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The Young and the Damned |
“And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes—“
“What is that you’re reading, Anna?”
“It is Annabelle Lee, Reginald. You may have heard of the poet, Edgar Allen Poe?”
“Of course, I’ve heard of the chap.” He kissed her auburn hair and then moved to her scarlet lips, caressing her face with his burly hands. “Are you finished yet? I’d like to have a little time with you before I leave.”
It was Thursday night and the clouds around Anna’s seaside fortress were getting darker. The sand dunes had never looked so gloomy or the shores so deserted. A storm was coming to the Maryland shores, but it was nothing compared to the rains in Anna’s heart. Her summer lover, Reginald Houlton III, was leaving that night, back home to his wife and family. He was a six-foot tall investment banker from Long Island, sturdy and rugged. It broke her heart every time he had to leave her bed to call his wife or whenever he vanished from Sparrows Point altogether for the year, like a ghost that haunted her in the sweet summer season.
“Don’t go,” she started, “don’t leave me for her. We have it all here, especially each other.”
“You know I can’t, love,” he said, slightly irritated but softly, “I love her too, and I can’t choose you over my kids. They outnumber us; it’s not fair.” He lied to his wife about coming to an annual national conference; he made sure to mention it was in Baltimore, far enough from home so she wouldn’t make a surprise visit, and close enough in case he was called for an emergency.
“Fair? What do you know of fair? I stay here all year long, working at my petty, thankless job so that when you come back I can be here. You can’t say I haven’t made sacrifices.” She was practically breathless with disbelief at his insensitive remarks.
“Let’s just forget this for now. I want to make love to you once more this year and here, look— the weather is perfect. This is not how I want our last night to end.”
Looking at her delicate sun-kissed skin in the dim room, he knew she was troubled and tormented by his decision. It was, after all, the same as the previous six summers he’d come to her beach. It was hard to remember the beginning; it had all become a blur of sand, sun and sex. She wasn’t helpless in bed, which was to her credit, but when it came to controlling her own life, he knew he could always depend on her to be there in the same house each year. She asked him countless times to stay with her, begged usually, and somehow he couldn’t bring himself to change his answer.
“Look, darling, I know you’ve made sacrifices, and you know I’m grateful for your loyalty and obedience. You give me something to look forward to every June.” He paused only slightly, and before she could speak, he cracked the shell of an already fragile egg. “But let’s be honest, love, you’re not going anywhere. When I’ve wrapped up my family affairs, I’ll be here to join you for good. What’s this really about? You’ve never had this much trouble accepting my leaving before. Is it Rachelle?” Rachelle was the hairstylist he had slept with once or twice over the weekend. He usually got his hair cut before he came to Anna’s for his June vacation, but his work schedule wouldn’t allow it this year.
It was immediately clear he’d finally crossed the line, and that set her off. Her eyes flashed a rage that he could almost feel under his skin.
“In case you’re really in denial, you’ll never leave your wife! Your kids will always be there! And your job, you love that job almost as much as you love committing adultery on your loves. Well here’s to the end of your final conference on this beach, in this house, or with this woman. Find yourself another destitute soul.”
She tipped a glass of red wine back into her snarling ruby mouth and tossed the glass onto the bed, as he watched solemnly. She stormed out of the room before he could recover from his apparent shock. He shouldn’t have been surprised; she’d always been a firecracker, waiting to go off.
When he had first met her at the market in Bear Creek Junction, she’d been going off on a merchant who was still haggling with her over something she’d given up on earlier that morning. He’d helped her get rid of the pest, but she’d turned on him for his intrusion.
Reginald followed the path his mistress had taken to the grand stairs; from the banister, he could see light pouring out from the study. He sauntered down the stairs and slid into the study. Her desk chair caught his attention; it was turned towards the bookcase, and he could hear her violent tears all the way from the doorway. His gaze slid down to her unkempt desk; letters from him, sent throughout the busy months he wasn’t here. There were piles of bills, a letter opener, and a small roll of stamps. She turned slowly in her chair as she became aware of his presence. His rough breathing gave him away; tears were flowing heavily from her sad brown eyes.
“Come now, love; let me get you something to calm you,” he said smoothly, trying to calm Anna down. “Where’s the bottle of ’38 Chablis we opened last night?”
She began to open some new bills, deliberately ignoring him. This was the mail she’d picked up from town the other day. The other day, when she had walked into Rachelle’s shop to find her massaging Reginald’s backside. Before Anna could finish her next violent slicing motion, opening another envelope, she felt the traitor take her hand from the silver blade.
“Come, let us go upstairs to bed; we’ll forget all about this business. Rachelle was an adventure, but you are the one I’m committed to.” He started kissing her neck and he could feel her tears soaking his freshly trimmed beard. His hands felt their way to her familiar breasts, small and soft. She started to struggle to get his hands off of her, to get his beard that she had touched away from her skin. She was visibly tormented by being reminded of his treachery, the thoughts of yet another woman, besides her. Her mind began to race with the thoughts of all their summers together, the love made on the beach. All in a rush, she saw Rachelle’s face and his pressed together, their bodies entwined.
The motions went too quickly for either his or her comprehension. She felt her fingers enclose around the letter opener’s blade, sharp and sure. As she looked into Reginald’s eyes, she could see his shallow lust for her, and there were no second thoughts. As she plunged the narrow dagger into her lover’s abdomen, she gave him a small smirk through her tears. She grabbed the wine from the bookcase shelf and stepped back to watch him die.
“Here’s to you, and to your life of selfish whims and follies. To your family,” she snarled as he gasped his last breaths, “who will never see their lying, adulterous Reginald Houlton III again.”
He watched her sadly, as she sipped the wine greedily.
“Don’t forget to toast to the end of our family,” he continued in answer to her perplexed expression, rather weakly he added, “to your baby, who will never know its father.” He dropped to the soft carpet in a pool of scarlet blood.
Anna awoke two hours later, after she was found passed out on the floor by her housekeeper, Hilda. She had fallen very close to her dead lover’s corpse and she started at the sight of him. She sobbed at his side for what seemed like hours. She then summoned for her maid to join her in the upstairs parlor.
“Hilda, dear, were there any calls today for me or Mr. Houlton today?” The shaky maid took a moment to recount her work that day.
“Just after I’d cleaned the kitchen floor, Miss, the doctor you saw yesterday phoned here. Mr. Houlton answered the call; I remember because he was on the other side of the kitchen floor. He seemed rather grave at first,” she sniffled. “Then he was happy alla sudden. He told me he’d give you the news. I didn’t inquire as to what it was. I’m sorry, Miss.”
“So, he was going to leave her after all,” Anna whispered absently, staring out at the dark rocky coast. “That’ll be all, Hilda. Thank you for your service. Please be sure the door is locked on your way out; there will be no need to call the authorities, I will take care of it.”
“Thank you, Miss.”
As soon as Hilda had left the house, Miss Anna decided she would make one last toast to her dear Reginald. She filled a glass with Bordeaux, his favorite red wine, and toasted, “Here’s to my lost family, gone forever, like so many waves in the sea, forgotten, like so many rocks in the sand, yet loved like so many summers past.”
With that, Anna climbed the dark stairs at the end of the hallway, to the widow’s walk, where she fell from the platform to the jagged rocks below. To Anna, she thought it better to be dead than to suffer like Poe did for his Annabelle Lee.
Stop, Stab, & Laugh |
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In the late spring of 1999, and with the help of my two friends, I took on the absurd task of killing my own father. Whether you refer to it as euthanasia or just the manifestation of Satan in modern man, my intention was to relieve my father of the burden that living had come to be for him. I let my friends Larry and Curt in on what it was I wanted to do, and asked for their help with the whole thing. When I told them, they each just sat there for awhile, kind of dumb-struck, but they eventually came around to the idea. They’re real morons on the surface but understanding in their own way.
It wasn’t until about a week after my bright idea, when the chemotherapy had finally proved futile for Pop and the doctors began asking questions about hospice arrangements, that Larry and Curt and I began our plan to lay my father to rest. You know, put in that manner, it almost seems noble…almost. I probably could have done what I did alone, but I needed reassurance that I was doing the right thing. Larry said he would do the same for his father, if he knew who he was, and Curt just said “Sure, man. I always wanted to bump somebody off.” To which I responded with a punch to the arm.
After he rubbed his sore shoulder for a few seconds, Curt asked if Jack Kevorkian was still for hire, and I pondered it for a moment. But I soon remembered that Dr. Death had been sentenced to prison for second-degree murder only a few months before, so he was out of the question. Larry surmised that we could bust him out of prison, but I shot that down enthusiastically. “Listen,” I said, “he’s my father and I’m gonna be the one who says what we do, all right? I’m not gonna add kidnapping a suicide expert from prison to our list of incriminating acts.”
After some mild hesitation, Larry spoke up again, saying, “That’s fine, Moe. I was just saying, if we’re gonna do it then we should, you know, make it something memorable…we should get a machine with a bunch of bells and whistles to kill him…in honor of your old man.”
As I mentioned, these guys were far from capable humans, but they were all the help I had, so I had to deal with the situation. In some desperate attempt to bring civility to the matter, I proposed creating a death think-tank to list all the possible, humane ways in which one might die. The list ranged from being smothered with a pillow to poisoning, but those all seemed far too played-out, almost expected or cliché. Plus, my father was a strict Catholic, and I didn’t want it to look like a suicide. I wanted it to look like an accidental mishap, not just for his sake but also for his reputation’s sake. I figured the public didn’t need to waste any extra energy on praying for dear old Max Milton’s lost soul floating around Purgatory when in reality he was probably just getting sauced with Jesus up stairs, shooting the shit with the King of Kings.
Our list ended up being a catalogue of fantastic ways to kill a human, really just the opposite of making it seem as if God’s will had been performed, so we scrapped the whole thing and racked our brains to find a way to relieve my Pop. After spending the better part of that night arguing, Curt purposed that we toss him off a bridge or something to that extent. I had had my fill of stupid ideas from them, so I shot back, “You’re a moron, a buffoon, a stooge. You are completely out of your element, whatever the hell that might be…I don’t even know why I asked you idiots for help. You don’t have the slightest clue as to how to handle this, do you?”
“Clue!” Curt said enthusiastically.
I just shook my head and asked what the hell he was talking about and he said, “Clue! The board game. We can play Clue!”
Needless to say, I pushed him out of his chair and yelled some more at him with countless insults. But Larry spoke up in defense of our blundering friend. He explained, “What Curt is trying to say is that we can play Clue to pick what way we could bump off your old man, Moe. It’s perfect. That way we don’t have to decide.”
At first, I was against it, but the more I thought about it the more I liked the idea. It sort of displaced the blame, if you know what I mean. After some probing, I agreed that it couldn’t hurt, so we broke out the game distributed by those fantastic Parker brothers and rolled the die to see what was in store for my suffering Pop.
As you can guess, before we even began, I immediately ruled out the candlestick, lead pipe, wrench, and the noose from the equation due to their barbaric nature. That left us with only the gun or the knife. We debated on this for some time, trying to determine which was more appropriate, the gun or the knife, and we eventually landed on the knife, mostly because neither of us owned a gun, and we didn’t particularly have to funds to purchase one.
I know to most people, stabbing your old man with a knife would be considered the least civil way of sending him on his way, but you don’t my Pop like I do. He was in the Marines in the fifties over in Korea, and I think if we would have consulted him on the matter he would have chosen the same route or at least something similar to it. He wouldn’t have ever admitted it, but I think if he wasn’t such a strict Catholic, suicide would have been an option. I don’t really know why I think that, but I guess there’s something nostalgic in getting stabbed in the gut to a Marine, a sort of return to the past.
After picking the knife as our weapon of choice, next on the list was to pick the location of the murder. Since my Pop’s and my place didn’t have a study, a library, a billiard room, or a ballroom and neither of us new what the hell a conservatory or a lounge was, we had to choose from the dining room, the kitchen and the hallway. Larry said it didn’t matter where it took place as long as we made it seem like a break-in gone wrong, but I said, “No dice, man…no one will believe it, who would want to kill a cancerous shopkeeper?” He responded without thought, “you,” and I hit him across the head and reiterated that what we were planning was for my father’s own good. Curt said he agreed and that the only logical place, although he didn’t use the word ‘logical,’ was to have him fall on a knife in the kitchen. I agreed, so that was that.
So on the first of April, we set the gears in motion to bump off my pain stricken Pop. We all needed alibis as to avoid questioning, so I sent Larry and Curt to the zoo for the whole day; that way they would have multiple witnesses to corroborate their story. They were more than happy to comply. Like I said, they’re real dull cats and, in fact, are amused by other cats, so it all worked out for them.
That left me and only me to come up with a defense. My plan for that day was to work at the general store Pop and I owned. He had owned it since he came home from Korea, and when he got sick I took it over. We lived in an apartment above the store, so it was real easy for me to sneak up there and make it all happen. I called him out of his room around noon for lunch and the rest as they say is history.
I must admit, I handled the whole thing very well at the time, and no one ever suspected a thing. Everybody in town stopped by the store and gave their condolences after they heard the news. “Wow,” they all said, “What are the odds? First prostate cancer, then it spreading to all over the rest of his body and now this.” They all shed tears and stories, and I just acted indifferent, like a shocked son should act, but all that was just horseshit. I knew my father wasn’t in pain anymore, and, yes, I felt some remorse for what I did, but you can’t think about that kind of stuff. I moved out of town after it happened and Larry and Curt followed me, mostly because they had nowhere else to go and no one else to take care of them, but I didn’t mind, they’re good company. Now when I think of my Pop, I laugh. I know that he’s happy where he is, up in heaven with my mom, hitting the bottle and laughing with JC.
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Pressure Point |
I was alone. My roommate hadn’t come back once again, but that didn’t bother me too much. She decided where she slept and just as long as it didn’t affect me, I didn’t care. I lounged on the futon and was happy that for once, I really didn’t have anything to do. School had been keeping me busy for the longest time and Kyle, the guy who I had gone out on two dates with, had sent me a message, which was strange since I hadn’t talked to him in over a year. If only my boyfriend had been here, I would have been hanging out with him instead of in my room, alone.
It was the day before Halloween and every channel seemed to be showing some fright-inflicting show, which would make my heart pound within my chest. It wasn’t that they were that scary. It was the fact that I was alone, and being alone on a Friday night, on the first floor of a dark dorm hall, was, yes, a little unnerving for me.
Of course, my mother had constantly reminded me of everything that could possibly happen to me, since we constantly kept our window open. Rebecca, she would say, I’m not very comfortable with you being there alone, knowing that your window is open so that anybody can come by and get in. And every time my response was exactly the same. Mom, I would say, our window has a screen and it’s not like it’s open all the way, plus we’re in an alcove, so we need it open so we can get some air flow.
As I thought about my mom and her aggravating ways, a knocking came at the door. With a sigh, I got up and moved to the peephole, where I looked through to see nobody standing directly in front of it. It wasn’t the first time that somebody had just gone by and knocked on my door. It was a Friday night and the drunks were prone to doing any stupid thing on a whim, but still, it was almost twelve and the pin on my door showed me to be in.
Turning around, I began to walk back to the futon when another round of knocks came at the door.
“Okay, so we’re going to play knock-knock-ditch,” I said turning back around and looking out the peephole to an empty hallway.
This time, instead of leaving it at that, I opened the door and looked to either side, making sure none of my friends had been hiding next to it, but nobody was there.
“Whatever,” I sighed, going back in and back to the futon, but just as I had laid down, the door quivered as someone pounded on it. “What the heck!” I muttered angrily under my breath.
Getting up, I ran to the door, opening it quickly, only to find the hallway deserted.
“Seriously, whoever keeps pounding on my door, cut it out!” I growled, masking a nervousness that was lingering deep within.
Closing the door, I locked it and went back to the futon and turned up the TV, but I decided to change from Scariest Places on Earth to Rachel Ray’s $40 A Day, instead. Only once more did the door rattle, but when I did nothing, it stopped completely, which satisfied me.
It was about two in the morning when I got the sudden urge to go to the bathroom. Getting up I unlocked the door and proceeded a little ways down the hall. I heard nothing as I walked to one of the stalls closest to the exit. All the shower curtains that faced the stalls were closed and as I was in the stall, I heard the distinct sound of one of the shower curtains moving slowly, which I found odd, since I hadn’t heard anyone come in and that the shower curtain would be moved that slowly by somebody.
Getting done, I opened the door to see that the shower curtain closest to the stall I had been in, which had been closed, was now two thirds of the way open. Shrugging this off as pure nonsense and telling myself that I had been mistaken about the shower curtain’s previous position, I then washed my hands and started back to my room.
Opening the door, I walked in and immediately locked the door behind me. I gave a great yawn. I felt completely exhausted, so I changed into my pajamas, turned out the lights and the TV and got into bed, easily falling into a deep sleep.
The next thing I knew, I was being awoken as my bed started to shake. It felt as if someone were climbing up the end of it, so I sat up groggily and began muttering, “I thought you weren’t coming back tonight.”
“Hello, Rebecca,” said a familiar voice, which was not my roommate's, but Kyle’s.
“Oh my God! What are you doing here? How did you get in here?” I cried, flailing my legs as the weight of his body pressed against them, making me unable to move them any longer.
“I thought I’d visit you. I was hiding in the bathroom for you. Oh, Rebecca, I haven’t talked to you in a while and I miss you,” he whispered, crawling over my body.
“GET OFF ME!” I cried, revulsion and panic seeping from every pore.
“Shh, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, my sweet Rebecca,” he purred, as I felt a sharp pain at my neck, warmth trickling down from the point that he had pierced from what I could only guess was a knife.
“Why are you doing this?” I wept more quietly.
“I told you. I miss you. I miss us!”
“But there was never an us, Kyle.”
“DON’T SAY THAT!” he growled, and pain shot through my body.
“Please! DON’T!” I cried, tears streaming from my eyes, my breath coming in sobs.
“But I love you, Rebecca.”
“Kyle, please…”
“I want you!”
“Please…”
“NO!”
The anger in his voice terrified me and not knowing what he was willing to do to me was even scarier. My face was wet and my neck hurt, but he seemed to ease up on the pressure on my neck as I laid there trying not to weep too loudly.
The next thing I knew the pressure from the knife at my neck ceased completely and he shifted his weight so that the next moment I felt his breath stirred my hair around my right ear as he said, “I love you.”
“I love…Ian.” I cried, thrusting my body left, so I was closer toward the wall. As I did this I shoved him with flailing arms and then I heard him begin to gargle and choke. The room was pitch black, but the weight of his body fell on me once again. Something warm began spilling onto me, which made me scream as I rolled his dead weight off of me and my bed.
Scraping at my throat, I felt the small cut he had given me, the blood still running freely. I breathed heavily, afraid of getting down from my bed. Poundings on the door made me scream even more as I recalled what had happed earlier, but this time, the door opened to reveal police officers who ran in frantically turning on the light as they did.
I screamed, unable to differentiate between dream and reality, and when I saw Kyle’s body on the floor, my blood froze and I looked down to see blood pooled on my bed and seeped all into my clothes and all over my body. I screamed and cried, until one of the police officers came to me.
“Are you alright?” he said grabbing both of my flailing arms.
I began to hyperventilate and was only subdued when he hugged me.
“You’re okay…” he said, “shh.”
I wept and looked over his shoulder at the Kyle’s form, which they had turned over, the knife he had held to my throat was protruding out of his throat, his glazed eyes staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Oh, God,” I whispered, and I gave a shudder.
“Do you know this man?” The officer asked as soon as we got to the floor.
The rest of the officers looked at me, waiting for my reply, but my voice, I couldn’t say anything I was still scared and so I could only nod.
“Do you know why he was trying to kill you?”
“No,” I whispered, as I continued to stare at Kyle’s lifeless form and then I said, “he…we went out on two dates…I broke it off with him…he…he had said that I was the cause of his depression…he told me that he loved me after knowing me for a month.”
I looked up as the blood pounded and surged through my veins, making me warm and cold all at once. He, Kyle, had tried to kill me and I had killed him instead.
Case of Sharp Learning |
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“I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can,” the older man in the white lab coat said encouragingly. “All you have to do is just ease the knife into the chest cavity and twist your wrist just a little to make the cut. It’s all as the textbook shows. See?” He pointed to the anatomy text open on the exam table. “You can do it. Go on, you can do it.” The younger man’s shaky hand dipped into the cavity and paused momentarily before breaking down and emerging again.
“No, no, I can’t do this…I don’t want to kill this guy. I just can’t, Doctor Livingston. I can’t. I’m scared of what will happen.” The younger man’s eyes glanced at the Doctor’s side, “Can you point again to the spot?”
“How will you ever be a surgeon if you can’t perform on someone already dead? You should have just stayed in that small town in Florida. You’re exactly right! We don’t want to kill…I mean, eventually you’ll have the consequence of death…but right now…” The Doctor caught himself. With a tried patience, Doctor Livingston switched from his ranting back to encouragement and instruction as he bent in over the cadaver and reached out to point, “All you have to do is…”
Blood trickled, at first, from the Doctor’s upper side, beneath the shoulder. Eventually, it poured. Doctor Livingston collapsed slowly as his subclavian artery emptied his body’s essence. A hand reached over and removed the blade and placed it in the Doctor’s gloved hand.
“I said, ‘I didn’t want to kill this man.’ That doesn’t leave you out of it, Doc. Thanks for the late night help and the kill. I’m sure she’ll be grateful. I know I already am.” The living man limped through the glass embalming room door with light chasing behind and a bloody footprint falling short.
*****
“Doctor Leroy Livingston, Funeral Director,” she read to herself. How long has it been, she thought. Seven? Eight years? No, five years; a confirmative feeling swept over her body. There had been no contact from her friend and former Chief of Staff, until then the call last night. Why? Why now would he call to suggest getting together for dinner after not having any contact? Why now? -- Why not?
Perhaps his age was getting to him and missed me. She laughed to herself. Maybe, she thought, but better yet, Sally Kimball, why would you fly cross-country on such short notice to be with Dr. Leroy Livingston? She grinned.
“I’m not a sleuth,” she said as she pulled behind the garage where he had said she should park. She got out of the car, still smiling, walked past two garage doors and up a set of stairs to the second story apartment. As her foot touched the bottom step, the lights flashed on and she was startled. Pausing, she regained composure and caught her racing heart.
Sensor lights, she thought, what a novel idea. She continued to climb the stairs and took a moment to reset herself at the door before ringing the doorbell. After a few moments of waiting, the lights went out and as before, she started. As though coming to a funeral home wasn’t creepy enough, the ominous starless night only seemed to enhance the fright. She settled herself again and reached for the bell. The lights again sparked on, and she went for the door handle. It was unlocked.
She opened the door and called out for Leroy. No answer. She stepped in and the lights inside came on automatically. She closed the door as the lights outside darkened.
“Doctor Livingston? Leroy?!” No reply. As she strode into a kitchen, the lights cued there and blackened behind. He was not there. She began to understand the settings and started to look for places where the lights were on and she was not. After searching the bedroom and living room, she noticed a splinter of light coming from underneath a door.
Entering the hallway, the lights came on and went out with each step, each heart beat, it seemed. Step – Light ahead – Darkness behind. Step – Light – Dark. Step – Light – Dark. She reached the door and gripped its handle.
“Leroy, I hope you don’t mind. I let myself in.” She refreshed her smile and began to turn the knob. Time froze as she pulled the door open. In that moment she wasn’t sure why it slowed, but afterward it made perfect sense. A tension had built up in the room and a door opened on its hinges silently. As the door was just to pass her line of sight, the light behind it went dark.
“Leroy?” She stepped into the room and there was light illuminating the staircase that led down to a glass door. She made it halfway down before she noticed what was lying on the examination table: two bodies covered in blood.
Doctor Livingston was dead.
*****
Across town, another Leroy was sneaking a little alone time with a National Geographic after a night of studying for his internship at the ER. Leroy Brown had just put his three year old to bed and was trying to settle his active mind before ending up in bed himself.
Since leaving Idaville, he had settled for a shotgun wedding with his ‘baby’s momma.’ He’d killed his father with disappointment and he was sure his mother was turning in her grave. After all the arrangements were made, he had left Idaville and Rover Avenue for good at 21.
He had done the grocery store scene through high school and had put solving cases for twenty-five cents a day (plus expenses) in his past. After all, it’s hard to get anyone to take you seriously when you’re charging fifth graders’ to find their lucky sock. Bugs Meany had died in a car accident their senior year and Wilford Wiggins had died in Iraq a year ago. It was harder to find suspects in people he didn’t know and had no time or interest to learn.
He met Molly on a school trip to Orlando. It was easy to be around her and she was helpful in his survival. One night she’d stolen some old alcohol and that was enough for the two of them to make a child, a grandchild his parents weren’t ready for.
At 25 and now settled in Thedford, Nebraska in the middle of nowhere, but near the world’s largest hand-planted forest, Leroy felt some distance and safety from the life he’d run from. No one knew ole’ “Encyclopedia” Brown here. This was about to change.
The phone rang and the caller ID said Kimball, Sally 653-374-3637. It spelled out “old friends.” He answered it quickly, so as not to wake up his daughter.
“Hello, Sally,” he said dryly.
“Encyclopedia?”
“Yeah, it’s me. What do you need? You haven’t spoken to me in forever.”
“I need your help. Like, now…when can you get here?”
“Whoa, wait a minute. You need my help doing what?”
“I need you to solve a mystery…like old times?”
“Sally, I…I can’t. I’m sorry.” There was a long pause on the line. “Are you still there, Sally?” He could hear sobbing. Sally was not the type to cry about nothing. “Sally, I’m sorry, but Encyclopedia Brown is all grown up. I’m sorry.” The weeping got worse on the other end. After a moment he heard,
“Please?” Then it was as if the whole world held its breath in the pause of his thing, so she added quietly, “For me?”
“I’ll need to get a babysitter. What’s the address? What am I dealing with?” She got the address across and told him it was presumably a murder and she didn’t know of any suspects. He gave her an approximate time and then hung up. He shambled to his new shoes and grabbed his keys.
*****
She noticed him arrive and stood on the porch to greet him. He walked up and embraced her in a hug that lasted seconds. He whispered, ‘I’ve always loved you’ under his breath and entered the home, with lights trailing and leading. He steadily limped to the embalming room, without a word and pointed to a footprint near his white shoes.
She was confused as to how he graced the rooms and led her there, but he was pointing out the evidence when she noticed “LB” on the inside cover of the anatomy book near the dead and she understood.
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Thrust Into the Heart of Unicorns |
“Perhaps the greatest hero in life is the one who freely gives themselves for the good of another.” ~ Queen Amita
Only a little crescent of moonlight lit my way to the old castle of Pere. The exhaustion of the day’s trek through the lands of the dwarves had me weary as I made my way up to the dingy old building. A voice greeted me and the door opened as a faint red light led me to my sleeping quarters. I did not question the faint red light as I opened the door to my room. The ornate oil lamps lit magically as I walked silently to the edge of the bed in the corner. I fell to a sitting position on the bed as a puff of red smoke emanated from the dusty old bed. I lay down and fell asleep almost immediately.
I awoke some time later with a start and sat straight up in the bed. It had suddenly become deathly cold, and I was suddenly aware of a presence surrounding me. I yelled out into the darkness…
“Whosoever shall threaten my life, please present themselves!”
I heard a small chuckle come from the foot of my bed. I turned up one of the oil lamps just enough to see a small figure there.
“Well, me thinks you have no idea of what has happened to you this fortnight.”
“Who are you?” I asked, shivering.
“I would be the wise old cat of Pere. This is my castle. So, perhaps I should be asking you the same question. What, brave sir, are you?”
“I am merely a knight of the kingdom Losamigo. I am on a quest to find the fabled unicorn of Princess Amita so I may defeat the wizard of Tatedomia and save the people.”
The cat looked at me with bright emerald eyes and proclaimed, “Well, you have found what you seek here, I see.”
He raised one paw and pointed at my chest. I looked down to find a golden scar in the shape of a heart on my chest. My eyes grew wide with fear. What had happened when I was asleep? He must have seen my distress and told me to not question him until he was finished with his tale. His eyes grew wide as he told me a story of a young princess who had come across a severely beaten unicorn foal. Thieves had bore large holes in its body to bottle the precious and magical unicorn blood and left the animal to die. The princess took the unicorn to a wizard who told her there was no hope for the small creature unless the princess was to give something very dear to her. The princess proclaimed that all she had dear to her lie in her heart, and so she offered up her very own heart to the young unicorn. The wizard took it and revived the young unicorn, but now the princess was unable to love or to be happy. The unicorn stayed by her side faithfully and protected her from harm until, one day, the wizard of Tatedomia captured the princess and killed her. The unicorn saw the distress of the people of the princess’s kingdom and went to dispose of the wizard. The unicorn fought a hard battle but could not beat the wizard, so as he lay dying, he found the body of the princess and he laid his precious horn on her shoulder and gave her his life.
I sat there with tears rolling down my face as the cat exclaimed, “Why are you crying? You have been given the power to defeat the wizard!”
“I am not special. I was just assigned this…I will go to my death defeating Tatedomia,” I said with a sigh. The cat put his paws on my knees and looked me in the eyes.
“Princess Amita has chosen you. Her spirit has been searching these halls for years waiting for a soul with a pure heart whom she can trust with the powerful magic of the unicorn. Her mark is on your chest. You have the power of the unicorn now harnessed within you. Now go.”
I went without question from the castle to the land of Tatedomia and straight to the home of the wizard. When I entered his castle, I felt a horrible headache, and reached up to my head to find a horn. The unicorn’s horn! I felt the unicorn within me as I galloped up the stairs to the tower where the wizard Tatedom was awaiting my arrival as well as my demise. He withdrew a long sword and thrust it into my chest. I looked down just enough to see the wound heal completely and another golden hearted scar was left where the wound was. I immediately got to my feet and with the power of the unicorn’s rage, I ran towards her and thrust the unicorn’s horn into her side. The horn stuck in her side and lit up like the sun. The greatest and brightest red light I’ve ever seen filled the room. A woman floated from the heavens, took the horn from the dead wizard’s side, and held it aloft. She spoke gently and calmly in my direction.
“Thank you, dear knight. You will be rewarded greatly, for all is well.”
She then turned from me and a bright red orb came from the horn. A beautiful white foal emerged with a single golden horn. The young woman’s white robe became a glorious dress with a golden crown and the princess and the young unicorn walked from the castle in a bright ray of light. She turned and motioned to me, and my knightly clothes became a royal suit with a small silver crown seated on my head. I followed them and since then have lived here in the land of the unicorns with my queen, princess Amita.