The Bearded Lady Ornament

"What's with the bearded lady?" my son asked around a mouthful of cereal.

"It's a muff, Nick," I sighed with a roll of my eyes.

Nick grunted and shoveled more sugar puffs into his abyssal mouth. "Don't forget I'm going to Dad's tonight."

Ouch, Nick, why don't you just stab me with the butcher knife. I muttered, "How could I forget?" Fiddling with another ornament, I bit my lip to keep my true feelings below the surface. As a mom and respected leader of my community, it was required that I be untouchable by anything emotional. Even if I was going to be alone on Christmas Eve.

"You're the one who kicked him out, Mom," said Nick, the world's wisest sixteen-year-old.

"Nick, please not now." I didn't care if I was whining at this point. "Make sure you have everything you need." I placed another glass ball on the saggy pine tree drooping in my living room.

Three hours later, I sat in front of that now glittering tree, nursing a cup of hot cocoa and wrapped up in blankets. Bing Crosby crooned about snow in the background, but outside the window, it was still as dry as a bone. I flipped on the TV to catch the last scene of It's a Wonderful Life, the perfect reminder that my family wanted nothing to do with me tonight.

I frowned at the closest ornament, the bearded lady. "Why do I have to be the bigger person? Why can't I just throw a tantrum whenever I feel like it?" Great, now I'm complaining to a freak-of-nature ornament. My life was pathetic. I drew my blankets over my head, clicked my heels together three times, and chanted softly, "There's no place like sanity. There's no place like sanity. There's no place like sanity."

Bethany Bachman writes in Philadelphia and admits that her creativity levels are running extremely low.

For more fiction fun, check out www.storypraxis.com.

Things on My Mind

"You seem a little distracted, Jack," I said, sitting down across from the teen.

"I've got some things on my mind, ya know?" he mumbled through the greasy strands of hair that hadn't been washed or cut in months. He jiggled his leg, keeping his face turned towards the left.

I set my tape recorder down between us and turned it on. "Ryan Collins interview with Jack Kelly, Thursday, May fifteenth, two thousand eight. You said you had things on your mind. What kind of things?"

Jack bit at his fingernails as his leg shook furiously. "None of your business."

"Jack, look at me, please." His bloodshot eyes were tormented; they reminded me of the eyes of the wounded soldiers I had talked to before. They and Jack had both been to hell and back, whether in the Middle East or a local high school. "I'm here to help you. You have to trust me, okay? Why don't you tell me more about the morning before you-"

"It's Kara," he interrupted, with an irritated look. "I've been thinking about Kara." I flipped through my mental notes and remembered that Kara was the girl Jack had been close friends with and also one of the students who had died that day.

"She wasn't supposed to be there," he continued. "I told her to stay home, pretend to be sick." He made a quiet, wounded sound in his throat. "She was the first person I saw in the hall. I think she screamed when she saw the gun. I yelled at her to get out of there. I said Jay-Jay and his gang were gonna pay for treating me like crap." His voice was growing louder, and his fidgeting had stopped. His chest heaved with quick breaths as adrenaline started to fill his veins. "They were going to see that I'm stronger than they are and beg for my forgiveness as they lay dying on the floor in front of me."

"What happened then?" I asked softly.

"I shot them!" he screamed, springing out of his chair and raising his fists to the cell ceiling. "I held the gun up to their faces and stole their lives! They were scared and crying, but I just laughed because I had the power! I was in control, and they couldn't do anything about it!"

"What about Kara?"

Jack lowered his hands slowly, breathing heavily. His face twitched as he struggled to keep tears at bay. "She tried to take the gun out of my hands," he started slowly. "I struggled with her, and a shot went off."

Jack sank down to the floor. He drew his knees up to his chest, locking his arms around them and starting to rock. "She fell down, and there was blood...on her-"

Suddenly, he raised his head and screamed. His eyes were wide with terror, and he started to babble at the space above my head. "I'm sorry, Kara, I'm sorry! Not you! It wasn't supposed to be you!"

I quickly knelt beside him and tried to calm him down. The noise alerted some guards, who roughly pushed me out of the cell. "That's enough for today, Mr. Collins."

"But wait!" I protested. The slamming of the heavy, iron door echoed with Jack's last words.

"No, Kara, it wasn't supposed to be you!"

Bethany Bachman writes in Philadelphia and thinks bullies are worse people than the victims who go on shooting rampages.

Check out www.storypraxis.com for more fiction fun.

Someday I'll Kill You

The dried blood on his fingers looked like spaghetti sauce. He giggled at the thought.

"Spaghetti and meatballs for dinner tonight," he whispered to himself, flexing his hands in front of him. He giggled even more at that. He was clever and witty; no matter what anyone else said.

He picked up his hacksaw and continued cutting through the elbow on his blood-stained workbench. He had to finish quickly; rigor mortis was setting in, and the body would be too hard to dismember soon.

Looking back over at the corpse, he grinned maliciously and licked his lips. She had screamed for so long before finally succumbing to death; it had excited and terrified him at the same time. The initial rape meant nothing to him and was only to make her realize that he was in control. His favorite part had come after the first knife wounds were made, and she was overcome by the pain. That's when she realized she was going to die.

The grandfather clock bonged above his head, spurring him on to make quick work of the girl. He kept her body naked and her eyes open, occasionally leaning over to smile at them and laugh at their emptiness. He carefully wrapped everything he cut off and packed it into the deep chest freezer. That would feed him for at least a month. He threw the skeletal remains of his victim in a tarp and rolled it up tightly, tying the ends with twine.

"Abel! Aaaabel!"a sharp voice poked through the basement ceiling. He whimpered and scrubbed his hands with puce soap in the washtub. "Where are you, you stupid dolt?"

"I'll be right up, ma'am," he yelled up the steps. He shoved the body bag behind a loose brick in the wall, giving the dead girl a vicious kick before closing her in. He heard his mother's cane tapping across the kitchen floor.

Glaring at the floorboards above his head, he whispered, "Someday, I'll kill you too."

Bethany Bachman writes in Philadelphia and admits that this story came from a very dark, angry place in her mind that was visited today.

Check out www.storypraxis.com for more fiction fun.

Fame

"She's lying to you, detective, right through her pale yellow teeth," Georgie hissed. A thin stream of spittle flew out of his mouth, swung around, and smacked into his cheek.

"Easy, guv," purred the drowned rat who sat on the other side of the interrogation table.

Detective Hayes huffed an insufferable sigh. "Yes, thank you, Georgie. Why don't you go to the cafeteria for a nice hot plate of spam, while I speak with Miss...um..."

"Witch. Miss Witch," the girl supplied.

"Yes, thank you, Miss Witch," Hayes nodded.

"I'm not really a witch, you know," she continued. "They just call me one 'cause I weigh the same as a duck."

Sputtering, Georgie pointed at the witch, his finger shaking with fury. "You turned me into a newt!"

"Well, it looks as though you got better," Hayes said loudly, prodding Georgie out the door amid his stammers. "Yes, thank you. Good-bye." Hayes sat back down at the interrogation table.

"I come from a very respectable family," Miss Witch said, "the Brook-Hamsters."

"Ah, yes, your brother works at the Ministry of Silly Walks, am I right?"

She sighed, "Yes, and my eldest brother, Gervais, was the Upper-Class Twit of the Year. We are all so proud of him. He is our claim to fame, you know."

"Very nice," Hayes smiled politely before clearing his throat. He opened a folder that lay on the table and skimmed it over. "Now, what can you tell me about this dead parrot?"

Miss Brook-Hamster gasped. "I had no part in that incident."

"You did. It says so right here."

"I didn't."

"Did."

"Didn't!"

"Did!"

"Look, matey, I didn't come here for an argument," She stood, pushing the chair out with a loud scrape.

Suddenly, the door crashed open, and a policeman in a trench coat entered. "Alright, alright, allow me to introduce myself. I am Inspector Fox from the Light Entertainment Police, Comedy division, Special Flying Squad. Everyone is this room is hereby charged under Section B12 with involvement in a strange prompt, that being a prompt, short story, or piece of written work intended to cause grievous mental confusions to the online public."

Bethany Bachman writes in Philadelphia and dedicates this prompt to Monty Python fans everywhere.

Check out www.storypraxis.com for more fiction fun.