Fuzzy Wuzzy

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.


My words are:

furniture ~ super ~ shift ~ eyes ~ purpose

It was submitted by: https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Well. i mean, I don't know where this came from, but here we are.

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Living alone has its perks. There's no one who cares how clean the place is or whether you change out your pajamas on your day off. You can be alone like really alone with no noise, no snoring, no loud chewing... when life is too much, it becomes a safe bubble of you that no one gets to invade.

On the flip side, the con side, are those same things to be honest. When I lived alone a dew years ago, if I got lost in a depression slump, I had no motivation to change it. I had no one to talk to. I had no one to tell me it was okay. I retreated from everyone I knew, and there was no one around at home to chase and invade the bubble. And, honestly, there's also no one to help you move the furniture when you come out of the depression slump and need a change either. Some things are better with extra hands.

We do what we have to, but as much as I love solitude, I don't miss living alone. Not that I can anymore. Not after what happened.

I couldn't have a pet in that first shithole apartment, and it WAS a shithole. No pet could have possibly made it worse, but those were the rules, and with my craptastic part-time retail gig and dwindling crochet projects, I couldn't afford anything else. A pet maybe would have given me a reason to want to live on bad days, a reason to get up, a way to connect. It was a time in my life I needed that kind of unconditional love. I didn't quite realize what a void I'd created by moving away from my parents and their cat and dog at least not then even as I spent most of my free time watching other peoples' pets online. I lived vicariously through them and went down youtube blackhole after blackhole of funny/cute/heartwarming pet videos.

Embarrassingly, that's also when the plushie obsession began.

I won a toy from a claw game. Like, I never win anything even now but definitely not then. There were days back then that it felt like the entire universe was against me, so when I won a little black cat around Halloween time out of the claw machine at work, I was ecstatic. I think I took it as some kind of symbol that things were looking up. Plus, the damn thing was so cute. It was so soft with a little pink heart-shaped nose and wide green eyes, and it was wearing a jack o'lantern costume which, of course, went right with my Halloween Everyday aesthetic. I named it Salem. Cliche but perfectly so.

The night I brought him home I posted him on all my regular social profiles--IG, Facebook, Snap--to tons of likes. Everyone loved my new furbaby. I enjoyed the rush of that just as much as I did hugging him every night as I drifted off to sleep, so I kept posting...and I kept adding to the plushie squad. I had a bat, a couple spiders, a baphomet, some Pokemon, a Lionheart Carebear I found at a thrift store, and more. I posted them as much as I saw people posting their real pets and was overjoyed when people started sharing their own collections on my posts. I made good connections. People really understood the struggle of needing but not being able to have a pet in their lives, and it, well, gave me a little bit of purpose.

So I didn't really think much of it when a few folks asked for my address to send more toys to add to the collection. Someone even found a plush angler fish to send. It was amazing honestly. I just felt so less alone in the world.

But then a strange package showed up right outside my apartment door one day.

Most people let me know they were sending me something. They had to ask for my address after all. But this one arrived out of the blue wrapped crisply in black matte paper. My name and address were written in blood red hand lettering. The handwriting was gorgeous, an artistic skill that must have taken hours and hours of practice. But there was nothing else on the paper. No postage, no postal markings that would be there from circulating the u.s.p.s., no return address.

I found it all quite peculiar and went straight to the building super's apartment to ask if he knew where it came from. Most of my packages were kept at his place, and he left a note for me to pick them up, so the thing being right at my door was odd in and of itself, but I figured maybe he had something to take care of and didn't need the added burden of holding my mail for me...

But he didn't know anything about it. He hadn't seen anyone come in with it. It hadn't arrived with the regular mail. He was just as shook as I was about the whole thing, so he offered to open it for me in case something went awry.

And it did. Not then. But it did.

We opened the box carefully, taking our time with the wrapping and tape, but all we found inside was a small plush toy about the size of my hand. Even to this day I can't say exactly what it was. It looked like a creature someone might draw if they'd never seen a cat but had someone describe how they act and move. Alien and a n g e r y but svelte and charming. The ears were cat-like but too large and too pointed. There were no whiskers, and the face was almost flat like a human's but with the barest hint of a snout and button nose. Its fur was a mottled red, and it had goat-like eyes, rectangular and foreign but intriguing. The body itself was squat, chonky with a nub of a tail. The most peculiar part though was the pair of legit-feeling stubby horns perched upon its head. They certainly weren't stuffed and felt all too like the antelope and water buffalo horns my folks gave our dog on Christmas.

I squeaked a sound somewhere between horror and adoration that scared the literal shit out of Dan. Seriously. He shit himself and recoiled from the toy immediately. I couldn't understand his reaction at the time. It was love at first sight for me. I hugged it tight to me while he stared, jaw slack, in abject disbelief then skipped down the hall to my apartment.

Things were great at first. I posted Lovecraft (i know, i know with the cheesy names...) everywhere and got so many mixed reactions. A lot of people fell in love with the weirdness of it, and others stopped following me altogether which they, of course, couldn't do without giving me their opinion on the toy and that I should burn it. If I'm really being honest with myself, though, the contention made me love him that much more.

But then weird shit started happening.

At first, it was just little things being out of place or going missing. No biggie. Nothing too out of the ordinary. I kept trying to chalk it up to my own terrible memory, but it just kept happening. I mean, I can be scatterbrained but not on THAT level, you know? It was daily. Sometimes multiple times in a day. It wasn't that big a deal when it was my deodorant in the freezer, but it was another ball game entirely when i found my hair straightener at the bottom of a half-filled tub.

Shit really got weird when the other plushies started going missing then pieces of them turning back up all over the apartment. I was devastated. I'd worked really hard to get that collection and the following I had. I didn't want to lose any of it, and to add to the stress, I honestly felt like I was losing my mind. There was just no way someone was breaking in to do these things multiple times a day, not leaving a scent or a trace, and locking back up on the way out. But I still didn't connect the things going on at home to the toy. Not until a picture of him stabbing me through the heart was pinned to my pillow with a knife while at was at work...drawn with my fucking lipstick of all things.

So of course when I find the note to the pillow, the bedroom door snaps shut. It's not my toy standing there, though. It looks like my toy on a mega dose of steroids come to life. Or maybe like a supervillian that fell into a vat of toxic waste. Either way, it sure as hell wasn't human, and I have no idea how I didn't simultaneously pee myself, vomit, and die on the spot just looking at the thing.

I kept my calm somehow trying to talk to it like I had in toy form cooing sweet words about his adorableness and how much I loved him, but that only seemed to enrage him. I was trying to buy time to get to the knife. My nerves fucked me though. He saw my eyes shift to it one too many times and figured out my planletting out a scream of rage in the process that literally blew my hair back and rattled the window behind me.

I couldn't give up. I was so not ready to die. Okay, well, I mean I joked about it like everyone else my age, and some days I didn't want to be alive, but that was wholly and completely different than actively plotting my own death, ya dig? I was ready to fight.

I made a beeline for the knife at the same time it rushed me, but I was close enough to grab it just before he powered into me knocking us both to the floor and sending us rolling. It beat me up and stood panting over me in a rage. I grabbed the knife from where it had landed beside me and tried my best to look convincingly deadly as I scooted further away, but it closed the distance in a hurry.

It snatched the knife from me and lifted its arms over its head for a deathly blow letting out what I could only assume was some kind of diabolical laugh in the process when Dan, bless him, kicked in the bedroom door armed with a rifle, aimed, and fired right into the thing's back. Greenish black liquid sprayed out of the exit wound on its chest burning my skin everywhere it touched. It let out another one of those screams, turned towards Dan, and collapsed.

It was over. I didn't even really have a clue what had happened or what the thing was, but the torment was over. The body turned back into its stuffed toy form perfectly healed. The only evidence anything had happened was the singed carpet where the thing had bled out and the burns on my skin.

Dan helped me clean up and dress the burns and attempt to salvage the carpet. I slept on his couch that night, and the next day the two of us took the toy into the alley beside the building and burned it. I moved out soon after and in with a friend from work. I haven't been able to live alone since.

Never got my deposit back on that shithole either, but I did get my husband Dan out of the deal so I guess there's that.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2019/04/wedding-bells-for-all-use-your-words.html

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Cognitive Script  https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-bad-day-for-memories-april-uyw.html

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/2019/04/a-womans-strength-useyourwords.html

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/

Follow Me Home https://followmehome.shellybean.com

The Crazy Mama Llama https://www.thecrazymamallama.com/

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

Bookworm in the Kitchen https://www.bookwormkitchen.com/2019/04/12/more-organized-than-ever/

Stacy Sews and Schools https://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/2019/04/use-your-words-april-2019.html 

Take It Easy, Beezy

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: duvet, handle, sky, trampoline, and project. They were submitted by: https://followmehome.shellybean.com

This is probably not the kind of story that comes to mind when you see this list of words, but I already had the idea for it and wanted to get it written, so here we are. the words fit perfectly.

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It started innocently enough with me waking up to my cat sitting on my chest on top of the duvet. She was bent over close enough that I could smell her ocean-whitefish breath and staring me down like I’d just stolen the last hairball treat in her stash. The whole scene kind of creeped me out a bit. Who likes being watched while they sleep? Sometimes I snore, though, so I figured she had heard me and wondered if I was possibly dying, and I just happened to catch her at the moment she’d leaned in to check. She’d been with me long enough to know my quirks, but cats can kind of be sensitive about those things, so I gave her a few pets and reassuring words, then rolled over and promptly fell back asleep.

In the light of morning with all traces of darkness fading from the sky, it was nothing more than a hazy feeling of weirdness that I soon forgot as the chorin’ for the day wore me down and kept me busy.

But then it happened again the next night.

And the next.

And, well, for a whole week every single night I woke up with her green eyes shining down on me haloed by the glare from my Frankenstein night light. I was more than a little creeped out, but I figured she was going through something hormonal and would take her to the vet if she acted out of the norm in any other way.

On night 8, she was quietly meowing in a rhythmic tune while she stared. Like she was chanting… A few nights later, she was moving her paws in circular patterns in the air in rhythm with her little chant. I hated to do it, but it was time to put her out of the room while I slept. So I tried. Didn’t work.

Didn’t work the next night either. Or the next when I actually put her in the kennel I used to take her to the vet and closed her in the guest bathroom.

I wasn’t sleeping. At least not at night. I fell asleep in a team meeting about a new community project at work and got a write up. I fell asleep in the car on the way home one night and almost wrecked the car. I was falling asleep on the toilet, in the elevator, and every time I was still for longer than a moment. I couldn’t handle it. I felt like I used to as a kid when I’d fall on the trampoline at my aunt’s house and all my cousins would keep jumping closer and closer to me so I couldn’t get up. I’d panic and flail and beg them to quit while they laughed and bounced me harder. It was like all the air had been knocked out of me and left me spinning.

It was time for the vet.

Okay, it was probably beyond time for the vet, but that’s where I drew the line. I made the appointment in a sleep-deprived fog, don’t remember the drive there, and stumbled my way through the motions of the sign in wondering just how I was going to explain what was going on. Obviously, I left out the parts about about chanting and paw movements. Who’d believe that? But I at least went through the waking up with her in my face every night and that something just felt…off. The vet had more questions, but I hadn’t changed anything up, no changes to her schedule, same food, same litter, and there were no other symptoms. She got her answers, did the standard checkup, and said everything looked fine and to call if anything changed. Ha. Everything had changed already. Everything was weird and different and fucking scary. I wanted answers for myself. I left feeling defeated and drowning in a web of confusion. She wasn't just any cat, and if something was wrong, I needed to know.

That night, it was more of the same. I didn’t even bother with the kennel or putting her out of the room anymore. What was the point? She’d end up in my face no matter what doing her creepy little stalker thing. It was just part of the routine now. It wasn’t until a couple days later that I felt something more in the room. I wrote it off as sleep paralysis at first. I hadn’t been sleeping well. I was exhausted. Sleep paralysis made sense. I woke up several nights in a row feeling absolutely terrified but unable to see anything at all. I could feel this swirl of anger and resentment pressed into me like a weight keeping me from moving. It was so intense one night I nearly choked, unable to lift my chest enough to get a good breath in.

As the nights wore on, that weight felt more and more real. I thought I could see a shimmering outline of a figure in the corner a couple times, but it was never solid, and I could have sworn I could smell something rotten. I convinced myself I was losing my mind and withdrew from everyone. I took a year’s worth of vacation time from work claiming I had to go in for surgery and basically isolated myself so no one would have to bear witness to my descent into madness.

I kept holding on to the fact that none of this was happening during the day. It kept me hoping that I wasn’t making any of it up or hallucinating it. I wasn’t seeing it all the time or anywhere I happened to be. It was just my room, my bed really, in the wee hours of the morning. Maybe I could figure it out…or maybe I could have if I wasn’t so fucking exhausted.

A couple nights before I had to go back to work I woke up with that same presence and Maude Lebowski (my cat) doing her little thing, but this time, it felt more defined, and the smell was very real. The dread and fear were there, but that weight of anger wasn’t suffocating me. The figure was solid but shrouded in darkness. I couldn’t see features, but it didn’t much matter. As soon as I heard the laugh, I shut my eyes so tight I couldn’t see a fucking thing anyway. Tonight I could move and took full advantage of snatching the covers right over my head. If I can’t see it, it can’t get me. Funny how that kid logic sticks with you when the shit hits the fan.

“Human known as Claire Ramona LaFleur, I have a message for you.”

What in the wide world of fuck? I thought. A message. A message? From who? Or what? What the hell was going on?
I know I whimpered out some kind of mumbled, garbled version of “message?” But it understood fully what I meant and replied in its deep, gravelly voice, “Maude Lebowski has requested that you purchase her the food you used to buy because, and I quote, ‘that new shit is crusty, and I’m not here for it anymore.’”

“What?”

“This is your feline companion Maude, yes?” It pointed.

“uh…yessssss…”

“Maude has summoned me and traded exactly one of her 9 lives in order for me to request that you buy her, and, again, I quote, ‘that good shit.’”

“my cat summoned a….what?”

“Demon. You can call me Beezy though I do think we both hope this night is the end of all this mess.”

“Okay, Beezy. Beezy, Ok. Let me get this straight. Maude has been torturing me for two months with the nightly wakeups and the weird ritual shit and what I can only assume was your presence for at least the last couple weeks. And she did all this because she wants Taste of the Wild not Blue Buffalo? AND it took 2 months to accomplish it?”

“Yes. That is exactly the deal. Also, it took so long because I can’t understand cats very well, and she can’t speak my name or do the symbols very well. It took a lot of tries and a lot of frustration for the two of us to get it together. But she made good on her deal, so I had to complete my end of the bargain no matter how long I took. Here’s the thing though: I’m thoroughly amused now that I can see the look on your face and your reactions, but hear me—I’m done. I want no more of this insanity. Please for the love of everything evil, buy your cat the fucking food she wants.”

And with that, it was gone.

I got myself dressed and made coffee, so I could wait in the parking lot for the nearest pet store to open. I wasn’t going to take any chances on Beezy coming back. Besides, who could sleep in that room smelling so strongly of sulfur and death? 

So that's the story about how I met Beezelbub. As they say, the truth is stranger than fiction.

Oh, and I buy Taste of the Wild every time now no questions asked. I perfectly understand what that says about my cat owning me. But until your cat summons a literal demon into your bedroom, you have no room to criticize.

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Links to the other “Use Your Words” posts:

Baking In A Tornado  https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2019/03/you-can-do-it-use-your-words.html

The Blogging 911 https://theblogging911.com/blog/

Cognitive Script  https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2019/03/that-rascally-rabbit-strikes-again.html 

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/

On the Border https://dlt-lifeontheranch.blogspot.com/2019/03/almost-home.html

The Crazy Mama Llama: https://www.thecrazymamallama.com/

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.com/2019/03/use-your-words-beige.html

Follow Me Home https://followmehome.shellybean.com

McKenna Speaks (Part 1)

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 11 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My subject is: Their eyes were watching God but also something else.

It was submitted by: https://paradoxicalsuds.wordpress.com 

As noted in the title, this will be part 1. Part 2 (which should be the end) will post next week for Use Your Words, so stay tuned. 

content warning: ableist attitudes and language from 2 characters; potentially abusive language from 1

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A piercing giggle shattered the silence of the Carpenter home while Tiffani was folding a load of towels and washcloths in their too-tiny, hot laundry room. She dropped the sky-colored towel in her hands, heart thumping in her chest. She wasn't used to those sounds even on summer break and immediately ran for McKenna's room upstairs.

The closer she got the more clearly she could hear two voices--a young girl giggly and happy and a deeper, gravelly one that must have belonged to a man but certainly not her husband. It had far too much bass to be his and was just...off. It didn't sound like anyone she knew and certainly not anyone that should be around her child. She was in a state of hyperventilation by the time she reached the pastel pink door covered in lavender flower decals with her daughter's initials stenciled in the center--MLC. She closed her eyes for a moment grasping the small gold cross around her neck and whispering a prayer from her lips for everything to be okay, for nothing to happen to her baby before she turned the doorknob and looked inside the room.

There was McKenna sitting at her Hello Kitty picnic table having a tea party and seated across from her, tea cup in hand and pinky up, was a beast of a man smelling of sulfur and ash. He had dark hair covering his body, twisted horns growing from his head, oxblood eyes, a long tail flipping back and forth lazily like a cat's, and large, black leathery wings folded around him a bit like a blanket.

3 things went through Tiffani's mind. Is he cold? Should I offer him a cup of coffee? Wait is he a demon?

The room began to darken as McKenna shrieked, "I LOVE YOU BEST FREN." The next thing she remembered was that...thing..standing over her shaking one of her shoulders. Tiffani screamed a prayer, and he jumped backwards cowering from her words in the corner while McKenna pleaded, "no, mommy, no, stop scaring my fren."

Tiffani's brain scrambled. She had never heard her child do more than babble as a baby. McKenna was 6 now and had never once said "I love you" to anyone. She had never prayed before bedtime, asked for a cookie, pleaded for a toy. Oh there had been plenty of tantrums and meltdowns. Tiffani rarely understood why and could never predict them with any reliability, but McKenna most often lived in her own little world and had been diagnosed as autistic years ago. It was a part of life, their life, and despite how difficult it was, Tiffani and her husband, Chet, had finally accepted the reality of it. Well, she had. That didn't mean they hadn't prayed for answers at first, prayed to hear their little girl talk and laugh and interact. They'd both worn callouses on their knees from kneeling in prayer and had made a sizable debt from going to specialist after specialist, therapists, pediatricians, miracle healers, priests, preachers, holy trips to healing waters...if she thought it might help, they tried it. But silent days with occasional outbursts and praying for it to all work out in the end was life now. 

They had always been a religious family. Tiffani's folks had been Episcopalian while Chet's were Methodist, but they'd never really been heavy church goers until McKenna's diagnosis. It had felt like a punishment for not being more devout though Tiffani never would have said so out loud. She shouted from every rooftop what a blessing McKenna had been in teaching them how to appreciate the small things and pushing them to find a stronger faith, but deep down it was never as easy as she liked to have people believe. Now they both attended the small Catholic church in town at least once a week. They'd found a second family there who were more understanding and supportive than anywhere else. One of McKenna's fits was all it took to get ugly, pitying looks or all but thrown out the door even at her family's long time church. It had been a long road to finding some sort of acceptance, and their church family had been a big part of learning how.

And, after all that, here was her child talking, TALKING OUT LOUD, to a smelly stranger with man-sized bat wings.

She snapped out of her chaotic mess of thoughts as McKenna moved closer to the thing and talked to him in soft, reassuring tones. "It's okay, fren. This my mommy. She can bring snacks. You like goldfish crackers? We have da pizza ones!" The demon seemed to settle down when McKenna pat his shoulder and stood to his full size grazing the 10 foot ceiling with the tips of his horns. She got a better look at him then in an old band tshirt (maybe Nirvana? but she didn't listen to that trash so she wasn't sure), ripped jeans, a red and black flannel tied around his waist, and Converse sneakers. He looked like he had stepped out of the 90s. Or maybe there was a grunge circle in Hell these days where everyone was unwashed and angry.

McKenna was standing next to him with her tiny, pale arm wrapped around his knee looking up at him full of joy. When he bent forward and ruffled her hair, a jealous rage fired into every nerve in Tiffani's body so forcefully she visibly trembled and yelled at him to get the fuck out of her house, language she never, ever used much less in front of her daughter.

He looked at her, confused and angry, and lunged forward just as she screamed, "I BANISH YOU IN THE NAME OF THE HOLY FATHER." As his clawed hands clamped down on her arms, he was gone in a cloud of smoke. Poof...they were alone. A moment of silence settled around them. Tiffani tried to catch her breath and get rid of the heightened emotions that were still making her heart race, but before she could get herself under control, McKenna went into complete meltdown mode swinging her arms to punch herself in the face and screaming wordlessly before she ran herself into the wall. Her tiny daughter with a halo of brown curls surrounding her chubby, cherubic face backed herself up slowly preparing to rush the wall again when Tiffani caught up with her and lifted her off the ground taking an onslaught of kicks and punches while her baby wailed louder and louder.

All this had been too much for her, and they would have to step into the walk-in closet in the master bedroom where Tiffani had set up their calm cave. In the closet she had a weighted blanket, soft plushies McKenna loved, a velvet sleep mask, and wax ear plugs. When McKenna was like this, she would need near sensory deprivation to calm down or would just have to exhaust herself into sleep.

Once they were seated in the large beanbag Chet had bought a few months back, Tiffani went through the meltdown rituals--McKenna on her lap, the blanket over them both, dodging frail fists, mask, earplugs, plush unicorn to cuddle. There was some kind of calming solace in taking those steps and knowing eventually they would work. It was a therapy all its own working to calm them both in an otherwise emotionally charged few moments.

The next thing Tiffani knew she was waking up to Chet calling her name from downstairs. How long had she been asleep? Had it all been a nightmare?

She moved McKenna off her lap and into the beanbag alone. She looked so tiny to be such a force. Outside the closet, the light coming from the windows was faint barely providing enough to see how to navigate the room without stubbing a toe. They must have slept for hours.

Chet was coming up the stairs as she stepped out of their room, finger to her lips to signal McKenna was asleep. He closed the distance between them and wrapped her in his arms. He still smelled like the soap he used, and the familiarity of his scent and touch released tension in places she didn't even realize it had been hiding. She sighed a little and squeezed him tightly praying for the tears in her eyes not to fall. If she got started now, she wouldn't be able to quit. She pulled back quickly trying to get herself together and shook out of his embrace feeling her walls lock down and close all those emotions inside. For now.

"Another one?" he asked, eyebrows raised and a frown furrowing his face.

She nodded knowing what his reaction would be.

"What the hell about this time, Tiff? We can't keep living like this. You're going to have to stop catering to these damn tantrums she has. You're coddling her! She's got to learn life is tough."

Tiffani just turned and walked away from him. It was an old argument she was tired of fighting and had been for quite awhile. She had cried, begged, took him to the same doctors, sent him links to articles and bought him parenting books for people with kids on the spectrum. He wouldn't hear of it. Nothing was wrong with his child except she was spoiled.

"Spare the rod," he preached every time he attempted to spank McKenna for an outburst (which always, always made it worse). Any time Tiffani tried to reason with him on the topic, she was basically pissing in the wind. She did her best by their daughter, did her part around the house, and buried all the resentment and anger deep in a black, fiery pit in her chest. They barely spoke anymore outside of his bloviating about his job, his bloated importance or why she wouldn't sleep with him anymore. She loved him. He had been her whole world so long she didn't know how to walk away. He was her comfort. He still felt safe. But she also hated the sight of him sometimes...and if she was being perfectly honest he had been running around on her long before she stopped putting out.

"Don't say I never tried to help, Ice Princess," he called as she opened McKenna's door and stepped inside curious to see if she would find the demon waiting there or not. She heard his boots stomping downstairs as she glanced around the room. She was alone, neither monster invading her space.

She got a whiff of ash still riding the air in the room and knew it had been real. She pored over the drawings on McKenna's little table noticing all the old familiar symbols over and over again every page...then the last one. It was something new drawn in red crayon. It was simple--just a few lines, a circle, and arrows--but it was repeated over and over again on the page and each one was marred by a black smudge like it had almost caught aflame...

How many times had that thing been with her daughter? How could I not know? she wondered as she traced a finger over the design.

The paper shook and grew hot in her hands as she traced the last arrow point. It stretched and moved twisting into shape. She screamed barely recognizing the sounds coming out of her mouth. She dropped the paper as the demon from earlier rose into shape in front of her eyes and laughed.

She heard Chet's boots thundering upstairs and his voice calling her name. This. Was. Not. Going. To. End. Well.

...to be continued

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Baking In A Tornado https://www.bakinginatornado.com/2018/07/still-pouring-secret-subject-swap.html 

The Lieber Family Blog http://thelieberfamily.com

The Bergham Chronicles https://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com/2018/07/dream-job-secretsubjectswap.html

The Blogging 911 http://theblogging911.com/blog

Cognitive Script https://cognitivescript.blogspot.com/2018/07/guilty-or-not-guilty-ss-july.html

Never Ever Give Up Hope https://batteredhope.blogspot.com

My Brand of Crazy https://sarahsbrandcrazy.blogspot.com/

Part-Time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

Southern Belle Charm http://www.southernbellecharm.com

Paradoxical Suds https://paradoxicalsuds.wordpress.com/