not. She straightened the tall, pointed hat that kept threatening to tumble from her head. “It sets the right sort of mood.”

The boy and girl grinned at each other. Both wore sweeping black robes, rather in the fashion of the students of Hogwarts. A close observer might have even thought they had come from the costume shop, but with the fog settling in and the daylight gone, no one could be sure. Jack wore a silver circlet around his forehead, while Jill sported the afore-mentioned pointed hat.

“At least half the kids will be spooked before we even begin,” Jill went on.

Jack nodded, seeing her point. “And the other half will be spooked soon enough after,” he boasted. “Let’s get started.”

“Where should we do it?”

“Over by the old Hadley house, of course,” Jack answered. “That’s the best place for spooks and magic.”

Jill frowned, a little. When Jack mentioned the Hadley house, she thought she felt a chill draft on her back, though she wore a warm sweater under the admittedly lightweight robe. The night wasn’t cold, for all it was foggy. It was October 31st, but there wasn’t a hint of frost. Jill shivered. Then she shrugged and dismissed her momentary discomfort as a bit of stage fright.

The friends scampered off in the direction of the abandoned house that most of the locals figured was haunted, ready to have some fun at the expense of the other children.

They moved a little less eagerly when they neared the Hadley house. The house dated from an extravagant era when ceilings were high and the wealthy adorned their homes with wooden lace and decorative towers. All of that and more had made the Hadley house the town’s showpiece until an earthquake had cracked the foundation, leaving it uninhabitable.

It had stood empty for decades, slowly decaying. The wood lace broke and drooped, and shutters tore loose. The garden grew wild, until the showpiece of the town became “the old Hadley house.” Most people were happy to believe it was haunted. The town’s elders saw it as haunted with memories of another age, but the children believed there were ghosts. On a foggy night, they believed it with a greater force than on a sunny day.

Jack and Jill ran a bit slower as they neared their destination. Somehow, they felt a little reluctant to play their tricks after all.

“Suppose old Hadley will get upset if we pretend to be him?” Jack didn’t know who the ghosts were, but supposed there must have been an old Mr. Hadley sometime.

“You aren’t going all sissy and worrying about ghosts, are you?” Jill demanded. She tried to ignore her own sense of foreboding. This was going to be fun! She ignored a voice that suggested she shouldn’t have to work so hard to believe that.

“Not me,” Jack vowed. “I’m no sissy and you know it!” He ruined the effect some by checking over his shoulder for whatever might be there. There wasn’t much to see. The fog was thick enough now, and the streetlights poor enough, that they couldn’t really see the house. They only knew it was there.

Jack thought of a new problem. “No one’s going to come by here,” he said. “It’s just the house on this side and the park on the other.” It felt awfully lonely to him, and he couldn’t see the other children poking around the haunted house on Halloween night.

“They have to,” Jill said. “To get down there.” She pointed to the three houses that formed a cul-de-sac beyond the park. They were large, new, expensive houses, and every kid in town knew that they gave out the best candy—full sized Snickers bars and slabs of chocolate.

“Fine.” Jack gave in, and handed Jill one of the pairs of home-made stilts he’d been carrying. The pair had been practicing for weeks, until they could stand and walk as well as if they were on their own two feet. Setting her stilts aside, Jill pulled out a jar of something.

“What’s that?” Jack asked, suspicious.

“White-face make-up. I liberated it from the drama club.” She began smearing the gooey stuff on Jack’s face before he could protest. “Now you do my face.”

He rubbed the white make-up onto his friend’s face, and grinned through his own mask. “You’re right. This is perfect. Now let’s mount up. I hear voices.”

Stalking out of the shadows of the over-grown Hadley garden, black robes billowing around their towering forms and faces inhumanly white in the dim light of fog-shrouded streetlights, they had just the effect they had been hoping for. Children shrieked and ran, and more than one dropped his candy bag.

Jack and Jill repeated the trick twice more, despite a growing feeling of unease.

“Maybe we should get out of here,” Jill suggested. The effort of using the stilts had her sweating a little under her robe, but there was a cold patch between her shoulder blades, as though an icy hand lay there.

“Let’s do one more,” Jack urged. “We can wait to get them when they come back from the rich people’s houses this time. We’ve been doing it wrong.”

“Fine.” Jill wasn’t going to be the chicken if she could help it.

They took up their position and waited. The fog thickened. Jack couldn’t hear any other children now, and a cold wind swirled around his ankles. He couldn’t see his partner.

“Jill, let’s get out of here.”

No answer.

“Jill!”

He couldn't see the streetlights now. The fog was too thick.

Witching weather, he thought, just before an icy wind tangled his robe and his stilts, toppling him with a shout that brought only the dimmest echo from Jill.

###

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2016
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

Thursday Flash Fiction: The Horror of Spam

Yeah, I know. "Flash Fiction Thursday" doesn't alliterate like it does on Friday. But I  do like to post to Chuck Wendig's challenges on Thursday, before everyone has lost interest.

This week's challenge was to write a bit of horror framed as a spam email. I didn't go very horrific, of course. In fact, at first I thought I couldn't do this at all. But while I was out biking on Sunday it occurred to me that one kind of scam/spam was perfectly suited to a Halloween theme, if not real horror: the grandchild in need.  Chuck suggested limiting this one to under 500 words; mine is only 367 including the title. I regret that I cannot reproduce the machine-translated English of most spam (well, no, I don't regret it at all. But you know. I had to say it).

The Horror of Spam, the Spam of Horror

To: Grandma
Subject: Need help!

Dear Grandma,
I am in such trouble and I need your help. I was on our school trip to Romania and we were staying in this really cool castle in Transylvania. So I totally fell in love with our host, this guy Vladimir who lives in the castle. He is sooooo cute! And he says he loves me too, but he’s pretty desperate so I don’t know.

See, now he’s saying that he wants to keep me forever, and that I need to give him money. I mean, I know that castles like his cost a lot to run, and that’s why he rents it out to tourists and sleeps in the basement. Well, in the crypt, really, but it’s totally nice and dry and all, and he says he doesn’t mind a few dead ancestors. Real aristocrats are so much more matter-of-fact about that stuff, aren’t they?

But if I don’t come up with the money, he says—well, I never noticed his teeth, because you know, guys with those smoky sultry good looks don't grin or anything. He’s making me kind of nervous, I mean this is Transylvania after all. And I don’t think I want to be his bride, even if he is a Count, and for sure I don’t want to let him bite me on the neck. But that’s the thing: he says if you don’t send money, I can either join him in his crypt or he’ll give me to his friend Wolfgang. The one Vlad calls “Vulfie” with a raised eyebrow, just to make sure I know what sort he is.

I’m afraid I kind of boasted about how rich we are, when I was first getting to know Vlad. I mean, he’s a Count, you know? I didn’t want him to think I’m from some ordinary family. So he wants like, a million dollars? Please, scrape up whatever you can and wire it to me at 1600 Transylvania Avenue, Transylvania, Romania, unless you want your favorite granddaughter turned into a vampire. Or eaten by a werewolf.

Your loving Granddaughter,
Elvira

P.S. Hope your arthritis is better!

Friday Fiction: Halloween in Skunk Corners

This week, Chuck Wendig didn't give us a flash fiction challenge, instead offering the suggestion that we share our first chapter of NaNo novels.  Since I choose never to inflict anything on my readers, even my blog readers, until it is edited at least once, and of a preference twice or maybe 15 times (whatever it takes, when it comes to my books), I chose not to participate.  Fortunately for me, as I cast about for a story, I received the following from the Ninja Librarian himself, just in time after a long silence!  Somehow Tom always knows when I need a helpful word.

But even before we get to that, please vote in the NEW title poll on the right side of the page.  I've taken my favorites from the titles suggested both here and on Goodreads, and am doing another round.

Halloween in Skunk Corners

After my lengthy silence, I return to report to you about recent Halloween-related events in Skunk Corners, lest one of your informants provide you with an inaccurate account of the celebration.  Events of that evening did develop in a manner I believe you will find interesting, and I believe that only Alice and I know the full story, as befits the librarian and the teacher.

You may recall that on a previous Halloween we in Skunk Corners were visited by something presenting itself as a headless horseman and endeavoring to terrorize the good citizens of the town.  That proved a snare and a delusion, most especially for the unprincipled varmint who perpetrated the impersonation, though he spent far less time in constrained circumstances than I would have preferred.  This year, I kept a sharp lookout for any disquieting developments in Skunk Corners, lest  any neighbors, perhaps from Endoline or Pine Knot, might attempt something similar.

Nothing, however, seemed amiss in the days leading up to this most curious American holiday.  While the adults concentrated on the harvest and preparing the seasonal treats, the young folk of the town gathered together where they believed themselves free of adult supervision and laid their plans for mayhem.  None seemed to rise to any level in need of my attention, though of course I kept a close eye on their festive preparations.

Alice, she whom others in town choose to call Big Al, likewise reported calm in the school and the town, and began (on my recommendation) to read the works of Edgar Allen Poe.  We selected a few of the less horrifying works to share with her students.  “The Raven” they found a bit creepy, but it gave no one nightmares, not even the smallest children.  Al is very careful of her youngest charges.  “The Cask of Amontillado” even I chose not to read after dark.

Everything proceeded quietly.  Too quietly for my restless young friend.  The day before Halloween Alice and I ‘cooked up a plan’ of our own, as she phrased it in the local argot.  Assorted pranks having long been standards among the somewhat older children of the town, we thought it was it was our time to turn the tables on them in a new way.

The hardest part was managing to get our efforts completed after dark but before the young folk began work.  In the end, our fine Mayor, Mrs. Herberts, helped us all unknowingly, for she declared a town celebration, with soup and pie, to be held at Two-Timin’ Tess’s Tavern on Halloween night.  I suspect Alice of having been behind this idea, as she knew very few people in Skunk Corners, young or old, could resist a soup and pie dinner.  Even the most dedicated pranksters would be sure to be indoors for the serving of the pie.  Annie’s pies are worth going out of your way for. 

So, in the early evening, while our townsfolk filled their bellies with good food and their souls with warmth and laughter, Alice and I lost ourselves in the crowd until we could slip out unnoticed.  Working hard, we finished in time to return and judge the pumpkin-carving contest.  First prize went to the elderly Miss Cornelia, who proved to possess a wholly unexpected talent for the conversion of squash into works of gruesome art.  I dearly hoped none of the small fry would have nightmares after viewing her lit pumpkin in the dim room.

Then we said our goodnights and went decorously off to our quarters in library and school.  Only, after a decent interval to allay suspicions, we crept back out rather less decorously to enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Everyone keeps a cow or two, of course, and generally at least one ends up on the roof of the railroad depot on Halloween night.  As a general rule, it is Archibald Skinner’s cow, for he is a most unpleasant man, and frequently chases the young folk from his property.  It does no harm to the cow, and gives the children a chance to exercise their ingenuity in concocting the means of elevating the bovine.

The other annual prank is, of course, the horizontal displacement of the house of comfort behind the bank.  What Alice refers to as “knocking over the Tolliver privy.”   Mr. Tolliver is a favorite of no one.

On this Halloween night, the young people divided themselves into two bands, desetined for barn and bank.  Soon we heard voices.

“Hey!  He’s moved his cows!  There ain’t no—what on earth?”  Alice nudged me in the ribs.  Someone had discovered that the cows were gone.  In their stead, tethered in place in the stalls, stood a pair of outhouses.  We’d had to borrow not only the one from the bank but also Mr. Skinner’s own, in order to match the number of cows to be removed.

About the same time, a loud whisper came from behind the bank.  “Hey!  What are these cows doing here?”  Soon the two groups of would-be pranksters came back together, with much laughter and indignation and smothered outbreaks of gaity, and appeared to own themselves outdone.  Smothering laughter of our own, Alice and I departed to our well-earned beds, assured of our own brilliance.

Imagine our surprise and chagrin in the morning. 

There, behind the bank, lay two cows on their sides.

Atop the depot, proud and tall, stood the banker’s outhouse.

And on my doorstep, perhaps in homage or perhaps to say that they knew who was behind the swap, sat a gourd, carved in the perfect likeness of mephista mephista, or the common skunk.  I don’t know who carved it, but I can guess.

###

Z: Naomi Zucker (Book Review)

Review: Callie's Rules, by Naomi Zucker.  Middle Grade fiction; 225 pages (fast read).

I was attracted to this book in the beginning, because Callie is a bit like I was in Jr. High--still a kid, and clueless about all this new stuff the other girls all seem to know.  And right off on page 7 there's a great quote about rules, the kind of rules that govern the behavior of teen girls, not the kind that schools make:
Stupid rules.  Well, rules are rules.  They're not supposed to make sense.  they're supposed to make the people who know the rules feel good and the people who don't know the rules feel stupid.  Too true!  These are rules for how to fit in, how to be cool, and by the end of the book Callie figures out that the girls who slavishly follow them are fools.

The premise of the novel is two-fold: Callie is just starting middle school (6th grade), which is a huge transition and she really doesn't get it.  At the same time, the richest woman in her rather small town has decided that Halloween is a pagan festival, both too frightening for small children and designed to lure kids into satanism or something.  Since she is the banker's wife, she is able to convince lots of people, including the Town Council, that she is right.  So while Callie is trying to fit in at her new school, she is also trying to save her favorite holiday.  The two tasks seem to be completely incompatible, since being an activist means standing out.

The story is fairly well told, and the message is sound: to be yourself and to stand up for what you believe in.  I think it will appeal to middle-grade girls, and may be of some help to those trying to navigate all those unspoken social rules of middle school.  Overall, however, I wasn't satisfied.  The story didn't feel real, with characters and situation that were just a bit over the top.  That's fine, of course, in the right book--one that knows it's over the top.  I didn't feel like this one did.  It was good enough, but just didn't work for me, despite my appreciation of the message.

Three stars.

*******************

So that's it.  A to Z is finished!  Tomorrow I'll be doing my reflections on the Challenge, and laying out some of the things I've learned and decided about my blog.  I will then return to my 3-4 day/week blogging schedule!

Furballs--a Halloween story

Furballs

It should have been just another day.  Get up, get dressed, have breakfast and go to school.  Malkina ran into the first snag as soon as she tried to pull on her underwear.  Reaching behind herself, she felt the furry protuberance.  Mystified, she moved to the mirror--a full-length mirror her mother insisted she have in her room, but which Malkina mostly ignored.  Why should she even look, when she was so hopelessly ordinary?  The most ordinary girl in the fifth grade.

Kicking aside a modest pile of books and dirty laundry so she could stand in front of the mirror, Malkina twisted and turned until she saw herself.  Saw the long, striped, furry tail she held with her left hand.  The tip of the tail twitched and she dropped it, jumping away from the mirror.

“I think I’d better wear a skirt today,” she muttered, turning back to the closet.

The next shock came when she began to brush her hair.

“Ouch!”  The brush had hit something awfully sensitive.  Again she explored with her fingers first, afraid to look.  High up on the left side of her head, a furry wedge emerged from the tangled hair.  She didn’t even have to look in the mirror to know there was a match for it on the other side.

Ears.  Cat ears, and a cat’s tail.  Suddenly panicked, Malkina shook off a slipper and checked her foot.  Still reassuringly human.  Dashing across the room, brush forgotten in her hand, she inspected every inch of herself in the suddenly-useful full-length mirror.

Everything seemed to be, well, ordinary.  Everything except that tail, and the furry little ears.  Watching carefully in the mirror, Malkina finished brushing her hair, mounding it over the ears and holding a big wave in place with hair gel.

At the breakfast table, Mom didn’t notice anything.  She never did.  Half asleep, interested mostly in her coffee and getting everyone fed and out the door to the bus, Mom never really fully opened her eyes until mid-morning.

Malkina’s older brother noticed, though.

“Whew!” He whistled.  “Got a hot date or something?  Can’t remember the last time I saw you in a skirt.”

Bob could be so annoying.  For one thing, he’d gotten a nice, normal name, not like Malkina.  For another, he couldn’t seem to stop teasing her.  He still thought she was a little girl, and that comments like that were funny.

“Just thought I needed a. . . change,” Malkina said.  “In a rut, you know.  Always the same.”

Walking to the bus stop Malkina found that the tail caused some trouble.  She’d had to pick a fairly long skirt to cover it, but the tail, unable to wave the way a cat’s tail should properly wave, twisted around her legs and threatened to trip her.

When she got to school, things got both better and worse.  Better, because her best friend was waiting just inside and grabbed her in a hug.  Worse, because she was dressed much like Malkina.  She whispered,

“You too?”

Adrianna nodded, looking scared and excited at the same time.  “It worked!  Our incantation worked!”

“ But that was just a joke!  Magic doesn’t really work,” Malkina objected, evidence to the contrary twitching beneath her skirt.

Adrianna shrugged.  “Guess maybe it does.”

“But what are we going to do?”

“Have the best Halloween costumes ever, for one thing!”

“But I can’t even sit right!  The tail’s in the way, and when I brushed my hair, it hurt my ears.”

“We’ll work it out.”

During the math test that followed morning recess, Malkina began to find the advantages of being part cat.  She always panicked a bit on a test, but when she put her hand up to her head, her fingers found an ear.  She scratched lightly behind it, the way she did with the neighbor’s cat, and felt calmer at once.  A twitch or two of her tail made her happy again when she got her Social Studies paper back with a lot of red marks.  Maybe this wasn’t so bad.

It wasn’t until they were out trick-or-treating, dressed in black leotards with real tails and ears protruding, that the two remembered they’d worked more than one incantation.

They were three streets over from Malkina’s house, trying to decide if they’d knock on the Burdocks’ door or skip it.  They usually had good treats, but Max Burdock was the biggest pain in their class.  Such a big pain that. . .

“Uh-oh,” Adrianna muttered.  “Do you suppose. . . ?”

Malkina felt her tail expand as the fur stood on end.  They had followed up the incantation that gave them cat features with one to turn the annoying Max into a pig.  And he hadn’t been at school today.  Was that because he had a curly tail and a snout?  Would his parents guess who’d done it and get them into trouble?

Caution came too late.  They were at the gate, and from behind it they heard a dreadful snorting and snuffling.  Malkina remembered that they had called Max a big pig, when a huge boar, with tusks as long as her arm, burst from the yard.  She had time to remember a few of the other things they’d included, giggling, in their incantation, as they girls turned to run from the giant, red-eyed, fire-breathing demon they had turned loose on the neighborhood.

This can’t end well! Malkina thought, despairing.

It didn’t.