Category Archives: Short Stories

It will have blood they say; blood will have blood. — Macbeth (3.4.122)

He was standing in the lobby of that office building down on Broadway, the one that’s all glass. And I was outside on the sidewalk, locking up my bike and looking for addresses. At first, I didn’t notice him because I thought I was looking at my own reflection. But then he smiled.

It still took me a second to realize what I was seeing. I don’t know if I can describe it to you. There’s your face, doing something you don’t feel your face doing. And then there’s your hand, rising up in a tentative greeting. But your own hand is hanging limply at your side. You feel stuck.

It reminds me of those dreams where you can’t open your eyes. You ever have those? I get them all the time. Usually right before the alarm goes off.

In fact, I think I had one that very morning, mere hours before I found myself on Broadway, gawking at my clone, my twin, my self, who was now exiting the rotating door, walking just like me.

Sure, he was wearing different clothes: leather shoes instead of bike shoes; jeans instead of cargo shorts; an expensive-looking, embroidered cowboy shirt; no shoulder bag. But that face! “How’s it goin’?” he said. He gave me a chin nod. Single strangest experience I’ve ever had in my life and this guy, who just happens to look exactly like me, greets me like we’re a couple of frat boys.

I had no reply.

“Oh shit. Am I your first?”

I wondered if he was from the future. “First what?”

“Dude!”

“You mean there’s more of you?”

“Dude!”

Why did future me look like such a douche bag? And was I really going to start saying dude all the time?

“Aw, man. I remember my first one. I was, like, 15 years old! You must be freaked out.”

“You think?”

“Totally.” He offered me a high five.

I’d been going for sarcasm, but I slapped his hand anyway. Flesh met flesh; he was solid material. I thought about that zen koan: “What’s the sound of one hand clapping?” It took on a new dimension, that’s for sure. But I had no answers. At least I knew he wasn’t a ghost or some other type of spirit. Maybe he was a shapeshifter. Then again, maybe he was Greg in one of those ultra-real-looking masks that spies like James Bond and Tom Cruise put on.

“You must have a lot of questions.” He started walking away. “C’mon.”

This wasn’t happening. “Hold on,” I told him. “I have to deliver this package.”

“Dude, trust me. This is way more important.” His smiled vanished. He stepped close and whispered, “Twenty four hours from now, one of us will be dead.” Which was compelling.

So I followed.

Still, every once in a while I’d sneak away to feel sorry for myself. I took walks through the neighborhood and looked through the windows at normal families. I imagined Mom running beside me. Sometimes I even talked to her. One day, I happened to pass the witch house and I stopped in front. “See that house?” I said to no one. “A witch lives there.” I could see my Mom jogging up to the door, talking with Mrs. Morton’s daughter. But then my daydream took a turn, and I pictured her falling in the dead yard.

They told me she died of cardiac arrhythmia, but it didn’t make any sense to me. “Heart attacks happen to fat cigar-smoking men,” I thought, “not to my mom.” I needed someone to blame; I needed to destroy something, to connect a punch. I knew it was wrong as I was doing it. I knew Mom would scold me for it. I knew it wouldn’t help. But as the rock was leaving my hand, I was also hoping that maybe after I got scolded and shamed, she would be back in my bedroom, rubbing my back and telling me she loved me.

It landed with a disappointing thud a foot shy of a window. I was looked around for another rock and as soon as I found one, the porch light came on. The door opened. It was the daughter. It was a cool May evening, not fully dark yet. The air was thick and misty. Around the porch light I could see a foggy halo.

“What’s your name?” she asked me. I knew she was going to call the police on me, but I had been caught.

“Alex,” I said.

“Alex?” she said. “Are you Alex Sandoval?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry about your mom,” she said. I didn’t respond. “You know, she’s okay now. She’s in a better place.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I wanted to say, “like I didn’t hear that twelve times at the funeral.” But I didn’t say anything. I just stood there.

“You know, Alex,” she went on, “it’s supposed to hurt. If it hurts, it means you loved her.”

I sniffed and blinked quickly to hold back tears. Part of me wanted to throw the rock at her, the other part of me wanted to go cry in her arms. I did neither. “Why is your grass dead?” I asked.

“My mom killed it by accident last spring. She fertilized it too soon, I think. It’s not so bad now.”

She was right. The lawn was mostly green, no browner than the other lawns in the neighborhood. Along the side of the house, there were some carefully planted hostas.

“What about the trees?” I asked. “Did your mom kill those?”

“No. Those are elms. Some bug got to them. I’ll have to get them removed.” There was an awkward silence. She walked toward me. “Did you know my mom used to sew all my clothes?” she asked. I didn’t respond. “And around Halloween, she used to make all my friends a costume? She had this great witch costume she used to wear and she would hand out these huge king-sized candy bars. She was a lot of fun.”

She was standing ten feet away from me now. I felt short. “Why doesn’t she do that anymore?” I asked. She was silent for a long time. I started to wonder if she’d heard me.

She couldn’t look me in the eye when she said it: “She died almost a year ago.”

I let the rock drop from my hand. Before I knew what was happening, tears were gushing from my eyes. Mrs. Morton’s daughter stepped closer. I began sobbing. I felt hot shame flush my face. She hugged me tight.

She hugged me tight and rubbed my back.

That year in school, it became more and more acceptable to talk about girls. In one conversation, somebody asked, “Who’s the prettiest girl you’ve ever seen?” When it was my turn, I said, “the witch’s daughter.” The group erupted.

“What?”

“You’ve seen her?”

“How come you never told us about this?”

I told them the whole story, leaving out the part about my mom talking to her, and they chattered non-stop. I had mostly forgotten what she looked like, but I made up details because I kind of liked the attention.

Mark came up with a new theory: “maybe the witch kills anyone who sees her daughter.” But he quickly reconsidered. “No. Maybe the witch kills anyone who touches her daughter.”

Everyone looked at him like he was crazy. Adam said, “So we’ve got to put together a recon mission to see her.” They all leaned in.

The “recon mission” became our new topic of conversation throughout the remainder of winter and into spring, though we never actually acted on it. I guess beautiful women are scarier than witches. As the sole witness of the witch’s daughter, I was the expert. By April, I was starting to enjoy sixth grade.

One day, shortly after Easter, I came home from school and nobody was there. It wasn’t unusual for Mom to be gone after school, but that day the house felt eerily quiet. When Dad came home minutes later, I knew something was wrong.

He knelt in front of me and hugged me hard, like he was clinging to a tree dangling over a cliff. He started sobbing, which I’d never seen him do. “Mom’s left us,” he said. “She’s flown away.”

It was hard to believe any of it was happening. Dad crying in front of me, delivering this impossible message. It was disorienting. For some reason, I said, “she can’t fly.” And he hugged me and started sobbing again.

She was out for a jog through the neighborhood when she fell. A couple of high school students discovered her when they almost ran over her in the street. They called 9-1-1, but by the time she got to the hospital, she was dead.

In the weeks after her death, everything reminded me of her: a pillow knocked off the couch, the clothes folded in my dresser, the musty smell of the basement. Dad cut his hours at work so he could be home when I wasn’t in school. He said it “prevented us both from wallowing in self-pity.”

Still, every once in a while I’d sneak away to feel sorry for myself. I took walks through the neighborhood and looked through the windows at normal families. I imagined Mom running beside me. Sometimes I even talked to her. One day, I happened to pass the witch house and I stopped in front. “See that house?” I said to no one. “A witch lives there.” I could see my Mom jogging up to the door, talking with Mrs. Morton’s daughter. But then my daydream took a turn, and I pictured her falling in the dead yard.

They told me she died of cardiac arrhythmia, but it didn’t make any sense to me. “Heart attacks happen to fat cigar-smoking men,” I thought, “not to my mom.” I needed someone to blame; I needed to destroy something, to connect a punch. I knew it was wrong as I was doing it. I knew Mom would scold me for it. I knew it wouldn’t help. But as the rock was leaving my hand, I was also hoping that maybe after I got scolded and shamed, she would be back in my bedroom, rubbing my back and telling me she loved me.

It landed with a disappointing thud a foot shy of a window. I was looking around for another rock and as soon as I found one, the porch light came on. The door opened. It was the daughter. It was a cool May evening, not fully dark yet. The air was thick and misty. Around the porch light I could see a foggy halo.

School began shortly after the egging incident. We had just started middle school, so for the month of September, we had bigger things to worry about than a witch. Around Halloween, though, Mark and Adam started bringing the witch into more and more conversations. It impressed girls.

Some time in early November, Mark missed a weekend basketball game. When he showed up to practice on Monday, some guys started joking that he’d seen the witch and had to be hospitalized.

After practice, Adam and I were waiting for Mom to come pick us up. Adam asked Mark what happened, but he brushed us off.

“Did you see the witch?” Adam asked. I stayed silent.

“No.”

“Where did you see her?”

“I didn’t see the stupid witch,” Mark said.

“So what happened to you last weekend?”

“Look, I just don’t want to talk about it, okay?”

Mark walked off just as Mom pulled up. In the car, Adam said, “He definitely saw the witch.” I said nothing.
“What are you guys talking about?” Mom asked. She seemed a little annoyed.

“Nothing,” I said. But then I thought I’d better prove my innocence. “Adam thinks Mark saw the witch last weekend “˜cause he wasn’t at the basketball game.”

“Oh really?” Mom said. “Did you know that Mark’s grandpa died and his family went to the funeral last weekend?”

We were struck dumb. Adam’s smile faded. For a second, I got really sad. I almost choked on a sob. But then I came to my senses. It happened to Mark, not me, I repeated to myself. It happened to Mark, not me.

Unfortunately, it was going to happen to me. And it was going to be worse.

One day, when Mom picked me up from the pool, she was oddly silent. At home, she sat me down. “I have some bad news,” she began.

“This is it,” I thought, “I am cursed.”

“Scarlet’s left us. She’s flown away.”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

She saw the confusion on my face. “To heaven,” she added. “A neighbor called me today and said they found Scarlet in their yard.”

It still took a minute for it to register. When I saw the tears in her eyes, I realized she was trying to say that Scarlet was dead. And then slowly, my disbelief turned to anger. I wanted to ask which yard, but I’d already decided on the yard. There was only one possibility. I clenched my jaw and walked up to my room. Later, when it came time to feed Scarlet, I felt the loss a bit more. The house seemed quieter, even though it wasn’t really – how much noise does a cat make?

I couldn’t hide my sorrow when I mentioned the news to my friends at baseball practice. Adam came up to me later with a plan: he and his brother had two dozen eggs. They were going to throw them at the witch’s house.

“Does Mark know?” I asked.

“No.” Adam said, “It’s just us.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’ll go with you guys.”

I don’t know how Mom found out, but she did. She stormed into my bedroom the next morning and jolted me awake, shouting, “Alex James Sandoval! There is no excuse for what you did last night, do you understand me?” I looked down at my bed sheet. I noticed there were some black cat hairs on it. “Look at me!” she shouted. “Look at me!” I looked. “I certainly hope this wasn’t your idea. Was it?” I didn’t answer. “Was it?”

“No,” I whispered.

“So why did it sound like a good idea to throw eggs at someone’s house?” I started brushing the hairs into a little black fur ball. “Tell me something. If Mrs. Morton was the devil herself, how would it help things to throw eggs at her house?”

Her gaze was boring into me. There I was, sitting in bed in my pajamas, getting scolded by my mother, who kept asking, “how does it help – even if she’s guilty – to throw eggs at her house? How does it help?” I started crying. I was aware that she was right; I was hoping for pity. “Answer me, Alex. How does it help?”

“It doesn’t,” I whispered, wiping away a tear and sniffling.

“What?”

“It doesn’t,” I said louder.

“You’re right. It doesn’t.” She slammed the door behind her. I felt horrible. She made me feel horrible.

I decided to stay in my room all day, partly to punish myself, partly to punish her. I thought about running away. I thought about faking my own death. If she came in and found me dead, she’d really be sorry. But an hour later, Mom knocked on my door. I couldn’t say no when she asked if she could come in.

“You know I love you, right Alex?” she said. I didn’t answer. She came over and sat on the bed and started to rub my back. “If you’re as upset as I am about Scarlet dying, you must be pretty upset,” she said. “But she was an old cat, you know? She was almost eighteen.” She was still rubbing my back. I didn’t want to admit it, but it felt nice. “You know, sometimes animals just walk off alone when they know they’re going to die.” I saw a tear fall onto my pillow. “I think Scarlet was just old. I think she just walked off because she knew it was her time. There’s not always someone to blame. Sometimes, bad things just happen.” She pulled me toward her. “Baby, you know I love you, right?” If I had spoken, I would have burst into tears, so I just nodded. She hugged me. “Good,” she said.