A Short Story

Tammy pressed her forefinger to the first title on her Christmas list, mumbled the author’s last name under her breath, then turned her gaze to the top shelf. She wasn’t a big reader, but her son was. Charlie’s favorite authors ranged from Lovecraft and Little, Koontz and King, sometimes Poe. Anything dark and twisted, psychological or mind-bending, was pretty much a safe bet. This year, she really wanted to get it right.

Tammy glanced over her shoulder at the girl in the red jacket. “Zelda? What’s the name of that scary movie your brother likes to watch?”

“I don’t know,” Zelda shrugged, “Charlie watches lots of scary movies.”

“Yeah, but what’s the one from the 80s with the hotel and that big, green labyrinth?”

Zelda scrunched her ten-year-old face. “You mean the one with the Muppets?”

“No, not the one with David Bowie, the one with the ghosts and that awful bathtub scene.”

“Who’s David Bowie?”

Tammy considered humming the opening riff to Under Pressure on the off-chance that her pre-pubescent ears would recognize it, then changed her mind. “He was a singer who liked to wear makeup.”

“Oh, you mean like Kiss?”

Tammy almost replied yes, but caught herself. “How do you know Kiss?”

“Charlie,” Zelda replied, “the big-tongue guy scares me. I like the guy with the whiskers.”

Tammy silently agreed, then scanned the second row of paperbacks.

A males sales associate approached from the aisle, gently tugging on the chin of his recently manicured brown beard. “You finding everything alright, ma’am?”

“Umm,” she mumbled, her long thin fingers fiddling with the handwritten list. “I’m having trouble finding these books.” She handed it to him and crossed her arms, unintentionally closing herself off.

The salesman studied the list, then checked the shelves. “The first two should be behind you, but it jumps from Keller to Knight, which doesn’t make any sense cause it’s the same genre.” Then the answer came to him. “Oh, okay, so we moved his collection closer to the mall entrance in preparation for that new Flanagan film.” He tapped the list, then handed it back. “As for the others, we can look ’em up at the reference station.”

“Great, thank you.” Tammy turned to Zelda, who was staring at the artwork of a Harlequin romance novel. She had a scrunched brow and a disgusted, elevated upper lip. “Come on, honey, let’s follow the nice man.”

Zelda obeyed, but halfway through the Western section, a stuffed unicorn with a rainbow-colored mane plopped down in front of her about ten feet away. She stopped, looked at the stuffed animal, then watched her slowly-departing mother move further away. She looked around herself, then at the unicorn, and went for it.

It jumped to the right, bounced on its hind legs, then fell on its left side. Zelda looked around as if she had just seen a magic trick, and went for it again. It jumped back, much further this time. It did a half-backflip, bounced off the hunter-green carpet with its head, and landed on his right side. And that’s when she saw it. A long piece of green yarn wrapped arouond its hind legs. If she could loosen the knot just enough to slip it off, the unicorn would be hers.

She took two slow half-steps back, then lunged for it.

The unicorn jerked back again, and Zelda fell on the floor. As she got to her feet, a thick, callused palm wrapped in a dirty washcloth grabbed her mouth. Whatever it was, it tasted horrible, and it smelled even worse. She tugged on the rag, but her fingers were too weak. And then the rest of her was lifted into the air.

Eight seconds later, she went limp.

Marsha Blaylock watched Tammy and the sales associate venture into the aisle and disappear behind a wall of Biography hardbacks. She slipped the unicorn and the spool of yarn into the pocket of her husband’s extra-large black Metallica hoodie. The hard part was over. Distracting the child was always easy. Their attention spans are like goldfish, just tap on the glass and you’ll have them. Doing it when the parent or guardian was also distracted, that’s the tricky part.

She looked to her towering husband, Geoff. He pocketed the chloroform rag, then draped the ten-year-old over his thick 6’4″ frame like a Raggedy Ann doll and let her weight fall into the crook of his left elbow. Marsha instinctively wrapped the girl’s dangling arms around his neck, then stepped back for further instruction.

Geoff motioned to his right. “Cover me,” and then they started walking.

They casually made their way toward the front entrance, passed the reference section where the hipster-adjacent sales crew conjugated, then ventured into a crowd of shoppers gathered around the recently-released best sellers table. Marsha looked at her husband and, for a moment, swooned at his strength. The way he held the child oddly made her feel safe. The way he cupped her tiny, vulnerable frame with just his arm. The way his stringy salt-and-pepper beard concealed the girl’s unconscious face as her blue-jeaned lower half dangled over his robust beer belly. She didn’t want to admit it, but she found him desirable.

It also made her phantom ovaries tingle.

Midway through the crowd, Marsha said the first thing that came to mind. “I told you we should’ve fed her before we left the house.”

“Let’s just get her home,” Geoff replied, “Poor thing’s been up since four. No wonder she fell asleep in the kid’s section.”

“Sleep isn’t the issue, Mark. Her blood sugar is low.”

“Then feed her a fucking candy bar when we get to the car.”

“Mark, are you stupid?” Marsha asked. Geoff looked at her, almost out of character, but kept his stride. He could tell she was out of her element. This was his idea, not hers. Geoff threw her a nod permitting her to keep going, then looked to the windows that led out to the parking lot. Marsha hesitated, swallowed hard, and double-downed. “Like for real, are you stupid? Giving a diabetic a Snickers bar is like…” she trailed off, realizing she was approaching uncharted waters. She had no idea what she was talking about, and her improvisation skills were sub-par. She made up for it by biting her upper lip and shaking her head like a frustrated mother scolding her oldest child. “You know what? Forget it, let’s just go.”   

The crowd, acknowledging their spat, parted like the Red Sea, and later forgot they existed.

The parking lot was packed, which oddly made them feel better. Marsha more than Geoff. If shit went down and the kid’s mother alerted the authorities, she could always run to the car like a bat out of hell, leaving Geoff to fend for himself. Or she could run off in the opposite direction, then later claim she had been forced to assist with the kidnapping.

But then she remembered that Geoff had the keys.

Geoff carried Zelda to the edge of the sidewalk and looked both ways. Marsha did too.

A soft feminine voice stopped them. “Not too late.”

“Holy shit!” Geoff gasped, instinctively moving toward Marsha. He lost his footing on the sidewalk, stepped off the pavement and twisted his right ankle. Not enough to do any damage, but enough to shock him. He regained his balance, then faced the speaker. “Sorry, what’d you say?”

He saw a woman in a white sundress with sparkling green eyes. Late thirties, early forties. Her sleeves loosely clung to her elbows and the bottom hem ended at her knees. Her long beautiful blonde hair held a reddish hue that shined under the afternoon sun, draping down her pristine shoulders like that of a fairytale princess and morphing into curls that concealed her ample bosom from wandering eyes. “It’s not too late.”

The woman was also barefoot.

Geoff tightened his grip on Zelda and sniffed in the cool December air. It was 37 degrees, and a bit windy, but that didn’t seem to bother her. He lustfully studied the lady, then faced Marsha, already midway through the crosswalk. Geoff composed himself, then readjusted Zelda. Her right arm slid off his shoulder, but the stranger in the white dress re-draped it. “Thanks,” he said, then caught up with Marsha. “Blonde chick in a white dress at 6 o’clock.”

Marsha glanced back, but didn’t slow down. “What about her?”

“I don’t know, she just…looked at me weird, you know?”

“Just keep going.” When they passed the handicapped spots, Marsha glanced back again. The woman was still on the sidewalk, watching them. “What did you say to her?”

“Nothing.”

Marsha didn’t press him. “Sorry about calling you stupid. It just kinda came out.”

Geoff checked his wristwatch, the black and silver Omega he snatched from a drunk tourist in a casino parking lot. “Doesn’t matter, we got what we came for. The mob inside won’t remember us, they barely even noticed us. And even if they do, we’ll be in Louisville by nightfall.”

“And then what?”

“We cut the kid’s hair, bleach it, then leave her at the drop-off spot.”

“And after that, we get the house back, right?”

“No, we get the money and lay low until this whole thing blows over.”

“But if we have the money, why can’t we buy the house back?”

“Because there’s more to it than that,” Geoff snapped, “we can’t just…buy it back, okay? There’s a process. If people who look like us show up with a quarter million after—”

Marsha popped him in the stomach with the back of her hand, barely missing Zelda’s left leg. “A quarter million?!” she snapped, stopping in her tracks. “Are you kidding me? Who the fuck did we kidnap, Geoff?”

“Bitch! Don’t say my name!” He replied, barely containing his wrath. “You keep talking like this and…” he trailed off, then nodded at the white-haired elderly couple that had just left their grey Buick. The man nodded back and led his wife past them. When they were alone, Geoff leaned in and whispered. “Keep your questions to yourself until we’re on the interstate.”

“Okay,” Marsha said, then followed Geoff to the car.

If Geoff were an honest man, he would’ve told her it had started three months earlier with a Craigslist ad. The author, a self-ascribed real estate mogul based in Cincinnati, had requested the delivery of a very sensitive package across state lines. The phone call, a day later, had revealed the package to be a ten-year-old girl. The man, using the alias Jack-O-Man, claimed to be the girl’s biographical father. He had lost her in a custody battle and offered two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash for her safe return. Geoff was vocal about his reservations, but Jack-O-Man calmed his concerns and persuaded him to take the job.

There was no money, but Geoff would find that out in due time.

They passed a black and silver Toyota Camry, the elderly couple’s grey Buick, and a purple minivan with a seven-member stick family decal on the real window. Marsha glanced back at the sidewalk a third time. The woman was still there, watching them. “Must be a schizo or something.”

“What’s that?”

“Wearing a thin sundress during winter, that’s what schizos do. I read somewhere that the chemical imbalance in their brain is so off that they can’t regulate body temperature or some shit. That’s why they always dress so weird. Like that crazy bitch who patrols the university in a black winter coat during July. It’s the same thing.”

“Makes sense,” Geoff nodded, unaware that Zelda had already blinked twice.

When they got to the car, a 2005 black Pontiac Vibe with a faded grey bumper, Geoff did a quick look-around, then opened the back door on the driver’s side. The seat was folded forward, prepped for this moment, with a large Queen-sized grey comforter on top. He wrapped Zelda in the grey comforter as if she were an infant, swaddling her arms and tucking the folds of the blanket in any crevice that would hold, then gently pushed her into the hatchback. Marsha guarded the hatchback window, smiled at a passing family of four, then glanced one more time at the sidewalk.

The woman in white was gone.

Marsha slapped the hatchback door. “Whoever it was, she’s gone now—”

…Marsha…

The voice came from beyond the grill of the Pontiac. Marsha’s ears perked in that direction, but she remained stoic. Her name wasn’t super unusual. Most her age who grew up watching the Brady Bunch recognized it. However, when she heard it in public, the intended party was usually always someone else. The voice called again. And again, she ignored it, focusing her attention on her husband through the back window. He stuffed the swaddled ten-year-old into the hatchback, raised the back seat to its upright position, and shut the door.

…Marsha…over here… muttered the voice, much softer this time.

The first one rang real. The second one did too, just a tad further away. This last one though, felt different, more internal. Like an intuitive declaration or an auditory hallucination pulling her focus. She gave in and looked across the parking lot into the endless row of stationary vehicles, but saw nothing that connected the dots. A large black minivan left the Expectant Mother’s parking spot and drove past Marsha’s line of sight, spraying black and gray slush in both directions. A family of five yielded to the van, then continued, pointing their awestruck fingers at the towering Christmas tree that decorated the mall entrance.   

There was nothing for about nineteen seconds.

Nothing, except a never-ending multi-colored landscape of stationary vehicles and clouds of floating water vapor. A lime-green Volkswagen bug, then a cherry red pick-up truck sloshed toward the entrance, spraying her shoes with water and breaking her trance.

And then she noticed, across the parking lot, something only meant for her.

A light blue flyer flapped under the blade of a green Nissan’s rear window.

“Why the rear one?” Marsha asked herself softly, then checked the neighboring vehicles for identical flyers. Nothing. On any of them. Nothing on the front. Nothing on the back.

Geoff approached the driver’s side door, then looked into the backseat from where he stood just to make sure the girl was covered. She was. That was a relief. His wife’s odd glare across the parking lot, however, was not. “Marsha?”

Marsha looked at him. “What’s that?”

“You alright?”

Marsha nodded, then resumed her stare on the blue flyer.

Geoff followed her line of sight, but saw nothing eccentric. “What are you looking at?”

Marsha pointed at the flapping flyer. “That thing. On the rear window of that green car.”

Geoff didn’t see it, but acted like he did. “Cool, that’s really something…” he trailed off, then slapped the top of the car with his thick callused palm. “Gotta go.”

In the hatchback, Zelda stirred, but did not wake.

Marsha studied her husband’s wide-eyed expression, noted the urgency of his gesticulating blue flannelled forearms, and motioned for the passenger door. But just as her fingertips touched the door handle, that instinctive beckoning from earlier called again, and she walked through the parking lot.

Geoff motioned to call for her, cupping his mouth with both hands and leaning over the hood, but suddenly felt insecure as a trio of middle-aged well-dressed housewives approached from the right. Moderately attractive, but still way out of his league. Clear skin kissed by the beams of a tanning bed, soft red lips, and a tad plump around the thighs. They wore matching black windbreakers like an all-female real estate agency and walked in sync, hands in pockets, as though their presence was expected.

Geoff followed them with his eyes like a serial killer in a 90s slasher film, then let his gaze fall upon their backsides. The middle one with the resting-bitch-face was cute, maybe just a bit too much eye shadow. The one on the right was physically striking like the silent Queen of a fairytale kingdom, but way too thin. The one on the left, however, the thicker gal with the booty. She was the one whom Geoff had trouble looking away from.

Geoff climbed into the driver’s seat and turned the engine over. He checked for movement in the rearview mirror, then watched his wife approach the green Nissan through the windshield. “Come on, come on, come on, babe? What are you doing?” he mumbled, impatiently slapping the steering wheel with his thumbs before running both hands through his thinning black and silver mane. He vigorously dug his fingers into his scalp, wiped the sweat from his face, then popped his knuckles until he ran out of things to do.

He turned the radio on low, changed the station twice, turned it off and looked through the passenger window. Fifty yards away was the woman in white, slowly walking toward him.  

Geoff felt a shiver run down his spine, but wasn’t sure why.

Three slow steps later, rich red blood seeped from her left nostril.

Suddenly, déjà vu from forty years earlier hit him.  

Martin Shankman, a freshman with dark red hair and freckles, had just had his ass handed to him by some seniors. Randy Brewer and his redneck cartel had overheard him talking shit to a group of sophomore girls during first period, then challenged him to a fight at recess. Martin wasn’t a pushover. He stood his ground fairly well. Dropped Randy’s second-in-command, D.J., to his knees with a gut punch, blocked all of Howie’s signature jump-kicks with a swat of the hand, and knocked the wind out of Randy twice.

He left the field with a bloody nose, a chipped tooth, and later, a firm handshake.

Here’s where the déjà vu kicked in.

After Martin took down D.J., Randy charged, then kicked his feet out as if he were sliding home. Martin tried to counter it, but tripped face-first into a patch of dirt. He sat up, touched fingers to his bloody face, then looked at Geoff, who had seen it all from behind some shrubbery at the back entrance of the high school. Martin rose to his feet, gave a ‘time-out’ hand gesture, and slowly walked back, his eyes trained on Geoff.

At that moment, Geoff trembled.

The Angel of Death had spotted him, eavesdropping like the coward he was, and was now casually closing the distance as fresh blood from his nose dripped off his chin. Geoff tripped back into the grass and turned his sights to the school as the memory of what truly spawned the fight flashed in front of his face.

Martin never said an ill word about Randy and his ragtag team of misfits, he was merely the scapegoat after Geoff scampered off to the bathroom. From that moment, Geoff never made eye contact with Martin, nor did he apologize.

Geoff blinked away the memory, then honked the horn.

Zelda opened her eyes, pulled the blanket to her chin, and looked around. She was still groggy, but fought it for as long as she could.

Marsha looked back at Geoff, held up a finger, and returned to the Nissan. She glanced around herself, yanked the flyer from the blade, then headed back to the Pontiac, unfolding it with her fingers as the winter slush from the pavement seeped through the walls of her sneakers.

She opened the note, then stopped a few steps later.

Save Yourself, Marsha, Final Warning.

The second time Geoff honked the horn, Zelda fully woke up.

Marsha looked up from the note, confused, but at the same time, not.

Zelda pushed off the black blanket, rolled on her stomach, and looked out the back window. She saw the bright afternoon sun hang like an orb over the bookstore, the ever-expanding multiplex mall that surrounded it, and the infinite row of diagonally arranged cars topped with small amounts of ice and condensation.

She blocked out the sun with her hand and looked for her mother.

In the parking lot, she saw a pretty woman in a white dress, walking toward her, with long reddish-blonde curly hair. Her bare feet stepped across the cold, wet pavement with ease. It was as if she were walking on water, floating almost, like that miracle man from that ancient book with the gold pages, the one her grandpa liked to read so much.

The woman in white stopped three cars away, then looked to her right.

Zelda followed her stare to an older woman, around her grandma’s age, in a black hoodie with white scraggly writing. She was holding a blue piece of paper and looking around, searching for someone. She read the blue paper once, looked up, read it two more times, then shoved it into the front pocket of her jeans.

Zelda looked back at the woman in white, who was now smiling. Her smile calmed Zelda. She couldn’t explain it, but it did. Something about her, even from a distance, was comforting.

The woman in white looked to the sky, then gripped her left wrist like a groomsman posing for a wedding photograph. She closed her eyes, and after a short pause, returned her gaze to Zelda. Her once light green eyes had now turned bright white. She cupped her mouth with both hands and whispered—

…go to sleep, child…

And then Zelda’s eyes closed.

To Be Continued…