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By R. Peterson (author. All copyrights retained by R. Peterson).
Nema poured ice-water from the pitcher into a cracked canning jar and held it to her mother’s lips. She could feel waves of heat rise from the prone form. “Please drink this Momma,” She pleaded with the grey haired woman lying atop the grime covered mattress. Beads of sweat formed on the old lady’s forehead as she strained to sit upright. She pushed away the glass of water but instead clutched her thirteen-year-old daughter by the arm with misshapen grey fingers and pulled her close.
“The angels have been to see me,” she said her eyes suddenly bright and dancing from the afternoon sun filtering in through the linen-curtained windows. “They want me to dance with them in the air, way up high where it is cool, and the breezes lift their wings under the heavens.”
“Tell them no,” Nema began to cry. “You might fall. I can’t bear to lose you!”
“They are so very beautiful,” Christina said as her piercing eyes became misty and stared into nothingness. “They remind me of you my child.” She struggled to wrap her arms around her daughter and pull her down on the bed next to her. She slowly stroked Nema’s soft honey-blonde hair with trembling fingers. “You and they are both cut from the same bolt of fabric. They must be your sisters, my daughters I never birthed, come to claim you nonetheless.”
“You cannot leave me mother!” Nema was frantic as she grasped the old lady and held her tightly. “I need you here, I am afraid Momma … I am so afraid!’ Nema began to wail as her mother closed her eyes. The bedroom door opened and Frank Sharpe stood gawking down on his wife and step-daughter. The smell of unwashed skin mixed with sweat and un-wiped fecal matter drifted before him as he fastened a snap on his bib overalls. He had just come from the outhouse but didn’t believe in wasting money on such foolish things as toilet paper.
“You don’t eat up your beans,” he pointed a grimy finger at Nema. “So I did.” He smiled showing rotten teeth several of which were capped with empty twenty-two shell casings. Nema glanced at her step-father then looked back at her mother.
“She’s dying Papa Frank! We have to get her to a doctor.”
“A doctor!” Frank Sharpe rolled his eyes upward as if gazing at unseen angels of his own. “A child who has been to school like you have should know better. If the good lord wants to take one of his, we shall not hinder his holy work, amen.” He reached out a calloused hand and cuffed Nema hard on the side of her head. His voice grew loud, mean. His narrow black eyes focused on the frightened girl. “I want that weeding done and all the rest of your chores before you come in or you just as well stay out and sleep with the dog.” He shoved her toward the door then followed her with a kick from his boot. “I’ll have no more sass from you in my house!” He warned as the waif of a girl ran crying, banging the porch screen. “Miss one damn weed and I’ll beat the skin off your back with my razor-strap,” he yelled after her.
Nema was crying as she chopped weeds from the corn in the long garden rows. The only time she stopped was when she could hear Frank’s loud voice thundering from the bedroom. He was reading selected passages from the Old Testament to her mother, admonishing her to repent her evil ways and restore righteousness unto his household. She wanted to be inside with her momma, placing a cool rag on her forehead, not worrying in the hot sun. Frank would give her mother no comfort; he always believed everything was God’s will, ignoring the age old adage that God helps those who help themselves. An hour later she heard the back porch door shriek open and watched as her stepfather marched toward the well-house. He had a bottle of whiskey hidden just under the cool water that pooled around the bottom of the rusted and leaking pump. Nema knew because of the afternoon heat, Frank would be in there rewarding himself for redressing the sins of Eve for hours. It was what came after the quiet drinking that made her shake. She could see Frank sitting on an empty water can just inside the open door and she couldn’t risk trying to enter the house by the noisy screen door. She worked her way down the rows with the hoe till she was under the open bedroom window beyond his view.
“Mother, are you awake?” she whispered as she pulled her chin up to the windowsill. There was no sound from inside the sweltering room and the slight breeze from earlier had died down to nothing. Nema dropped down and fetched a two foot long section of log from the woodpile at the back of the house and placed it under the window. She was pulling herself upward from the teetering stool when her mother’s pale face appeared in the window above her.
“Nema!” her mother gasped. “Be careful, you will fall!”
“Momma!” Nema said. “You’re awake, I’ve been so worried. I want to be inside with you.” Christina gazed down at her daughter’s eyes, sparkling like the morning dew on the Bluebells that had adorned her and her first husband’s garden.
“I want you to do something for me my child.”
“I will do anything for you momma, I promise.”
Christina leaned out the window so she could almost touch her daughter’s upraised fingers. “There is almost twenty dollars wrapped in this paper.” She thrust a small string-tied envelope into the girl’s hand. “Leave this farm tonight when it’s dark, as soon as Frank falls asleep. Stay off the road, but walk to Miller’s corner just past the Burgess Bridge and wait for the bus to come by at eleven. Tell the driver you want to go into Cloverdale and pay him. Once you get into the city you must ask around. Find your uncle Jim … James Masterson. Find out where he lives. He’s the only kin you have got now.”
“I won’t leave you Momma, not when you’re so sick.” Nema began to cry again.
“I’m leaving with some friends, please do as I say,” her mother begged her. “I don’t want you here with Frank alone.”
“Take me with you momma!” Nema shrieked. Christina looked down at her daughter in sadness. “That’s what I don’t want to happen,” she whispered. He mother disappeared back inside the room and Nema sat on the ground crying for a minute before she wiped her eyes. Maybe things are going to be a lot better she thought, mother is leaving, I’ll hide in the orchard and follow her when she leaves, we’ll both be rid of Frank and his damn God. She tucked the small envelope with the money into her shoe and went back to hoeing the endless rows of corn.
The sun was just a sliver, and Frank was sitting at the kitchen table, when Nema came in covered with dirt and with the chores and weeding finished. She brushed past the hunched man as she headed toward her mother’s room. He reached out and grabbed her arm. She could smell the whiskey on his breath as his rangy head bobbed toward her. His mouth opened and his grey tongue flapped and rolled for several seconds before his addled mind could form words. “Where are you going?”
“To see my momma.” Nema tried to pry loose the jagged fingernails digging into her arm.
“She won’t be getting up to see you,” Frank said. He reached under the table and lifted the same whiskey bottle he had kept hidden in the well house and took a long pull from it. Nema had never seen the liquor bottle in the house before, and it was almost empty. “She won’t be getting up for anybody.” Frank smirked as he nodded toward the partially opened bedroom door. He held the bottle high over his head as he drained the last remaining drops from the bottle as Nema pulled away from him running toward the bedroom.
Christina lay sprawled across the rumpled bed, her head hanging at an odd angle toward the floor on one side. Her eyes were open and stared vacantly at the sparsely furnished walls surrounding the dismal room, barren of any color or decoration. Frank staggered in the doorway behind her, as she ran to her mother’s side.
“She’s dead,” he blubbered. “The good lord took her right after you went to the weeds.”
Frank shattered the empty bottle against the wall with one flailing arm as he staggered inside the room. “I warned her about the Devil, right up to the end.” Frank’s eyes were on fire as he slid the leather belt from his pant loops. “It’s too late now for her sins,” he cried as he pointed toward his late wife, “but not for yours!” He licked his lips as he pointed a dirty finger toward the wide eyed girl. “You take off them britches now! No sense in getting them all bloodied and wash needing, just because you gets a whipping,” he said.
Frank stood breathless as he watched her undress. His eyes rolled up in his head as she stood bawling naked before him. “Thank you God for showing us the way to salvation,” Frank thundered toward the cracked ceiling, and then he swung the leather belt viciously downward.
Kettles the twelve year old Blue Healer mix moved from his resting place under the porch when the girl’s cry first split the twilight and slowly wandered into the orchard. Settling under a twisted apple tree he put his muzzle into the still warm ground and tried to bury his ears with his paws as the screaming continued.
It was a quarter past ten when Nema stuffed the rest of her clothing into the pillowcase. Frank lay passed out on the floor with his own pants around his ankles next to the bed where the body of his wife still lay. The now blood covered belt still clutched in his hand. Nema took a large knife from the kitchen drawer and held it as she walked back into the bedroom. She wanted to say goodbye, but the still cold form sprawled across the bed was not her mother. She wiped her eyes with her hand and turned and started for the door. Frank’s gnarled hand grasped her ankle and caused her to trip, knocking over an oil lamp on a floor stand in the corner and sending her sprawling through the doorway. The knife slipped from her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Frank blubbered. “I love you Nema. I only get this way when I drink. I think it’s just God’s way of showing me the light.” He rose on his elbows and crawled toward her. “Things are going to be different now.”
Nema kicked at him with her tiny feet. Her flailing fingers brushed against something rolling across the floor against her fingers, it was the metal oil lamp. She would not allow him to do that again, she would rather be dead! She lifted the heavy lamp in her tiny trembling arms and dropped it on her stepfather’s head. She rose slowly to her feet and looked at Frank’s stubbly chin lying in a pool of blood.
Nema picked up the pillowcase with her few ragged clothes and ran shrieking from the rickety house, through the corn patch with tears flooding down her face. A top-heavy stalk had fallen between the rows and Nema tripped sprawling into the recently hoed soft soil. She slowly raised herself up a sharp pain throbbing in her ankle. She heard the screen door bang open as she bent down and reached for the bag. Her shaky leg refused to support her weight and she sprawled in the dirt.
“By the grace of the good lord, his glorious wrath will now descend upon the wicked,” Frank Sharp thundered into the night. Nema looked up to see her stepfather, lurching toward her holding the broken metal lamp high above his bloodied head.
By R. Peterson (author. All copyrights retained by R. Peterson).
Nema poured ice-water from the pitcher into a cracked canning jar and held it to her mother’s lips. She could feel waves of heat rise from the prone form. “Please drink this Momma,” She pleaded with the grey haired woman lying atop the grime covered mattress. Beads of sweat formed on the old lady’s forehead as she strained to sit upright. She pushed away the glass of water but instead clutched her thirteen-year-old daughter by the arm with misshapen grey fingers and pulled her close.
“The angels have been to see me,” she said her eyes suddenly bright and dancing from the afternoon sun filtering in through the linen-curtained windows. “They want me to dance with them in the air, way up high where it is cool, and the breezes lift their wings under the heavens.”
“Tell them no,” Nema began to cry. “You might fall. I can’t bear to lose you!”
“They are so very beautiful,” Christina said as her piercing eyes became misty and stared into nothingness. “They remind me of you my child.” She struggled to wrap her arms around her daughter and pull her down on the bed next to her. She slowly stroked Nema’s soft honey-blonde hair with trembling fingers. “You and they are both cut from the same bolt of fabric. They must be your sisters, my daughters I never birthed, come to claim you nonetheless.”
“You cannot leave me mother!” Nema was frantic as she grasped the old lady and held her tightly. “I need you here, I am afraid Momma … I am so afraid!’ Nema began to wail as her mother closed her eyes. The bedroom door opened and Frank Sharpe stood gawking down on his wife and step-daughter. The smell of unwashed skin mixed with sweat and un-wiped fecal matter drifted before him as he fastened a snap on his bib overalls. He had just come from the outhouse but didn’t believe in wasting money on such foolish things as toilet paper.
“You don’t eat up your beans,” he pointed a grimy finger at Nema. “So I did.” He smiled showing rotten teeth several of which were capped with empty twenty-two shell casings. Nema glanced at her step-father then looked back at her mother.
“She’s dying Papa Frank! We have to get her to a doctor.”
“A doctor!” Frank Sharpe rolled his eyes upward as if gazing at unseen angels of his own. “A child who has been to school like you have should know better. If the good lord wants to take one of his, we shall not hinder his holy work, amen.” He reached out a calloused hand and cuffed Nema hard on the side of her head. His voice grew loud, mean. His narrow black eyes focused on the frightened girl. “I want that weeding done and all the rest of your chores before you come in or you just as well stay out and sleep with the dog.” He shoved her toward the door then followed her with a kick from his boot. “I’ll have no more sass from you in my house!” He warned as the waif of a girl ran crying, banging the porch screen. “Miss one damn weed and I’ll beat the skin off your back with my razor-strap,” he yelled after her.
Nema was crying as she chopped weeds from the corn in the long garden rows. The only time she stopped was when she could hear Frank’s loud voice thundering from the bedroom. He was reading selected passages from the Old Testament to her mother, admonishing her to repent her evil ways and restore righteousness unto his household. She wanted to be inside with her momma, placing a cool rag on her forehead, not worrying in the hot sun. Frank would give her mother no comfort; he always believed everything was God’s will, ignoring the age old adage that God helps those who help themselves. An hour later she heard the back porch door shriek open and watched as her stepfather marched toward the well-house. He had a bottle of whiskey hidden just under the cool water that pooled around the bottom of the rusted and leaking pump. Nema knew because of the afternoon heat, Frank would be in there rewarding himself for redressing the sins of Eve for hours. It was what came after the quiet drinking that made her shake. She could see Frank sitting on an empty water can just inside the open door and she couldn’t risk trying to enter the house by the noisy screen door. She worked her way down the rows with the hoe till she was under the open bedroom window beyond his view.
“Mother, are you awake?” she whispered as she pulled her chin up to the windowsill. There was no sound from inside the sweltering room and the slight breeze from earlier had died down to nothing. Nema dropped down and fetched a two foot long section of log from the woodpile at the back of the house and placed it under the window. She was pulling herself upward from the teetering stool when her mother’s pale face appeared in the window above her.
“Nema!” her mother gasped. “Be careful, you will fall!”
“Momma!” Nema said. “You’re awake, I’ve been so worried. I want to be inside with you.” Christina gazed down at her daughter’s eyes, sparkling like the morning dew on the Bluebells that had adorned her and her first husband’s garden.
“I want you to do something for me my child.”
“I will do anything for you momma, I promise.”
Christina leaned out the window so she could almost touch her daughter’s upraised fingers. “There is almost twenty dollars wrapped in this paper.” She thrust a small string-tied envelope into the girl’s hand. “Leave this farm tonight when it’s dark, as soon as Frank falls asleep. Stay off the road, but walk to Miller’s corner just past the Burgess Bridge and wait for the bus to come by at eleven. Tell the driver you want to go into Cloverdale and pay him. Once you get into the city you must ask around. Find your uncle Jim … James Masterson. Find out where he lives. He’s the only kin you have got now.”
“I won’t leave you Momma, not when you’re so sick.” Nema began to cry again.
“I’m leaving with some friends, please do as I say,” her mother begged her. “I don’t want you here with Frank alone.”
“Take me with you momma!” Nema shrieked. Christina looked down at her daughter in sadness. “That’s what I don’t want to happen,” she whispered. He mother disappeared back inside the room and Nema sat on the ground crying for a minute before she wiped her eyes. Maybe things are going to be a lot better she thought, mother is leaving, I’ll hide in the orchard and follow her when she leaves, we’ll both be rid of Frank and his damn God. She tucked the small envelope with the money into her shoe and went back to hoeing the endless rows of corn.
The sun was just a sliver, and Frank was sitting at the kitchen table, when Nema came in covered with dirt and with the chores and weeding finished. She brushed past the hunched man as she headed toward her mother’s room. He reached out and grabbed her arm. She could smell the whiskey on his breath as his rangy head bobbed toward her. His mouth opened and his grey tongue flapped and rolled for several seconds before his addled mind could form words. “Where are you going?”
“To see my momma.” Nema tried to pry loose the jagged fingernails digging into her arm.
“She won’t be getting up to see you,” Frank said. He reached under the table and lifted the same whiskey bottle he had kept hidden in the well house and took a long pull from it. Nema had never seen the liquor bottle in the house before, and it was almost empty. “She won’t be getting up for anybody.” Frank smirked as he nodded toward the partially opened bedroom door. He held the bottle high over his head as he drained the last remaining drops from the bottle as Nema pulled away from him running toward the bedroom.
Christina lay sprawled across the rumpled bed, her head hanging at an odd angle toward the floor on one side. Her eyes were open and stared vacantly at the sparsely furnished walls surrounding the dismal room, barren of any color or decoration. Frank staggered in the doorway behind her, as she ran to her mother’s side.
“She’s dead,” he blubbered. “The good lord took her right after you went to the weeds.”
Frank shattered the empty bottle against the wall with one flailing arm as he staggered inside the room. “I warned her about the Devil, right up to the end.” Frank’s eyes were on fire as he slid the leather belt from his pant loops. “It’s too late now for her sins,” he cried as he pointed toward his late wife, “but not for yours!” He licked his lips as he pointed a dirty finger toward the wide eyed girl. “You take off them britches now! No sense in getting them all bloodied and wash needing, just because you gets a whipping,” he said.
Frank stood breathless as he watched her undress. His eyes rolled up in his head as she stood bawling naked before him. “Thank you God for showing us the way to salvation,” Frank thundered toward the cracked ceiling, and then he swung the leather belt viciously downward.
Kettles the twelve year old Blue Healer mix moved from his resting place under the porch when the girl’s cry first split the twilight and slowly wandered into the orchard. Settling under a twisted apple tree he put his muzzle into the still warm ground and tried to bury his ears with his paws as the screaming continued.
It was a quarter past ten when Nema stuffed the rest of her clothing into the pillowcase. Frank lay passed out on the floor with his own pants around his ankles next to the bed where the body of his wife still lay. The now blood covered belt still clutched in his hand. Nema took a large knife from the kitchen drawer and held it as she walked back into the bedroom. She wanted to say goodbye, but the still cold form sprawled across the bed was not her mother. She wiped her eyes with her hand and turned and started for the door. Frank’s gnarled hand grasped her ankle and caused her to trip, knocking over an oil lamp on a floor stand in the corner and sending her sprawling through the doorway. The knife slipped from her fingers.
“I’m sorry,” Frank blubbered. “I love you Nema. I only get this way when I drink. I think it’s just God’s way of showing me the light.” He rose on his elbows and crawled toward her. “Things are going to be different now.”
Nema kicked at him with her tiny feet. Her flailing fingers brushed against something rolling across the floor against her fingers, it was the metal oil lamp. She would not allow him to do that again, she would rather be dead! She lifted the heavy lamp in her tiny trembling arms and dropped it on her stepfather’s head. She rose slowly to her feet and looked at Frank’s stubbly chin lying in a pool of blood.
Nema picked up the pillowcase with her few ragged clothes and ran shrieking from the rickety house, through the corn patch with tears flooding down her face. A top-heavy stalk had fallen between the rows and Nema tripped sprawling into the recently hoed soft soil. She slowly raised herself up a sharp pain throbbing in her ankle. She heard the screen door bang open as she bent down and reached for the bag. Her shaky leg refused to support her weight and she sprawled in the dirt.
“By the grace of the good lord, his glorious wrath will now descend upon the wicked,” Frank Sharp thundered into the night. Nema looked up to see her stepfather, lurching toward her holding the broken metal lamp high above his bloodied head.
Nema - Part two.
From behind the sheet covering the bedroom window, The Angel Compacta watched Nema run through the corn as her companion Flachen staggered into the room from the hall. “Ouch! My head,” the luminous angel giggled as she stood at the other side of the window.
“An angel can’t feel pain.” Compacta looked at her partner with a smug grin.
“She can when she transforms herself into an oil lamp and has to roll six feet across a floor.” Flachen said. “I’m still a bit dizzy.”
“I wonder about you.” Compacta laughed. “Why you do the things you do. Why not just destroy him?” She pointed toward the ragged man lumbering toward the girl in the corn patch with the same oil lamp held high over his head.
“A young girl like that needs to learn to take care of herself.” Flachen said. “Besides she does have friends.” They both gazed into the moon lit garden.
Frank saw Nema sprawled in the dirt and he knew he had her trapped. He almost laughed as she rose to her feet and tried to hobble away. She was hurting and she wasn’t going anywhere but straight to hell alongside her dead mother in a very short time. He heard a growl to his right just before the old dog Boo leaped between him and the trembling girl, clamping its almost toothless mouth around Frank’s leg. “Let go of me. Damn you!” Frank thundered as he beat the dog’s head furiously with the lamp. The fourteen year old German Shepard yelped repeatedly but held on to the end. It was almost three minutes before Frank was able to pry the dead dog’s bloody jaws from his leg.
Frank stood up and kicked the blood soaked dog carcass away, oblivious to the years of faithful service the canine had given. He blinked his eyes several times, waiting for his vision to clear. A vicious rage coursed through him as he thought about the ungrateful brat and how he was going to punish her when he brought her back home. He heard the rustle of corn stalks as if a breeze was suddenly pushing through the thick rows. A large dark form loomed before him, and he wiped his hand across his eyes to see better. A massive hunch-backed Grizzly Bear rose upright in the corn looming over him like a fur covered behemoth. Frank opened his mouth to scream, but didn’t get the chance. He wet his pants, as a huge clawed paw raked viciously across his head, breaking his neck.
Flachen shook her fingers as she strode from the corn patch toward the porch where her angel companion waited. “He has a hard head,” she said.
“What now?” Compacta asked.
“Nema’s on her own I’m afraid,” Flachen said as she tossed back her flowing, luminous hair. “We will not help her again.” They both stared after the tiny speck disappearing into the distance.
Nema listened to Boo’s yelping as she ran through the field with tears flowing down her eyes, the pain in her ankle had been replaced by a greater agony. It wasn’t until the yelping suddenly stopped that she paused and looked back toward the tiny house. She was afraid to go back and scared to go on, she was terrified of everything on this most dreadful of nights. But the bus would be at Miller’s corner at eleven and she would not be late. She turned and sobbed with each footstep and ran on. She had promised her mother.
Nema followed an elderly man and woman as they cautiously climbed the stairs from the bus and toddled into the dimly lit bus station. She looked around, and tried to smooth her wrinkled skirt as the departing passengers gathered their luggage and began to dissipate. They all had somewhere to go except her. She had someone to find. Cloverdale was the first city she had ever been in. She glanced at a clock that hung on the wall above an empty ticket counter, it was 3am. Her first thought was to find a phone, look in the White-Pages and find out if there was a listing for James Masterson. She pulled the wad of bills and loose change from her blouse pocket and counted, she had seven dollars and twenty six cents left. She scanned the quickly emptying room and spied a pay phone against the wall. She slowly walked toward it, thinking about what she was going to say to the uncle she had never met. A tattered phone book hung from a chain just under the coin slot, and Nema reached for it. Black fingers touched her hand and grasped it in a handshake. “The phone is out of order,” Nema looked into the grinning face of the first Negro she had ever seen. He was at least a foot taller than her, and wore a blue hooded parka with a long golden-chain necklace hanging from his neck. Dozens of tiny white cut-out metal dogs dangled from the links. Black eyes sparkled from under a mass of frizzy black hair and scanned down her body. He shook her hand firmly then released it. “My name is Stanley Freeman but my friends call me Stony. Can I help you find someone? …Miss …?” He paused staring at her.
“Nema,” she stammered, “Nema Sharp – I mean Masterson.” She blushed, remembering the new life she was beginning with her real father’s brother. “Nema Masterson.” She held her hand up in a kind of wave then dropped it when she saw the curious look he gave her. He laughed.
“It’s not the first time a beautiful newly-wed woman has forgotten her married name.”
“Oh I’m not married … I’m only …” Nema looked at the man astonished, a faint smile forming on her lips because of his compliment, he must think I’m older “sixteen!”
Stony opened the phone book and was thumbing through the pages.
“Masterson … did you say?”
“Yes, James Masterson. He’s my father’s brother.”
“Does he know you’re coming?” Stony peered at her from over the pages.
“Yes … I mean … not yet. I need to call him.” Nema was starting to feel uneasy.
“Well this phone isn’t working, but I’ve got his address right here next to his number.” Stony tore the page from the book folded it and slipped it into his jeans pocket. “I’ll drive you there, my ride is right outside.” He smiled at her and gestured toward the door.
“I don’t know … I think maybe I’d better …”
Stony grabbed her by the arm and began to drag her toward the door.
“I don’t make friends with just anyone.” He shook her. “Most of my hens are real grateful.” He dug his fingers into her tiny, already bruised, arm.
Nema began to cry and he slapped her hard across the face. The report echoed in the empty chamber. He looked back; the only two people left in the station were an old man and a woman standing next to a window facing out on the dark street. The faint outline of an adult diaper showed through the man’s threadbare bulging pants. The couple turned away quickly when Stony glared at them.
Compacta and Flachen moved into the bedroom where the translucent form of Christina Sharp was beginning to float upward from the bed. “Where is my daughter? Where is Nema?” Christina asked as she gazed at the two beautiful, radiant women.
“She’ll be OK,” Flachen said as she turned nervous eyes toward Compacta.
“She better be.” Compacta said, as she tugged the newest angel, floating over the lifeless body, toward her.
Stony opened the passenger door of his sparkling pink Cadillac and viciously shoved the tiny girl inside then locked it from the remote on his keychain. He turned and stared at the old man and woman watching from inside the bus terminal. They both turned away quickly as he strolled back inside. The old man was quivering as Stony grabbed him by the collar of his frayed coat and spun him around. “You old folks have medical insurance?” He asked as he flicked open a knife and held it to the wide-eyed man’s throat. “You didn’t see nothing did you?” Stony reached his left hand into the trembling man’s shirt pocket and plucked out a pair of reading glasses. He smiled as he dropped the spectacles to the floor then crushed the lenses with his boot. He slammed the old man onto the broken glass then kicked the woman as she bent to help him.
Stony was whistling as he walked toward his car. Nema was beating her fists on the side window when he slid behind the wheel. He reached across the seat and jerked her down onto the satin covered cushion by her disheveled hair. He pounded his huge black fist into her face and smiled as her eyes rolled blankly in her head. He used his elegantly manicured nails to tear open her blouse revealing the tiny bruised and swollen breasts.
“Looks like somebody rode you before, but I’ll still make some nickels off your sorry ass.” He used his thumb and bent first finger to savagely pinch and twist one tiny breast till she woke up and began to scream then he hit her again, harder this time, and smiled as she flopped onto the floorboards. “You will learn my little bitch, you will learn,” he said as he started the expensive car and tuned the radio to a Rap station. He fingered the cut-out metal dogs with the engraved names of girls, as he drove down the darkened streets of Cloverdale.
“Are you sure my daughter is going to be alright?” Christina asked for the third time since they had begun to stroll six inches above the glistening moon-lit surface of the Cottonmouth River.
“You can’t always depend on angels,” Flachen told her with a sigh. “Sometimes you have to believe in humans, and expect the best from them.” The three spirits paused, floating above the surface of the water as the transparent shape of Boo bounded happily toward them on ageless legs his ghostly tail wagging in the moonlight.
Flashing red lights and screeching tires surrounded the Cadillac, as Stony dragged the teen girl toward the run down tenement building where loud music raged. Cloverdale police officers slammed him to the sidewalk shortly after he started to run. The old man and woman from the bus station sat in the back of a patrol car talking to an officer leaning in the open window. The old man pointed toward the captured man as they put the cuffs on him and the officer wrote in a notebook.
Stony twisted his face on the sidewalk and glared at the grey haired couple in the car. “I’ll be out on bail tomorrow night and I’ll pay you both a visit,” he spat as an officer forced his head downward.
“Nema!” a loud voice called. The tiny disoriented girl looked up as a beaming man, followed by three bashful kids and a smiling woman, swept her up from the police officers and into his arms.
“I’m your uncle Jim,” he said. Nema began to sob as the family clustered around her.
“I thought you wasn’t going to interfere?” Compacta accused Flachen as the three angels floated through the bars into the maximum security section of the Comanche County Jail.
“Just this once,” Flachen said as she fumbled with the lock on the cell.
Stony looked up, as his cell door creaked open and a mammoth brute lurched into the tiny cell. Stone cold eyes gazed down upon him from just above a huge nose ring as the beast removed a sharpened spike-belt with gigantic muscled arms from tightly stretched jeans, and raised it high overhead. “Even an angel has to have some fun,” the monster said.
“An angel can’t feel pain.” Compacta looked at her partner with a smug grin.
“She can when she transforms herself into an oil lamp and has to roll six feet across a floor.” Flachen said. “I’m still a bit dizzy.”
“I wonder about you.” Compacta laughed. “Why you do the things you do. Why not just destroy him?” She pointed toward the ragged man lumbering toward the girl in the corn patch with the same oil lamp held high over his head.
“A young girl like that needs to learn to take care of herself.” Flachen said. “Besides she does have friends.” They both gazed into the moon lit garden.
Frank saw Nema sprawled in the dirt and he knew he had her trapped. He almost laughed as she rose to her feet and tried to hobble away. She was hurting and she wasn’t going anywhere but straight to hell alongside her dead mother in a very short time. He heard a growl to his right just before the old dog Boo leaped between him and the trembling girl, clamping its almost toothless mouth around Frank’s leg. “Let go of me. Damn you!” Frank thundered as he beat the dog’s head furiously with the lamp. The fourteen year old German Shepard yelped repeatedly but held on to the end. It was almost three minutes before Frank was able to pry the dead dog’s bloody jaws from his leg.
Frank stood up and kicked the blood soaked dog carcass away, oblivious to the years of faithful service the canine had given. He blinked his eyes several times, waiting for his vision to clear. A vicious rage coursed through him as he thought about the ungrateful brat and how he was going to punish her when he brought her back home. He heard the rustle of corn stalks as if a breeze was suddenly pushing through the thick rows. A large dark form loomed before him, and he wiped his hand across his eyes to see better. A massive hunch-backed Grizzly Bear rose upright in the corn looming over him like a fur covered behemoth. Frank opened his mouth to scream, but didn’t get the chance. He wet his pants, as a huge clawed paw raked viciously across his head, breaking his neck.
Flachen shook her fingers as she strode from the corn patch toward the porch where her angel companion waited. “He has a hard head,” she said.
“What now?” Compacta asked.
“Nema’s on her own I’m afraid,” Flachen said as she tossed back her flowing, luminous hair. “We will not help her again.” They both stared after the tiny speck disappearing into the distance.
Nema listened to Boo’s yelping as she ran through the field with tears flowing down her eyes, the pain in her ankle had been replaced by a greater agony. It wasn’t until the yelping suddenly stopped that she paused and looked back toward the tiny house. She was afraid to go back and scared to go on, she was terrified of everything on this most dreadful of nights. But the bus would be at Miller’s corner at eleven and she would not be late. She turned and sobbed with each footstep and ran on. She had promised her mother.
Nema followed an elderly man and woman as they cautiously climbed the stairs from the bus and toddled into the dimly lit bus station. She looked around, and tried to smooth her wrinkled skirt as the departing passengers gathered their luggage and began to dissipate. They all had somewhere to go except her. She had someone to find. Cloverdale was the first city she had ever been in. She glanced at a clock that hung on the wall above an empty ticket counter, it was 3am. Her first thought was to find a phone, look in the White-Pages and find out if there was a listing for James Masterson. She pulled the wad of bills and loose change from her blouse pocket and counted, she had seven dollars and twenty six cents left. She scanned the quickly emptying room and spied a pay phone against the wall. She slowly walked toward it, thinking about what she was going to say to the uncle she had never met. A tattered phone book hung from a chain just under the coin slot, and Nema reached for it. Black fingers touched her hand and grasped it in a handshake. “The phone is out of order,” Nema looked into the grinning face of the first Negro she had ever seen. He was at least a foot taller than her, and wore a blue hooded parka with a long golden-chain necklace hanging from his neck. Dozens of tiny white cut-out metal dogs dangled from the links. Black eyes sparkled from under a mass of frizzy black hair and scanned down her body. He shook her hand firmly then released it. “My name is Stanley Freeman but my friends call me Stony. Can I help you find someone? …Miss …?” He paused staring at her.
“Nema,” she stammered, “Nema Sharp – I mean Masterson.” She blushed, remembering the new life she was beginning with her real father’s brother. “Nema Masterson.” She held her hand up in a kind of wave then dropped it when she saw the curious look he gave her. He laughed.
“It’s not the first time a beautiful newly-wed woman has forgotten her married name.”
“Oh I’m not married … I’m only …” Nema looked at the man astonished, a faint smile forming on her lips because of his compliment, he must think I’m older “sixteen!”
Stony opened the phone book and was thumbing through the pages.
“Masterson … did you say?”
“Yes, James Masterson. He’s my father’s brother.”
“Does he know you’re coming?” Stony peered at her from over the pages.
“Yes … I mean … not yet. I need to call him.” Nema was starting to feel uneasy.
“Well this phone isn’t working, but I’ve got his address right here next to his number.” Stony tore the page from the book folded it and slipped it into his jeans pocket. “I’ll drive you there, my ride is right outside.” He smiled at her and gestured toward the door.
“I don’t know … I think maybe I’d better …”
Stony grabbed her by the arm and began to drag her toward the door.
“I don’t make friends with just anyone.” He shook her. “Most of my hens are real grateful.” He dug his fingers into her tiny, already bruised, arm.
Nema began to cry and he slapped her hard across the face. The report echoed in the empty chamber. He looked back; the only two people left in the station were an old man and a woman standing next to a window facing out on the dark street. The faint outline of an adult diaper showed through the man’s threadbare bulging pants. The couple turned away quickly when Stony glared at them.
Compacta and Flachen moved into the bedroom where the translucent form of Christina Sharp was beginning to float upward from the bed. “Where is my daughter? Where is Nema?” Christina asked as she gazed at the two beautiful, radiant women.
“She’ll be OK,” Flachen said as she turned nervous eyes toward Compacta.
“She better be.” Compacta said, as she tugged the newest angel, floating over the lifeless body, toward her.
Stony opened the passenger door of his sparkling pink Cadillac and viciously shoved the tiny girl inside then locked it from the remote on his keychain. He turned and stared at the old man and woman watching from inside the bus terminal. They both turned away quickly as he strolled back inside. The old man was quivering as Stony grabbed him by the collar of his frayed coat and spun him around. “You old folks have medical insurance?” He asked as he flicked open a knife and held it to the wide-eyed man’s throat. “You didn’t see nothing did you?” Stony reached his left hand into the trembling man’s shirt pocket and plucked out a pair of reading glasses. He smiled as he dropped the spectacles to the floor then crushed the lenses with his boot. He slammed the old man onto the broken glass then kicked the woman as she bent to help him.
Stony was whistling as he walked toward his car. Nema was beating her fists on the side window when he slid behind the wheel. He reached across the seat and jerked her down onto the satin covered cushion by her disheveled hair. He pounded his huge black fist into her face and smiled as her eyes rolled blankly in her head. He used his elegantly manicured nails to tear open her blouse revealing the tiny bruised and swollen breasts.
“Looks like somebody rode you before, but I’ll still make some nickels off your sorry ass.” He used his thumb and bent first finger to savagely pinch and twist one tiny breast till she woke up and began to scream then he hit her again, harder this time, and smiled as she flopped onto the floorboards. “You will learn my little bitch, you will learn,” he said as he started the expensive car and tuned the radio to a Rap station. He fingered the cut-out metal dogs with the engraved names of girls, as he drove down the darkened streets of Cloverdale.
“Are you sure my daughter is going to be alright?” Christina asked for the third time since they had begun to stroll six inches above the glistening moon-lit surface of the Cottonmouth River.
“You can’t always depend on angels,” Flachen told her with a sigh. “Sometimes you have to believe in humans, and expect the best from them.” The three spirits paused, floating above the surface of the water as the transparent shape of Boo bounded happily toward them on ageless legs his ghostly tail wagging in the moonlight.
Flashing red lights and screeching tires surrounded the Cadillac, as Stony dragged the teen girl toward the run down tenement building where loud music raged. Cloverdale police officers slammed him to the sidewalk shortly after he started to run. The old man and woman from the bus station sat in the back of a patrol car talking to an officer leaning in the open window. The old man pointed toward the captured man as they put the cuffs on him and the officer wrote in a notebook.
Stony twisted his face on the sidewalk and glared at the grey haired couple in the car. “I’ll be out on bail tomorrow night and I’ll pay you both a visit,” he spat as an officer forced his head downward.
“Nema!” a loud voice called. The tiny disoriented girl looked up as a beaming man, followed by three bashful kids and a smiling woman, swept her up from the police officers and into his arms.
“I’m your uncle Jim,” he said. Nema began to sob as the family clustered around her.
“I thought you wasn’t going to interfere?” Compacta accused Flachen as the three angels floated through the bars into the maximum security section of the Comanche County Jail.
“Just this once,” Flachen said as she fumbled with the lock on the cell.
Stony looked up, as his cell door creaked open and a mammoth brute lurched into the tiny cell. Stone cold eyes gazed down upon him from just above a huge nose ring as the beast removed a sharpened spike-belt with gigantic muscled arms from tightly stretched jeans, and raised it high overhead. “Even an angel has to have some fun,” the monster said.
the prequel story starring the two worldly wise angels The Guitar is available here. You can catch Randall tweeting on twitter @itsonlymeandyou. And if you enjoy short stories, or longer ones for that matter - you're in for a treat over at Randall's site - "There's Magic in Everything"