I like this particular story for two reasons. First, it allowed me to prove to myself that I can complete a plot in less than 8000 words. Second, it has gotten wildly different reactions from those who have read it. Hubby says that the inside of my head is a "strange and wondrous place," and he found this story to be disturbing. Others have not been quite so perturbed by it, and it was the feature story in the June newsletter for the Village Writers Group, based in Decatur. My little sister also loves it.
Three Beers and a Monster
The monster ate my sister the day she told me she was having an affair with her boss. We sat at a little outdoor café with green and blue umbrellas that proudly advertised the two types of beer sold there. Her pronouncement almost earned a spit-take. As it was, my sunglasses only partially hid my incredulous expression, and my heart gave a dull thud in my throat.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked. “You, Miss ‘I don’t do anything daring or dangerous?’ Sleeping with Rick?”
She shrugged and tucked a piece of straight blonde hair behind her ear. “You gotta live a little, Cass. Plus, the perks are awesome!”
I looked away from the radiant, almost fanatical, expression on her face. “That’s technically sexual harassment.” She didn’t hear me.
The waiter brought our beers, one blue and one green, to the table, and Chris asked him to take our picture. She leaned in close, and I couldn’t believe that she looked the same, smelled the same, of sunscreen and citrus fruit. I smiled, glad the sunglasses hid my tears.
I hadn’t told her yet, but her boss was my fiancé. We had kept our romance secret so that Chris could get the job without charges of nepotism, and she had such a big mouth, we knew she’d tell the wrong person. Looks like the joke had been on me.
“So that’s my big news!” She took a big swig of her beer and held it up for me to clink it, which I did, half-heartedly. “What’s yours?”
“Just that I sold a story,” I lied. She never read the sci-fi or horror fiction mags, so she wouldn’t know. She didn’t like “all that creepy stuff.” I didn’t feel bad anymore about dragging her along on a ghost tour the previous night and a Voodoo tour that morning.
“You have such a great imagination! I’m so proud of you!” Another sunscreen-mango hug. “Here’s to the Summer girls, taking the world by storm!”
A second beer followed the first one, then a third. Even though I nursed them over a couple of hours, it was more than I’d drunk in many years, on an empty stomach on a hot afternoon. I felt it when we stood up to walk to Chez Louisa, where Rick had proposed to me just two weeks earlier on a romantic weekend away. My stomach churned, and I swallowed against the acid that filled my throat. How could he? And with my sister? Didn’t he know we told each other everything? And how could she? I’d denied our relationship, but that’s because he’s so much younger than me, closer to Chris’ age. But hadn’t she’d seen how I felt when I talked about him?
We walked along the riverbank in the waning sunlight. Twilight brought a cold breeze off the water, and I shivered. Chris didn’t seem to notice. She almost glowed with the love she’d stolen from me.
“Hang on a sec,” I said when we reached a curve where no one watched or walked through the grassy paths. I bent down to fiddle with my shoelace, and that’s when I saw the ripples on the water. The ice on the breeze stung the back of my throat, and even Chris had goose-bumps on her pale skin, which had been so warm before. For just a moment, I hated her, and then I hated myself for what I imagined, her blonde hair flowing behind her as she slipped into the water, her mouth a perfect “O” of horror.
The ripples turned to waves that went slap, slap, slap against the river wall. The stench of salt and mold and rotting seafood filled the air, and we both gagged. I grabbed her hand to run, but she didn’t move. She stood and stared into the darkness, her mouth round and her cheeks pale. Now a small island appeared in the river, and it rose out of the water and looked at us with one blank, black eye that reflected the entire sky in its orb.
“Cass, it’s talking to me!” she whispered. She looked at me, her eyes wide. “It says I’m a naughty girl for taking something that belonged to you.”
I swallowed against the lump that had been in my throat all afternoon. “Rick and I are engaged, Chris.”
“I… I didn’t know! I swear I didn’t know!” Her voice rose to a scream, and that’s when it struck, moving almost too fast for me to see. It dragged her into the river, and my sister disappeared under the water with a splash that seemed too small for the monster, too big for her. I vomited the three beers, then, on hands and knees, watched the surface of the water until the thudding of my heart calmed, half-wishing that maybe it would come back for me to punish me for imagining it into existence.
I went to the police, of course, but they didn’t believe me, said I’d been drinking. Finally, I just told them that she tripped and fell in. The nice deputy gave me some coffee and a blanket and put me in a cell for the night.
“Old Kenny get another one?” his boss asked when they thought I was asleep.
“Yep. Monster’s getting daring.”
That’s when the drug they’d put in my coffee took over. They say it was something in the beers, that a serial rapist had drugged us and carried Chris off, and I’d hallucinated the whole thing. But I know what I saw and what I heard.
Maybe I’ll go back with Rick next weekend to put flowers at the spot where she disappeared. He’d make a nice snack for Old Kenny.