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We’ve Got It Going Our Way Now, Sis
My daddy was a jack-of-all-trades. He always had a purple nail on one of his rugged hands, from smashing it between two objects or having his hammer come down on it of his own accord. If we were close enough to where he was working, we’d hear him murmuring and having full-out conversations with himself. When he wasn’t talking, he was chewing on his tongue and contorting his mouth in weird ways that surely helped him get the job done quicker and easier. I don’t think we saw him work on anything without something going a little haywire because he always seemed to throw a few more colorful words in…
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Creepy Creative Writing
In the spring of 2009, I had a terrifying paranormal experience that changed my life. After months of processing the occurrence (which I write about in my book to be published in 2020), I decided to share the story with my English I class and challenged them to write a descriptive essay of their own, about a legend or ghost story, true or fictional. It became a popular assignment each year during the month of Halloween. Interestingly enough, many students had their own truthful stories, as well. One of my bubbly, creative, and fun-loving former students contacted me a few weeks ago to say my scary stories from way-back-when had…
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Full Moon
Yesterday was one heck of a day. Actually, when I came through the door at home and my husband asked how my school day was, I forcefully threw my things down. “It was one helluva day.” “Helluva good day or helluva bad day?” “Not good. It was weird.” I don’t know how much of my story he followed, because I saw him looking around me at an old movie on TV, but I told him about a disrespectful student before lunch and two students I thought were going to come across my desk and throw punches at each other after lunch. I already believed it must be a full moon…
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Madman at the Wheel
The savage look in those eyes was enough to send chills down my spine; the kind of look one might expect to glare from behind the door of a padded room. From a birds-eye view, it must have looked like excited children playing with Matchbox cars, sending them into a chaotic frenzy, careening every which way. Cars were separating on the two-lane in front of us as if an invisible child’s hands were effortlessly pushing them to the left—into the highway median and into oncoming traffic in the other lanes, or to the right—straight into a steep embankment recently dug by heavy equipment. The driver of the old green car…
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The Best Things in Life are Free
When I allow my mind to sift back to a time I felt the pure, unrestrained bliss of a child, there are two events that easily stand apart from all the others. It was a time when life was uncomplicated and safe, with the ugly of the world still unapparent. We lived in a little red, two-story sandpaper-like sided house beside the kindest people I’ve ever known. I’m sure they were middle-aged, but Maggie’s sagging folds of wrinkles and Claude’s slow deliberate gait made them seem ancient. They had little in the way of material things and had no children of their own. We spent warm days and cooler evenings…
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My Very Own Avengers
I slammed the door and locked it behind me as I rushed into our apartment with a small grocery bag in my hands. Sobbing uncontrollably, I stood by the door, trembling. My parents saw the blood had drained from my face and knew something was terribly wrong, but all they could do was wait for me to tell my story. My mother took the bag from me, sat me on the couch, and waited for the waves of convulsive gasps and stuttering to calm. My parents had planned for us to move to the Chicago area as soon as I finished third-grade. When I told all my 8-year-old friends good-bye,…
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My Sister Tried to Kill Me
It began like any other school day. We were both trying to hog the mirror from the other and tempers were beginning to flare. I’m sure it really wasn’t my fault. I had been the only child for four years and had gotten all the love and attention from everyone. When this tiny new creature came to live in my house, I noticed how everyone’s perspective immediately changed. “Isn’t she precious?” “Look at that perfect little nose!” “All that gorgeous dark hair!” And she was, dang it. She was a beautiful baby. I had been born bald and was wearing blue cat-eye glasses to correct a crossing left eye by…
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. . . He Never Said He was a Killer
I was invincible. I had spent the last two years majoring in outdoor recreation at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and was mentally and physically at the top of my game. I had completed an internship at Touch of Nature Environmental Center assisting in leading hikes, canoe trips, rock climbing and rappelling, and educational programs all over southern Illinois, the Missouri Ozarks, and the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. My very naive, rural, small-town mind had been forever blown. There wasn’t anything I couldn’t do. My can of self-esteem had exploded and was overflowing. I took weight-lifting 101, became an American Red Cross First Aid and CPR instructor, and was certified…
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Hypothermia on the Chilkoot
This week’s extreme temperatures had most of the nation under seige. Fears of frostbite and hypothermia were very real and hearing the word “hypothermia” took me to another season and time when winter temperatures weren’t necessary to be affected by hypothermia. It was summer in southeast Alaska, so the nights were cold and the days were absolute perfection–as long as lots of sunshine isn’t mandatory for your mental health. Three days in a row were the most I saw the sun shine over the three months I made it my home. I had just spent three months of an environmental education internship in northern Minnesota and decided to travel with backpack…
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PEE-YEW!
Each time the stench wafted up my nose in an intermittent wave, I furtively sniffed around me. It had to be me. I was the only one sitting on that end of the couch. Once, twice . . . my nose quickly scanned each armpit as I reached up into a yawn or pretended to pull my hair back. My alarm didn’t go off, so arriving at my cousin’s house late for brunch was a given. There was no time to shower, pick out clothes, or put makeup on. I hurriedly scrubbed a toothbrush around in my mouth, put clothes on from the night before, and combed my hair…
