Watching My Idol

Brenda was impressed with her neighbor’s body.  She spied on her with binoculars to watch her work out.  Then she copied her routine.  Her neighbor was fit and tone.  Brenda was overweight.  She liked her body’s curves.  Still she wanted a fit body like her neighbor’s. 

Brenda lost fifteen pounds imitating her neighbor’s workouts.  She was more confident.  Men looked at her differently.  That validated what she believed.  

   

One evening at seven-thirty Brenda prepared to spy on her neighbor.  Both lived in mid-rise buildings.  Their units were on the corners.  They could see each other.  But no one else could see them when they went into certain rooms in their units.  This was perfect for Brenda.  She did not want to be seen as a peeping Tom.       

Brenda put the binoculars up to her eyes.  She was ready to watch the workout.  But she began watching something entirely different. 

     

Her neighbor undressed.  She then disappeared into another room.  She reappeared ten minutes later with a towel in her hand.  Brenda assumed she had taken a shower.  She was toweling herself off.  She then threw the towel on the sofa and leaned over.  She came back up with a baseball bat in her hand.  She then straddled something beside her couch.  Brenda could not see what she was straddling.  Her neighbor’s other sofa blocked her view of the floor. 

Brenda watched her raise the bat over her head and swing hard at the floor.  She repeated this action five or six times.  Brenda could see her biceps flex with each swing.  Then she dropped the bat to the floor.  Then she turned and leaned down toward the couch. 

Brenda was wondering what had just happened when her neighbor quickly stood up.  She turned and faced Brenda with a pair of binoculars up to her eyes.  Brenda ducked down.

Story by John Martin

If you enjoy our blog of stories—drama, mystery, and horror—please follow us and leave your comments.  Thank you.  

Hi Neighbor

I came home and saw my neighbor, who is also one of my best friends, crawling out of the side window of my other next door neighbor’s house.  I could not believe what I was seeing.  I jammed my car into park and jumped out and ran to him.  The lower half of his body was dangling out of the window. 

“Phil!”  I said.  “What the hell?”  He told me to keep my voice down and help him.  I looked around and grabbed his legs and pulled him through the window.  He fell back onto me with bottle of wine in his hand.  He told me it was a two hundred dollar bottle of wine.  I asked him what the hell he was doing.  He said that Rita, the owner of the house and my neighbor, was passed out on her sofa.  She is an alcoholic.  The whole neighborhood knows it.  He said he had gone over to keep her company.  But she had locked the door and he could not get out.  The window happened to be open so he crawled out.  He told me he had been visiting her for a month.  She had given him that bottle wine for keeping her company.  He tried to explain their relationship.  “I don’t want to hear it,” I said. 

Rita Blanchard was sixty-eight and rich—family money.  Her husband, David Blanchard, was seventy-two and a smart man.  He was a physicist.  But he did not have Rita’s wealth.  I reminded Phil that David was not an idiot.  Phil was forty-six and married with children.  He joked he only did it for the wine and gifts.  He acted as if he was not worried about getting caught.  I told him to never talk to me about it again.  “This never happened,” I said.   

I tried to forget about the whole incident, until three weeks later.  That is when David came home and found Rita naked and strangled to death in their bed.  The police investigated everyone.  David was even investigated and cleared.  The police had no suspects.  Phil was panicking that he would be implicated.  I told him it served him right.  We speculated who could have done it.  Two weeks after Rita’s death we quit speculating.                          

David Blanchard approached Phil and me in Phil’s yard.  He began making small talk.  We gave him our condolences.  He thanked us and said, “I can’t live in that big house anymore without her.  Why don’t you two purchase the house from me as an investment?”  We told him we did not want to purchase another house.  Nor could we afford to.  “I paid one point two for it.  The most I could get now is seven hundred and fifty.  I’m underwater like everyone else.  You two can pay my original purchase price and my problem is solved.  I plan to move in with my assistant.”  His assistant looked to be in her early thirties.  I had seen her before at his house dropping off papers. 

We told him again that we were not interested in buying his house.  “Funny thing about what you see when you least expect it,” he said and squinted.  “Like a certain someone helping a certain someone else crawl through a window.  Then, there’s that matter of bodily fluids showing up in places where it shouldn’t be.”  I forced myself not to look at Phil.  I hoped he was not panicking.  “Police may call that motive.  They’ll at least investigate.  What do you two think?”  He paused and sucked air through his teeth.  “Well, you two give that purchase some thought.  One point two million is a steal for that house.”

John Martin           

Happy Thanksgiving Chaos

By John Martin 

The next two days are going to feel like I am sitting in purgatory.  I am the Matriarch of a clan of misfits who are my family.  Yet I love them all.  They are on their way to my house as we speak.  You may find my tone somewhat harsh.  But then my family would make your family’s dysfunctional holiday behavior seem normal.  Here is how this evening will go.  Three of our children and their spouses and their nine children will show up at our door within minutes of one another.  They will struggle to bring their suitcases inside.  Once in the foyer they will begin fighting about who gets which bedroom. 

Our house is just large enough to house everyone.  My husband and I have a large house.  We purchased it for holiday visits for the entire family.  When our grandchildren grow up we are selling it.  But this is just the beginning of our Thanksgiving show. 

Two hours later my oldest son will show up with his new bride of two years.  My oldest son is fifty-eight.  Melanie, his new bride, is twenty-four.  That is twenty-four as of three days ago.  She will be the gasoline for the fire.  She will wear a low cut blouse.  Temperatures will be in the single digits.  Her breasts will be fighting just to stay inside that blouse.  Her pants will be so tight the seam in her crack will be stretched to full capacity.  The men will ogle her every chance they get.  She will eat up the attention.  But she will pretend not to notice them noticing her every move.  They will try to hide their stares.  But their wives will catch them.  That is when the arguments begin.  There will be mumblings under the breath.  There will be loud whispers coming from inside the bedrooms.  My smaller grandchildren will ask me, “Nina, why does your chest hang down and Melanie’s doesn’t?”  I will answer diplomatically that Melanie’s is newer, and leave it at that.  What I really would like to do is put them over my knee.  When I have finished with them, I would ask them why their little rear ends were red.  But they are just the innocents in all the drama.  So I leave it at that.

The women will hate her, but pretend to like her.  She will be clueless.  My son, her husband, will strut like peacock.  All of it will be painful to watch.  The men will try to show off for her—flag football, soccer, running—until one of them gets hurt.  Then I will put an end to the games and the showing off. 

“Someone’s knocking on my door.  I have to go.  Let the torture began.  Oh…I almost forgot.  Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!”

Joan Harbor - Writer at Red Staircase

Hi Everyone,

I want to tell you about my new book that I just published called Mattie.  It is on Amazon.  The idea of Mattie came to me when I was watching a cute little girl in a television commercial.  She was going door-to-door in her neighborhood trying to persuade her neighbors to purchase an item from her.  When her neighbors opened their doors she greeted them with a big smile.  Her hair was in two cute, neat little pigtails.  She looked adorable.  But even her adorable looks could not hide the devious side of her seemingly innocent personality.  Her neighbors’ expressions indicated that they picked up on it too.  This was part of what went into Mattie.  The rest of Mattie came from inside my head from previous readings and observations.

For example take this quick short story:

“Coming Home”

I put my key into my apartment door and turned it.  I opened my door and walked inside.  The apartment was dark.  It is always dark at night.  I do not leave a light on.  It wastes energy.  My security alarm went off.  The way it was supposed to.  I closed my door and turned the deadbolt lock.  I then walked over to my alarm to reset it.  My light switch is ten inches away from my alarm pad.  My routine is to reset my alarm and flick my light switch to on.  That is what I was doing.  But when I reached for the light switch someone or something grabbed my wrist.  I am almost positive it was a hand.  The hand was enormous.  It covered my wrist and a large part of my forearm.  I tried to yank my wrist free.  The hand was like a vise grip or blood pressure cuff wrapped around my wrist and part of my arm.  I was not going anywhere.

 

The hand yanked me into my living room.  The force was so violent and fast that my feet left the floor.  The next thing I felt were many sets of hands all over my body.  They tore my blouse away.  At the same time they ripped my pants off.  I struggled hard.  But they had me pinned to the floor.  The sound of my clothes being ripped away was so loud that I feared my appendages would be torn off with my clothes.  Within seconds I was completely naked.  My socks and boots were even gone.  I could feel cold settling down onto my body.  Then it felt like a group of people piled on top of me.  Like the game played when you were a kid where more and more kids jumped onto the pile.  But this was not one at a time.  Everyone all at once piled on.  My first thought was rape.  Then I must have fainted or passed out from lack of breathing.

The next thing I remember was someone pounding on my door.  I was too exhausted to stand up and go to the door.  Next I heard a loud crack.  Light poured into my apartment.  Shadows rushed in with the light.

I later saw the pictures of how I was found by the police.  They were the ones who broke in the door.  Someone had called the police and reported loud noises coming from inside my apartment.  It was not a neighbor.  That person was never identified.  But the police said the person who called left details of my condition.

 

The pictures showed me lying in a large pool of blood.  I agreed to a rape kit.  I was examined by several physicians.  I had not been raped.  There were no cuts or bruises of any kind.  But it gets even stranger than that.  The blood found in my apartment was not mine.

 

Physicians said that if I would have lost that much blood I would have died.  Weeks later I was asked to go down to the police station again.  They had the report on the blood.  It came from several different animals—bulls, pigs, wolves, and some could not be identified.  They were as baffled as I still am.

I did not go back to my apartment.  I moved out of that state.        

Initially I knew the police were suspect of me and my story.  No other evidence was found at the scene.  No witnesses or friends had come forward.  There were no leads to follow.  I knew what they were thinking.  Thirty-year-old woman comes home after a party high on some illicit drug.  Does something she wants to forget about.  So she creates a fictitious scene to appease her conscious.  That theory could have allowed them to ignore me.  But in the last twelve months fifteen similar cases have occurred in that city.  Women my age have been the victims.  This is hard to ignore.

I hope you enjoyed the short story.

Love, Joan

            

A Simple Plan That Was Never Simple

No one was supposed to get hurt.  ‘Suppose’ is a tricky word.    

The plan was simple.  One of us would get on the bus at the stoplight and force it to drive to the end of the road.  Two more of us would be waiting at the end of the road and usher the bus inside the old building.  We would then exchange twenty students for twenty million dollars – one million each.  Each of us just had to play our part. 

The three of us wore masks.  No one would ever recognize us because our disguises were perfect.  The bus driver was tied and blindfolded.  We dropped him off at the school—unhurt.  A computer program would accept the money from the depositors and route it to a bank account.  We knew who the depositors would be.  Three large factories employed seventy percent of the town.  There was no way that they would not act to save those children.

We moved the bus to a safe location and waited for two days for the money to enter the account.  There were a few empty threats made against the children’s lives to speed the process up.  That is all the threats were—empty.  We fed them.  The building had bathrooms.  We kept them safe.

The one who was supposed to be watching the children that night left to go to a girl’s house to have a quickie.  He got back to the bus a few hours later.  The garage where the children were sleeping had filled with some gas.  It burned his eyes when he walked back into the building.  It had knocked the children unconscious.  He called us in a panic.  We rushed over.  But it was too late.  It was chaos after that.

We checked the account.  The money had been transferred in.  Two of us wanted to split the money and leave.  One of us wanted each family to have a million dollars.  We owed them that.  The other two fought him on the idea. 

I shot and killed both of them.  I mailed each parent a check for one-million dollars.  Law enforcement is pursuing me.  They do not know who I am.  But they know my profile.  I am laying low until I can leave the country.  I am broke.              

Strangers At My Door

The front door lock looks different.  Its color is still dark silver.  The design is the same.  But it looks newer.  There should be scrapes on it or some markings from my family’s keys, from us fumbling to get the key in the keyhole.  That is what I expect to see.  But I cannot say that I had noticed any scrapes or markings on it before.  Maybe the lock is scratch-resistant.  Or, maybe it is what I think.  Someone has changed it.  But if so, why?  And how can my key still fit the lock?  Unless the lock is one of those locks that you can change to fit several keys.  Then, are they gaining access to my house while I sleep?  Are they letting themselves in while I am at work?  Are they searching through my things while I am away?  What are they looking for?  Why did they target me?  What could I have that they want?  Why have these people invaded my privacy?  Are they waiting on the perfect moment to kidnap me?  I do not want to disappear into the night where no one can find me.  I need to protect myself.  Maybe I should call the police?  But what will I tell them?  I have no proof of anything out of the ordinary.  They will think I am psychotic and lock me away.  And that would mean they were in on it.  Now I cannot call the police.  I am going out of mind trying to think of who is stalking me—FBI, CIA?  What do they want from me?  They probably know my every move.  I must go on the offense.  Who can I hire to check my home for listening devices or cameras?  I am not going down sitting still.  They may think that since I am a woman that I cannot protect myself.

Tonight, I will sleep on the floor beside my bed again with the knife and gun in my hands.  And when those intruders sneak into my home tonight, I will stab them and put them in basement with the other three intruders. 

I miss my husband and two daughters.  I have not seen them in two days.  I suspect the intruders have taken them. 

Who Is My Fiancée?

I have wanted to break off my engagement to my fiancée for one year now.  She is thirty-eight years old and beautiful—in a wholesome kind of way.  She is lean and athletic and very confident in her abilities.  And she scares me beyond anything I have ever experienced.  I am afraid that if I try to leave her I will end up in jail or dead.  She is not the person who I originally fell in love with.  I discovered that a little over a year ago.  That is when our relationship permanently changed.
 

My fiancée had called me at nine-thirty on a Monday night and told me to come over.  She lived about ten minutes away.  But this was unusual because we did not see each other until the weekends.  To some people that may seem odd.  But that is what our agreement was.  It had not always been that way.  We did it out of necessity.  Because when we stayed at each other’s place during the week we were normally very tired the rest of the week.  We had an extremely active sex life that often lasted until the early morning hours.  And since we each have stressful jobs we could not afford to be tired during the week.  Our mistakes can be costly ones.  I am an architectural engineer inspector for skyscrapers.  She has a job with the federal government in the Consumer Affairs Department.  It requires her to have top secret clearance.  She reads documents and analyzes data on the United States.  That is all I know about her job.  She had told me that was all she could tell me.  And I loved her so much I accepted what she said. 

 

We had both been very busy that week.  So I was pleasantly surprised when she asked me over.  Initially, I pretended to resist her offer.  I reminded her why it was a bad idea.  Then she countered with an offer that convinced me the idea was not so bad. 

 

She was standing in her doorway waiting for me when I drove up.  She was wearing a short black night shirt and holding a bottle of champagne. I asked her what the occasion was.  She said we were celebrating because I had listened to her and come over.  As soon as we closed the door she kissed me.  It was one of her long, passionate, aggressive kisses.  Between breaths she said she had to open the champagne. 

 

We downed two glasses each during foreplay.  Foreplay only lasted a few minutes.  Then we did what was natural to us.  We had sex.  Two years of dating and now engaged and our sex life had not slowed down.  Neither of us had ever been with anyone that we had that much intensity with.  This would be her second marriage and my first.  I was thirty-six and had been in many relationships.  None of them compared to what we had. 

 

After several hours of love making we fell asleep.  She woke me up around an hour later.  I heard her and felt her breath as she whispered in my ear.  “I want to show you something in the guest bedroom.”  I was a little groggy from having the champagne on an almost empty stomach.  I had only eaten some nuts for dinner before she had called.         

 

She took me by the hand and led me into the guest bedroom.  I had a smile on my face and ready for phase two.  The room was dark.  That part of the house was dark.  I assumed she was about to introduce some kind of toy or exotic apparatus into our sex life.  She could be spontaneous when the urge hit her.  She paused before turning on the bedroom light.  “Don’t be mad,” she said.  “I have an explanation.”  I asked her what I should not be mad at.  It must be kinky, I thought.  “Just keep an open mind.”  She flipped on the light switch.  I stared briefly and jumped back.  “Take it easy.  It’s not that bad.”  I had to catch my breath.  “Breathe.  Just breathe.” 

 

A nude male was lying motionless on his back on top of the bed.  There was a lot of blood from his chest down.  He appeared to be Hispanic.

“What the hell?” I said.  She kept telling me she could explain.  She was calm.  Her attitude made me that much more nervous.  “Is he dead?”  She assured me that he was.  “We have to call the police.”  She said we did not and that it would be a dumb move.  “We do.”  She said no.  “What the hell is wrong with you?  What happened here?  Who is he?  Did you do this?”

 

“I need you to calm down and help me,” she said.  “I’m counting on you.”  I asked how I was going to help her.  “First, you need to lower your voice.”  I apologized for not being calm like her.  “I forgive you.”  I sarcastically told her thanks and that her forgiving me made me feel better.  “You know you can tell the level of love a person has for you during a crisis.  And right now I’m questioning your level.”  

 

“I’m sorry if you’re questioning my love because I can’t be as calm as you!” I must have yelled it.  She told me stop yelling.  “There’s a dead body here.”  She watched me pace the floor.  “Does this have something to do with your job?”  She said I knew she could not answer that.  “It does.  Doesn’t it?”  She did not answer.  She only stared at me.      

 

“We’re going to put him in my trunk,” she said.  I told her I was not going to do it.  I was not going help her get rid of a body.  “Do you want to see me go to jail?  Do you know what they do to people like me in jail?”  I told her I did not want her to go to jail.  Then I asked her what she meant by people like her.  “I’m not going to get into that right now,” she answered.  I told her there had to be a good explanation for it if she did it.  “Then help me.”  I told her to tell me something.  I asked her what was going on.  “I did it.  And the explanation will not be of interest to a jury.”  She stared at me.  “Now are you going to help me or not?”  I told her I could not.  “You can.  You can do it.  I need your help.  I’ll explain it later.  I’ll tell you everything, every detail, but later.” 

 

I argued with her for what seemed like a long time about what to do.  “You’re acting like pussy,” she said.  “Be the man I love.  Protect the woman you love.”  I told her she had to do the right thing and call the authorities.  “I’ll do it on my own.  I now see I can’t depend on you.”  I asked her did he rape her.  She did not answer.  She just stared.  I pleaded with her to tell me something.  “Help me roll him up in the sheets and comforter.”  Her tone was cold and harsh.  I stood there.  “Now, please.”  I was feeling nauseas.  She must have noticed my face.  “You’ll be okay.  Turn your head away from him and help me roll him up.” 

 

I was so confused by now I began to help her roll him up in the sheets.  “Wait here,” she said and walked away.  I stood there looking at the body and then looked away.  Within seconds she was back with a roll of duct tape in her hand.  She unrolled and ripped off a piece and taped the sides of the comforter together.  She did this about ten times.  Then she ran a piece of tape the length of the comforter and taped it over the short pieces of tape.  She pressed the tape down on the comforter to make sure it stuck.  Then she laid the roll of tape on a towel on the nightstand. 

 

“Get his feet,” she said.  I looked down at the bulky roll of linen.  The man had to be around one-hundred and seventy pounds.  I was about five pounds heavier than he was.  My fiancé was maybe one-thirty or one-thirty-five.  “We’re going to take him to my car.”  Her car was parked behind her house.  It would be a long walk to carry dead weight from one end of the house to the other. 

 

“Why don’t I take his shoulders?” I said.  “His feet will be much lighter.” 

 

“Thank you,” she said and smiled a little.  “But I can handle it.”  She gripped the comforter tight and pulled his upper body off the bed.  She stayed in a squat position and took small steps backward toward the back door.  She was wearing a tank top and shorts.  Her arm muscles were very visible.  They looked strong.  Veins showed beneath the skin of her arms.  Her legs were the same.  That was the first time I saw how strong she really was.  I knew she worked out.  I knew she was fit.  But I did not know she was that strong.        

 

We struggled to get the body to the back door.  I struggled more than she did.  She maintained a steady pace until we reached the back door.  It was slightly open.  So she pushed it the rest of the way open with her foot.  “Go slow,” she said.  “You don’t want to slip on these stairs.”  We walked cautiously down the stairs.                

 

We laid his body on the ground behind her car.  She opened the trunk and looked at me.  “I can get his upper body in there,” she said.  “Can you swing his legs inside?”  I told her I would try.  “I need you to do it.  Not try.”  She grunted and used her knee to lift the body’s upper torso up and inside the trunk.  “Swing his legs inside.”  The body was in the trunk.  She stared inside the trunk.  I was sweating and feeling sick to my stomach.  “There’s a knife on the counter,” she said.  “Will you get it for me?”  I was trying to breathe to calm down.  “Now would be great.”  She smiled at me.  I stumbled back inside the house to get the knife.  When I walked back outside she reached for it.  I handed it to her.  “Thank you.”  She watched the body for a moment—tilting her head left then right.  Then she turned toward me.  “Turn around.”  I told her I was not turning around.  I was scared she would stab me in the back.  Who was this woman I thought I had known?  “I hope you’re up for this.”  She turned her attention back to the trunk and began stabbing the body over and over.  I ran beside the house and leaned against it.  “Not against the house.” 

 

I could hear her grunting with every stab and the sound that the knife made entering the body.  I vomited next to the house.  “Stop,” I said.  “You’re crazy.  Who are you?  Where’s the person I was going to marry?” 

 

She told me to keep my voice down.  “You sound frantic,” she said.  “You want to attract the neighbors?”  She had left the knife sticking up in the body.  “I needed to make sure.”  I could only shake my head.  “Are you okay?”  She began to walk toward me.  “We’re going to work this out.  This has to be traumatic to you.  It would be for me.  Here.”  She extended her arms to me.  “Come on.  A hug always makes me feel better when you give me one after a long day.”  I was speechless.  What was she talking about?  This was not a long day.  This was murder.  “Let’s go back inside and make love.  Things will look better in the morning.”  She smiled.  I told her I was feeling sick, that I needed to go home. 

 

“That’s a bad idea,” she said.  “You need to stay here tonight.  This would be upsetting to anyone.  I’m even a little shaken by it.”  I told her she did it. Now I was an accomplice.  “No one saw us.”  She reached out and placed her hands on my head and rubbed my head.  I moved my head from her hands.  Those were murderer’s hands, I thought.  “Stay here for the night.  We’ll talk in the morning.  I promise.  Once I explain everything to you, you’ll understand.”

 

“I’m not feeling well,” I said. 

 

“Let’s get you inside,” she said.

 

“I’m feeling dizzy and sick,” I said.     

 

That is all I remembered about that night.  I woke up the next morning naked and in bed with her.  She was laying half way on top of me.  She woke up and told me I was wonderful last night.  I jerked up and asked her about the body.  “Tell me about the dead man,” I said.  She told me it was taken care of and for me not to ever mention it again.  “Is the body still in your trunk?”  She said there was not a body in her trunk.  I got out of bed.  “Where are my clothes?” 

 

“They were too damaged to be saved,” she said.  “So they were thrown away.”  I did not know what to say to her.  “There are a pair pants and a shirt on the chair.”  They were clothes I had left at her place. 

 

I put on my pants and ran toward the back door.  She called for me to come back inside.  I grabbed her keys from the counter on the way out the back door.  When I got out the door I pushed the trunk button.  It clicked and popped opened.  I pushed it the rest of the way up.  It was empty.  I touched the inside of the trunk to see if she had cleaned it out.  It was dry.  I looked for stains.  There were not any.  I thought I was going crazy.  I ran back inside to her.  “What did you do with it?”  She was saying something when I remembered the guest bedroom.  I ran to it.  The bed was made.  There was no blood in sight.  I yanked the sheets and blankets back to reveal the mattress.  There had to be stains.  There were no stains.  I felt the mattress.  It was not wet.  I looked under the bed.  I went back to where she was still laying in bed.  “What did you do?  What did you do to us?”            

 

“It’s not our worry,” she said.  “Just let it go.  Don’t ruin our lives over this.”  I demanded answers from her.  She would not answer anything.  She propped herself up on her elbow.  “Listen to me.  We’re engaged.  You love me.  I love you.  That’s all there is.  Nothing else matters.”  I asked her more questions.  “Nothing else matters.”  That was her answer to all my questions.  I told her I could not live with it.  “Yes, you can.  And, you will.  I won’t allow you to get weak on me.  We have a great life together and we’re not going to ruin it.  That means neither of us.” 

 

The last words she said have had me worrying ever since.  The way she said it was as if she had said all she was going to say on the topic.  Now I feel stuck and afraid when I am around her, and even when I am not around her.  Sometimes I feel like I am waiting to be killed.