Tag: twisted ending

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Creative Writing Horror

An Ungenerous Heart

Do letters cry? Jody certainly did. She heard how the sky turned black as the bullets rained down on her husband’s battalion. Could regret be written in soil where her husband lay? Regret certainly soiled her cheeks.

She read the two letters again and again. One stated that he died courageously. The other was for her? Then with Maurice in toe she walked to Alice’s place next door.

She threw the letter at Alice. She told of how Alex died. They couldn’t find his face. It was burned to blackness thanks to the napalm. What was he thinking to send her a letter of devotion and good bye to her house, but addressed to Alice? It was a grievous mistake, wasn’t it?

As Alice cried, Jody unpacked her basket and took out a glass container of clear liquid. She calmly unscrewed the cap and threw the liquid into Alice’s face. As skin and flesh burned and melted like clay on a hot day, Jody thought of the letter.

The letter made her cry hard. Not because it made her miss him, but because it reeked of betrayal. It was not addressed to her. It was addressed to Alice.

Alice and her screams made her laugh. She laughed and laughed at the ludicrousness of it all, and the pettiness of it, too.

Jody was still hearing the screams as she whispered sweet nothings into Maurice’s tender ear as she coaxed him to swallow a cyanide pill.

She kissed his lips hard suffocating him while wondering what it was like to die. Maurice’s eyes glazed over, his heart started beating too fast, and he breathed his last.

It wasn’t the climax she was hoping for. What greeted her was disappointment as she tasted it on his last breath. It was a flavour she was well used to.

Categories
Creative Writing Horror

Whodunnit

He always looked out for her whenever the catcalls started. She always tended to his wounds after football practice. Brother and sister: that’s what they were. They were meant to look out for each other, and that protective nature was something they gleaned from the great family life that they had.

The parents were devoted to each other, and they did their best whenever they could. So it was a hideous shock when her mother found out that her daughter’s bedsheets were bright with blood. Periods, maybe? Can’t be. A mother’s instinct says so. A family discussion was out of the question; and being so conservative she needed to know when this happened and whether her daughter used protection.

The ‘talk’ took place in the kitchen between mother and daughter, woman and girl. She used protection; she didn’t want to be on the ‘Virgin Cruise’ as her girlfriends dismissively called those who wanted to preserve their chastity; no, the condom didn’t break; it was a boy from school; it happened when no one was at home; please chill out now, it’s no biggie, times have changed.

How do you spot a liar? Maybe it’s when they look at their feet as they talk to you, or when they stammer so bad it sounds like rap, or when the beads of sweat form and a heady miasma of fear emanates from them, or when their story doesn’t check out. It’s all or none of these things. It’s none of these things.

How do you spot a liar? It’s when brother kisses sister on the lips in a way that’s beyond platonic, and when sister holds her brother’s hand and looks into his eyes with a sense of hope and longing, and when they both look at mother as if she’s the problem. But mostly because a mother’s instinct says so.

When she grabbed her daughter, forced an icy smile to play on her lips as she whispered a threat to call the authorities one summer morning did her daughter open her mouth to speak. From the corner of her eye, the mother saw her son nervously watching them both. What piqued her curiosity was when she sensed her husband looking uncannily nervous too.

Her daughter’s hot breath played on her ear as what she said reverberated and echoed in her head as if it were hollow: It was Daddy, he told me not to tell.

Categories
Creative Writing Horror

Summer

August came and went, but she’ll always remember August, because of what he said:

Give me a kiss and I’ll give you a smile.

Tell me something sweet, and I’ll buy you something nice.

You cover your face like the moon behind a shimmer of clouds.

Tell me you love me, and I’ll see you come around.

Darling, didn’t you know that I’ll pick two stars and put them in your eyes.

If only you’ll be a little less stubborn and learn to offer up a smile.

Three months passed, and it was turning out to be the greatest love story ever told.

They promised each other with the stink of sex between them:

Let’s both hold hands and write this story — our story — together.

Months went past but even as her stomach grew and she grew beautiful still, the theatre of life dimmed.

That’s when she opened her mouth, and an angel with a terrible secret whispered out aloud:

Do you know this little secret I’m about to drop softly into your ear, my love?

Street lights wept as she told him of early dementia. The days passed by, and he saw how thoughts, questions, and sanity itself fell away in her mind.

The only thought that remained in that fine sieve of her brain was a terrifying question:

Who am I?

He thought:

Relationships end because one person loves the other person a little less.

And he slipped a knife through with just a hint of a secret gasp, and she felt the skin, flesh and sinew parting with sympathetic and painful reluctance.

She thought with a last painful breath as the darkness came:

As you can see, even monsters were babies once.

When the world came to see her rest, she heard his Mama admonish him:

What are you doing?

He said with a surprised jolt:

Nothing Ma.

But she saw him as did the red-breasted robin nearby, spitting with glee, spitting with relief, right where she lay, right here among the leaves.

Categories
Creative Writing Horror

So Alike

This little story features a bottle of red wine with a forgettable name, my wife, our mutual best friend of 18 years — Chris, and my two sons — Cameron and Brad.

Thank the good Lord for great friends, I slurred happily, and we all agreed and gulped down more wine. I look at my wife giggling at one of our best friend’s jokes; and then at Chris and his hazel eyes, dimples, and how he effortlessly raises his right eyebrow in a tease.

With the wine warming my belly, my eyes are forced to stare at Brad — and his eyes, which are a beautiful hazel, and deeply ridged dimples — as if they’ve forgotten what he really looks like.

It’s only when Brad turns to me and smiles, and raises his right eyebrow in an ironic arch do I realize that the joke has been on me for the last 18 years.