Apathy is a selfish killer.
Feel free to read and print our stories, but don't forget to tell others where you found them.
Readrunwrite.com
Theresa Schmits
Theresa Schmits
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Submissions:
Open for all good, quality writing.
Click here to read
"Chicken Eyelids"
by Theresa Schmits
"Chicken Eyelids"
by Theresa Schmits
Click here to read
the children's story,
"History Test" by
Oksana Starlins
the children's story,
"History Test" by
Oksana Starlins
Click the above link
to download Adobe
Acrobat Reader to
your computer to
read our PDF files.
It's free!
to download Adobe
Acrobat Reader to
your computer to
read our PDF files.
It's free!
Chemical Nightmare
Chemical nightmares whisper to me
coming or going
Beautiful woman at the bottom of the sea
gives birth while crabs eat the flesh
off her fingers.
I want to kill myself, I say in my sleep.
And he asks me why.
Can you imagine?
HE asks me why!
My children, my failure, my valuelessness. I am no longer afraid
Peace is in nothingness and I want to go there.
Death requires no futile quest for freedom.
They said a shotgun would chip my teeth and blow their fragments on the walls
and I could not have
an open casket.
I like it like that. It is final.
I am out of reach of “salvation”, beyond your control.
At the bottom of the sea, I can breathe.
The chemicals make acid; acid eats my brain
It bleeds, it swells, it makes me forget where I put my keys
Laughing, hold onto sanity.
I am still here, but
chemical nightmares whisper sweet seduction to me.
Theresa Schmits
Bad Deeds Past
By
Theresa Schmits
Chapter One
Wearing too thin coats in the Midwestern atmosphere of cold drizzle, sleet, blustery winds, and gray skies was what poverty
was like. Ashley Megan Lee Moore took a deep breath of cold, fresh air. She wore, on this November night, a fake leather
trench coat she had picked up from the Salvation Army Thrift Store. But she was glad for it as the season turned cooler. It was
better than nothing. Nothing is what she had before. Five dollars at the thrift store protected her, to the extent those five hundred
pennies could, from the elements of a rapidly approaching, somewhere between Minneapolis and Chicago wintertime.
“’Bye, Ashley,” yelled the old guy at the bar called Deputy Dog. His mustache ambled out and curled, much like the old
Deputy Dog cartoon character.
“’Bye, Deputy. Thanks for warming my car up for me!”
Deputy looked down at his feet with smiling and rosy cheeks, “No problem. No problem.” Ashley wondered how old
Deputy must be. Age on his face trembled and dashed away like a butterfly on a breeze. Forty? Fifty? Surely not older than
that, yet the crew at the enormous saloon treated him as though he were a beloved old grandfather, perhaps too soft on the drink,
whom everyone knew needed just a little more cash for rent and utilities since he spent all his social security check on booze.
Ashley looked across the dark parking lot where her rusty Ford Custom 500 was parked, idling, with a great, steamy cloud
of exhaust hovering behind it. Warmth. Ashley’s hair caught in the wind and slapped the toxic scent of cigarette smoke across
her mouth, open and exhaling visible breath due to an allergy to cigarette smoke, as she ran to get into the car before she chilled.
No matter what night it was at the bar nor how few patrons there seemed to be, the air was always blue with cigarette smoke and
Ashley went home with smoke in her hair, on her hands, in her clothes, on her eyelashes. Never could she sleep before washing
away the sickening smell.
Thank God. The heat inside the car saved her from shudders and chills, and she thought of Ray’s sort of gift to her of this
car. Ray, who saved her from walking when her old car broke down, and who only kind of wanted payment of the $300 he had
spent on the car and would have waived that altogether had Ashley only married him. But Ray didn’t know her. He only knew
her circumstances. He knew in the autumn outdoors her cheeks were pale and her eyes were blue and her hair hung in shiny red-
gold shimmers. When she was sad, her face shadowed sorrowful and sober, and when she smiled, dimples shocked and her
eyes snapped dark blue flashes. She took his breath away with a smile. Always practical but unable to resist the urge to try to
have her, he liked her mysterious sadness and he imagined he could change her life. For once Ray could be a hero. Besides, he
knew his mom and dad out on the farm would like her. Ray wanted a wife. Ashley just needed a car.
And now she had a car and with her wages at the bar, she was working to pay off the $300 debt, even though she knew
Ray would rather she didn’t. Things were changing for Ashley Megan. Her father had always told her, “You have to be able to
take an order to give an order.” She learned how to take an order, shrugging off embarrassment and degradation and at times her
own will, and worked until she could barely stand. Her father would be pleased with her work ethic.
There was no one about on the streets at this hour. The bar closed at 2 a.m. and Ashley hit the door by 2:15. During the
week, the bar closed earlier. It only stayed open late on the weekends. The last bar open in the Quad Cities, all the partiers from
Iowa just across the Mississippi would come over to Illinois when the Iowa bars closed and at about 2:30, an influx of already
drunken people would flood the place. Then it would be standing room only. Ashley learned how to work fast, serve fast, and
how to avoid the hands of the off-duty cops who always wanted to grab her bottom as she walked by. Tonight was an early
night and she thought about what she would do the next day since she would not be so tired that she could not get up while it
was still morning and wash the dishes or go grocery shopping with the heaviness of tips at the bar. Ashley could always
exchange the quarters, dimes, and nickels at work, but she loved the rich weight of money on her person.
November winds blew the trashcans down the street that morning. Ashley chased them down still in her bedroom slippers.
It had rained a wet, sad, sorry rain the day before. Her slippers got wet and the cold pinched her toes before she made it back
inside. The sky was grey and clouds chased each other low across the horizon. A Midwestern winter was coming on and people
said they wouldn’t be surprised to see a few snowflakes with as cold as it had gotten.
Ashley had laughed because Helen had laughed. Helen was her landlady. She was in her eighties and Ashley made her her
role model. Helen had buried three husbands and grieved for every one of them. She had faced the adversity of losing the man
she loved and everything that came along with him—his income, his warmth in the dark, his protection, and his sweet friendship.
This she did three times and then she said she would not marry again before she died. Instead of losing her home when the
income went away, she sliced it up as mercilessly as Jo March did her first manuscript and rented out her marvelous, old, early
20th century house with the wide front porch, boards painted gray, and leaded glass front door. She loved people, she said,
chuckling. And she knew how to be poor—she knew how to handle it. Ashley could learn from an expert and was surprised at
Helen’s open kindness, so she rented the upstairs of Helen’s house as her apartment. When Helen laughed, Ashley laughed and
they both said they were thankful they had such a great house to call home that winter.
There were only a few leaves on the trees, yet. Those few stragglers held on to the skeleton trees with their fingertips and
were suddenly, surprisingly hurled through the air by the same wind that was the doom of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Only those
leaves arose in mini tornadoes as the wind checked every entrance, every porch, every window to see if it could get in and make
itself at home in someone’s nice living room. Then it checked them again. Locked outside it would then die just as suddenly as it
came and the leaves would let themselves down on the front porch or in the entrances to garages only to be swept up again if the
wind should come by, like a disappointed lover wanting to keep an affair alive.
The other leaves were, as Robert Frost put it, trodden black, in the wet November rain. The deciduous trees had disrobed,
lovers preparing for bed, and everywhere Ashley’s headlights beamed, their pale shapes appeared frozen in a seductive dance.
She was watching the black side of the road and the white trees positively silhouetted against the darkness. She was tired and as
she drove she hoped not to fall asleep. It was longer home now that she had moved from her earlier, dilapidated hut. Generally it
was a good drive. A good drive to a good place--warm, since Helen would have gotten up and turned up the heat because she
wanted it toasty when Ashley made it home. It was good to have someone who cared about whether or not it was warm.
Suddenly, in the brush of her headlights around a curve, she saw a person. Walking. Walking with a big bundle at the
opposite side of the road, going in the opposite direction. At the edge of the road because there was no sidewalk. She drove on
but as she passed, there was something familiar about the person. The walk, maybe. The way the person turned away from the
light. The walk made her curiosity irresistible.
Ashley drove on but without heeding the cautiousness that the prospect of danger always brought, she suddenly pulled into a
driveway and turned around. She was going to go see who that person was. She had an inkling that the person walking was a
woman. Maybe she needs help. Something was wrong. Maybe she’s had a fight with her husband. Maybe she’s got nowhere
to go.
As she approached the figure walking down the side of the road, the walk became more hurried. Ashley was sure, just sure
now, that it was a woman. The walk, hurried and now hunched, was fearful. Ashley could see the shape of her body even
beneath the bundle and the big coat she wore. She had to be a woman. She had the body type of the women who do their
shopping almost exclusively at Walmart or K-Mart. Wide shoulders, big breasts, narrow hips and large backsides. The welfare
body, having seen too many hard times, afraid to be hungry again, ingesting thousands more calories than needed in preparation
for the day times got worse. Fat was survival of the fittest. It would have saved millions in the Potato Famine, would have saved
millions in Africa. Fat would keep you alive if it didn’t kill you first. Women like that were almost always encased in stretchy
pants or shorts, almost always wearing a button down top or a much too big t-shirt to hide the rolls of fat. Ashley, she knew
women like her. She knew their insides.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
[More to come.]