Creepy - Lacerated Enlightenment

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

What are the odds?***Written by: Clarissa Thomas***Bonus Episode: "Bessie's Lament" Written by: Jay Seate and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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slash creepypod. Now, this is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications

is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents Lacerated Enlightenment. Written by Claire Thomas. I found that we often confuse improbable and impossible. It was improbable when a man,

A man blinded by Shrapnel had his sight restored half a century later by a swift kick from a horse. Yet, it happened. It was improbable when a young girl named Laura Buxton released a balloon that traveled 140 miles to reach the hands of another Laura Buxton of almost the same age. And while you probably don't spend much time worrying about meeting your end by rolling off your bed in your sleep, 450 tip off their mattresses and never wake up every year. The thing is, given time, everything happens, making what could have once seemed impossible, merely unlikely.

Our perceptions of what's possible is colored by our circumstances, our experiences. If you tried to explain the internet or space travel to an 1800s, newsboy, the word impossible would likely escape his lips, if he could control his laughter long enough to form it. Yet, we can all go to Google and find out more than we'd ever care to know about Apollo 11. And as I share Vincent's tale with you, I ask you to bear in mind, the improbable can seem impossible until it happens to you. The water of the pond was suspiciously serene. No energizing breath of spring air creating supple waves, no gliding coy breaking the pristinely murky surface of the water.

Vincent's amber eyes pensively examined his reflection, entirely nude and entirely unashamed. His index finger traced along the darkened motif that made its way across his torso. Voltaic tingling burrowed deep into his chest, as he caressed a feathery tendril, of rougeed flesh that began by his left clavicle and twisted around his sternum to reach his opposite hip bone. No artist could rival this mark. This stunning ideogram, he thought to himself

as the wind picked up around him. No hint of the other brands had lasted beyond a couple of days, but this masterpiece had remained with him for weeks. Maybe this one would stay. He longed for this one to stay. With a charing blazed arrival the one that had made its way through his body to create it. It felt to Vincent like Eon surpassed since he'd been typical, perhaps even underwhelming. A college dropout who worked from home as a customer service representative for a budget cell phone service. He'd been better suited for the position than most. with the patience and eldest of four children has instilled at a young age

and a pillowy pacifying tone. He'd often invoked memories and irate callers of their father soothing them in their tender years. He'd been the kind of man who volunteered at the local animal shelter a few times a year and always brought a bag for litter on his weekend hikes. Who did his best to live his life by his personal morals and values, while wondering if he'd been meant for something bigger. But he wasn't that man anymore. He was new.

He was evolved. The chance of being struck by lightning twice is something akin to one in nine million, as it first hits the ear, underwhelming odds to say the least. Upon uncovering this particular statistic years prior, however, Vincent had been reminded of a decade-gone-failed attempt to charm his then-girlfriend into skydiving.

Their second anniversary had been a few weeks out, and he thought it would be the perfect adrenaline-filled endeavor for them to recall in their nursing home 50 years later. Melinda, a willowy brunette with steel eyes and stiletto wit, had shot the idea down with no hint of hesitation. But it's perfectly safe, Vincent had crooned. He'd even had the statistic ready, anticipating resistance from his cautious, pragmatic lover, before he'd even made the suggestion. One in 167,000.

That was the likelihood of one of them falling from the sky and their parachutes failing to open. Their descent to the pines and dirt, leaving their shattered corpse limbs akimbo for the search party to find. one six seven and all of those zeros trailing. His flippant lull had made him more than obvious that he found this probability minuscule, negligible, not even worth considering. Melinda's stonily resolved, bordering on snarky response, was something that had embedded itself in his mind,

a fly that still remained in the widow web of his subconscious. Only one in 167,000, huh? But that doesn't really make the one any less dead, does it? Vincent hadn't had much to say to that, naked at the quiet water's edge, admiring the aftermath of the fifth time a heaven-sent bolt passed through him. He imagined he'd now have even less. He'd earned the cane that rested against the nearby Cyprus from the first incident. On that evening of the first blitzing blast, he'd simply stepped outside to save the geraniums he kept potted on his deck from the beating stream of downpour that threatened to rip their petals from the safety of their pedicles and shred their leaves to oblivion.

After a chaotic ambulance ride to the local hospital, during which Vincent struggled to answer questions while in a giggling, giddy days, he'd learned from the attending physician and an illuminated radiograph. that lightning can break bone. To be fair, he'd never thought to wonder before that day, but the electrons shifting through his body had realigned fibers in his tibia, and the voltage contracted them and created a fracture that radiated towards his knee. The delicate tissues around the bone had suffered more harshly, the tendons and ligaments having torn in the shock. The doctor reassured him that he needed to be able to be.

nothing beyond rest and good spirits to make a timely recovery. And Vincent was sent on his way with pink pain pills and broad-spectrum antibiotics to prevent his seared shoulder from festering. While recovering at home after his release from the hospital, Vincent had become understandably intrigued by his near-death experience. His inquisitive interest and some time with his aces had left him almost disappointed to discover that surviving a lightning strike was, in fact, less near-death experience, and more vaguely tangential to death but missed the exit by Miles experience.

A measly one in ten people struck by lightning end up six feet under the earth, and the other 90% remain walking at a lifetime later. But that doesn't really make the one any less dead, does it? Still, his obvious preference was to reside among the latter. even if the walking was now aided and arduous. He could get around without his cane, but walks of much distance left him with sharp aches if he didn't use it to bear some of the weight on his left side.

And while he'd never admitted out loud, he had loved the gap-faced astonishment that transformed the face of any uncouth passer-by at the store or on the street when he answered their intrusive inquiry as to what a man so young and fit was doing with a walking stick. His newfound fascination with lightning and electricity was, for lack of a less ironic term,

enlightening. It was a reminder to Vincent how much he didn't even know that he didn't know about the world around him. He'd never even thought to wonder what electricity fundamentally was, but he became something of a buff on the physics and chemistry behind the power, the manner in which those teensy negative subatomic particles called electrons flow from one atom to another, ousted from their mystifyingly minuscule home to one adjacent. And Vincent was fortunate.

There was no reason to repudiate that many got off with worse than a bum leg, as many survivor accounts he perused told of those with less luck. For example, he read of a man who found himself no longer able to understand or express himself in penned language, needing to be reeducated on the fine arts of reading and writing. More commonly suffered by those struck were severe memory slips, an inability to concentrate, or, and Vincent found this most unnerving, the survivor just no longer having the warmth and charisma they'd once possessed. They would seem to those around them to no longer be the person with whom they'd spent many intimate moments.

A father, who once delighted in tea parties with his daughter, would become a barfly who only went home to shower and ship. Or a devout minister would leave the church and become a professional gambler. Vincent was indeed unscathed by comparison to these poor souls, only having a limp to show for his misfortune. The second time came the following year, The result of a sudden spring storm the local Gazette and newscasters had failed to predict. Vincent had ventured onto the lake in his weather-worn bass boat, bait and pole at the ready.

Not an hour had passed before the sky turned threatening, and his eardrums were invaded by the first plinks of raindrops hitting the now-wind rocky water. Vincent was making his way back to shore when he felt a familiar tingling and saw that the follicles on his arms had turned upright. He had braced himself to once again feel Zeus's fist pummel him into momentary paralysis and full-bodied subatomic agony. This time, his shoulder had taken the brunt of the blast, so he had to type with one hand as the other was held up in a sling. One in nine million, he'd read, scrolling the internet as he recuperated.

Remarkable by any standards, certainly. With the world's current population, nearly a thousand could expect this seemingly impossible accident to happen not once, but twice. Isn't there even an expression about that? But Vincent learned that not only can lightning strike the same place or person twice, that's not even where the odd odds end. A suggested question that appeared as a suggested question that appeared as, clacked his query into his computer's keyboard was,

What are the odds of being struck by lightning seven times? Interestingly specific, Vincent had mused, but his curiosity was undeniably peaked. With a click of his mouse, answers glowed on the screen in front of him. A name was sprinkled amongst the black and white of his results, and he clicked on the top of the article. Jack Sanders,

A firefighter from Nebraska, had been struck by lightning on an astoundingly unprecedented seven separate occasions before his death. Vincent's eyes had almost made their way out of his skull as he read the man's myth-worthy tale. Twice had been plenty for Vincent, and he didn't want to imagine the brand of constant caution with which Jack must have lived his life. One may have expected Vincent to begin trembling at even a hushed whisper suggesting accumulinal nimbus, or to stay housebound as a modern-day Miss Havisham,

minus the wedding gown. But he carried on as normal, the thought of a third incident being nothing beyond a barely comprehensible unlikelyhood. After all, Jack Sanders' aside, what were the odds? But that doesn't really make the one any less dead, does it? After the third strike, it was no longer the errant erroneous sensation of falling that would startle Vincent awake as he dropped into a dose, as it was with most. Rather, that primal fear seemed to have been overthrown by a new threat, his glitching brain

deemed more worthy. As his mind sunk into the blackness, a phantom tingle would charge his skin, and he be jolted awake by imaginings of his hairs on his arms standing on end. He'd breathe heavily and tell his muscles to relax, as the impact they were bracing for was not coming. At this point, people rarely asked about his cane. The town Vincent lived in lacked the population required for a man thrice throttled by bolts from the troposphere to go unknown and unrecognized.

Cupped whispers, and thinly to not at all, veiled stairs, plagued Vincent when he ventured to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for Alfredo Florentine, or to the post office to restock on stamps. If precipitation was in the forecast, Vincent stayed home. But it wasn't hard for him to imagine that they would give him a wide birth if he made an appearance on some storm-sunk day. He had no neighbors within a mile of his house, but he pondered whether, had any been closer, their homes would have found themselves on the market. And then came the fourth,

a few months shy of the sixth anniversary of his first emergency room expedition. Not a single drop of rain had yet fallen from the sky, when a boom was almost instantaneously followed by a transformer near his front yard sizzling and sparking, arching its path into Vincent's vulnerable stomach. Oh, that fantastic faded free fall into nothingness for all but a moment. Infinite needle pricks making every cell of his mortal dermis vibrate with electrical excitement. He collapsed onto the still dry grass, convulsions thrashing his body as pulses of white light clouded his vision.

When his body stilled and his sight cleared, he remained on his back as the first splatters fell from the clouds onto his face. Steering up, eyes huge and unblinking. He passively wiped a string of drool that had formed from the corner of his mouth to hang down his cheek. He listened, not to the rain, not to the thunder, but to the microscopic zaps and crackles within himself. He could hear every neural synapse firing, every energy potential shifting. When he was ready to stand, he could hear current that traveled from his brain down to his muscles and knew that every electron in his atoms was replaced by those of the omnipotent sky static. This time, the sight of the pink fern leaf cracks left on his flesh had gripped him with such magnetism.

That hours passed as he looked down at his lower abdomen, his skin dimpling as he pressed his fingertips into every itty, bitty, wavy branch. They stretched across his abdominal muscles, making Vincent think of a new mother's stretch marks and ponder births. And to him, that seemed perfectly fitting. During one of his obsessive midnight research athons that had followed the second strike, Vincent had read of an orthopedic surgeon who was hit by lightning while making a call on a payphone to his mother. Prior to this, the good doctor had never read a single note of music.

What's more? It had never even occurred to him to try. But after the foreign electrons surged through him, when he slumbered, he dreamt of nothing beyond sitting on the bench of a Steinway concert grand in front of thousands of eager patrons. of letting his fingers tiptoe and sashay roll and rumble along the immaculate keys, of teasing the audience with quiet staccatoes and exciting them with roaring crescendos. This man became a rare example of dreams, quite literally coming true. He became a pianist and composer of skill and talent rarely attained by even lifelong musicians in scarcely more than a decade.

and the word savant was thrown around in more than a few articles about the prodigious performer. After the fourth strike, Vincent dreamt as well. He dreamt of the search engine suggestion switching from seven to eight, of his name being the one stamped in black into crisp novel pages in the World Wide Web. There would be interviews, movies. The book of world records would be at his door. fawning over his unique brand of vigor and virility. He could even write an autobiography of the man who tamed the firebolts from above.

They were a part of him, had claimed him. Whether he was the lion to the tamer or the reverse, he was unsure. He only knew they now belonged to each other. His job became a wisp of something that was almost a memory. his phone dead for days. Although he was positive that he, although he was positive that if he needed it, concentration and a touch of his ever-changing hand would bring it back to usefulness. He stayed seated on a dining-room chair he'd pulled to a westward-facing window,

waiting to feel the pressure drop in the air around him, and the puffs moving across the sun to turn flat in ashen. He ate little, and the once talented cook consumed only what could be prepared with a sturdy can opener and a microwave. Dishes stacked in the sink. He hadn't time for things as trivial as scrubbing and rinsing plates and forks. His teeth went unbrushed, his clothing unchanged. He needed to be prepared, ever ready at the window for the first sign of his electric accomplices return. His patience never waned, for he knew.

It was within his very cells, down to his atoms, in every blink of his eye and every beat of his heart. It wanted more of him, and he of it. No one came to check on Vincent. He had read that Jack Sanders had been devastated when those around him became nervous by his presence, most hastily turning the other direction to not risk being too near him should the lightning decide to lap at him that day. Vincent imagined Jack's socialization hadn't improved

when he claimed that the clouds would chase him to ensure they got a taste of him. The fireman's wife being struck on a previously sunny day as he helped her hang laundry had undoubtedly failed to throw water on that fire. Vincent imagined he too. was something of a pariah, but now lacked the interest in leaving his home to be certain. The dirty dishes spread their way along the countertops,

and Vincent's eyes grew hollow and ringed as he waited. Finally the day came. He was at his station by the window, watching the clouds roll in as the first water drops hit the panes and slithered down the glass. He yanked off his pants, having been badly burnt by the metal of the buttons and zipper in the other strikes and flew out into the damp chilled air. He stretched his arms heavenward and leaned his head back,

waiting for a nearby crackle that would precede the searing spirals of voltage into his eager vessel. He stood as the drizzle turned to a pore, as the sky grew dark with night rather than clouds. He stood. Soaked and shivering, as every boom and flash arrived and left him untouched. He stood, arms now lowered, even as the sun came up to cast the atmosphere in Vermillion. But as the sky cleared, Vincent's demeanor soiled. He stomped his filthy feet back into his house, his left legs stiff from being stationary all night.

He pounded muddy footprints into the carpet. bits of his living and dining rooms, making large circles through the lower floor of his home. The only time he stopped was to send a series of plates and bowls shattering to the kitchen floor with one swift swoop of his arm. Why hadn't it struck him? He'd only been hit four times. It had come for that coward jack seven. And that fool had no grasp of what the power could do for him if he had only let it. That visionless weakling had a fixed no less than 12 lightning rods to his mobile home. Twelve!

And there Vincent was, ready and willing to take what it wanted to give, and it passed over him! On his next rampage through the kitchen, he felt shards of ceramic and glass enter the crusty souls of his feet, but his pacing didn't falter as the dirt on the floor. mixed with blood. The lightning had followed Jack as he tried to escape, chased him down like a crazed lover, and for what? It never had him. Even after seven strikes, it never had him the way it had Vincent.

They were supposed to be partners. It lived within him, and he was a welcoming host. No, this wasn't right. It couldn't shun him this way. Then, the gifted electrons in his gray matter world, and he knew. He should have seen it. This was a test. Jack hadn't had them meddle to take what lightning wanted to give him.

He'd put a 22-caliber bullet into his blessed brain to escape it. The bolts didn't want to waste their efforts, their magic on another man who would die, his shoe what they were offering him. Vincent just needed to prove that he was willing, worthy. Then he would get his headlines, his notoriety. He would have his prestige. Vincent planned as his frame grew gone, plotted as acne sprouted onto his uncleaned skin.

As he began taking his truck on night shielded missions to the local junkyard, he would distinctly notice aches in his plaque-crusted teeth. teeth. But none of that mattered. He could still hear the crackles and sparks down in his cells, and that was the only part of himself he was concerned with keeping vibrant. He'd bring his loads of wood and scrap back from the dump night after night and work throughout the days, sawing, hammering, drilling, determination to be ready for the next storm evicted his need for sleep. After a week of work, He passively wondered if anyone could see the structure behind his two-story home from the street yet, but with the vague, lazy interest with which one might wonder how high school acquaintance is doing this day.

Another week passed, and he was ready. Hands on his hips and caked with sweat and grime. He looked up and admired his efforts. The top was not done like his deck, flat and surrounded by rails and posts. It was raised up to the top of the tree. with layers of boards laid on top of each other and makeshift palates. The structure was not conventionally beautiful. The wood mismatched and the stairs uneven.

But it was towering, and it was sturdy. This was all Vincent required of it, and the corners of his mouth almost twitched into a smile. It turned out he'd finished just in time. Two nights passed before he was awoken by a soft rumble. followed several seconds later by a blazing zigzag miles off. He grabbed a foot-long piece of galvanized steel pipe. He scooped up at the junkyard and made his way up his looming tower

as quickly as the uneven stairs would allow. When he stepped down to the rickety platform at the top, he looked down at the tops of the oaks and maples. He started counting the seconds between booms and bolts. It was getting closer. when almost no time was passing between them. Vincent held the pipe with both hands as high as he could. In his imagination, the strike had always come the moment he raised his conductor.

But that did not happen. His arms grew shaky from the weight in his malnourished arms as the wind whipped around him and the rain stung his face. For the first time, he wondered if his efforts would go unnoticed. The storm came and went, as did many others. With every single one, he'd make his way out to his ramshackle altar and hold his metal offering to the clouds preparing for a blow. It didn't come.

But Vincent never lost faith. He knew his trial was designed to cement his bond with the storms, and he would try as long as it took. Fall past, and with it went to lightning. hibernating along with the bats and the bears. And he waited. Waited at that westward window in case of an off-season downpour, dozing upright and leaving only for off-hour grocery runs for canned food.

The minuscule cost of black beans and chickpeas left his credit card from maxing out in spite of his lack of income. But the snow came and went. The grizzlies awake. And the rains return. The lilies were blooming, and the robins had nested when Vincent got his fifth strike. Much like the last time, he crumpled to his back and thrashed. He planned for that, though, and the railing posts and ballisters kept him from falling roughly five stories to his death.

This time, this time when the season stopped, Vincent could hear the sizzling hum of the improved electrons throughout his corpus even more clearly. but he wasn't sure if that was because he had grown louder, or if it was because that was now all he was able to hear. Somehow, in his hours upon days of constantly questing for statistics and stories of the natural phenomenon that had overtaken his life, he'd never read of the one in 30,600 chance an average individual has of their tympanic membrane being ruptured by a zap of lightning. But that doesn't really make the one any less deaf, does it?

He'd had to sit and scoot his way down the stairs, not trusting his problem limb in this precarious descent. He could feel his heels hitting the steps, but there was no thud. He could see the raindrops hitting the ground, but there was no plink. But that made sense. The lightning wanted to make sure his promises of sacrifice were sincere,

his devotion all encompassing, that he was willing to give and not just receive. That night when he slept, Jack Sanders was still on his mind. His subconscious reeled images of a tombstone with a gale pounding down around the synthetically green earth. The thunder quaked the ground and the soil agitated away until a casket that had been feet under the earth was exposed. Electricity shot up from the coffin and into the sky, lighting the entire cemetery like a nuclear blast.

Indian Cave State Park, Nebraska was two days' drive from Vincent's house. Three, if he stopped to sleep. But that wasn't really relevant anymore. He set out when it was black and there were no other cars cruising the streets. It could have been midnight, or the sun could have been about to rise. It didn't matter, but he needed gas. He would take an exit and find a station with a nearly empty lot and pay it with a card. He had to watch for the numbers on the pump screen to stop going up to know when his tank was filled,

since he couldn't hear the click when the nozzle would stop its flow. He couldn't listen to the radio, or even the sound of the breeze passing his open window. It was just Vincent, and the buzzing of the electricity stored within his head. him. The wind was thick, and humidity hung in the air like a musty shawl when he drove his truck through the gates of St. Darrowhine Cemetery. The car path curved towards the back, and he tensed as he waited to spot a service in session or visitors walking among the headstones. But he didn't. He was alone. Just him, Jack, and the other corpses resting in the ground. And that was Vincent's ideal. As he knew.

knew he'd be awfully easy to sneak up on now that his ears were strictly ornamental. He parked his Chevy as far away from the entrance gates as he could, walking amongst the headstones. Vincent Moldover asking the lightning to take him whenever his time came, after he'd been struck three more times and he'd grown old, when the thrill of fame and fortune had worn off. After all, it truly was one of the more interesting ways to die. The odds were only one in 281,000.

Oh, the headlines. World record holder for most lightning strikes killed by one last bolt. No one would ever forget his name. Vincent eyed Jack's grave marker, whose epitaph read, We are eternal beings, having a temporary human existence. And it was clear. Vincent knew why the lightning had wanted him here

for the sixth strike. Jack needed to know what he'd lost, what he could have had if he'd only trusted, if he'd embraced the blasts rather than evaded them. Jack doomed himself to forever be nothing more than human, rotting in the earth. But Vincent would transcend. Vincent slept in his truck, concealed by an old mausoleum in a corner of the cemetery that seemed to have little traffic. The tombstones had death dates exceeding a hundred years, and there were no flowers or decorations that adorn them. He ate cans of tuna and beans he'd packed for his journey. A storm would come for him soon. He had no doubt. He only had to wait six days for his electric overlord to rumble its way towards him as he admired his markings in the cemetery pond's

reflection. And that's where this story began in the quintessential calm before the storm. Moments later, the wind whipped up around him, cracking branches on the cypress that supported his cane. The light shown the atmosphere was almost perfectly in sync with a coordinating thunder that he could feel but not here when he dove naked into the now rippling water. He was positive, the current would momentarily grasp onto his molecules once again. I would be a fool not to acknowledge the improbability of Vincent's journey. The impossibly slim odds of a man struck by lightning five times diving nude into a graveyard's co-pond in an attempt to acquire a sixth.

How unlikely his mission went unnoticed and uninterrupted. How hard it would be to believe that a sixth strike would find him. am here that day. One in hundreds of trillions is likely on the conservative side, but that doesn't make the one any less dead. Does it? Bonus episode. Creepy Presents. Bessie's Lament, written by Jay Seat, and narrated by Danielle Hewitt. Life Asked Death. Why do people love? me, but hate you. Death responded, Because you are a beautiful lie, and I am the painful truth. Anonymous. Bessie lay a book aside and listened to the sound of her own heartbeat. She turned her head and glanced over her

shoulder, half expecting to see something awful. Why did she read such things? Wasn't the real world frightening enough? Hadn't the war's decimation of the South been enough? Thank goodness their Tennessee farm had been beyond Yankee wrath as the armies tore paths through the south, pillaging in their wake. The war might be over, but not the despicable acts of individuals. What had happened in her little farm community was yet another burden to bear. An agonizing moan rattled down the hallway and through Bessie's bedroom door. It gave her a customary chill.

Even before Clarence's stroke, whatever emotion existed between he and she was long gone, dead and cold. He had been too old to defend the Confederacy. The old men stayed home and planted while the young men went off and died. An old hand was better than no hand at all, Bessie thought at first. But Clarence was not much of a companion. His imagination never took flight. Bessie had long since turned to fanciful tales.

The darker, the more enticing. She knew enough about human nature to know her diligent. reading was an escape from the war and a less-than-exemplary marriage. The rights of courtship so faded by time she could barely remember Clarence's attempts at wooing her. And now, he was an invalid, a sad ending to a less than scintillating couple, which had borne no children, practically a sin in their rural southern setting. Creek. Bessie sat up in bed. The sound accelerated her pulse. Was it the house still settling and shifting after nearly? 50 years of occupancy? Or did she have an intruder? Had the sound come from outside or inside?

She cocked her head and listened. Could someone or something be listening back? She might be getting old, but she wasn't scatterbrained. She had heard something out of the ordinary. She slipped out of bed and padded across the creaking floor to a curtained window. Bord's groaned beneath her feet as she peeked out. Nothing was visible except the faint outlines of familiar shapes, still and dormant. Branches swayed in a light breeze. There was the hoot of a distant owl, the rustle of dead leaves, nothing unusual. But when she was a little girl, such sight often caused distress. Was there a presence out there among the trees? Limbs could turn into arms and big rocks could become hulking monsters or tortured souls demanding some kind of reckoning with the living.

Her grandfather supposedly had the gift of sight. He used to tell her the countryside was rife with ghosts, shapeshifters, and even the undead. Maybe it was his way of scaring kids into their houses at night, but she had never forgotten, nor totally lost her fear of what could come in darkness. Even now, toward the end of her fifth decade upon this troubled earth, if she looked carefully. She believed she could see shapes flitting between the trees. Ghosts, goblins, the walking dead, whatever her imagination might conjure. But it hadn't been phantoms that killed Daisy Cox. Rumors were going around that she'd been cut up, certain parts removed, and on top of everything else, gutted. The local investigation was about as tight as a sieve.

Bessie had shivered when Gladys Brown whispered the gory gossip prior to Daisy's burial. It made her think of the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Oh, yes, Bessie knew about good old Edgar and his tales of horror. Books were only one of two luxuries Clarence had ever allowed her. Mercifully, she had acquired them before hostilities interfered with commerce. She might be a simple country woman, but she was well read. Skull Duggery sustained her through uncountable nights of rural humdrum. In spite of war atrocities, that must certainly have occurred,

Bessie couldn't imagine anyone doing to a human being what had been reportedly done to Daisy. She had been feisty and independent-minded, but sweet nonetheless. Could those frivolous traits have been motive for someone to kill her? Most likely it was some drifter or some riffraff from a larger place who dropped this real-life murder mystery practically in Bessie's own backyard. I heard it'll be a closed casket, the poor thing, Gladys had said. Bessie would rather have been reading than hearing such prattle at her kitchen table, but she dutifully listened before making the excuse that she had to check on Clarence

and try to coke some soup down his gullet. Poor Bessie. Always the dutiful wife. Well, you take care of your man. Hopefully he won't linger on and suffer till kingdom come the way my poor Harold did. He wanted so to do. go valiantly and with honor. A veil of tears is what it was. There were women who liked to wallow in suffering, beyond what all of them had suffered. Gladys was one of those women. Daisy had indeed

had a closed casket. A core of community farmers and merchants stood by patiently over the hollowed ground where generations of locals had been planted below the earth after leading humble, honest lives. The smoky mountains as a backdrop. Bessie attended the service. Even though she'd never cottoned much to Daisy's frivolous nature, it was the proper thing to do. Her reverie returned from thoughts about Gladys's sing-song voice and funerals, to the shapes that steadfastly resided in her yard. The light breeze ceased, the owl quieted. All was as still as death over the countryside.

It was an eerie stillness for within the scene's normalcy. She heard something that bore the quality of her frightening stories. a squeak that could be a door opening. She would have to search the house. She walked from the window to her bedroom door, the boards again protesting under her weight. She eased the chair from under the doorknob, a precaution she'd taken up ever since Daisy's murder.

A perpetrator was still on the loose, and she had little confidence in the local law enforcement. Sheriff Barnard was good at cards, but little else. If Clarence hadn't become an invalid due to his stroke, she would insist he plod through the house with his pit. pistol. Foolish old woman, he probably would have said. What defenses did she have? An older woman in a house too big to tend properly. Her mind began to fantasize. She couldn't shut out the story of Johnny Lowville's return from the distant battlefield, too badly wounded to rejoin his regimen, and sent home to die,

which he did shortly after his return. Rumors abounded that Johnny became something evil. Something that caused his father to blow off the poor boy's head before they could get his body into the ground. There were other dreadful stories of dead soldiers rising up from battle and searching out the living. But these were stories Bessie didn't care to hear. The ugliness of the war in its aftermath had perhaps added to her fixation with lurid readings. She shook her head as as if to clear out the cobwebs of rumored events and began to check the house. She opened her bedroom door and peered into the hallway. Clarence had his own room down the hall. no reason to change accommodations after all these years.

Although he could no longer manage getting into the privy on his own, he remained somewhat mobile, usually when Bessie didn't want him to be. He'd crawl out of bed a couple times when she was in the throes of a story and managed to scratch at her bedroom door scaring the living daylights out of her. He couldn't speak. Only move his jaws pathetically in that helpless way of stroke patients. Bessie patted barefoot down to his door.

and turn the knob. There he lay, the jaw working up and down trying to utter something, or just dreaming the dreams of those lost in some world between this one and the next. The air seemed to thicken with the atmosphere of a sick room. She walked to his window and peered out over the landscape. It reminded her of how isolated she was. On the outer window-sill, a fallen leaf was snagged. It was brown and gnarled, curled upon itself like a crunchy dead creature.

It gave her a start. A reminder that death was all around. Clarence's breathing was too shallow to make noise. The only audible sound was the thumping in Bessie's chest. She re-entered the hallway and quietly walked into the main room. The air there was cooler than the rest of the house. Only one reason for that. Something was open.

Yes, she and Clarence were not alone in the house. She felt her pulse quicken. and wondered if someone or some thing could be hiding along a wall just out of sight, some giggling thing which would reach out and grab a hold of her ankle when the time was right. Another creek. Within the room was a sense of foreboding. Like when entering an unfamiliar place as a child, she could feel a force that seemed to be all around her,

dark secrets clinging to every corner. She felt a cold spot where her heart was supposed to be when she saw that the front door was slightly ajar. She sought the courage to reach for an oil lamp, but it eluded her. She was too afraid that something cold and slimy would reach back. She felt trapped, her with a husband who's already at death's doorstep.

Then Bessie saw the dark shape that stood next to the open door. At the final stage of desolation, she gasped. Bile rose in her throat, as she put one hand to her mouth, to halt a scream. The shape moved and revealed the faint light from an oil lamp hidden behind its form. Then fingers grasped hold of its stem and turned the flickering wick higher, until its intruding possessor's face became recognizable. Nothing supernatural stood before Bessie. Gladys? Bessie placed her hands against her chest. What are you doing here? It's the middle of the

Night. There's going to be another murder tonight. Gladys answered calmly. I didn't hear your buggy. I walked. Why on earth? What in the world has gotten into you? Let me get you a glass of warm milk. Bessie found a match and lit a second lamp. Gladys followed Bessie into the house's kitchen, but she didn't take her usual seat of the table. She stood. Her eyes riveted on the hostess. You look like you've seen a ghost. You must calm yourself, Bessie advised. Think I'm losing my marbles, do you? Gladys said. She fished around in a pocket of her man-style trousers until her fingers found a chain with a locket. Does this belong to you? Or Daisy? Bessie glared back, not knowing what to say. Think I didn't know about you and Daisy

diddle in my poor Howard before he got sick? That man never did have a mind of his own. chasing tramps till the day he couldn't get out of his own bed. Bessie looked at Gladys incredulously. You're just confused. Sit down now and let me... What was Gladys reaching for in a back pocket? Was it a weapon? Bessie held her breath as Gladys set her lamp on the table.

In the eerie glow, she looked like a wraith back from the netherworld in search of some ill-conceived sense of justice. Any modicum of southern charm she may have possessed, long removed. The shriek of a madwoman exploded through the stillness. Gladys launched herself toward Bessie, arm raised, and mouth opened in a snarl. Bessie took a step back, but not quickly enough. The blade slashed through her nightgown and caught the meaty part of her upper arm. Hot pain.

She maneuvered to the far side of her kitchen table while Gladys raised the knife, poised to strike again. The two women danced around the table in the meager light like it was a child's game of musical chairs. In Gladys's eyes, Bessie saw a window into a world that frightened her to her core. Gladys's teeth were clinched, like she was going to break enamel. The cords in her neck stood out. She had transformed from a gossipy frump to talisman in a psychotic scheme for vengeance. Suspicion, jealousy, grief, anger.

Sprinkle them with a healthy dose of dementia, and you've got to kill a recipe. Gladys's desire for revenge, the grappling hook on which she now clung, dismissed any attempt to reason with her. Like Stonewall Jackson's severed leg, sanity was far too removed from the body to be useful. Gladys was circling. Do you want to hear the scary part, Bessie? She asked as if going into a trance. The scariest part? Bessie didn't want to hear the scary part, not tonight, not ever.

Her only concern was surviving the moment. It was when I took this very knife and sliced off Daisy's nose. I'd never heard anyone try to talk without a nose. Bessie didn't want to listen, but Gabby Gladys wouldn't shut up. The sound of her voice came out of the new hole in her face. She sounded like a squeaky little pig, which she was, of course. Creepy, huh, Bessie? I did the kind of work a good butcher would admire.

Gladys's eyes were wild with gleeful insanity. Cut her up, just like in that tripe you like to read. I plan on doing the same to you. Cut off your breasts and gut you like the pig you are. You should have stuck to your books. Gladys started around the table again. You might not be the last, dearie. I got it all out of him.

Gladys was leering now. Her face disfigured, a mask of hatred. Bessie thought she might start foaming at the mouth. Harold confessed. I've got a list. Now, what shall I slice off you first? What part did Harold like best? I bet I know.

Bessie couldn't think of anything to defuse the woman's rage. She turned and bolted toward the hallway. but the passage wasn't clear. Her heart leapt into her throat as a figure stood in the doorway blocking her exit. She could hear Gladys' footsteps behind her, approaching with a knife raised high, no doubt, ready to strike again. Diverting from the doorway, she darted off into the corner and then turned to defend herself from whatever might come.

A boom as loud as Gladys's shriek filled her ears. It was followed by the acrid smell of gunpowder. Gladys was no longer pursuing her. She had fallen back, a dark circle growing in the middle of her chest. An incantation of words spewed from her, scattering aimless without direction. The figure in the hall doorway was none other than Clarence. He shakily stood in his night shirt. His sunken features and bony knees gave him the appearance of something skeletal.

Gladys sprawled across the couch making strangled gasps for air. Bessie wasn't in the mood to provide her with any. The hole in her thorax was making a sucking sound. Then the sound died away into a gurgle, followed by a death rattle. The threat, Bessie assumed, was over. Clarence's arm had gone slack. The pistol lowered to the floor. His finger caught in the trigger loop. Bessie took the gun from him afraid it would discharge again accidentally. Without warning, she collapsed next to him. Gladys Brown was buried hastily only a few days after Daisy.

Her coffin would also be closed. It was felt mourner shouldn't have to be given the perverse pleasure of gazing at the corpse of a murderess. She was dropped into a hole next to Harold, who in the big calendar of time hadn't preceded her by much. Bessie didn't attend, and she wouldn't miss the sound of Gladys' hymn singing in church, which invariably drowned out the cords on the creaky old spinet. Clarence hadn't ventured from his bed since the night of the attack, not even to scratch it or door and scare the life out of her. He had weakened to the point that a wheelchair was needed.

Bessie wondered if he would ever leave the bed again, except for when she wheeled him onto the porch for cleanups beyond a spit bath or bedpan duty. The morning after Gladys' attack, Bessie's wound had been bandaged properly in town, and she had given a statement to the authorities. A deadly melee had taken place right before her eyes, but it was over now,

and she could go back to her stories in relative safety. the human killer had been dealt with, as long as the walking dead and ghosts stayed where they belonged. A true horror had sullied her little community, one which couldn't be put down to vicious rumors. She wondered if her mystery and horror tales would continue to thrill after facing her own mortality at the hands of a raving neighbor.

Bessie hadn't told anyone of Gladys' accusations, and she had retrieved the telltale locket. But within days, rumors began to spread like wildfire, with gadflies expressing both sympathy and digging for details of the attack. Country folk don't take kindly to women being unfaithful, a church good do or offered. Let them gossip. Let Sheriff Barnard figured out the motives of a woman gone insane, Bessie told herself. But she knew that eventually everything would come back to her and Harold. Could any of the dead rest in peace? Yes, she decided. She and Harold deserved to have their little secrets

themselves for eternity. Even while the war raged over the countryside, her infrequent meetings with Harold had broken the dull snoring repetition of each day being essentially the same as the one before. She had looked forward to the few stolen moments of awakened passion. Even when the time was taken away due to Harold's sickness, she had the memories with him, an escape route through her dark fiction. Was it true about Harold and Daisy and others? Bessie contemplated. Could the old toot have been a rainhard looking for vixen's? She refused to believe it. He'd told Bessie he loved her.

Bessie had lost the locket. Gladys was packing in the Brown's hayshed, where Harold had peeled her like a banana and made her the vessel of his passion for the final time they were together. Fortunately, Gladys had delivered it the night she died. Bessie was convinced she had grieved more than Gladys when Harold fell ill, and passed, because she knew he'd loved her more than his gossipy wife.

So there was truth in Gladys's ravings. But she should have been glad that someone was willing to tend to her husband's needs. He'd sworn to Bessie there hadn't been any love lost between him and Gladys for years. And now, Gladys was as dead as he was, and so was the other woman, if Gladys was to be believed. Still, Bessie trembled a tad when Sheriff Barnard and his deputy, Pierce Fike, rode up on lathered horses in front of her place two days later. Barnard had survived the war physically unscathed,

and had been appointed to his lofty position. His CSA Calvary pistol rode on his hip in a show of authority, but Bessie was unimpressed by his cavalier dash around the plain country folk. After exchanging pleasantries, Barnard said, We know Gladys was just plain logo, out of her mind, and she liked to exaggerate things. But she left a note about Harold and some other women around these parts. She claimed some of them wanted to kill her.

Your name was on that list. She wasn't exaggerating the length of the knife she stabbed me with, Bessie said, a bit indignant, lifting her arm to show off her bandage. She tried to kill me. Maybe she was just trying to scare you off, and took it further than she planned. Bessie couldn't believe what this yokel for a sheriff was saying. So you think her death was planned?

No, but it's a small community. Everyone seems to know about one other's doings. Both officers looked at Bessie. The thick-necked deputy stared at her reproachfully, implying some kind of guilt, looking through her, trying to see into her soul. Well, don't let it worry you, the sheriff finally said.

I know you've been through a lot, taking care of Clarence and all. Would you mind if I looked in on him? He's sleeping now, but he couldn't tell you anything if he was awake. You already know what happened. With Gladys, I mean. The sheriff pulled his hat back down on his forehead. We'll come back another time then.

An uncomfortable silence fell amongst the three of them. You'd tell us if Clarence was failing, wouldn't you? Barnard asked. What difference would it make to you, if you don't mind me asking? The fella in town died a few days back, and... He will. If you ain't never heard, no need to plant the evil garden now. If Clarence was ready to be called, you'd fetch the dock or load him in the wagon? I suppose I would.

See that you do. And we'll try to be considerate a Clarence. Have a pleasant day, Bessie. Bessie watched until the two men reached the end of her road. They rode, oh so slowly. It seemed to her, like they were discussing the situation. She halfway expected the sheriff to turn around and come back. What would she do if they did?

Her arms broke out in goose flesh. Might they have enough brains to figure out about her and Gladys's late husband? And why the question about Clarence's health? The conversation awoke another memory of her grandfather. Something he'd said on one of those dark and scary nights. And with a little too much liquor loosening his tongue, he'd say, error so often, an evil creeps into this valley. Who knows why or how?

But beware of the night, Missy. Beware of the evil it can bring. There were some soldiers brought back that wouldn't stay dead. After the sheriff and deputy disappeared, Bessie closed the front door behind her and bolted it with a seldom used crossbar. Twilight, deceptive in its softness, would be arriving soon.

Bessie was mentally and physically exhausted. She had planned to climb into bed with a volume of short mystery stories. She supposed she could write her own story now. It would be about a southern bell, at odds with the post-war self, and some secret mission to restore it to its former glory, with romance and daring do. But her personal story didn't have an ending yet. Might it end with an expose about her and Harold?

Or might she be a suspect in days? Daisy's death, because of that blasted list the sheriff had referred to, making everyone believe her to be some kind of fiend. She didn't like those scenarios. Within her was the gnawing, accelerating fear that something more needed to be done, further action taken. In the refuge of her bedroom, she rested her palms against her breast with the knowledge that they would never again be touched by a loving hand. For a moment, the faces of Daisy and Gladys seemed to appear above, looming over her, floating like ghosts. They didn't look like happy phantoms.

Bessie moaned. It was all going to end very badly. She had no doubt now. It was only a matter of time. Wait. Maybe there was another way to sort things out. She would have to let Clarence go. He had saved her and she had planned to keep looking after him.

But wasn't this idea a better solution, everything considered? A chance to write an ending to, a personal story that was far more interesting than waiting for their lives to play out in the expected manner. What would the rest of her life be like if none of this had happened? Taking care of Clarence until he was put in a hole and covered up. Then what? Listening for more bumps in the night? Waiting for the grandpa fueled fears of her childhood to overtake her? Marking time? Waiting to die during her own resolute march to the grave? No. Clarence would want it this way, she decided. This was better, taken from this world by her hand. A goose-down pillow held over his

face for just a few moments. This was much better. Independence Day had arrived. She felt as if she was having the vapors. Although, all of that nonsense had supposedly ended years ago. It crossed her mind, she might have to explain her actions in whatever form of afterlife there might be, but it didn't deter her. If a traditional Christian form of the pearly gates or the fires of hell existed, so be it. She reckoned that she and Gladys and Harold and Clarence and all the rest could fight it out in the ladder. Once she decided what to do, a strange quiet settled around her. She gathered up an extra pillow and headed for her husband's bedroom. I don't believe for a minute that you caroused with others.

You loved me. To the hell with Gladys and her ranting nonsense. Ghosts be damned. Her actions wouldn't take long and it seemed so rational now. The aftermath of Clarence's stroke wouldn't get him. No lingering like Harold. She'd see to it. A true act of mercy to be performed.

Then she could go on with her life. She still had enough energy for one final grand gesture in her personal mystery. She'd read enough stories. She knew what to do. Going from pacifist to defender of secrets to murderous to grave robber was quite the leap in the span of two weeks. After leaving Clarence's room, she retreated to her sanctuary and hastily dressed in black. She found what she needed in the tool shed, and drove the horse and wagon past the dark specters of the night which surround all rural homesteads. The threat of trees,

growing arms, or rocks becoming monsters wouldn't dissuade her this night. It was dark, but it wasn't a stormy night. Thank goodness for small favors. The small country cemetery was perched on a hill with mostly simple stones. It had grown little since the start of the war, for most bodies from small-town communities never made it all the way home. A few angels and lambs watched over some of the deer departed, but not many. Bessie took her shovel and walked to Gladys' fresh grave that lay next to Heralds. Exuming her was a necessary evil for an alibi.

Bessie's emotions could have been all over the map, but she didn't want to give her imagination any openings while she dug. she could not allow her mind to crumble under the weight of supernatural thoughts. Keep the door that holds back the flood of suggestion tightly shut, she advised herself. In spite of her best intentions, tricks of moonlight and shadows have a way of becoming shapeshifters lurking behind stones, where wing statues vacating their moorings and inching closer to protect the departed. The memory of that imagined, giggling thing inside of her house tickled Bessie's mind. Maybe it had patiently waited to grab her and pull her to the other

side until she exposed herself in a graveyard. Something moved. Bessie froze. A figure rose above a black headstone, its body undulated and then crawled to the side of the stone revealing its spiked pelt. It jumped down and scurried away in the dark. A gall-darned porcupine, she said with relief.

Dig, Bessie, dig. With Clarence's work gloves in the shovel, she set to her task. Two feet down the dirt clots became wet and sticky, making a mess of her boots. She had the feeling of being watched by something more than cold markers. The night itself was watching. A cool breath of wind crept across her face, the fingers of night reaching across the land to touch her.

The beating of a night bird's wings swooped somewhere in the darkness. Had this been one of her lurid stories, the wind would pick up to a nasty wine and rotting corpses would undoubtedly stir, preparing to walk about, dark and ragged figures rising from a long dark sleep. Sure enough, the breeze picked up some steam and fluted between stones, whispering a promise of creepy things to come. Don't succumb to the paranoia and crack under the strain of becoming a grave robber. She warned herself. Her mind led her back to something her grandpa had said before he passed on to the greater glory.

When I die, remember to bury me quick. The dead don't always stay dead in these parts. Everyone this side of the foothills must be buried quickly. and everyone in their community had been buried within a day of their death as far as she could remember, but she never questioned why. Women didn't question men about such matters. Whatever the rush to inter the deceased, Bessie felt certain she was the first to employ a hasty exhumation. Maybe this enterprise hadn't been such a good idea.

But the die had been cast and she wasn't about to turn tail now. Keep digging, Bessie. She finally managed to concentrate not on the repulsion of her act. but rather on the strengthening adrenaline rush that had come with taking hold of her future. Her neurotic fears crawled back into their nighttime holes. Gladys didn't belong next to Harold anyhow. In the end, he belonged to me. Bessie mumbled as the shovel finally struck wood.

She managed to spring the catches of the inexpensive wood coffin. Open sesame. There lay Gladys the shell of the woman who tried to snuff out Bessie's life. Well, old Gabby looked peaceful enough. No worse for the wear except for the gnarled dead petals of a lily pin to her dress. But Bessie hadn't come to mock. She just needed a relatively fresh body. And Gladys deserved disturbing more than Daisy.

Bessie placed a rope under Gladys' arm and tied the ends to her wagon. Hoisted from her not-so-final resting place, the corpse endured some damage as Bessie maneuvered it around various stones. But all in all, not too much indignity. Not like a tin can tied to the tail of a horse. After hauling the body to her wagon and lifting it onto the bed, she filled in the plot as good as new. Bessie pulled off Clarence's gloves inside. That wasn't so bad, she said to the refilled plot.

The aches and pains to come weren't tormenting her as yet, and she thanked her imagination for staying strong. The corpse had its final journey through Bessie's house and into her room. Bessie removed Gladys' clothes. She'd never before seen the parts of a cadaver that were hidden from the public. She vowed then and there that she would someday leave instructions to be cremated when her time came. But it wasn't Bessie who would burn this night. It was the corpses of Gladys and Clarence that would go up in flames.

She dressed the old girl in one of her nightgowns. It clung to her like a shroud, the very one in which an alive Gladys had drawn Bessie's blood. It seemed delightfully apropos. Bessie managed to prop the corpse against the bed's headboard and place one of her books on top of a layer of cotton that covered the sewn-up hole in Gladys' chest. Your remains can study one of my stories for eternity. All Bessie had left to do was wash off the evening's unholy dirt. Write the note that would say she couldn't go on with the sadness of all the community's deaths,

while the grim reaper approached her helpless clearance. She would admit to setting the fire in their bedroom. She would give them that much. She felt certain the bodies would be destroyed beyond recognition, trusting the law not to delve beyond what appeared to be the obvious. She smiled a little at the idea of Barnard and thick-necked Fike, scratching their heads and making stupid remarks at the scene. Bessie walked into the kitchen and took the family stash from a ceramic flour jar on the kitchen counter.

She would put it in the pocket of clean clothes after her bath. Her muscles were starting to bark at her. Her eyes were so tired they stung. She reached for the bottle of toque wine, saved for special occasions on an upper kitchen cabinet shelf, and poured a full glass into a tin cup. She carried it back into the bedroom and toasted Gladys. Thank you for being available, Bessie said mimicking Gladys's chirpy voice. You didn't take my life, but hopefully you will save it, dearie.

For a moment, just a moment, Bessie could swear one of Gladys's eyelids had lifted a bit and closed. She knew it was unlikely. Dead eyelids were generally sewn shut. But in the haste to plant this murderous female, Who knows what the blacksmith did or didn't do? Bessie turned away not about to let her euphoria be deterred by a dead wink. Farewell, Gladys, she said. Although she'd spent countless years under its roof, Bessie wouldn't miss the house.

Too many unmet needs and repressed desires. And now the aura of death thrummed through the place. It'd become a mausoleum rather than a home. And although slight, there was a new aroma about, something repugnant like a dead rodent decomposing within a wall. Surely Clarence wasn't becoming O'Difras so soon. Convinced she had imagined it, she needed to go get on with the night's work. Bessie carried her drink into a small room off the hallway which contained an iron bathtub

that had come all the way from St. Louis many years ago. It was the second extravagance Clarence had allowed her during their years together. She poured four buckets of fireplace heated water into the tub and peeled out of her soiled garments. The water enveloped her weary body up to her breasts. It was warm and helped dull the ache in her overworked back, knees, and arms. She'd taken a detour outside the bounds of civilized etiquette, but not so far she couldn't return somewhere else and start anew.

Characters and stories did it all the time. The only thing she feared now was letting her imagination take a hold of her before the job was complete. She could fool the humans, but please. No more specters floating above her, or wraiths, whispering imagined thoughts. No more reading for a while. She planned to fill her own lives on written pages with a bit of adventure. Even though she lived in a country that worshipped youth, maybe there was still adventure for her out there somewhere.

If she could get to a railroad station, she could buy a ticket to a big city, perhaps even a northern city where times weren't as hard. Her past had been one of passivity, pathetically mundane. Her future would be like a spring rain and fresh roses. It'd be like looking for the prize inside of a store-bought box of flower. You don't know what you're going to get until you start digging. Unless it's a graveyard, of course. She looked at the plainness of her feet resting at the far end of the tub

and remembered the stories she'd read about a woman who had the most beautiful feet, small and dainty with perfectly shaped toes. Everyone told her how they admired her pretty feet. The catch? The woman had no arms. I'm going to start painting you bright red the way city women do, Bessie told her ten toenails. I wonder if Harold would have liked that or even noticed. Someone will notice.

She welcomed this new challenge. There were some romantic tunes playing in her head. But further back in the darkest recesses of her mind, there was another tune. The old church spinet was tinkling out an old southern hymn while Gladys sung. Enough of you, Gladys, enough! buffeted by waves of possibilities. She stood up and reached around the lip of the tub for the cup of wine, resting on the pile of books. It was time to toast a new beginning, with something other than her bar of lye soap.

Bessie's foot slipped on the tub's slick surface. She desperately grabbed at the air as her legs flew out from under her, but it was too late. Her head crashed down on the edge of the iron tub as her body settled back into the water. A brilliant whiteness leapt across her world before she fell into the oblivion of a black hole. Her eyes fluttered open. Much of the water had drained down a metal pipe that led through a wall and onto Bessie's outdoor garden. Her body lay awkwardly in the tub.

She tried to sit up and found she couldn't. She tried to at least straighten her legs. She couldn't do that either. She felt nothing except a dull pounding in her head. She saw a trickle of blood mixing with the water. The facts hit her like a jolt from an electrical wire. Paralysis. Oh, no, her lips mouthed.

Not this. Not paralyzed. This was worse than a stroke. She started to whimper. Her cover-up remained unfinished. Clarence lay dead in his bed. Gladys lay in Bessie's bed, both at peace, but not yet torched. Why hadn't she been more careful?

Because she'd been in a rush to finish the night's work, that's why. A warm tear streamed down Bessie's cheek for all those things that might have been. It wasn't fair, just when she was ready to start living again. The supreme irony. Barnard and his idiot deputy would be scratching their heads all right as they looked down on her naked, paralyzed body, and over the two dead ones. She would rather be dead. If she couldn't be more careful in the tub, then what chance had she really had in her brave new world? She couldn't tell if the remaining water around her was hot or cold.

She didn't know if it was night or day. Then a glimmer of hope. Maybe this was just a momentary condition. An impermanent failure of the nervous system from her sudden clunk on the head. She brightened a bit. At least her mouth worked. Just temporary, but for how long? She heard something moving through the house.

It wasn't the sound of footfalls. Something ethereal. Her mind raced. Something she wouldn't be able to defend herself against, even if she could move. The shapeshifters coming indoors, showing themselves at last, now that she couldn't shut them out.

The room's door opened the way doors always seemed to open in every horror tale she'd ever read, slowly and creakily. She saw Gladys standing in the doorway. Both eyes half open now, at odds with her frozen dead smile. A second figure appeared behind Gladys. Clarence.

His eyelids were closed the way Bessie had left them. but his mouth hung open showing his yellowed lower row of teeth. No drool this time, with secretions having settled. Clarence. Dead. And yet still crawling out of his bed at the most inconvenient time. Were the two of them ghosts? Or were they the dead walking? All Bessie needed was for all recent dead to show up and wait their turn to gawk at her helplessness.

The whole cast of her little drama. But the others were still safely underground. Hopefully. Bessie didn't want to deal with this lying down, naked, before both God and a pair of dead people. She imagined her legs to be futilely kicking for purchase. The undead from her grandpa's pronouncements have arrived. The walking corpses moved beyond the doorway and shuffled into Bessie's private room. She noticed Clarence was carrying a tattered Confederate battle flag

that he had proudly displayed on their porch during the war. It had been relegated to the obscurity of his bedroom when the war ended. It was still attached to its flagpole. pole, a silent sentiment of gallant pass that was no more. Just as Bessie's plans were no more unless she could lose her paralysis before the revenants took control of her body or her frantic mind. Clarence, with more agility than he'd had in life, raised the pole waist high, as if he was holding a rifle with an attached bayonet.

She was his enemy now. The undead moved next to Bessie's tub just as she thought she felt something tingling in her hands and feet, but it was too late. As she struggled to move, Clarence lunged forward with his makeshift spear. It lodged in Bessie's throat, the dusty cloth trailing down her body. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't struggle. Her eyes bulge from lack of oxygen, blotching from bursting capillaries,

struggling for breath with the stars and bars ridiculously jammed inside of Bessie's throat. Gladys and Clarence stood like stone demons watching her anguish. Were the two of them smiling now? Mocking her torment? Was it just lousy luck, or the beast at work through two dead ghouls in her private room, waiting while she approached an eternity of the damned? Would they attack or only observe? Blackness cloaked her pounding head with a cowl of gloom.

She tasted not just the vile material, but despair as well. A battle among the dead would soon be waged, but she had to die first. It was her turn. But there was something else. yet another degradation, waiting before she was allowed to depart her mortal coil. Clarence's and Gladys' mouths were open wide. They looked hungry. If she were still alive when they bit into her, she would mercifully feel it only from the neck up. Then a fear, worse than being eaten alive, descended. What if she were to die and be reanimated? One of the

undead, having to put up with Gladys and Clarence until someone found them and blew off their heads. She could only pray the two unholy figures moving ever closer would devour her completely, for she had no desire to be part of her grandfather's soothsaying, or a prodigy of the evil that lurked in the world of dark shadows. No adventurous Southern Belle in her future, no romance, only a desire to be good and dead. But would she get buried quickly enough? Bessie's head stopped moving, his life oozed from her fading consciousness like a silent screams swallowed up by the devil. Her last thoughts were about attitudes. Poor Bessie. Poor Clarence. Even poor Gladys, people would say.

How could she have done it, they would say. Truth can be stranger than fiction, and Lord have mercy on us all, she would have told them. All of these observations, in the time it takes to choke to death. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative common share-a-like licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.