John Swinburn

“They’re stunted little men who live in those hills,” he said, pointing to the houses across the street. “They’re tiny, like elves, but these bastards have sharp teeth. And their claws! Goddamn, they’re monstrous beasts!”

Calista Glazier winced as she listened to her father describe the little men he claimed he saw outside the window a few hours earlier when she was still asleep on the couch in the living room.

“Are you sure it wasn’t a dream, Daddy? I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Steadfast Glazier glared at his daughter. “Hell no, it wasn’t a dream! I don’t sleep no more. Stay awake sunrise to sunrise so’s no time to dream. And t’weren’t the first time I seen ’em. They come out around two in the morning. I see ’em under the street light when they come outta their caves, swarming like bats, there’s so many of ’em.”

Calista couldn’t believe what she was hearing come from her father’s lips.

“How can you tell they have sharp teeth and claws, Daddy? Seems like it would be pretty dim, even with the street light.”

“I know what I see! And, besides, a couple nights ago I seen what they did to some stray cats and dogs. Sliced ’em and diced ’em with their claws and bit through ’em with those teeth like they’re bitin’ though butter. And then they licked up the spilt blood like they was lappin’ up milk.”

As Calista listened to her father talk, she knew something dreadful was wrong. His grammar, his pronunciation, even the pitch of his voice did not belong to the father she knew. Steadfast Glazier was an educated man. He had been a senior executive with a major national insurance company. He did not speak like an uneducated hillbilly, nor would he conjure demonic dwarfs who ate neighborhood pets.

The day before, Calista Glazier drove from Denison, Texas to her father’s home in Struggles, Arkansas, at the behest of her sister, Sugar Sharkle. Sugar was closer in distance to their father, but she always turned to her older sister in matters too troublesome to face on her own, and this was one such matter. Calista arrived in time to prepare dinner for the two of them. Pork chops, creamed corn from a can, and spinach from the freezer.

Calista noticed nothing unusual about her father’s behavior that evening. The conversation was casual and unhurried.

“So, honey, tell me how the candle business is doing.”

“It’s humming along, Daddy, and growing fast, but not too fast. I think shutting down the brick and mortar store was the best decision I’ve made since I started the business. Sales for the online store are triple what I was doing at the shop and I don’t have to worry about paying attention to people who are just window shopping. Scented candles and soaps sell best. I spend every other day making the soap and candles. When I’m not making them, I’m shipping orders. And I take Saturday’s off. And when I feel overwhelmed, I just take a day off, a day trip like this one to see you.”

“That’s good. You need to give yourself time to relax. How many hours a day do you spent working?”

Calista cocked her head smiled at her father. “Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m not overdoing it. I hardly ever work more than eight or ten hours.”

“I have to worry. You got your work ethic from your mother and me. And we spent too damn much time working and not enough with you and Sugar.”

“Oh, Daddy, you spent plenty of time with us. We turned out just fine, didn’t we?”

“Well, you turned out fine. But Sugar married Leroy.” His face hardened as he mentioned Leroy’s name.

Calista’s smile morphed into an expression of concern.

“Aw, Daddy, Leroy’s not a bad guy. He’s just not as sharp as you are. You wanted Sugar to marry a doctor or a lawyer.”

“A doctor, maybe. But not a  lawyer! I have my principles!” Steadfast’s smile returned.

And so the evening went. During three hours of conversation, Calista neither saw nor heard anything of concern in her father’s behavior. She wondered whether her sister had exaggerated about their father’s “trips to the loony bin,” as Sugar called them.

When Calista witnessed her father’s bizarre behavior the next morning, though, she knew Sugar had reason to be concerned.

“Daddy, when did you start seeing these men?”

Steadfast Glazier’s gaze dropped to the floor, then back to Calista. “What? What men?”

“You were just saying…” Calista stopped as she noticed the blazing coals of anger in his eyes had turned soft and quizzical, the anger in his face melted into confusion.

“Oh, never mind, Daddy. Are you ready for breakfast?”

“Just coffee for me, honey.  But the fridge is stocked for a breakfast banquet. I have bacon, eggs, frozen hash browns, sausage…”

Steadfast Glazier’s daughter interrupted. “No, I’m good with just coffee, too.”

Calista knew she had to do something, but she didn’t know what.

[Yes, there should be more. I know that. Of course I know that. What, do you think I’m stupid? I just get bored with this. I want to do a pancreas transplant on an unsuspecting presidential candidate, instead. Or, maybe, I could perform cataract surgery on myself in front of a steamy mirror.]

“It was as if I saw it happen in slow m-m-m-motion.” Recuerda Villa, her eyes wide, recalled what she had witnessed.

What she had seen, though Recuerda wasn’t close enough to see it quite so clearly, was this. Jolene’s right arm, hanging motionless at her side, rose up and forward, then left across her chest and slightly back toward her body. Her right hand stopped just short of her left ear, then her arm sprung like a coiled snake, the back of her fist smashing into Lavender’s left cheek with an audible “crack!” Lavender’s eyes snapped shut and her head jerked back with the force of impact. She stumbled backward four steps until the back of her knees hit the low table next to the deck railing. Her knees buckled, and the force of movement thrust her downward until her back was parallel with the deck. Momentum thrust her across  and over the railing. She tumbled upside down toward the ground below.

Recuerda Villa, sunbathing on her dock a few houses away, saw the event, she told police. “It looked like the women were fighting, but I’m not sure. Women don’t fight here, not in Hot Springs Village.”

Maybe not. But, as the police would uncover during the investigation, the brief interchange between Jolene Shaw and Lavender Boudreaux certainly had all the trappings of a fight. A fight to the death. Lavender’s death.

Several people were much closer to the scene. Among them were ten women just inside inside Jolene’s house. A couple of them reported they thought they heard a scream, but didn’t think much of it. After all, one of them said, “It’s not unusual to hear someone in a gaggle of tipsy knitters shriek with laughter at a tawdry joke.”

[No idea where this is going. I’m not much of a mystery writer, but this vignette seems to “have all the trappings” of a mystery. At least some of the trappings.]

Four in the morning is the time of day when one is free to think unthinkable thoughts. It is a time of day at which sadness and loathing intersect with fear and rage. Depression and a multitude of other forms of mental anguish spring from the unsavory freedoms of four in the morning. Hatred. Crippling self-doubts. Fear of rejection. So it is not surprising that the seeds of Devian Qualls’ reprehensible plan sprouted just after four in the morning that November day in Devian’s musty house. Devian Qualls—a man cursed with a round, rubbery, paste-white face, thick neck to match thick glasses, and two hundred pounds more than his skeleton was meant to carry—intersected with four in the morning in a most unpleasant way.

Fog turned to icy drizzle and then to sleet shortly after Devian awoke. He traipsed back and forth in front of the French doors from the living room to the kitchen, stopping occasionally to stare out into the blackness of the morning. His thick nostrils flared as the pace of his pounding march from one side of the room to the other quickened with each circuit.

“Damn sleet! I’ve either got to go soon or I’ll be iced in here for god knows how long!”

He was the only one who heard his voice. His wife of nineteen years, Charmaine Qualls, had moved out three weeks earlier and, by the time Devian was cursing the ice gods, she probably was busily planning to change her last name to that of her wealthy suitor.

Devian slowed his pacing, then shuffled to his desk and sat, drinking strong coffee and staring at the empty computer screen. The chair moaned at every movement of his three hundred and thirty pound frame. He placed his sausage fingers on the keyboard and typed a few words:

‘I have done some things that were wrong, but not because I am a bad man’

He deleted the incomplete thought and began anew:

‘My multiple attempts to engage in extramarital affairs must have been prompted by’

He flipped that paragraph away, too, switching the object of his typery to his wife:

‘After trying so many times to have relationships with other women, Charmaine’s infidelity really caught me off guard’

Again, the words disappeared with a click of the mouse button. After several attempts to begin the story of his failed infidelity, and his surprise at learning of his wife’s success at the adulterous endeavor,  he withdrew his plump hands from the keyboard.

What if, he wondered to himself, the objects of his inappropriate carnal desires, each of whom had rejected his overtures, had instead been receptive? What if he had successfully engaged a dozen women in extramarital affairs? And what if he could rub his soon-to-be-ex-wife’s nose in those trysts? The seeds of his appalling plan began to take root.

“All right, then, I can pursue a lot of justice with this,” he said aloud, smiling at the empty empty grey computer screen bathing him in ghostly light.

“I’ll get those bitches. I know they had affairs. I just know they did. I wasn’t born yesterday. Sure they had them. They just didn’t have ’em with me. But I’ll make it look to their husbands like they did. And I’ll make it look to Charmaine like she bailed on somebody every other woman who set eyes on him wanted. That’ll kill her!”

Discomfort and solitude , coupled with simmering rage and a sociopathic lack of morals and empathy morphed into ugly desiderata that day.

[Yeah, yeah, yeah. My foreshadowing here told the entire story. The unfortunate thing is this: it’s implausible, uninteresting, and predictable. Or maybe not. But to my ADHD mind, it’s old news and unworthy of more fingerwork. But I’m posting it anyway, just because I might one day want to come back and borrow from it. I really need to get to know all these people I write about, though. Once we become close, I’m sure their stories will ooze out of me like blood leaking from a loosely wrapped bandage.] 😉

Once upon a time, an old Norwegian fisherman took his granddaughter out in his fishing boat. His boat was not the pleasure craft one sees so often today among men who call themselves fisherman. Rather, it was an old workhorse of a boat, a no-nonsense assemblage of nets crusted with salt amid ropes carefully coiled in their proper places on the deck.

Only an hour into the trip, the girl had become impatient with the cruise and began to complain.

“Morfar, let’s go back home. I’m bored. There’s nothing to do here but look at the water.”

The old man, his gentle eyes resting on the girl’s beautiful blonde hair, replied in soft words meant to sooth and calm her growing discontent.

“Datterdatter, the water gives you the life you live. The sea’s bounty is lifeblood for your mother and me and, now, you. There are far worse things to do than look at the water. But, don’t worry, soon there will be more to do than look at the water. Soon, we’ll begin casting nets and, if fortune is our friend, pull them in, laden with fish.”

“Well, I am not interested in fishing, Morfar, so let’s go back home. I have more interesting things to do than catch fish.”

“Ah, we will go back home in good time. First, I will show you how I catch fish. Next, I will show you how I sell some of the fish I catch to put pickles and vegetables on our table. Finally, when we are back on shore, I will show you how I smoke fish to make the meals we eat.”

[This began as a children’s story. What? John writing a children’s story? Yeah, but you see he gave up midstream. I’m not so good at allegory. I may finish this some day, well before I become a Norwegian grandfather.]