Triple Play Friday

Depressingly, this is the actual state of our nation as we head toward Election Day. A president who can't speak without lying, and a major Democrat candidate who often can't speak period. Which isn't Fetterman's fault - the man had a stroke, after all. And it's rare to see someone who has the strength of will to immediately get back on the election trail without taking time for his brain to effing heal. Which it likely won't since he's been literally abusing it during the most critical window for recovery. Still, I don't want to kick a man when he's down...

Okay, that probably LOOKS like I'm kicking a man when he's down, but I have a well-documented psychomotor condition that causes me to kick involuntarily from time to time and if you hold it against me you're an ableist and should be ashamed of yourself.

Of course, we're all looking at a brief period of disability following this weekend...

Some people may take exception to the cartoon above, saying "But Stilton, we get an extra hour of sleep so we'll be feeling great!" And I certainly respect your opinion and that of the horse you rode in on. But for me, personally, whether we're springing forward or falling back, I lose sleep and am out of sync with the world for at least a week or two while playing the "yeah, but what time is it really?" game in my head.

Nor does it help that suddenly it will be pitch black outside about the time I normally consider to be "late afternoon." But hey, I guess turning on all the lights for an extra hour a night won't kill me. It's not like anyone wants us to cut back on energy use to save the planet or anything, right?

The Breather and the Haunted Hand

Last week, I gave you a little taste of spooky fiction. Today being Halloween, I'm offering up some spooky (and funny) non-fiction from my own life. To the best of my recollection, every word is true...

          THE BREATHER AND THE HAUNTED HAND         

When I was a kid, it wasn’t unusual for my siblings and me to have weekend sleepover visits from other kids who we’d known our whole lives and considered extended family. We’d play board games, run around outside, and watch scary movies hosted by the ghoulish “Sammy Terry” on TV.

And sometimes, if the conditions were just right on an eerie, inky black night, my Dad would tell us ghost stories. And these were no ordinary, over-told ghost stories. No cub scout campfire tales about the young couple who encountered “The Hook” in lover’s lane, no plaintive voice in the darkness calling “who’s got my hairy toe?” while drawing unstoppably closer.

No, my Dad told us real ghost stories. Things that had happened to him and to the generations of family members who came before him. Poltergeist activity. Prophetic dreams of death. Sounds in the night. Ghosts.

On the night in question, my Dad was telling his rapt audience the chilling story of “The Breather.” We all sat in the living room with all the lights off and only a flickering candle or two for creepy, shadow-casting illumination. My siblings and our guests were seated on our large, L-shaped sectional sofa. At one end of the sofa, there was a rectangular table and chair, from which my Dad was spinning his dark tale while facing his audience.

“The Breather” was a presence that had followed my Dad throughout his childhood years. At night, alone in his bed, sharing the old house only with his grandmother, he would become aware of someone or something else breathing in the room with him. Something coming closer. And when he pulled the blankets over his face and held his own breath in fright, The Breather would draw near. Inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling…

As my Dad wove his story, I excused myself for a bathroom trip. Or at least, that’s what I said I was doing. In reality, once I was out of sight in the darkness I dropped to my hands and knees and very slowly crept back into the living room and under the table where my Dad was sitting. My younger sister, seated next to the table, was the only person who could see me. I met her questioning look with a “shush” finger held to my lips and she nodded.

As my Dad notched the suspense in the room ever higher, I slowly slipped my hand up over the side of the table and left it directly next to my father. Bent at the wrist, it would have looked like a detached human hand. And then I waited.

The moments which followed are among the greatest memories in my life. Every nerve in the room was stretched taut at the moment my father paused in his narrative for a moment and put his hand down on mine. For the briefest of seconds, I could feel his fingertips exploring and trying to identify what he had encountered. And then came the scream.

My Dad shouted in true horror while leaping out of his chair. And of course, everyone else in the room screamed too. Panic, pandemonium, and confusion reigned until I crawled out from under the table, laughing my young rear end off.  And after a suitable cool-down period, everyone else laughed while sharing how terrified they were at that exquisite moment. 

And The Breather? My Dad speculated that the entity was perhaps someone who had died in the old house where he was raised (now a historical site in Indiana) or a deceased relative just paying a visit. Indeed, he wondered if the somewhat raspy breath, not unlike his own in his later years, had been coming from his own ghost who was returning to keep an eye on his younger self.

It was an interesting and somewhat comforting theory. So that’s the one I choose to believe now, in the dark of night...

...when The Breather visits me.

You Are Now Entering...The Stilton Zone

With Halloween just around the corner, I thought I'd do a little change of pace and present a very short story that hopefully has an appropriate amount of fun seasonal creepiness.

About a week ago, this story just told me that it wanted to be written. I didn't feel like writing a story, nor had I done so in years. I wasn't aware of thinking about anything even vaguely related to the story's subject matter. And why bother to write a story anyway? 

Because I had to. 

A favorite saying of mine is "people become writers because they can't help it." So here's a story I couldn't help writing. The setting is small town America back in the 1950's, and the story is about...

          THE MAN WHO BOUGHT SPIDERS          

BAM! The screen door slammed behind him as Davy Thompson exploded into the house.

“Mom! Hey, Mom!” he shouted, looking around eagerly.

“Not here!” called a male voice.

“What?!”

“I said she’s not here,” Davy’s dad repeated over the sound of rushing water. He was washing his hands in the bathroom sink. “Gone to the grocery store.”

“Nooooo,” Davy moaned theatrically as he rushed into the bathroom. “I need to ask her if we’ve got any empty jars!”

“Why don’t you ask me if we have any empty jars?”

“You don’t never know that kind of stuff,” Davy argued as he handed his father a towel.

“I don’t ever know that kind of stuff,” Dad corrected. “But maybe this time I do.”

“Do we have any empty jars?” Davy asked.

“I don’t know,” Dad shrugged - then chuckled at his son’s look of dismay. “Kidding. I’ve got a few of them on my workbench to put screws and nails in.”

“Thanks!” shouted Davy, already racing for the basement steps.

“Hold on, hold on! What’s all the excitement about empty jars, anyway?”

“I’m making money,” Davy explained impatiently, “and I need empty jars with lids on ‘em!”

“Well, I guess you can’t use them for begging if they’ve got lids on,” mused Dad, “so what’s your scheme?”

“I’m selling spiders to Old Man Haberman. All the guys are! That’s why I’m in a hurry!”

Dad settled into his chair in the living room, amused and curious.

“Mr. Haberman, the henpecked guy down the street?”

“What’s ‘henpecked?’”

“Doesn’t matter. You say he’s buying spiders?”

“All he can get and a dime apiece!” Davy’s eyes glowed with the anticipation of great wealth. “And we must have a million spiders around here!”

“Quite likely,” Dad agreed. “But why would Haberman be buying spiders…?”

“Dad, I gotta get going!”

“Hold your horses, we’re having a conversation here. Why is Mr. Haberman buying spiders?”

“Heck, I don’t know. I guess he just likes ‘em!”

“Is he killing them? Putting them in his garden?” Dad prompted.

“No, he puts ‘em in his house!” The exasperation was clear in Davy’s voice. “Jar after jar. Shakes ‘em out and off they skedaddle. They’re all over the place and I’ve got to catch more spiders before he stops buying ‘em!”

Dad’s brow furrowed and he leaned in toward Davy, perplexed. 

“So he’s filling his house with spiders? Did you see this?”

“Sure did! I saw Nick running over there with a couple of jars and followed him to see what was going on. All the guys were over there on Old Man Haberman’s porch and he was passing out money to beat the band and dumping spiders inside his house!”

“Well, I can’t imagine Mrs. Haberman is going to like that. Not that she likes much of anything.”

“She ain’t there,” Davy pointed out.

“She isn’t there,” Dad corrected. “Where is she?”

“Old Man Haberman said she ran off a few days ago and won’t be coming back.”

“Ran off where?”

“I asked and he thought for a minute, then he said she ran off to join the circus.”

“What, like a clown?”

“That’s what I asked! He said she’d be more like a Ringmaster so she could stand in a spotlight with a big megaphone and tell people what to do all the time!”

Dad leaned back in his chair, genuinely puzzled.

“That would fit her personality,” he conceded, “but it just doesn’t make any sense.”

“Dad!” Davy barked, “I’m gonna miss out if I don’t get going!”

“Okay, okay - help yourself to the jars and every spider you can find!”

Davy wheeled on his heels and again bolted for the basement steps.

“Davy,” Dad called.

His son’s shoulders drooped in frustration. “What now?!”

“What kind of spiders is he buying?”

“See, I asked him that too, and he said it didn’t matter!”

Davy dashed down the steps to the basement, his voice echoing up the stairwell.

“Didn’t matter at all as long as they can eat a lot of flies!”