The Sparkling Drop Hotel
“Jameson.” I called out into the empty room.
“Say it.” A fragmented voice responded flatly.
“I don’t want to.”
“Well, maybe I don’t want to make the walls bleed.”
“I don’t want you to make the walls bleed. The clean-up is a nightmare.”
“Then I won’t entertain the ghost hunters.”
“Don’t be so dramatic.”
“Dramatic? I’m sorry, did you get your skull cracked by a jealous John?”
“That was a hundred years ago. Wait. A hundred and seven. As of tomorrow.”
“Say it. Or I tell the governor’s mistress to keep her head on. “
“Fine. OH, GREAT LORD BRYANT OF THE TOWERS EAST. I SUMMON THEE. KNOCK THREE TIMES IF YOU ACCEPT MY HUMBLE REQUEST. Happy?”
“More enthusiasm next time. But it’ll do.” Three rapid fire knocks came from the top of my desk. A translucent figure rose from within the oak, its shimmery face staring at me with a smug look.
“Thank you. The tour starts in a few minutes. Is everyone ready?”
“The manic milkmaid is in the kitchen. The gunshot twins swapped spots with the butchered butler.”
“Is that gonna work?”
“Do you trust me?”
“Loosely.”
“Keep talking like that, and I’ll cross over to the other side. You’re lucky your uncle isn’t here. I’m surprised he didn’t stick around.”
I glanced at the tear-away calendar on the wall. Tomorrow would mark the one month anniversary of my uncle's passing. “I’m not. Uncle Jess wasn’t exactly the lingering type. And apparently not one to divulge certain kinds of information.”
“I found your uncle to be quite thorough.”
“Yeah, well. Would have been nice to know that I was inheriting a staff of specters.”
“'Staff of specters'? That’s good, Tom. You should put that in the advertisements.”
A rush of cold air swept through the managerial office of the Sparkling Drop Hotel. The glittering figure of a buxom young woman materialized in front of me.
“Master Tom! Master Jameson! We have a terribly worrisome situation in the basement!”
“What’s going on, Dahlia?”
“Some girls slipped away from the tour group. They’re toying with some sort of strange board-”
I felt Jameson’s cold eyes settle on me.
“-then one of the girls fell to the ground and began shaking violently-
I met the ethereal gaze of my specter-in-command. He grimaced– as well as a ghost can grimace, anyway.
“-speaking in some tongue I’ve never heard!”
"I see. Thank you, Dahlia."
“Everything is so dark and menacing!”
“They must have really summoned something terrible.”
“I was speaking of their attire, sir.”
“...right. I’ll call down and stop the tour. Say there’s a gas leak or something. Dahlia, warn the others.”
The comely spirit gave me a shimmery nod and slipped her translucent body back through the wall.
Jameson's lofty voice wafted through the thickening air. “Very good, Tom. I’ll gather the haunts.”
“Hey, Jameson. One thing. Before we go down.”
“Yes, Tom?”
“Why does the milkmaid talk like that and you speak…normally?”
“Well, Tom. I’ve always been one to keep up with the trends. Now. Are you ready to descend?”
I opened the door to the lobby, diaphragm prepped to bellow falsehoods aimed to spare the living.
Mills
"So like...what's your deal?"
"My deal?" A shit-eating smirk slid across Mills' face.
"Yeah. You know. What are you, like, into?" Ree was beginning to lose her nerve.
"Oh. I don't know. Little of this. Little of that. Got kicked out for thinking about anything other than dudes." Mills began to fiddle with the tip of the shortest spike in her fiercely gelled mohawk.
"So...bi?"
"Hey, man. If I'm into it, I'm into it. No need to overthink things." Mills raised a single eyebrow. "Why, you fishin'?"
" Well, no, I mean, maybe-"
"Then chill. Just do what ya feel."
Lemon Berry
Look.
My dad is loaded. Like, loaded loaded.
Like leave your wife for a woman who introduces herself as ‘Brandi with an I’, pay the housekeeper to keep her mouth shut, low friends in high places loaded.
That’s not what he did. Not quite. My parents’ marriage ended organically, the result of a woman who was too much like her mother and a man who thought his deadbeat father had a couple of good ideas.
Fine. Whatever. I didn’t really like it. Dad was gone for a while. He came back. Paid for my therapy. I guess we’re good. I’m an only child. And I’m not above having someone try to buy my love.
And her name wasn’t Brandi. It was Sarah. Simple, unassuming, twenty-three years younger, Sarah.
Sarah, despite endless hours on the treadmill, wasn’t very fast. But her extensive time in Pilates made her strong.
Surprisingly strong.
The last thing I remember is a flash of a pearl barrette shoved into a highlighted updo.
Shit, she didn’t even change out of the wedding dress?
Holy crap. Am I back at the venue?
What is it with rich people and getting married on freakin’ farms?
Was my dad in the limo? Maybe he has better luck than I do.
The rope around my wrists starts to burn. As I shift, trying to wriggle free, a bobby pin with a broken tip stabs me in the top of the head. It’d been bothering me all day but I didn’t fidget with it lest her majesty– typical Sarah suddenly turned Bridezilla– would have bitten my head off. I saw what happened to the caterer. The florist. The priest.
Dad lectured me enough for a lifetime. I didn’t need one from a woman barely older than me.
What happens when a caterer, a florist, and a priest walk into a wedding? They get shit on for three hours and then go home.
What happens to the groom’s only daughter when she decides to be civil? She gets kidnapped and wakes up bound and gagged in a barn.
I shake my head violently, releasing my sweat-soaked strands from their prison of hairspray and bobby pins. The sea-foam silk of my dress (the one that Sarah insisted I wear) catches the broken bobby. I contort my spine and grab the pin with a single crooked finger. I stab it into the middle of the knot and wriggle my hands back and forth.
My therapist told me I should take up yoga. Said it would be relaxing, cathartic. I thought she was being figurative when she said a good routine saved her life.
I am nearly free when I hear the barn door squeak. Sarah walks in, freed from her wedding dress and now in a leather bodysuit.
Leather? Really?
Was the murderous younger wife not enough of a cliche?
She goes over her evil plan. My dad, the will. He gives me everything, she gets nothing. He made her sign a pre-nup so this is the only way. Blah Blah Blah.
I knew Sarah was basic, but I wouldn’t have expected her to have such a live-laugh-love energy when it came to homicide. She owns at least three shirts with some variation of “Messy hair, don’t care” and this, this is the woman trying to kill for money?
The door squeaks again. Dad walks into the barn, still in his tuxedo. I push the tulle (who uses tulle to gag someone?) stuffed in my mouth out with my tongue.
“Dad! You have to get me out of here, Sarah is psycho-”
“John, I did it for us. Your daughter, she doesn’t appreciate you, you’ve said this so many times-”
Dad looks at me, looks at Sarah.
“You know, kid. You are kind of ungrateful.”
“You’ve got to be fuc-”
“-And you’d probably give half of it to your mother anyway….”
“You CAN’T be serious-”
“Well, Sarah, my dear. Let’s get this over with.”
Sarah scoffs with incredulity, and throws her perfectly toned arms around my father’s neck. The two kiss deeply. I wriggle violently and finally free myself of the rope tied around my wrists. As my father and evil stepmother begin to play the most gratuitous game of tonsil hockey in existence, I make a break for the door. Sarah, with her freakish prowess, catches me by the arm and pulls me onto the floor of the barn. She climbs on top of me and wraps her hands around my throat, her perfectly painted acrylics digging deeply into my skin. The edges of my vision turn black.
Before I pass out, a loud crash comes from beside me. The vice grip releases from my throat. I cough and slowly prop myself up to see the grill of my mom’s GMC (she kept it in the divorce) protruding through the painted wood. The driver’s door swings open and a pair of sensible pumps clack-clack their way over to me.
“Mom?”
“Honey, are you okay?!”
“Um. Yeah. Are they dead?” I point to Sarah and Dad’s limp bodies, tossed across the room by the force of the vehicle.
“Oh. Hmm. I suppose they are. Jerry! You remember Jerry, don’t you, dear?”
“Jerry, like Dad’s lawyer, Jerry?” At the sound of his name, my father’s lawyer of fifteen years exited from the passenger side of the SUV.
“Hey kiddo! Long time, no see.”
“You saw me three hours ago.”
“Heh, I suppose you’re right. I noticed you left the reception early. We got worried when you didn’t show for dinner."
“Show for dinner…Mom, are you dating Dad’s lawyer?”
“Well, I met Jerry during the divorce proceedings and we hit if off but it was obviously a conflict of interest at the time, and then I ran into him at the Farmer’s Market a couple of months ago and with your father getting remarried-”
“A couple of months ago?”
“Well yes, honey...I wanted to tell you but you understand why I wouldn’t…anyway, after your Dad and Sarah got engaged, Sarah started asking Jerry a lot of questions-”
“Okay. Fine. Whatever. Let’s get out of here.”
“And honestly, sweetie, Jerry is just so sensitive and so passionate-”
“Mom, please-”
“No man has understood my mind and body the way he does-
“MOM, LET’S GO.”
“Well hold your horses, I think we have to call the authorities-”
“Way ahead of you, Tonya. Oh, and if you check the backseat, there should be a takeout box with a few pieces of wedding cake in it. ”
“Oh, Jerry. This is why I love you. Do you want some cake, sweetheart?”
“MOM. WE KILLED TWO PEOPLE.”
“Well, it was an accident! And besides, after the third time Sarah called him, Jerry started recording their calls. Probable cause or something. I saw it on Law and Order. Now, do you want cake or not? It’ll take the police a while to get here.”
“...what flavor is it?”
“Jer, what flav- what? Oh, that does sound nice– must have been Sarah’s idea, your father would never have chosen something like that– Jerry said it’s a lemon berry cake with a whipped frosting. You want to split this piece?”
“I’d rather have a whole piece to myself.”
Jerry cups his hand over his cell phone and calls out from the other side of the barn. “Go ahead and take my piece, kiddo. You’ve earned it.”
Charcoal
I swallowed thirteen pills. One for every year that I’d been alive. It seemed like a lucky number.
My mom made me shove my finger down my throat, which I did. She went back to sleep. I took thirteen more and added one of her muscle relaxers– for luck.
I woke her up. Off to Conway Medical Center we went.
It’s a blur between now and then. There are flashes of my mom lifting my legs into our 2001 Pontiac Montana, a blip of me stumbling through the emergency room parking lot, and fluorescent lights rail-roading above my head as scrubs-clad bodies moved frantically around the hospital bed.
A tube forces its way into my throat. I thought I felt it. But maybe not. The objects in the room melt into one another and the doctors and nurses became a singular entity barking orders and confirmations. Black sludge pushes itself into my body.
As my blinking slows, the images swirled into a void familiar, a listless dreamscape, the somber knowledge of the improvements to be found in my absence, that a loss is not truly a loss, that time heals all wounds– of all this, I am convinced. Across my vision comes a flurry of juvenile faces offering nothing more than bitter accusation, memories of the cuts along my arms, legs, and back made with the knife my mother had been trying to find for weeks, a lonely walk home, a move I never wanted to make, and a box in a little girl's closet filled with presents for when her hero returns.
The scene shifts, unnatural choreography formed within my lulling eye. I see my mother, first fresh faced and young, then weary, then worried, crying in a lonely waiting room, biting the brittle nails she’d worked so hard to grow. I remember, five years prior, when her cousin placed a barrel between his teeth, discovered later by his teenage son. My great-aunt threw herself across the closed coffin, wailing for her baby boy. There was a shrine of him in her home, an aging picture set atop a piano that would never be played again. Was this my fate– a picture hung in a living room, stared at often but discussed little, a too-taut heartstring never to be released?
Slingshot visions pulled me from maternal lamentations and propel me into a place I’d never seen, a place that feels like home, where tiny voices call for me and a calloused hand grazes the length of my cheekbone. I saw my mother’s wrinkled face wash over with peace, and one of the few smiles life allowed her creeping across her cracking lips.
Bright lights come into gentle focus. The medical staff is moving less frantically though the seriousness in their steps remains. The tube is pulled from my throat. I gag, cough, and drift off.
When I wake, my mother is by my side whispering a notion of unconditional love. The doctor comes, informs me of my stability. As discussed, he says, if you tried to do this again, we’d have to watch you for a few days.
Three hours later, two officers appear at my bedside. They clasp my hands and my wrists and escort me to a nearby elevator. As I walk, the metal twists around my ankles. One of the officers takes pity and releases the lower set of cuffs, warning me not to run off. The elevator reaches the bottom floor and the doors open. It is twilight, and there is a police car waiting on the other side of the glass entryway. I’m told to watch my head as I awkwardly shift my body into the backseat.
As the car pulls out of the lot, I think of what I’ve seen and wonder- am I truly to be fixed?
Unanimous
The best writing advice I've heard from multiple authors, teachers, and lovers of art- write unapologetically. Write from the heart, stories that are true enough to feel but false enough to make you dream, the things that would cause a ruckus at the family reunion...that is the kind of writing that moves the soul. The kind of writing that people dissect for decades, that people know how it makes them feel yet they can never really put it into words...
Hoarder Haibun (cluttered dreamscapes)
In the way I trip over old cords that lead nowhere, this is the way you trip over dusty dreams, machinations of projects and harder times in which you would whisper "I told you so" to the generations who told you it was too much- though in three decades time, they came to see the virtue of your ways, but me, no I am the demon, yes I am the creature who dares to call the old book trash, who renounces the water stained furniture, who blames the structure's problems on shoddy uncle-brother-neighbor craftmanship from people who knew much less than they'd admit, I am the beast who speaks of yard sales and thrift stores, of moving shelves, the cannibal calling professionals over relatives, who roars at unannounced visitation, the wicked banshee who lords over the thermostat while holding sweaty, screaming children, wounded messenger crying out-
I am the monster
come to feast on broken homes
Nostalgia, it weeps
Cassandra
the mountain fell
within her mind-
a whimper of smoke
ruined dreamscape
burned hot by
ocean flames
ashen graves
piled over, faded
windswept to uncover
bones, barely burned
singed, marred by
fleeting memory
of a hazel eye,
narrowed beneath
a furrowed brow
a watery gaze
pleading for a
heeded call
the virgin weeps,
torn to speak
naught
and yet,
she still whispers
in vain
Packrat
The handle burns my fingers, I curse, wrap my hand in my shirt and kick the door open
Who the FUCK
gets a metal door
in South Carofuckinglina?
The fire-hot handle interlocks with the knob of a poorly placed coat closet, I wrestle it free with misaligned angst
Who built
this place-
Pablo fuckin’ Picasso?
I scan the house, some sense of duty or obligation suffocates the grooves of my brain, God there’s shit everywhere, it’s all trash, I’m calling it now
Corridors of crap-
Graveyard of coulda,
shoulda, woulda.
Post-war children, they say ‘just in case’, but case never comes, never did, never will
No pictures hung-
No, of course
THAT’D be too much.
The bedrooms, bathroom, basement, dusty and covered with mold, bet I could make an asbestos angel in the attic, maybe I can fix this, maybe there’s hope, maybe I can save our souls
The hell-?
Are the doors
fucking MELTING?
No no no no no no what kind of sick Stephen King bullshit is this
I swear to God I’m not like them, I actually like to dust the blades of fans, I would never use plastic this long, I loved Marie Kondo’s book, you’re never supposed to use plastic that long, WHERE ARE THE GODDAMN TRASH BAGS, I swear I can stop it I can make it better GODDAMN IT DON’T LEAVE ME HERE, THIS DOES NOT SPARK JOY
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT FOR ME