Sometimes, in the FrightBox, you don’t meet your soul mate, you just meet your soul.

Twitter is down. Many turn to Facebook, also known as Twitter-A-Done causing a log jam and tension in that community. Communicating in sentences, paragraphs and punctuation is proving difficult for the Twitterites and annoying to the Facebookians. People are scared and flocking to the streets. Panic almost ensued until some suggested a brisk walk.

Love this. You can almost imagine that his fear is so paralyzing that even though he tries to scream nothing comes out.  His body is warped or wracked with fright.  The normal people on the bridge with the straight or not warped bodies are merely spectres to him. The other person on the right side is too impossibly far away to help.

Above San Francisco. Sky and clouds above San Francisco.  The Skies above

Of Death

By the prickling of my thumbs . . .

Whenever I hear that from people, I think oh how nice, they’re not coming. Whenever I say it, it means: “My tormented ghost will be there if he earns a few moments of out time!”

(c) 2011 by David L Nelson All Rights Reserved.

It’s raining. There is a lot of movement in the other room. They are finally taking the Christmas tree down. I enter the bedroom and see the Christmas tree falling towards me from the corner directly opposite where I stand. It misses my feet. Suzie and Lina tell me to be more careful. Against the far wall is seated my boss on a folding chair. The card table in front of her has a semi-circle row of dominoes on it and a pile of books in the center.

“Mr F.” she says, “have you read Carlos Davis Smith’s Regt und Rent?”

“No I haven’t, not yet,” say I.

“This is your homework then, read it by Monday and hug your boss.” I lean forward to hug her, but she cringes, crossing her arms over her chest and recoils. I stop short. “And move this bed and that night stand away from the fireplace.” I turn the bed and night stand she has mentioned.

“What a stupid place for a bed,” I think to myself. Lina comes and helps me. “Move this bed towards that wall.” I say. We leave just enough room to stand on the side of the bed. I am leaned over the bed and as my butt touches the wall I see Lina drop away at the other end of the bed. Through the floor, a hole in the grate allows her to fall into the basement. Her face holds for a fantastic instant, a look of surprise. I come around the bed and glance at my boss; she is playing with her dominoes.

“Can you find Lina for me Mr. F thanks.” She asks. I turn my head to the floor; there in front of the fireplace half of the floor grating is gone. It had formerly covered a floor heater, which is also gone. In fact the metal casing underneath and around the floor heater is missing too. The cellar is exposed and a cool draft floats up to my face. The only sign of Lina is the blood spot and bit of hair stuck to the half remaining grate. I drop a lighted match, as it hits the floor it ignites a small pocket of methane, a little fireball lights up the whole cellar. The familiar eight doors, two per wall show up quite clearly as well as Lina’s clothes scattered and strewn about the floor most of which has now caught fire from the small blast. Then comes the faint smell of burning hair. I finally see a clump of smoldering blond hair all by itself in the middle of the floor. At least Lina is not attached to it. I turn to my boss and explain the situation.

“Sure okay fine,” she says, “just read your book and make sure to air out this place it stinks, thanks.”

I walk around the hole and lie on the bed. The book has a tan leather cover and on the top left of the front the words, Lines and underneath that, Regt und Rent have been burned into the soft skin. I open to Lines. In tiny hand written letters I read: “Davis Smith tore my throat out and left me to die which was just as well because my life was worthless and I would have ended it myself, but now it has taken on new meaning, I WANT REVENGE ON DAVIS SMITH!” On the inside of the front cover is written: “It was the sad story of a young man who begged his best friend to end his life, because he felt so depressed and hopeless, wanted to die and end it all for good. Such sadness. But how could he do it himself, so he had enlisted the help of his best friend. His best friend however had a mean streak and no pity for the wretched, so he picked a painful way to die for the man he had loved as friend and confidant for so many years.”

A mouse running along the baseboard stopped and voiced his tiny complaint: “I WANT REVENGE ON DAVIS SMITH!”

“Perhaps Regt und Rent is a better story,” I say, I turn to it and find only pictures. Distorted blackened bodies are nailed to a wall around a doorjamb. Bright red blood drips down the door, and one bright red hand print glistens off the door handle. On the next page is a picture of Lina, her feet and hands tied to the bed posts. He her bald head rests on a plank. A white plastic sheet covers all but her hands and feet. Tears are streaming down from her tight shut eyes. Momentarily a nun walks in, kisses the index and middle fingers of her left hand and touches the cross above the bed. She has a straight razor and a pan of water. Steam comes up from the water. Lina shudders and begins to squirm under the white plastic sheet.

“There there now,” says the nun, “you wouldn’t want to make things worse than they are, would you?” I watch in horror.
“You have to have your neck shaved dear; Davis Smith likes them that way.” Lina sees me, she screams at me to do something.

“Khoda Hafez!” I scream at the nun. The nun turns to me wide eyed, mouth open and runs out the door. I turn the book over and bang on the back cover with my hand. Lina falls out onto the bed. She is bald, tangled in the white plastic, eighteen inches tall and sobbing. I turn the page. The view is from below a table looking up from the floor. A man with a fish bowl over his head is looking down from the top. There is a gaping whole where his larynx should be. Rot and puss drip from its edges.

“I WANT REVENGE, I WANT REVENGE!” He is screaming from inside the fish bowl. Every vein in his face forehead and neck pops out. Maggots crawl out of the festering hole and fall up, out of the page. I just barely get out of the way, they stick to the ceiling. I slam the book and throw it down the grate in the floor. Left over smoldering hair catches fire to the book. Lean over the edge of the grate I see a Surgical masked face followed by a bloody butcher’s apron is crawling out of the open page. Quickly I light a match and drop it down. Methane explodes again. The man’s hair is on fire. He drops back into the book and tries to shut it, but it is too late the pages are already burning. I turn to my boss who is still sitting at the card table.

“I found Lina,” say I.

“Good” she says, “tell her to answer the phones for a while. Have you read Carlos Davis Smith’s Regt und Rent?”

“I am sort of . . . looking over it” say I, “but it’s hard to read.”

“Well read it before Monday and hug your boss.” I lean forward to hug her and she strokes my hair, kisses my cheek and puts her index finger in my ear.

“By the way Mr. F. please move that bed to in front of the fire place and shut the windows it is getting chilly in here.”

“You know,” I say, “I have to go home early today, I have an appointment.”

She looks at me angrily then smiles, “okay,” she says, “but remember to take one of these with you, and you can download it from Amazon if you lose this copy.” She hands me a tan leather book with the words Lines and Regt und Rent burned into the cover.

I leave the book and my Android on the bed and pick up Lina on the way out; “my niece’s Barbie Doll clothes might fit you now.”

“Really?” says Lina, “I think I might be too tall.”

For the normal reader who comes across my website, if you have thoughtful comment, I’ll consider posting it. But if you’re a spammer, what makes you think I’ll automatically approve your comments about weight loss, making money and smokeless cigarettes.

My personal favorite, some jerk named Eben Pagan who claims to be a marketing guru but has to resort to spam. I gotta tell you, I don’t think you’re making a good impression.

Sincerely,
FrightBox

Click, and the office lights went out. By the front door to the office in reception, the timer hand wound down and that two hour block was over. Rick’s supercharged screen blazed into his eyes. Fingers still resting on the home row keys, he closed his eyes and wished the office away. Putting himself in his living room with his twin boys, they were sitting at his sides in front of Sponge Bob. He could feel the warmth of their shoulders nestled against his ribs. He could smile again for just a moment. Before he got up eyes open, he looked into the black ante room, a shadow stood there. With one elbow resting on one hand and it’s chin in the other the shadow cocked it’s head head, listening. Blinked, and again, the narrow book case with its globe on top and pirate ship on the middle shelf stared back at him. Globy was taken by Pee Wee’s globe so he decided to call his new friend Grampa Ave which gave a homey feel. Rick walked to reception and cranked the dial over for another two hours. As he turned and looked out the conference room window behind reception he saw that the sun had set.

Again in his seat he pictured how much his boys’ faces had matured in the last year. Early that morning as he poured cold white liquid over cheerios, his boys had smiled and joked that the milkman was visiting for breakfast. How did they know what a milkman was? At seven, maybe it was just that he was the man with the milk who was usually gone before they even got up. One year had passed again, their birthday was coming up and how much their faces had changed. Not quite identical twins, his mother in law had a flair for hurtful remarks especially when she wasn’t trying, that’s what she always said about them: “Almost not completely unlike twins,” then she’d add, “Maybe the postman got one and you get the other.” And Rick would smile and mentally shovel dirt onto her coffin. But now their faces looked like a dark haired light skinned Mexican and a light haired dark skinned Swede. “I die daily,” Rick typed. Backspaced it out of his client’s marital settlement agreement.

On Facebook, he’d seen them grow up, Lydia made sure to post them for every fun thing that happened. “I’m my sons’ facebook stalker,” he whispered, “and I have an imaginary friend.” Paralyzed fingers sat on the home row keys again for minutes. Mentally comparing the faces of his Joey and Zaney he could feel his throat tighten, chin crinkled. Rick’s computer screen went cloudy, and he slowly put his face in his hands and sobbed. Feeling the tears slide down, he elbowed his laptop out of the way and rotated his palms to catch them. Darkness again. Another two hours had gone by. Wondered if he slept for two hours or if he’d not cranked it all the way around. Grampa Ave stood there elbow in one hand, chin in the other and seemed to be shaking his head side to side. Time for a break, since no work was getting done. Phone in hand, he considered calling his boys but realized it would hurt too much. Clients sometimes asked if he understood what they were going through. Occasionally he’d quote to the obvious democrats, “I feel your pain.” His favorite was when they’d throw back in his face that he’d never been divorced before and therefore couldn’t possibly know what they were feeling. Rick knew. Last mother’s day had been a work day and he’d finished at about ten feeling good at how much was accomplished, satisfied that clients’ cases were moving forward and realized he’d hadn’t even called Lydia. Moments like that made him think of the wind in his hair standing at the top of the Coronado Bay bridge.

Clearly it was worse to be Rick. Rick had to sit in his office late nights and weekends doing paperwork and research so that bastards who told him that he didn’t know how they felt could get the most amount of time with their children that they wanted. Whether it was a lot or a little. Meanwhile Rick got not one moment, and he wanted them all. Again he typed “I die daily.” For a while he shut his burning eyes and remembered singing How Great Thou Art while holding one in each arm. Zane had to be bounced but Joe had to be rocked. That made it rough when they were crying at the same time. One time his mother in law came in, sat down looking like a battered wife, and crying she said, “I, I, can’t, sleep, with, two, crying, babies, in, the, house, can’t you do something about it?” Rick had looked at her and in his most intimidating voice, he whispered over the howling, “and I can’t take three!” Teeth tight together, you could see the muscles in his jaw as he spoke. She’d moved out shortly after that. Pressing print to pdf, “I should divorce you,” he whispered. Rick stood, stretched and emailed the MSA to his client and supervisor for review.