Poor Choices
Jacob Coleman had spent the two months since his mother’s
passing renovating the childhood home he’d inherited. It was a decrepit older
house badly in need of a face-lift that would help him forget about a tough childhood
of desperate poverty.
While removing strips of ancient, yellowed wallpaper from
what used to be the bedroom he shared with his brother, Jacob noticed a
slightly raised portion on the freshly peeled wall surface. It resembled the
outline of a door.
Making a hole just large enough to see in, he discovered that
there was in fact a door on the other side. He broke away the drywall, took a
deep breath and pulled the knob. Light penetrated the dust-laden darkness until
it revealed what Jacob first mistook for a large doll, but looking closer,
discovered it was the dried, leathery skin of a dead child.
The sight and smell of the body hit Jacob like a stomach
punch, and he staggered backwards until he reached a far wall. Preparing to
bolt for the doorway, his body was instantly paralyzed when he heard scratching
and shuffling noises coming from the now open tomb.
A faint shadow emerged, followed by the small, translucent
boy, his eyes dark and vacant, wearing an expression of eternal sadness.
Jacob managed a whisper. “Brett?”
The boy looked up. “Yes.”
“Mama told me you ran away.”
“They could only afford to feed one of us.”
The Old Country
Jenny’s grandmother came to America from a place she
couldn’t even pronounce in Eastern Europe. The elderly woman had lived in a
rural area and was very poor most of her life, so she mended clothes and cooked
with herbs she picked herself and made every meal from scratch. “It’s how we do
it in the Old Country,” she would say. Despite being a kind and cheerful
person, Jenny was always a little uncomfortable when her mom wasn’t there and
it was just the two of them.
Jenny came home from school one day and her grandmother said
that Jenny’s mother had tripped on the stairs and broken her ankle, and she
would have to stay with Grandma for awhile. The girl wasn’t crazy about the
idea, but had no choice.
Grandma lived in a small house and Jenny had to sleep on a
couch in the den. Later that night, Jenny was awakened by noises coming from
somewhere in the dark house. She got up to investigate and found that the grinding
noise was coming from the basement. She opened the door and called out.
“Down here, sweetheart. Don’t be afraid.”
Jenny cautiously came down the steps. It smelled awful and
she pinched her nose. At the bottom of the stairs she turned to her right and
saw her Grandma grinding meat and packing sausages. On a bloody table lay the pale,
naked body of a man minus a leg. Jenny was too terrified to scream.
Smiling, Grandma kept grinding. “It’s how we do it in the
Old Country.”
The Big Bad Wolf
Three stools down from me at the Missoula Café, Fred Knudson
was sipping coffee and staring blankly at the wall on the other side of the
counter. I only took notice of it because his hands were shaking pretty badly,
and I’d never seen him like that before.
“I know it’s none of my business, but you okay, Fred?” I
asked.
He turned toward me, and I could see he was pale and his
eyes were bloodshot.
“No sir, I’m not okay. Last night, something tried to break
into my house.”
“Something? What, a deer or bear?”
“That’s what’s got me riled up, Quentin, because what I seen
on the porch wasn’t a four legged creature. It stood on two legs, but…”
“But what?”
“Now don’t you laugh, but this thing had bright red eyes and
looked like a man-sized wolf. And no, I wasn’t drinking.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled into Fred’s driveway just
behind him. He showed me where the thing had been and sure enough, there were
large paw prints in the snow on his porch.
“Even though I had my rifle with me, I called 911. I think
the lights from the police cruiser scared it off.”
“What do you imagine this thing wanted?” I asked.
“Hell, I don’t know.”
“Didn’t I hear you shot a wolf a few days ago?”
“Yeah. It killed two of my sheep. I got a right to protect
what’s mine.”
“True,” I said through growing fangs. “And I have a right to
protect what’s mine.”
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