Reprised from last Halloween… Have a wonderfully spooky night! xo, Amy

Gene was washing the dishes when he heard someone at the door.

A kid dressed as a wizard held out a pillowcase. “Tricker treat.”

Halloween already? Gene didn’t have any candy in the house. “Just a second. Be right back.”

He closed the door most of the way and looked around quickly. No candy, of course. There were some apples on the counter, but the kid’s parents would think he put razor blades in them. Damn. On impulse Gene picked up something and returned to the door.

“Here you go. Happy Halloween.”

The kid stared. “What is it?”

“A waffle iron.”

The kid looked dubious.

“This is better than candy. You can make your own waffles, all year round.”

“Really?”

“Sure.” Gene couldn’t remember if the damn thing worked. He hadn’t used it in years.

“Okay. Thanks.” The wizard walked to the house next door.

Jesus. Time to go buy some candy. Gene went to his dresser and looked in his wallet. Twenty bucks, and that had to last him till Wednesday. Shit.

Knock, knock, knock.
Gene grabbed a few random items from the dresser and went to the door. Good thing, too, because it was a group this time.

“Here you go, everybody. Happy Halloween.”

A girl in a Tinkerbell costume made a face. “Speed Stick?!”

“Oops! Let me have that.” Gene took back the deodorant and gave her an old deck of cards instead.

A Mighty Morphin Power Ranger took issue. “I want candy.”

“You’ll have to settle for this watch.”

“Cool! Does it work?”

It didn’t. “Batteries not included.”

The Power Ranger didn’t seem to mind.

A punk rocker accepted the remote control to a DVD player Gene no longer owned without comment.

Gene closed the door and tried to think. He couldn’t just give away everything he owned. What on earth did he have to give out this year?

He went back to the kitchen. Maybe he’d stashed a Snickers bar in the fridge. Gene opened the refrigerator door. The opening notes of Also Sprach Zarathustra thundered around him. He took the carton and set it beside the door.

Back to the linen closet. The box was still there, unopened. Thank God he’d started buying in bulk. He settled himself in a chair near the door and waited for the fun to begin. He had beside him a carton of thirty-six eggs and a box of one hundred shaving cream samples.

Gene was gonna be the coolest guy on the block.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

Again with the writing while I’m tired… xo, Amy

There is danger in perpetual twilight, that fine bleak edge between light and dark, sound and sense. You’ve experienced it. That split second when you put your fingers under water and your brain hasn’t yet figured out whether the water is hot or cold. The first anxious moment you’re unsure if the woman in the next room is laughing or crying. The peril is the uncertainty; the blank potential that only your imagination can fill.

For your imaginations are far more terrifying than anything the denizens of the gray areas can compel. The terrors we create for ourselves are infinitely worse than whatever reality we might face.

And so the denizens listen in the twilight, watching and waiting from the shadows. They linger patiently, hulking vultures, as you destroy yourself from within. They wait as long as they have to, secure in the knowledge that sooner or later, you will succumb. Patience is a virtue, and virtue is its own reward…

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

No SPASM tonight.

I just got treated like the biggest bitch in the world for suggesting (in the nicest way possible) to someone very close to me that she shouldn’t punch her teenaged, pregnant sister (who happens to be living under my roof).

I wish this were yesterday and it was easy being a quasi-stepmom again.

“Fuckin’ nose won’t stop running,” Snake lamented.

“So take some Theraflu or shit,” counseled Freaky John. “Shit works great.”

“It’s not a cold, retard, it’s a fuckin’ sinus infection.”

“I thought they were the same thing.”

“Fuck, I gotta see a doctor, dude, this thing is killing me.”

“You got health insurance?”

Snake stroked his goatee. “No. I oughta go down to the VA and get some benefits.”

“What the fuck’s the VA got to do with anything?”

“I’m a goddamn veteran, that’s what. Christ, you’re stupid sometimes.”

Freak nodded sagely. “I didn’t know you served.”

Snake thumped his chest somewhere in the vicinity of his left lung. “With—” He erupted in a sudden fit of coughing. “With pride,” he choked.

“Good for you. When did you serve?”

“Started the same fuckin’ day as you, dipshit. We joined together, remember?”

Freak scrunched his eyebrows in thought. “No, I don’t think I ever enlisted, man.”

“Did too.”

“Unreal. I’m pretty sure I’d remember something like that. What branch?”

Snake smacked himself in the forehead.” You’re like talking to a motherfucking wall. The Army!”

“The Army, huh.” Freaky John laughed. “That’s fucked up, dude. I always thought I was more of a Navy man.”

“Nope. KISS Army, all the way.”

Freaky John stared at the wall for a minute. “I don’t think the KISS Army’s got much in the way of benefits, man.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

We picked him up at a general store at the junction of two county roads somewhere in southern Indiana.

I don’t know how old he was. Mid twenties, perhaps. Ages are hard to guess when you’re a child. He approached us as we left the store. “Where you headed?”

“North,” Dad replied. “Why?”

“Been hitching since yesterday. Got to get to Elbert tonight. Buy you a tank of gas if you’ll take me.”

Mom shrugged. Dad grinned. “Okay. I’m John, this is my wife Helen and our daughter Audrey.” The hitchhiker nodded a greeting, and we were on our way.

He wasn’t much for talking. We sat at opposite ends of the back seat, leaning against our respective doors with his guitar between us. He had long brown hair and a faded denim vest with fringe. After a while, he slipped off his sandals and examined his feet. Without warning, he drew a knife from his pocket and began cutting the calluses from his soles.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I whispered.

He shook his head. “Dead skin. See?” He stabbed at his heel. “Nothing.”

That was it for conversation for a while. My mother dozed in the front seat and my father listened to a baseball game on the radio. The hitchhiker continued cutting away dead flesh on the seat beside me.

We stopped for lunch by the side of the road. We sat on a blanket under a shady tree, eating sandwiches and potato chips. Dad took a cat-nap and Mom lay next to him with a paperback.

The hitchhiker picked up his guitar and strummed softly. I didn’t recognize the words, but he had a surprisingly sweet voice. He smiled when I began to sing along with the chorus: “Better run for your life if you can, little girl…”

“Trespassers!” The farmer had snuck up from behind us. He had a shotgun. “You’re on my property!”

My parents bolted upright. The hitchhiker stopped mid-strum.

“I’m sorry, we didn’t realize,” said my father. “No harm done. We’ll clean up and be on our way.”

The farmer smiled unpleasantly. “That’s up to me. And I say nobody’s leaving until I get a kiss from the young lady.”

My mother paled. Dad put his arm around her. “Call the police if you want to, but you’re not touching my wife.”

The shotgun made a nasty sound being cocked. “Your daughter, then.”

I screamed.

The barrel swung toward my nose, then suddenly upwards as the hitchhiker held his knife to the farmer’s throat. He’d snuck around behind him, just as he’d done to us.

“Drop it,” he said through clenched teeth.

The hitchhiker tossed the shotgun into a lake a few miles up the road and we continued on our journey. As before, he wasn’t much of one for conversation.

We dropped him in Elbert, as planned.

Never saw him again.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

“Born-againers are exactly the same as mash potatoes,” Snake declared.

Freaky John took a hit off the bong and coughed violently. “Good stuff,” he added, eyes watering. “With or without butter?”

Snake eyed the bong suspiciously. “You’re smokin’ butter, dude?”

“Fuck, no, the potatoes.”

“What potatoes?”

“The ones that are born again.” Freak giggled. “Fuckin’ giant mashed potatoes with crosses on their necks.”

“Potatoes have eyes, not necks,” Snake countered. He took a nice deep hit and held his breath for a minute. “I mean born-again people. All you got to do is get baptized, and you’re saved. Just add water, and bam! Instant God.”

“How do you know? Is that one of those fuckin’ Snapple Facts?”

“No, man, you ever watch that televangel shit on Sunday morning?”

Freak rolled his head back and belched. “Do they have potatoes?”

“No, they only got communion wafers and shit.”

“Oh.” Freak sounded disappointed. “French fries?”

“I said, they only got communion.”

“Baked.”

“Dude, you’re fuckin’ baked, not the potatoes.”

“Unbelievable.” Freak shook his head and poured the crumbs left in the Doritos bag down his throat. “Fuckin’ unreal.”

Snake laughed and took another hit. “I’m glad we can have deep fuckin’ conversations like this.”

Freak smiled benevolently. “It’s cause I’m a student of philosophophy.”

“No, dude, you’re in law school.”

Freaky John grew grave. “Oh, yeah. Unbelievable.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

Vivian propped her chin on her hands and looked down into the grass. A ladybug was making her way between the green blades. Vivian reached down and gently nudged the insect with her finger. The ladybug didn’t appear to notice. Vivian giggled and rolled over onto her back. The ladybug might have noticed if her finger was ladybug-sized. But little girl-sized? No.

“What are you laughing about?” Vivian’s mother was on her knees, diligently pruning the rosebushes nearby.

“My fingers.” Vivian held up her hands and regarded her fingers closely. Such strange, long, tentacle-y things. She wiggled them. “How do I know they’re fingers?”

Her mother shrugged. “How do you know they’re not?”

Vivian frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe they’re not fingers, after all. Maybe they’re elbows.”

“Maybe you overanalyze things,” Mother replied.

“I can’t help it, words are interesting. What if they weren’t called fingers, they were called something else? Would that change my fingers? Would it change how I used them?”

“Other mothers have daughters who want to talk about ponies and princesses,” Mother chuckled.

“What if ponies and princesses were called zounds and zebras?”

“They’d still be the same thing, Vivian.”

She rolled her head around to look at her mother. “How do you know?”

“These, for instance. What I’m holding. What are they?”

“Pruning shears.”

Mother shook her head. “‘Pruning shears’ is a label, words we use to mean something. You should never confuse a label with what it stands for.”

“But they really are pruning shears.”

Mother sat down cross-legged besides Vivian with the shears. “Give me your hand, little one.” She fit her daughter’s fingers into the handles of the tool, motioning them open and closed. Then she held the shears and traced Vivian’s fingers along the blunt side of the blade. Finally, she helped Vivian clip an errant stem from the rosebush. “Now. Describe them again.”

Vivian wrinkled her nose. “Heavy steel clippie thingy that makes a shhk! noise and cuts off roses.”

Mother laughed. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think there’s a word that fits.”

“Now try describing what pruning shears are without words.”

Vivian picked up the shears and lopped off a leaf. “That was easy,” she observed.

Mother smiled. “See? ‘Pruning shears’ is just a few mouth noises we make when we want someone to think of pruning shears. Words are labels.”

“I like when you explain things like this, Mother.”

Her mother leaned over and chucked her gently on the chin. “There’s no explanation for how I feel about you, little one. You’re indescribable.”

Vivian hugged her mother. “So are you.”

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

“The motion of the wings of a butterfly can trigger a hurricane.” Those words haunted him. The notion that the smallest act or event had a cumulative, rippling effect that could snowball into death and disaster changed him.

He considered every step now, weighing the impact of his feet on the pavement. Eventually, he mastered a virtual economy of movement, preserving the balance of kinetic energy he exerted. His fluid, measured body motions and even breathing reminded people of a dancer. It was same the kind of control a ballet dancer required to perform complicated choreography and make it appear effortless. It helped him achieve a sort of inner peace to know that by being so thoughtful about his own acts, he was helping to prevent the possibility of natural catastrophe.

Until he ate those refried beans and started Hurricane Wilma.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.

Life on a blue-green planet can be pretty blue when you’re red-green color blind.

He could make out red pretty well. He knew it wasn’t as vivid a depth of color as everybody else saw, but he could perceive and enjoy it. So what if he had trouble telling red from pink. He knew a rose when he saw one, he reflected.

Green was a different story. The bottom light on a traffic light appeared white to him. Currency was all gray and white. Grass was white, the leaves on the trees an amalgam of silver and gray.

Spring and summer were monochromatic, colorless, devoid of the rich tapestry of greens others could see. Oh, he enjoyed the changing of the seasons, but he wished he could enjoy them as much as everyone else did.

Except autumn. Come October, the foliage sprang into life, alive with fire and brilliance. And it was at that time of the year that he felt truly fortunate. Other people appreciated the fall colors, sure. For him, it was the only time he saw the leaves’ colors at all. Suddenly, it was real, it was visible, a cornucopia of color for him to revel in. He took long walks almost every day in the fall, savoring the brief rush of color that would tide him over through the next three seasons.

He mentioned it once to his wife. “I feel like I’m missing something,” he confided. “It’s one of the most abundant colors. If I couldn’t see fuschia or neon orange, I could probably get along just fine, but it would make me so happy to be able to see the colors of a tree in summer.”

His wife thought about it a long time. Such a simple want, really.

So she did some research and brought him a Japanese maple.

When he heard she’d spent so much money on a maple tree, he was disappointed in her judgment—until he went into the back yard and saw the tree.

It was a small tree, ten feet tall at the most, but she’d planted it with room to grow. It had a long, slender gray-brown trunk and plum-colored leaves.

It’s been many years, and they have many Japanese maples now. And sometimes, resting after working hard pruning the trees on a hot summer’s day, he sits back to sip some cool lemonade and reflect on how the love of his life made this blue-green planet not so blue for him anymore.

Copyright 2005 Amy Frushour Kelly. All rights reserved.
Reproduction by any means prohibited without prior written consent.