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June/July 2009
Vol. VII No. 6   ISSN: 1545-3650
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AlienSkin Magazine®
Published Bi-Monthly Online

 
 
Up
Airy Chick
A Ballad at Silver Hill
Cookies From the Threshers
Curse of the Nail
Dixie Fried
Infatuated
Jerry
The Kiva
Last Waltz
A Little More Echinacea
Mask man
Of Vengeance
Offerings
The Passing
The Root of all Evil
The Secret Weapon
Sensory Overlord
Topper's Shop
Vanity Fields
The War Without Blood

~ Women of the Future Weep ~ by Deborah Walker, Oregon
All men love the star-girdled alien queen with her fake Aphroditian allure.

 

 

~ Preserving Arthur ~ by K. A. Patterson, Pennsylvania
Poor dead Arthur, abandoned. Life's juices pumped out. Embalmed fresh for eternal rest.
 

 
 


Featured Fiction
Cookies From the Threshers

by Rebecca Tester  ©2009

(This tale is sponsored by Mick Coleman and Adrienne Ray)

The day after I moved into the blue house on Okinawa, my daughter Sam found a plate of fresh peanut butter cookies on our doorstep.  Sam told me that they were from our neighbors, the Threshers.

I got to know the neighborhood better, but I never found anyone named Thresher in two years.  I forgot about it until the miscarriage.  When I got home from the hospital, I found a plate of brownies on the table with a pink rose—just like the ones in our garden.  The card read:

I know this may not be proper, but we feel for you. Having longed for a child of our own for several years, it nearly broke us when I lost John Junior.

Dottie.

I looked them up in the phone book, but no John or Dottie Threshers lived near us.

I asked Sam if she remembered what they looked like.  She said they were a younger couple.  That John wore a green suit with funny ribbons, and Dottie had short brown hair and wore a white dress with green polka-dots. She said they smiled a lot and like making a mess of the kitchen.

After Mark left me—I guess I just couldn’t take losing the baby, but it had to have been my fault—I found more packages of sweets and flowers. Chocolate-chip cookies, snickerdoodles, divinity, caramels . . . And letters from Dottie.  Every time I was on the verge of slitting my wrists and getting it over with, I would find a letter from Dottie on the counter.

She spoke of losing their infant son, of her husband being different when he came back from the war, of what losing him was like.  Even her writing could sway me—she must have had beautiful hands to make such pretty letters.

Sam was visiting for the weekend—my weekend with her—I don’t get the longer period because Mark said I wasn’t safe—she was playing in the front yard with some neighbor kids, and I heard screaming.  I ran down the stairs, and God help me, I saw this man push her into a car.  I ran after the car, and I threw a shoe at it and shattered the back window.  But the driver kept going . . .

More cookies.  More letters of hope . . .

They found her body in a ditch twenty miles from my house.

More flowers.  Letters of sympathy and condolences . . .

They know the offender.  He’d kidnapped a five-year-old ten years ago but had been released early on good behavior.  The state prosecutor says he’ll get a life sentence with no hope of parole, but I told him that won’t bring my Sammy back.

I went home and went to bed.  I guess I snapped this morning . . . I went downstairs, intent on swallowing a bottleful of Tylenol and sticking my hands in the blender . . . But laughter distracted me. I could hear them—a man, a young woman, and a girl.  My Sammy.  I tripped down the rest of the way and landed hard against the wall of the kitchen.

They were just like Sam had described them—Dottie in her dress, John in his Army uniform with medals and ribbons on the left breast of his coat.

They must’ve been dead for fifty.

I hadn’t even thought the house was that old.

But at least I now know why I could never keep eggs on hand. And why I’ll always keep them on hand from now on.

~ Rebecca Tester, North Carolina  ©2009

Despite what she writes, Rebecca is an excellent neighbor who delights in baking brownies and walking her two dogs.  She writes when her three young children, home, pets and fabulous husband allow.

 
 

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