The White Lady

Chuck gave us cocktails to work off.  Our title was a cocktail and we based our flash fiction on it.  Mine?  The White Lady... pretty cool.  I've never drunk it as I don't drink alcohol... but ooohhh... it's getting late and my imagination is working overtime.

The cell was crowded, but she was there standing outside the bars looking at me smiling… and it was all her fault.

I hated her for what she made me do at the bar.

Out in the car park…

…oh, God, to that cop…

Tears blurred my vision as I looked down again whispering, “Shit.”

The problem was that nobody believed me about her… they said there was nobody of her description near me when I exploded into that white hot rage she caused when she was nearby.

And glancing around, I’d say a few of these guys in the drunk tank have seen their fair share of their own pink elephants, green imps and crap-arse nymphs flippin’ them the bird from a tree branch in their time.  But for me, it was the White Lady who got me in trouble each and every time… and I mean the drink and that bitch over there.

Now, let me start from the beginning… okay?

My mates and me were going out on the town to enjoy our evening.  We hit a few clubs and sunk a few brews before we decided to have a couple of cocktails with some ladies… they were sweet, sexy and dressed to rock-and-or-roll!  You know that type, one or two were teases, there was always one dressed like a dude who was normally the leader of the pack (and kept her head above water, even if she did get a few into her), and then there were the ones who looked like they just got out of control no matter what the leader did to help them.  But they were all in for a great time.

The great time turned nasty very quickly; and thanks to the leader of the ladies pack, they split in time for me to lose it.  How that happened was that they started ordering cocktails… you know the types:  very strong ones… Flaming Lamborghinis, Sex on the Beach and Hurricane’s Winter (yeah that last one was a new one I’ve never heard of, but it kicked arse!).  Then, one of them ordered everyone The White Lady… well, we were all off our faces enough from the strong ones, but when this last one hit us, it hit us bad – or good, it depends on how it affected each of us. 

Some of the girls were crook as hell.  The leader was violent and picked a fight with me, which she won, but got put into the ladies’s lockup for the night.  But I heard her talking about the white lady telling her to do all that shit… now, I hadn’t drunk my White Lady cocktail when she was blathering about this.  And when I did, my whole world turned upside down.

One minute it was great, the next?  Well, I found myself on the ground with two cops sitting on me and cuffing me, telling me my rights and that bitch dressed in white smirking at me from inside the paddy wagon… she chatted to me all the way to the station; whispering into my ear.  I did my best to ignore her and ended up pushing my face into the corner crying because she just wouldn’t shut the fuck up!

Now, I’m here, she standing there staring me down. 

Her voice is going around and around in my head.

And that bloody smirk is really getting on my nerves!  But I am trying to stay calm… I won’t break… I swear.

Daybreak.

I feel like hell.

But the white lady isn’t around anymore… damn.  It was the drink that caused my problems.

How the hell am I going to convince the court about this?

My folks bail me out and I’m taken home.

Mum and Dad sit me down and talk to me… asking me what the hell went wrong and I tell them what I remember, but they exchange a look that only means that there’s more to this story.

“Sweetie, your friends are dead.” Mum said.

Dad frowns, “You went into a rage and killed them.”

“What?”

They can tell I honestly don’t know what they’re talking about.

My court date has arrived.  I’m fumbling with my tie… and Dad fixes it for me.  It’s the middle of Winter and I’m sweating like a pig.

“I’m scared out of my mind.”

He stops fixing it and looks me in the eye, and I know he’s scared too, “Yeah, same here.”

Mum calls from the living room, “It’s time to go.”

Man, I looked and sounded like a mad man in court that day.  The judge gave me a withering look for the whole time I spoke; but he seemed to listen to my side of the story as my friends’ parents glared at me from across the peanut gallery. 

I had one problem in that courtroom that day… the white lady was sitting in the far back corner.  And when the lawyer asked me if I saw the person who provoked me in the room that day, I said yes and pointed her out.

But nobody saw her, and so it wasn’t recorded legally.

I’m sitting in the day room of the institution writing this out in a diary; just as the shrink has asked me to.  She told me that they’ve seen so many people pass through here due to that new cocktail who have lost so many friends to what it does to them. 

The white lady is in here too… her voice is in my head all the time.

She in my dreams…

The white lady won’t leave me alone… and my shrink knows it.   

It really makes you wonder…

Exactly how many people are in here who can see the white lady?  And…

…is she sitting across from them now, as she is sitting with me now, whispering always in my ear… to always … do … bad.

The Terrarium Phoenix

It started with a large, empty terrarium.  It was found at my late Uncle’s house, in his garden I believe, and everyone in the family wanted it for their own wants and needs.

One cousin said it would look great with her collection of rubber bands and paper clips.

Another cousin said it would look great filled with coloured stones sitting on a coffee table.

My Aunty wanted to do it up as it used to be… but she never found the time or space in her home to have it sitting in the right place without her ex-husband walking around acting like a bull in a china shop (and I mean he actually would knock it over just to piss her off).

Then my folks took it home.  It sat at the bottom of their back steps for over two years, all grubby, all dirty, filled with bird shit with the original cork sitting sideways in it… it was obvious they weren’t going to use it anytime soon.  So, my brother and his girlfriend offered to take it home; but never did. 

Me?  I kept walking by it saying it would look great in my home – seeing I had a 1970’s vibe going, and this terrarium would pull it all together – but my folks said my brother wanted it. 

So, I left it alone… and kept on looking at it every time I walked past it when I visited.

Then, the day came!  Mum and Dad offered it to me.  They said my brother didn’t want it anymore, and I had the damned thing in my car faster than you could fart!

Well, once I got it home, I put it on the coffee table, and it lived there for two weeks!

Two weeks!

Before I got my arse into gear and did some serious research on just what made a terrarium work its jungle magic in that special way where I put it together and it took care of itself… and you know, it didn’t take me long to find a place around Brisbane where they fitted terrariums.  And just last week, I was off in my Little Green Machine (aka: my car) to the other side of town using the GPS to find the place and get the cork for it.  It was fantastic!  I met the lady, also had a terrarium, and she showed me hers; which was heading towards 40 years old and it still had the same plants in it that she had put into it all those years ago.  How cool is that?

Well, that afternoon, I was off to Bunnings (a huge gardening store here) and I found all the elements that were going to make my empty, sad-looking terrarium live again.

When I got home, I unpacked the car, washed out the terrarium with dishwashing liquid and wiped it out.  Then, following the instructions I wrote out from the net, I put in the gorgeous stones I had bought, put in charcoal, sphagnum moss and then the potting mix! 

What a mess I made!  But it was so much fun!

The plants were next… and they were gorgeous little leafy things and looked like plastic, but I love putting them in.  And then?  It was time to decorate.  I found the stuff I had bought for the fishies when I had them last year or so, scrubbed them with a toothbrush until the colour was back on them, and rinsed them off.  Then, I found some shells, stones and a large shell I had bought down the coast at Brunswick Heads.  I spent around two hours working and working how everything was going to look before getting the spray bottle and misting it all to start the process of being its own ecosystem. 

I couldn’t stop looking at it last night.  I had put in a shipwreck inside the bottle and the whole thing looks like it’s in its own little world. 

But I have found I have brought the bottle back to life in a way… it was a live way back in the 1960’s and 1970’s in my Uncle Allan’s time, it died when he put it outside into his garden and had been lying dormant for all this time…

Lying there waiting for somebody to help it,

… assist it …

…bring it back to life, just as a Phoenix never dies, neither does a terrarium.  It may lay dormant, but it doesn’t really die.

Shotgun Promise

I was twelve when I made the promise – the vow – to carry on the family name; the business of tracking down and killing evil.

I didn’t know what it meant to do that.

Not really.

Dad just gave me a BB Gun and told me to promise to do it… to fill his shoes when the time came.  My brother had made this promise to him – as had my Mum and now, it was my turn.

To me, the Shotgun Promise wasn’t really anything to take seriously; as I didn’t like firearms.  I hated killing anything.  I hated taking aim, carefully moving with that animal and pulling the trigger; but Dad had been teaching me to shoot a gun since I was around five years old.

And in this day and age, you had to learn young.

After all the apocalypse had arrived by the time I was fifteen, and it was kill or be killed… and I had to make sure my friends were safe.  It was my duty to go out and check on them one by one at their houses every day and know they were still here with us… collect them together and work them as a group to keep us living; to combat the growing number of demons that were now walking the planet.

I know it’s a big responsibility to have a teenager to go out and take care of people who refuse to leave their homes… but I understand why they want to stay in them. 

They feel safe.

They want to have a sense of normality around them.

Their stuff is in that house; and they feel close to that stuff.

So… who am I to tell them to get out of there and live in a shitty old library where there’s no heating, no air-conditioning, not showers or toilets, no place to sleep and hardly anyone to talk to? 

Yeah, I’m in no position to order them around… but Dad told me to always pack light and be ready to move.  And so my brother and I have always been the new kids in school, the new kids around the neighbourhood, the kids who carried knives and holy water, who excelled in Latin, Gaelic and could read any dead language you stuck in front of us. 

We were the kids who had no permanent friends simply because we never stayed in a place long enough to make the certain connection with people… no matter where we moved, I couldn’t have a best friend for long before Mum and Dad moved us on.  My brother couldn’t have a girlfriend, go to a school dance, give a girl a Promise Ring or enjoy a long-term relationship simply because of Dad’s job… and that’s not the worst of it all.

We weren’t allowed to tell anyone exactly what Dad did as a job.  As far as anyone knew, he was a salesman.  Of what?  Well, name it and he can sell it.  However, a good salesman doesn’t move fifteen times a year and yanks his kids out of school to follow the next job around… instead he tries to keep that job he has.  So, when my brother and I attended five schools in one year, Mum sat Dad down and suggested we started learning from home instead; as it was beginning to look suspicious to the government.

By the time I was seventeen, Mum was dead.  A demon had possessed her on the way home from a job and Dad tried to exorcise it but failed.  It shattered him to shoot her, but he didn’t want his wife being ridden by this bastard until she was dead inside. 

We packed the truck quickly that night and left the rented house and got as far away from the area as possible… but Dad took us back to our home town.  He said if the shit was going to hit the fan big, it was going to back at home…

I didn’t believe him, but I went along with him anyway.

And it wasn’t until we arrived back at our house that my brother and I both knew the game was up.  The shit was going to hit the fan – and hit it fast. 

“Alright boys, time to get out.” Its gravelly voice muttered from Dad’s mouth.

“Crap!” My brother shuffled out of the car as I climbed out as well, grabbing the gun from under the seat.  The gun I had hidden there with special rounds I had been working on for an occasion such as this.  These rounds didn’t have salt inside them.  They weren’t made of silver.  They had a Devil’s Trap carved into the side of them… put there when I made them with the die I had designed just for this particular type of occasion. 

I picked up the gun, closed the door to the truck as Dad rounded the front, pointed at his head and...

I didn’t hear the shot…

I didn’t feel the recoil…

I didn’t feel anything… as the shell of my father hit the ground and demon shattered and sputtered out within him, going back to hell.

“Hey!” my brother shouted, “You bitch!  He was going to save us!”

I turned to him as I watched his eyes turn from blue to black to red, and I knew I had nothing to lose – well, except maybe my life and soul.  But I had a promise to keep.

Whether I lived to see through that promise?  Well, that was going to be something else altogether.  I turned the gun on my brother… then… looked around as a sea of black eyes turned toward me.

Unrequited Love

He was cheating on her.

She could tell… the late nights home… the mysteriously high credit card bills…

It was time to get her own back.

Erin had planned this night to the tiniest detail.  The meal was cooked, she added in her own spices… and she waited until he arrived home.  She had eaten early and wanted to ‘entertain’ him. 

A knock at the front door made her wonder… did he forget his key?  On opening the door, the police stood there to deliver the news about his accident.  They handed her a small ring box...

...a diamond ring within.