Pulling the Skin Off the Bones

Mom and dad acted strange all day. Mom kept rubbing her hands together, as if trying to pull the skin off the bones. Dad stayed home from work. He never stays home from work, so he didn’t know what to do with himself. And he kept walking past me, messing up my hair, and wiping his eyes.

“Hey, son,” he’d say, walking away to another area of the house where continued doing nothing.

That afternoon mom asked me what I wanted for dinner.

“Anything,” she said, tilting her head to the side, as if looking at me for the first time. Or the last. “Your choice.” I went with spaghetti and meatballs. I knew it would be easy, and cheap.

That night she was in my room, rearranging things. When I came in she had a duffel bag packed so full it looked like an inflated swimming device.

“No matter what, you keep this,” she said.

“Am I going some where?”

“Not for long,” she said. But I knew she was lying. She held her hand up under her nose, as if to stop a sneeze, and moved past me. Ten minutes later they walked me out into the rain, the pouring rain. We stood there, outside my building, on what felt like the loneliest night of my whole life. No one said anything. We just got wet.

Then a van pulled up. Mom stuffed a ticket into my hand.

“You don’t lose this,” she said, her eyes wide. “This is your life. You don’t give it to anyone.”

I nodded. Dad picked me up and set me down inside the van – against the dry seats I felt even more wet. Dad slammed the door. The van driver pulled away, as if nothing had happened. As if I wasn’t even there.

I looked behind me – two people sat there: a woman with a scared look on her face, and a man that didn’t look scared enough.

“Hi,” I said.

“No talking!” shouted the driver.

“I’m cold,” I said, quietly. The driver turned on the heat.

“No talking,” he said, this time in a smaller voice.

I leaned over on my overstuffed duffel bag and fell asleep.

* * * * *

This is where you get to decide the direction of the story. The question is, who is this kid?

1) Macy‘s son

2) The son of the man who lives on death

3) The son of the woman who had been chasing Macy

4) It’s not his identity that matters – it’s what’s in the duffel bag

To read the beginning of this story, or to see how previous weeks’ decisions worked out (majority marked in bold), click HERE

Claim Your Winnings

“Hello, and thank you for calling Super-Eight. Please listen to the following selections, as the options have recently changed.”

When the power had gone out in the building, Jordan had sprinted back upstairs. John locked the door and slid a chair under the door knob, because that’s what they did in the movies.

“What’s going on?” he hissed at Macy.

“Shh!” she said, putting her hand over her ear, listening to the options. She also peered out the window, searching for Penelope.

“If you are a winner, please press 828 and follow the instructions. Please understand that the consequences of making a false claim, even at this stage, are serious. Please also understand that once  you report a winning ticket, the process is irreversible.”

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Macy asked John.

He nodded.

She pressed the numbers on the phone. 8-2-8. Immediately a voice spoke to her.

“Who is this?” it asked urgently.

“Uh, actually, there are two of us. We both won.” She gave them her name and, after asking John, gave them his name as well.

“Where are you?”

Macy told them the name of the streets at the intersection outside the apartment building.

“Someone will pick you up in approximately eight minutes driving a gray van. Do not speak to the driver. Do not speak to one another. The driver will only allow two people to enter the van. Do not try to bring anyone else with you.”

Click.

* * * * *

“I don’t see anyone in the hall,” muttered John, opening the door an inch and peeking out. “We can either go out the front entrance, or we can try the alley.”

Macy shook her head. “I don’t like either option.”

“Yeah, well neither do I. But now we’re down to five minutes. What do you think?”

Silence. The rain picked up, thudding against the glass like a thousand tapping fingers. Macy stared at the hundreds of miniature rivers racing down the windows. She wondered if they still waited out there for her.

“Let’s do the alley. It will only take us 30 seconds to get out that way. We wait another few minutes, then make a dash for it.”

John nodded.

The next three minutes passed in the form of years. The power in the building was still out, so she stared at the minutes as they changed on her cell phone. Soon John eased over to the door that led out into the alley way. Macy followed him.

“Ready?” he asked.

Just then the power in the building came on.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Macy hissed. “Let’s go!”

They pushed open the door and plunged into the alley, immediately soaked by the rain. A voice, not far behind them, shouted.

“Hey, there they go!”

As if on cue, a gray van slid up and parked along the sidewalk, its headlights bright, its windshield wipers flopping back and forth. John opened the door and jumped in. Macy followed close behind, but just before she closed the door, she heard someone shout her name.

“Macy!” She looked up the street. It was Penelope.

“Don’t go! Don’t do it! Those people, the ones who’ve been trying to talk to you, they’re good people! If you go in that van, you’re dead! Those other people want to help you!”

“I have to go,” Macy shouted. “I’m sorry!”

Penelope shouted one last thing before Macy closed the door and the van pulled away.

“What did she shout, there at the end?” John Dran asked her in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” Macy said. “I couldn’t hear her.”

The van driver shouted in a gruff voice.

“This is your one and only warning. No talking!”

But Macy had heard Penelope. She had shouted, “Don’t trust John Dran!”

Suddenly the van slammed on its brakes, the side door opened, and someone came flying in.

* * * * *

The question this week is, who else enters the van?

1 – A woman who was also a lottery winner

2 – A man pretending to be a lottery winner

3 – A child, clutching a lottery ticket

To catch up on the story and read it from the beginning, click HERE (you’ll need to come back to this page to vote)

The Man Who Lived On Death

Sometimes, on days when the wind galloped down from the mountains, the smell of dead people rushed away before it could rise up to his house. On those windy days he remembered the smell of growing things, or the way rain used to make the mud smell brown. He remembered being a child.

But when the air paused, like a comma, the smell rose up into his shack. This wasn’t offensive – to him the rank odor of dead people was the smell of comfort, of home. He was safe there.

He could see the dirt road as it twisted and turned an angular path through the tens of thousands of stacked graves on which his house was built. They were lined up neatly in rows, five coffins high, hundreds wide, but the road that went through the middle of them was haphazard, as if the person placing each stack thought, at the time, that there was no need for order as surely that would be the last stack ever placed.

As if death would stop.

For a short time (weeks? months?) he had lived on the outskirts of the Great Cemetery, but wandering gangs of people who had escaped the city made his life difficult, so he moved to the middle of the graves, built his house on top of them out of discarded wood. He bartered for a rifle.

The dirt road left the Great Cemetery and darted in a straight line through the dust-laden valley where it became a dark brown thread in a sea of tan. Nothing lived in the valley. Nothing breathed. Nothing moved.

Just at the edge of what was visible, he could see the walled city.

* * * * *

A small, distant cloud of dust swirled along the road. He grabbed his rifle and ran across the stacked, cement coffins. After ten minutes, he stopped and sat down, caught his breath. Three large trucks plodded forward in the cloud’s swirling midst.

He approached the edge of the cemetery just as the trucks pulled to a stop. When their engines shut down, the world stopped – stillness rushed in from the mountains. Before anyone spotted him, he climbed down among the dead, then crept along the road where it stumbled through the stacks. He stopped just inside the last pile. He peered out at the trucks, each one occupied by two of the city’s soldiers. Then he lifted his rifle and aimed it at the head of the first truck’s driver, stopping only when the man’s forehead was in his cross hairs.

* * * * *
This is where you decide what happens next:

1 – He pulls the trigger

2 – He shouts out that he is there and ready to make the exchange

3 – He pulls back in surprise when civilians are taken out of the back of one of the trucks

If you missed the first few episodes, you can read the story from the beginning HERE

Another Winner

“What do you mean, you don’t know what’s going on?” John Dran asked Macy. The rain outside stopped for a moment, and, without the band playing in the apartment above, the world seemed eerie and still.

“What do I mean?” Macy looked around, confused. Water was still dripping off of her hair and her clothes were soaked. “The power went out in my building. Someone tried to break in. Then someone else tried to abduct me. I’ve been chased around the city all night. That’s what I mean when I say I have no idea what’s going on.”

John looked surprised, and a little nervous.

“Wow. Chill out. What are you, a convict or something?”

“No! I’m just a, a nothing. I’m nobody.”

“So you have no idea why these people are chasing you, breaking into your house?”

Macy shook her head, then reached into her pocket.

“Before I ran from the last girl she asked me if I had this.” She held out her lottery ticket. “Please, take it. I don’t want it.”

He took the ticket and looked at it. His skin paled. He walked over to the table, slid the bowl of soup to the side and picked up his own ticket.

“You can keep yours,” he said in a flat-line voice. “I’ve got my own.”

Macy looked at John’s lottery ticket

“You played the same numbers I did,” she whispered. Then she looked up at him. “So what are you going to do?”

A knock sounded at the door. Macy and John froze in place, like prey hoping they hadn’t yet been noticed. Both instinctively held their breath. Whoever was in the hallway knocked again. Then a voice shouted.

“Hey, idiot, I know you’re in there. You know who you are, always banging on the ceiling! Get your ass out here!”

Macy glanced at John, who heaved a sigh of relief and went to the door.

“Listen, Jordan, now’s not a good time.”

“Not a good time to get an old fashioned ass-kicking?”

“Listen, man, I’m sorry for banging. I just, I was on the phone with my mom, you know. I couldn’t hear myself think.”

“Open the door,” Jordan said.

“Look, I’m opening the door but I have to keep the chain on, so don’t break my door down.” John latched the chain, then eased open the door, revealing Jordan’s very red face.

“Hey, you’re the guy who changed the number on my lottery card!” Macy said, moving towards the door. A panicked look spread over Jordan’s face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about lady.”

“No! It was you! I know it was you!”

Just as Macy began walking toward the door, the power in the building shut off. Darkness descended  like a blanket. The only light in the room came from the large windows facing the street, glazed with rainwater. Macy crawled to the window and peeked out, her face just over the sill.

She remembered being a little girl, barely able to see through her parent’s row house windows. They had lived on the outer street of the city – the wall rose tall and imposing on the other side of 90th Avenue. Macy had spent many days wondering what was outside the city walls. Who was out there. Now she had a chance to escape, to start over.

A car pulled up along the sidewalk, it’s brake lights glowing red in the darkness. A girl got out.

“Penelope!” hissed Macy.

* * * * *

What happens next? Vote for one of the following in the comments section below:

1) Penelope comes into the building and starts calling for Macy to come out

2) Penelope runs down the alley looking for Macy

3) Jordan runs off. John and Macy call the lottery organization and say they have won.

4) John and Macy escape into the city

To read the story in its entirety, go HERE

Searching For the Muse in a Bowl of Noodles

John Dran stared into his bowl of noodles, trying to divine some sort of wisdom from the tangled lump of strands. It was late. He pushed his spoon through the broth, and when he blew on the noodles the steam scattered. And the muse evaded him.

He wished the rain against the windows was louder – anything to drown out the band practicing in the apartment above him. The drum beat was unbearable – not because of how loud it was, but because of how off-beat it was. He grabbed a broom from the corner of the room and rammed the wooden end up against the ceiling. Suddenly the music grew louder and more chaotic. Several people stomped on their floor (his ceiling) in response.

Just as he sat back down, shaking his head in frustration, his cell phone rang on the other side of the room. He slid the chair over the kitchen linoleum toward the counter and looked at the display on the phone before picking it up and answering.

“Hey, mom.”

He slid loudly back to the table, picking up a piece of paper. It was a lottery ticket.

“No, I’m fine.”

He blew on his noodles again.

“I know it’s late. What are YOU doing up?”

John stared up at the ceiling, then grabbed the broom and knocked again, getting the same response.

“Well, you shouldn’t worry about it. I’ve got a good shot at getting that job. Mr. Campbell’s the only guy in the city who’s still hiring.”

He slurped up a spoonful of noodles, then shook his head.

“No, I’m not eating those sodium-laden noodles…What am I eating?…What does it matter, mom?”

He rolled his eyes.

“Stop it, you know I don’t roll my eyes at you any more.”

He inhaled another spoonful, burning his tongue.

“Yes, mom, I played the lottery tonight. Same numbers as usual.”

He lifted the ticket and looked at the numbers.

“No, mom, I never lie to you.”

He dropped the ticket and slid it under his bowl.

“Look, mom, I’ve got to get to bed. Talk to you tomorrow?…Okay…Yeah, you, too…”

He hung up, slammed the broom handle up against the ceiling a few more times, then stared at the lottery ticket lying on the table in front of him. He hated lying to his mother, but for some reason he had changed the last number. Unbelievable.

John poured the rest of the noodles down the drain and pulled a bag of trash out of the bin. The rain battered against the windows of his first-floor apartment. He had a side door that led out to the alley – there were six bolts that went down the side, and he began unlatching them slowly, one at a time.

* * * * *

Jordan shook his head, and his oversized ear lobes swayed back and forth. Five beleaguered band members stared at him, waiting.

“We suck,” he finally proclaimed.

“Aw, come on, Jordan, just…”

“Get the hell out of here! We suck!”

He started throwing pieces of equipment. His band members knew when it was time to bale. Jordan threw a guitar against the door behind them. Then he heard the person in the apartment below hitting his floor with something.

“Shut up!” he screamed before collapsing on his sofa.

* * * * *

Macy stared at her phone, then peeked around the corner of the dumpster. The girl looking for her had stopped just inside the alley. Macy heard six loud clicks coming from the other side of the alley. A door swung in, and a young man threw a bag of trash in a high arc into the dumpster behind which she was hiding. He moved to close the door but then squinted through the rain toward Macy.

“Who are you?” he asked. Light from the apartment illuminated the alley.

“What’s going on back there?” the girl shouted, walking toward them.

Macy had one second to think. “Sorry Pen,” she whispered to the phone, pushing “ignore.” Then she sprinted across the alley and through the open door into John Dran’s apartment, nearly knocking him over.

Water dripped from her shirt and her hair and formed a puddle on the linoleum floor as she slammed the door closed behind her and slid all six bolts into place. She quickly turned off the kitchen light.

“What are you doing?” he asked, annoyed.

“Shhh!” she hissed dropping down, sitting on the floor. “Get down!”

“What?”

“Get down!”

There was banging on the door. John dropped down behind the cabinets. The banging stopped as abruptly as it began, gave way to the sound of the rain still pelting the glass. Macy jumped to her feet.

“I have to get out of here – she’ll be here any minute.”

“Hey, hold on a second,” he said, grabbing her by the shoulders. “What’s wrong? I’ll help.”

Macy looked at him with a confused look.

“How can you help me? I don’t even know what’s going on.”

* * * * *

The question for you to answer this week is, “Who is John?”

1 – Someone who just lost the lottery after changing the last number.

2 – A guard who knows his way around outside of the walled city.

3 – A psychic.

4 – Someone who just won the lottery with the same numbers as Macy.

To read the story in its entirety, go HERE (you’ll have to return to this page to vote in the comments below).