Becka

BECKA

One of Three Stories in the Anthology

TALES FROM THE SHADOWS – COLLECTION ONE

Available From Lyrical Press

$5.50 - PDF Format - Coming October 20th, 2008

What is the true nature of haunting?

Becka Day, a woman with a difficult husband and a willing heart, finds herself the victim of an unusual haunting. Before the story is told, she will discover the compelling nature of violence and danger, of love and loss, and find within herself a weapon with two edges.

EXCERPT

August 23rd

It’s Sunday today. That means no work for me except housework. I work at the car wash down on Redbird Street as the receptionist. They treat me decent but they don’t pay much. Without Ray’s disability pay, we wouldn’t make it. And now this.

He wants to get this game machine. It’s the coolest thing ever, he says. But I got a bad feelin, and the worst part is, it’s my pay going to the bills and food. Whatever’s left over, Ray gets to buy what he wants. I get used to that, sure, but when it’s trouble he’s buyin, I get worried.

But he looks at me with those flat yellow eyes, and I say okay. What choice do I have? I don’t like myself much for that, but he’ll kick up so much trouble-Becka, you’re always holdin me down. Becka, what else do I have to do in the house all day? If it gets real bad, he’ll break things or yell or call me names, and is some little feelin of trouble comin worth all that? No. No, it ain’t.

Thing is, I remember the last game player he bought. I guess he don’t remember it, or he don’t care. More likely, he thinks it’s gonna be different this time. For Ray, it’s always gonna be different this time. This was a little handheld thing, not the box he wants to attach to the TV. It had three games with it, all of ‘em stupid as far as I could see, and he played it all the time for a few days. Then he broke one of the games ‘cause he lost six times in a row. Then he smashed the box. And now he thinks it makes sense to get a bigger box, and I sure do know who’s gonna be sweepin up the pieces of that one when he’s done. Trouble either way, I reckon.

They’re talkin about givin me a raise at work, and I’m thinkin whether I have to tell him or not.

Scratchin in the next room. Must be a mouse. We’ve had two mice so far, and when you see two mice you know there’s a dozen you didn’t see. They chew on the cord to the toaster and the microwave, and I’m waitin to find a little electrocuted mouse body-

No, that’s too much scratchin, and I thought I heard a little tiny laugh. That’s not no mouse. I’ll go look.

I wish I didn’t. We got two bedrooms in the duplex. One’s our bedroom. The other’s Ray’s junk room. He’s got an old desk in there and a ratty chair and piles of stuff every whichaway. There’s papers all over the floor and wrappers from his candy bars and crunched up Pepsi cans. He won’t let me in there to clean, so the rest of the house is fine and that room’s hell’s own mess. I opened the door, and there was all this movin in the papers, movin like somethin underneath, and I got the broom and turned over the papers and there was nothin. Scariest nothin I ever saw. Scritch, scritch, eyes lookin at me from somewhere I couldn’t see, and when I stopped pokin the papers was movin again. Oh Lord, I don’t wanna ever open that door again. I closed it too hard and Ray stopped snorin. I better go make coffee for him. Oh, oh, I hope I do it right, or that thing’s gonna be lookin at me with its no eyes and–He’s callin. I better go.