In Memory Of A Practical Man

Mattie Greaves sat across from Mr. Sawyer Day, the owner of a small and all but forgotten funeral home in Seattle, Washington and together they were quietly discussing  a suitable coffin for Mattie’s husband Tabor.

” My husband is a practical man ” Mattie told Mr. Day ” and he wouldn’t like anything with those fancy gold handles and he certainly wouldn’t approve of things like this ” Mattie was pointing at a catalog opened to a  glossy page of coffins painted blue and gold and even black with ducks and eagles flying around their edges.

” I understand ” Mr. Day said ” and I have several models for you to consider that are more traditional. I’m sure we can find one here that your husband would approve of. ”

Mr. Day is almost 65 and he had taken over Morning Ridge Funeral Home from his Mother’s family right after he had turned 30. He had started working there right after he turned 16 so that means that for over 50 years Mr. Sawyer Day had heard and seen it all.

So when Mattie Greaves asked if the traditional model she was looking at came with a comfortable pillow Mr. Day didn’t even look up. ” From what I understand it does, however in the past some of our families have brought in their own blankets and pillows. ”

” My husband is very fond of candy as well. ” Mattie whispered. ” Now his doctor told  him he needs to give up sweets but you know, he’s along in years and he’s been through so much. I ask you Mr. Day how could I take away his salt water taffy?”

” My Mother was the same way, she was fond of her Cuban Cigars. Not only did she refuse to give them up we could never figure out how she got her hands on them to begin with. In the end, we just let it go.”

” So of course I can…”

” Of course you can Mrs. Greaves, whatever you think would have made your husband happy.”

After going through a few more books Mattie decided on a solid oak model with bronze handles and a lovely cream colored liner. She passed on the flowers.

” He’s allergic ” she told Mr. Day.

Mr. Day and Mattie went through numbers and she was about to pull out her check book when Mr. Day said, ” We’re almost finished Mrs. Greaves all we have to do is discuss your choice of a grave liners..

Mattie dropped her checkbook on the table and looked at Mr. Day for almost two minutes before her face turned a little red and tears welled up in her eyes., ” Oh my, that sounds so final.”

” Mrs. Greaves, I’m very sorry.  I don’t mean to rush you. If you need more time to go over…”

” No Mr Day…you’ve been very kind and patient with me. It’s my fault. I’m the one who has been doing the rushing. I should have explained…my husband just needs a coffin until the one he normally uses arrives from back home.”

Inspired by the Soul Food Cafe Prompt

Memory’s Molten Stream

Midnight Conversation at Riversleigh Manor

From my Soul Food Cafe Prompt Archives 

amm

There’s something buried in the Gardener’s Shed and why would someone bury something that wasn’t dead yet?

The thing in the shed isn’t buried very deep, so if you were to crawl over the dead fall in front of the door and were able to push your way through he matted cobwebs and you didn’t mind the smell of rotting leaves and small unburied creatures you’d find  there under the window a slightly raised mound of earth.

Were you to look at the raised mound long enough and the light somehow managed to find it’s way through the little panes of glass covered with dust and dirt you’d think someone was lying there on their side with one arm cradling their cheek and the other laying comfortably on their side.

Wouldn’t you?

If you brought a flashlight and the beam was bright you might think you could see something wrong with the entire left side of the sleeping figure’s face. You might think that maybe that the face was gone, smashed in by something like that shovel in the corner.

Isn’t that right?

They might wonder what you were doing back there in a rotting shed behind the Manor House in the dead of Night, they might see you take the shovel and try to smooth and pound that little raised mound of Earth flat.

That’s what they’d see wouldn’t they?

So I must ask you again, why would you bury something that is not dead yet?

Go ahead you can tell me.

Just keep your hands were I can see them.

Bubba Ho-Tep

THE BEST MOVIE,THE BEST SCREENPLAY THE BEST STORY EVER WRITTEN ABOUT A MUMMY OR ELVIS PRESLEY…

( Link To Official Movie Site )

Corners

 

Blaze Godfredo lives out on Old Creek Road- most of the Godfredo Family have lived out on Old Creek Road long before Washington became a state and if you want to hear any stories about the infamous ghost town called Fallen you can ask Blaze.

His Great Grandmother, Tanis Blaze won the town in a card game back in the 1920’s but that’s another story.

So when he was a kid Blaze used to play on the grounds of an abandoned insane asylum haunted by the Black Monk of Fallen and to add along with that interesting bit of family history you might be interested to learn that Blaze’s Great Great Grandmother had the dubious honor of being the one and only woman on the West Coast too be hung for Witchcraft.

” That’s a rotten shame Blaze ” some people would say when he would tell that story.

” Oh heck, what can I say? It was true..Bartsia wasn’t one of those poor creatures that they burned at the stake on trumped up charges….no Sir. Bartsia was an honest to goodn-well, Bartsia was the real thing. She was a fire and brimstone demon conjuring type of gal and she’d just as soon cut your heart out and feed it to her cat as look at you.”

Old Creek Road  was where they hung Bartsia from the infamous Devil’s Tree. The tree is where Bartsia was supposed to have done her deals with the Devil herself

The people of Fallen hung her there ….twice.

In order to rid themselves Bartsia some of the people who lived in Fallen had to do some deals themselves at that tree and it was about another 100 years before they got that mess with Bartsia worked out.

Afterwords Fallen was a ghost town and no one in Snohomish County will go near it let alone admit it’s still up there.

Of course you can find it if you want.

There’s this town called Cascade Ridge that you have to drive through to get to Fallen and that’s where Blaze lives out on Old Creek Road where he runs his business right out of his home.

Whenever someone in Cascade sees cars pull up to Blaze’s house where a sign says, ” Blaze Godfredo’s Haunted Washington Tours ” they just stand there and cry and wonder how much longer that old man is going to live for.

That’s how Blaze makes a living and no one has ever considered telling him to stop the flood of people in black clothes and show up in droves during Halloween. On a practical note it goes without saying that no one really wants to mess with a man who has a genuine Witch buried out on his property

Anway, that’s what Blaze does.

He takes little groups of people up to Fallen and to Old Creek who are  ghost hunters and people who fancy themselves to be Vampires and Witches and he tells them all about Fallen.

Some of them just get angry at his stories and the rest just get scared but nobody walks away  feeling like they’d been had.

One year this writer from Seattle took the tour and as Blaze walked her back to her car she stopped and asked, ” You know Blaze, these stories of yours are top drawer- but I’m curious. All these stories about The Creek, they’re about other people.  You’ve lived out here your entire life and except for that trip to Hawaii you told us about on the way up to Fallen it doesn’t sound like you’ve been much more the 100 miles away from here. You must have seen or been through something yourself. Come on Blaze, where do you fit into this story? ”

Blaze shrugged, ” Well, it’s my family’s history you know and I’m not the adventurous type and on the whole I’d have to say my uneventful life would affirm that sad fact.”

” Yeah, sure Blaze…come one what’s your story? ”

Blaze held his arm out and the writer, a woman named Honor took it and they walked up to Blaze’s porch and he told her about what happened to him 40 years ago out on Old Creek Road.

” No doubt about it, my family has a dark history- and the one thing I know about darkness, it creeps from the corners.  Think about it there, nothing bothers people more then the things they see from the corners of their eyes. It’s because the things you see there have creeped up on you.

And then they either creep away or just disapear and then you get that trickle of sweat running down your spine…You know what  mean don’t you.”

Honor nodded.

” Back in the 1960’s there wasn’t any lights out on the highway that hooks Old Creek up to Snohomish County and the rest of the world. But that didn’t stop people from driving their cars like the Devil was chasing them…well, you know sometimes….but for the most part people were just careless and stupid or drunk and stupid and they’d miss the road that leads to bridge over the Creek and they would end up smashed to pieces in the ravine.”

“So one winter we hear about this car full of college kids that disapeared on their way back from Seattle- they were headed up to Everett and they never made it.”

” Well that year my wife gets it in her head that she wants a fresh cut tree for Christmas and I’m the good guy right? I actually do it, I take an ax out into  30 degrees of ice and snow and go and cut her a tree. But that wasn’t so much to do for a woman who was willing to live out here just to be with me. She was a good Gal ” Blaze said with a smile ” Really Good…and kind. Anyway I go out and find her a nice blue spruce and I’m on my way home when just before I get to the bridge I hit a dog and it bounces off my hood and takes a dive right over the bridge into the ravine.”

” Wouldn’t you kno it? Just as I get out of my car that dog comes flying up the bank and with a busted leg it’s got it’s tail between it’s legs and Honor…that dog is screaming, not howling- it’s screaming. ”

” So I go over to the railing and look down and I see this black patch- it’s perfectly square and black and I realize what I’m looking at his the undercarriage of a car and I figure out the screaming I’m hearing didn’t come from the dog- it was coming from the car.”

” I slide and crawl down into that Ravine the best I can and just as I come up on the car I start seeing what look like body parts scattered all of the place and I figure the animals have been visiting the car for a snack or two and then I see this hand come from the window on the passenger side and I’m about to pass out when I hear someone say, ” please get me out they’re getting closer….please get me out.”

” Sure enough there was a lady still alive in that car and I figure she’d been down there for almost four days with those dead bodies.”

” God ” Honor whispered.

Blaze looked up from his memories and the look on his face was confused. ” Oh no, no, no God was down in that Ravine, wasn’t nothing down in there but death and if you know Death you know how it doesn’t like to share space with anybody or anything….”

Honor shrugged. ” I’ll give you that. ”

” Anyway, I reach down and grab the hand and that woman just slides out on a trail of blood and ice and I’m pretty sure she cut herself up pretty good when she came out. But before I could help her up she turned over and got up on her knees and was holding herself up with one arm  and she was holding her other arm to her chest. Then she jumps up grabs my hand and says, ” come on, we have to get out of here. I can hear them….let’s go!”

” Who? ” I ask her ” who is coming? ”

” Those animals!” she screams at me and then she starts running and she was one sure footed Gal because she didn’t slide or slow down as she drags me all the way up the bank to the road.

When we get up to the road we both look down into the Ravine and I can hear something all right. I can see something too. Only it wasn’t animals, it was little lights and and the sounds were voices and they were saying something about “picking up tracks here…”

That’s when I can see, right there out of the corner of my eye that woman spit something out onto the snow and what lands there are four little red and white lumps and I know those things are teeth.

Then she looks down at her hands and I hear her whistle and say something like, ” I guess I won’t be playing the piano for awhile.”

After she gets done talking I see her from the corner of my eye pull a long blond hair from the corner of her mouth and no it wasn’t her’s because the woman standing next to me had long black hair. It was so black it almost looked blue.

It was just seconds later that  she walks away down that road like she wasn’t cut up and bleeding and hurt- I’m not sure but I think she may have been whistling.

Well, a few minutes later a bunch of people come up over the bank and they’ve got dogs and guns.

” Hey there ” says this man ” are you alright?”

” Course. What’s up? ” I asked.

” There’s a wolf on the loose, it tore apart a bunch of dogs and horses and even a cow at on Maltby a few days ago and we tracked it out here- looks like it was spending some time down in that car. I’m not sure but it looks like it went through the windshield and got itself stuck. Then it got itself unstuck.”

” How? ” I ask.

One of the men drops something at my feet and there it was…this wolf’s paw with fur so black it shined blue.

 

” I don’t know who that woman was or where she went – but she should be easy to spot . After all, she only has one hand.”

Honor sat back and smiled, ” that was a good one Blaze…you really should- ” and then Honor’s smile sort of froze and faded and she turned her head a little and she said to Blaze ” I thought I saw something  from the corner of my eye…sorry where was I?”

Inspired by the Soul Food Cafe Story Starter:

Werewolf Project

Insanity Jones

by a.m. moscoso 

Inspired by The Soul Food Cafe Prompt

“W” is For The Wheel Of Life

 

Insanity Jones was a cat whose real name was Wolfgang and he belonged to  a woman named Rose Hunter.

Rose was an old lady who never seemed to have been a young lady and for as long as anyone could remember she wrote ghost stories and towards the end of her very long old life she wrote horror stories that contained astronomically high body counts that ended up becoming video games.

Everyone in Rose’s neighborhood liked her and they liked her brick house with the stained glass windows and they didn’t mind that she had a genuine human skeleton in her writing room and these part monkey part fish creatures floating in jars in her study and a big heavy oak chair that someone later figured out was an electric chair in the foyer because hands down they were all much more unverved by Wolfgang aka Insanity Jones.

The cat, they decided, was stranger then Mrs Hunter or her collection of dead things in jars.

Insanity Jones bit the mailman ( twice ) he attacked the fire fighters that come through every single Fourth of July to put out the little fires that start in the Evergreen trees because no one living on 51st Street has learned that bottle rockets with strings of firecrackers tied to them are a really bad idea.

Once Insanity Jones even sat in the middle of the road during rush hour and backed the traffic all the way up to the Lost Bay Road and caused three hour traffic jam on the highway.

Why didn’t the people in those first few cars get out and move Insanity Jones?

Well, that would mean touching him.

So why didn’t they just run him over you ask?

Because if you knew Insanity Jones you probably knew that would make him really angry and very dead and that was the stuff nightmares are made of.

Really though, no one hurt Insanity Jones because they really liked Mrs Hunter and it was sort of sweet the way she’d pick Insanity up and hold him like a baby and tell him how sweet and precious he was.

Plus, if  Insanity had ever torn apart birds on your lawn during an Easter Egg Hunt in front of a bunch of 3-8 year olds all dressed in their Sunday Best or popped your dog’s eye out of it’s head you’d have to admitt that it was sort of satisfying to watch Insanity Jones sitting in an old fashioned baby carriage while Mrs Hunter cut flowers.

Occasionally she’d bring them over stick them under his nose and say, ” Isn’t that nice my Sweet Baby? ”

The only thing better then seeing that was having Insanity know you were watching.

Thinking back on it, Insanity didn’t seem to mind at all- because when that demonic man eating beast was anywhere near Mrs Hunter he would act almost human. And when she would lift him up and kiss his battle scared nose ( which was missing a tiny chunk on the right ) and say, ” Never leave me Wolfgang, it would kill me for sure if I ever lost you. ” he almost looked like a real cat.

It was a sad day when Mrs Hunter died, and in the town of Abandon her funeral was huge. Along with her friends people like writers and actors and artists who did special effects makeup showed up to say goodbye.

Insanity Jones was there too and when he found his way into the chapel and sat on one of the back pews nobody tried to move him. No one sat anywhere near him but everyone remembers seeing him there and when he jumped down and walked out after the service he was limping a little.

Nobody was really surprised that Insanity Jones disappeared shortly after Rose’s Funeral-  everyone in town figured he just went completely over the line and took off for one of the inner circles of Hades where he had earned his own little forest full of flightless birds and Fireman with exposed ankles.

In a way they hoped so- Mrs. Hunter would have wanted her Sweet Baby to be happy.

It was about two years after Rose had died that her house was turned into a museum and it drew a lot of visitors on Halloween- and even after it was passed  people who looked like they didn’t know it wasn’t Halloween showed up and along with the curious and they all wanted to know the same thing.

Was it true that Roses’s Grandmother was Slumber Boneset- the famous Cemetery Baby? Was it true Rose spent two years living with Head Hunters and Witch Doctors on those little Islands in the South Pacific where soldiers during the war chose to die on sinking ships or ditched their planes in the shark infested waters rather then set foot on those dark little islands that Rose Hunter called home.

Rose’s friends would look from left to right and say, ” Well, she was a writer you know…” and then they’d say a little defensively ” Rose lived in a lot of places but she liked her house here in Abandon the best.”

As the years went on the Museum People started to notice little things around Rose’s House- things that made them not want to be alone in her rooms that smelled like nutmeg and gardenias.

Sometimes there’d be fresh cut flowers on Insanity’s little bed by the fireplace, sometimes the skeleton out in the living room would standing in one corner and you’d come back in a few minutes later and he’d be in another.

And sometimes the things in Rose’s Jars would have their eyes closed and sometimes those eyes would all be open and looking in the same direction.

They told themselves that in life Rose had a weird cat and she traveled to weird places and she had dead things floating in jars all over her house and she had a machete collection stored with bolts of fabric that were probably intended to be used as death shrouds- so of course you were going to see weird things in the house she called home.

As sad as it was they knew Rose was dead and gone and she was never going to come back and neither was Insanity Jones. The world, the people in Abandon would tell you, got a little smaller and duller when they accepted that cold little bit of reality.

It was a bright Spring morning the day Carmen Stark’s turn to open the museum came up- and like the other times she had to work alone in Rose’s House she prided herself on the fact that it didn’t bother her to work on her own for a little while the way it bothered the other volunteers.

She looked up into the bright blue sky as she popped the key into the lock and as she started to turn the key she saw that the trees were full of singing birds- all except for Rose’s trees and Carmen thought how right that was considering how hard Insanity worked to rid the world of anything that had wings.

Only the birds had been nesting in the trees since Rose had died so…

Carmen pulled her hand away from the key and she looked over her shoulder and up into the empty trees in Rose’s yard and then she looked down and looking back up at her was Insanity Jones.

Insanity was looking straight into her face and then he winked at her.

” You’re back ” she said and if you’re here…”

” Rose? ” she whispered hoping no one would answer.

And  from the other side of the door somebody turned the lock and the door swung open.

for more Insanity Click HERE

Many Happy Returns

by Anita Marie Moscoso

based on the Soul Food Cafe Writing Prompt

Fantasy Writing

Slumber Boneset doesn’t celebrate her birthday because she’s not sure of the exact date and that’s always been a sore spot for Slumber Boneset because she’s sure of a lot of things.

She’s sure about what the weather is going to be like, she’s sure of what it is people are thinking even when they’re saying something else and she’s always sure about where her six children and 14 grandchildren are and how they’re doing.

Over the years people have made their way to Slumber Boneset’s House by moonlight and for a few dollars she can help them with solve all sorts of problems.

So to not know something as basic as her own birth date has kept Slumber Boneset about being right about everything and that’s bad for business.

The plus side to this embarrassing situation is that it makes for a good story that her children and grandchildren insist on hearing every November 1st.

That’s when they celebrate Slumber Boneset’s Found Day.

” Oh you don’t want to hear that sad tired old story again! ” she said to her family over the dinner table last November.

” Yes we do! ” the youngest Boneset insisted in a panic “Your story is the best Halloween Story ever!”

Slumber started to laugh and asked her daughter, “ are you sure you want another one these?”

“ More then anything” she told her Mother and Slumber motioned for her grandson to take a seat.

Slumber looked around the table, she tried not to smile then she told her story.

Stonecrop Cemetery and Funeral Home is just a Park nowadays and there hasn’t been a funeral there for years.

Sixty –five years ago though it was still struggling along.

The problem was Stonecrop looked like a page from a Victorian Ghost Story about headless women dressed in white wandering along the rows of tombstones.

No one really wanted to visit there let alone have their remains interred there for all of eternity so business was slowing down and going out to Larkspear which was an up can coming style of cemetery complete with dark green manicured lawns and park benches and reflection pools full of fresh clean water.

Mr and Mrs. Cabbagetree were the owners of Stonecrop and all around they were good people who tended their dark overgrown cemetery the best they could.

But because it was so old already there was little to no money coming in and what repairs were needed they did on their own and they really didn’t mind. Stonecrop was their home and besides each other they didn’t have anything else.

They had each other and if you asked that was all they said they needed.

One morning Mrs. Cabbagetree was out in the Cemetery raking leaves and trying her best to visit the graves as she worked. She was pushing her rake along when a sharp pain raced up her arm to her jaw and it took her breath away.

” I’m only 42 ” she said to no one and then the rake fell from her hands and she died.

Mrs. Cabbagetree was buried on Morningside Hill, that’s where the children were buried in Stonecrop and I’m sorry to say it was an extensive section of the cemetery…infant mortality having been such a problem all those years ago.

” I know she wanted children, ” Mr Cabbagetree told on his friends at the graveside of Mrs. Cabbagetree ” and did she insist or even bring it up? Not once, she knew what this place meant to me, she worked so hard Burke and in the end that’s all she had to.”

” It’s not right, she should have had something of her own. She should have had that child”

Everyone said Mr Cabbagetree wasn’t the same after he lost his wife. He walked slow and talked slow and you almost wanted to reach out and touch his arm to make sure he was there.

He was already a ghost and when he died no one was surprised.

They found him one day sitting by a reflection pool full of leaves and his eyes were wide open and in his dead hands was a baby’s rattle and a black shawl.

After Mr Cabbagetree died the City started to bring in their own maintenance crews to keep up Stonecrop and one day they opened the gates and the first thing they saw were at least a dozen mounds of freshly turned earth dotting Morningside Hill.

Mrs. Cabbagetree’ s grave was opened and when they looked in she had a shovel in her hands and a smile on her face.

It was the Day after Halloween that the work crews returned to Stonecrop and before they could unlock the gates and go in they saw a little box sitting off to the side…. and it was moving.

One of them looked into the box and there, wrapped in a black shawl with a tag sewn onto the collar that said ” Slumber Boneset ” was a baby.

She had black hair and her skin was a soft caramel color and one of her eyes was midnight black and the other was ice blue and besides that she was perfect.

” So that’s my story, I was known for a long time as the Cemetery Baby and some people think I have the gift … but we know better then that, don’t we? ” Slumber asked.

From the other end of the table Slumber’s eldest daughter said, ” Mom, I think it’s time.”

” Yes it is…. please someone get my Shawl from my bedroom closet. Yes, the black one of course. After all, this is a special occasion.”

Slumber raced down the hall to the kitchen and when she returned she had a shovel in one hand and a baby’s rattle in the other. ” Let’s go dear, I’m ready.“

Devil’s Luck

 

by anita marie moscoso

based on the Soul Food Cafe Story Prompt

T is For Transformative

Did you ever have one of those days when everything went wrong?

Maybe you knew it was going to be bad when your alarm went off  20 minutes too early and to make it worse it was one of those nights where you woke up every half hour and when you got out of bed you knew, you could feel it was going to get much worse.

Veta Trella had a night like that.

After she got out of bed she went  to take a shower and as she stepped into her tub she slipped but was lucky enough to break her fall with her knees.

That  was okay because Veta wasn’t the kind of person anyone paid attention to so if she had to limp and shuffle no one was going to notice.

That was the only lucky break Veta had for the rest of the day.

When Veta dried her hair she was distracted by the sizzling sound the wires made everytime she turned her wrist and just before her hair was completely dry some blue sparks flew out of the wall and all of the lights in Veta’s house went out and stayed out.

She guessed all of those black scorch marks all over her walls by the electrical outlets she saw on the way to her basement to check her fuse box was not a good sign.

When Veta  finally made it out thedoor she looked down in time to see her that not only were her shoes not tied, they were different colors and just as she turned to go back into her house the door swung shut and she knew that not only was the door locked she had never taken her keys out of the candy bowl she kept them in.

But none of that mattered for very long because as she took  a step she tripped on her laces and went face first into the door.

It was only a matter of seconds- not minutes before her nose started to swell and she could feel her lips start to go numb. She poked at her face and sighed and then Veta walked around to her back yard.

She walked slowly up the steps to her back porch and when she reached down to pick up a little clay flowerpot to break the little glass window in center of the porch door she felt her fingernail peel back and then it came off with a sting.

She held her hand up, looked at raw  finger tip and sighed.

Veta made it through her kitchen safe enough but when she got to the living room she scared her cat Blitzer right off of the couch he knew wasn’t suppose to be on.

Veta didn’t have the heart or energy to yell at him because she shouldn’t have had to break into her own house and put herself in the position to scare her black cat into running straight across her path.

In fact, he was so startled by her that he jumped straight up onto the mantle piece above the fireplace and sent Veta’s antique mirror crashing to the floor where it didn’t just break.

It smashed into millions of little shards and a cloud of dust and glass wafted up and into Veta’s face- Veta’s bruised and swollen face that was now in the process of working it’s way into a full fledged allergy attack.

” Oh, why the Hell not ” Veta said and then she sneezed and her nose started to bleed- all over her brand new white blouse.

When Veta made it to her bus- well it wasn’t her usual bus because she missed her regular bus- she almost tripped over a woman who had suddenly stopped to pick something up off of the ground and that sent Veta and her things flying  in about four different directions.

Veta sort of shuffled and cringed all the way to the back of the bus and when she sat down it was on something wet and sticky and she closed her eyes and when she opened them she looked up and then down and then from her left to her right and then slowly behind her. When she was done she slouched down and held her belongings to her chest and tried to make herself breathe.

 She thought if she concentrated on doing just that she wouldn’t start screaming.

Then the woman Veta had tripped over took the seat right in front of her and she was jabbering and laughing and chatting away to the very good-looking man next to her.

” Can you believe it? ” she sang, ” first I find a hundred dollar bill right there on the curb on the very morning I’m thinking I’m going to for sure  miss my bus and then…” she leaned towards her seat mate and nudged him with her shoulder ” you ask me out and look! “

 She was holding her phone up and the man read the text message and he congratulated the woman on her promotion and then he moved a little closer to her and put his arm over the back of her seat.

” I mean, I don’t know where all of this is coming from.  I’ve never had luck like this before!”

” My Grandma would have said you have the luck of the Devil ” he told the woman happily.

And then Veta reached over she tapped them each on the shoulder.

When they turned around they were looking straight into Veta’s bright yellow eyes which were ringed with bruises and they saw the little white horns she normally hid under her blow dried hair and then her forked tongue shot from under her broken nose and swollen lips and she hissed ” your Grandma is liar.”