JOHN AMMANN
EVIDENCE OF HELL
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2009 John Ammann
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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PROLOGUE
The Evil Type- part 1
As the story goes, the Stillwell family packed up what memories they could bear from the house they had lived in for twenty years and simply left the rest. Paid for after fifteen years of pinching pennies to make it paid for, Jeff Stillwell and his wife Janice said that the house, and each other, reminded them too much of Amberly. So they took pretty much what each could carry in their own cars and simply…left. To this day, nearly twenty years later, the house sits vacant on the corner of Marlyn and Hyde Park road. Neighbors who knew the Stillwells still take turns cutting the grass and collecting the mail. Some have passed the duties down to their sons and daughters but not before a stern warning to never go any further than the porch. One can assume this is how ghost stories get started.
Amberly Stillwell’s bedroom stood, for the most part, empty and unopened since she disappeared and, assumably, does to this day. For years Janice Stillwell refused to discuss what she saw or heard the night Amberly disappeared from the house of her grandparents some one hundred and fifty miles away, but shortly before her death in 2008 Janice told a friend that, as she entered Amberly’s room with a basket of laundry, she knew that night that Amberly was dead. When the friend pressed the issue and attempted to comfort Janice with stories of how kids sometimes run away and that no proof was ever found to indicate a murder Janice apparently said, “I know what I saw.” She didn’t live to explain.
Janice Stillwell took her life three days later—having suppressed the emotions for years and having them crash down on her was apparently too much too soon. Jeff Stillwell has never been seen again and was noticeably absent from the funeral.
Guy Jerrardo claimed a possessed word processor made him do whatever it was he did to Amberly Stillwell. It was a new one for Baltimore detectives by any measure. But to look at this word processor, this writer won’t go so far as to call the thing possessed, but there’s something odd about it.
It sat on Guy's desk where its place had been made weeks before. A good sized area had been cleared for its arrival and when he found it, Guy's word processor was a snug fit. Again, we’re talking almost twenty years ago. It was a story that made every major newspaper when it happened and caused a lot of the people close by to lock their doors at night for the first time in years—even though the state promised Guy would never see the light of day again.
The story the pictures tell show every inch of the desk covered by what Guy needed to start what he considered his long over due letter. There was just enough room for the cup to hold his correction pens or the fancy paper feeder he had purchased prior to the machine. In all, he had spent a good sum of his summer's earnings on the accessories alone and was down to less than fifty six bucks to buy the used typewriter he had seen in the electronics section of the Good Will in town. It was an old clunky typewriter and he wasn't really sure if they even made the ribbons for it any longer, but he knew he needed a typewriter if he was to impress Amberly, his new found love.
Guy was a lanky boy whose hair fell across his eyes often and he was content to leave it there. He often was seen with the headphones of his Walkman on and his arms crossed in front of his chest with his knees pulled between his arms and chest—a quiet boy from Essex, Maryland right outside of Baltimore. No one could say before his name hit the papers that they knew very much of him. Not even those that sat next to him in class since first grade. His parents rarely attended teacher’s conferences unless the threat of Guy’s suspension was presented. Some who had had a rare conversation with Guy’s parents said there was a sadness in the parents’ eyes when Guy was the subject. It was a sadness, they said, of a parent wanting to not see their child an outcast but unable to do a damn thing about it. But that’s a different story.
During interviews after the crime, Guy claimed he had told Amberly Stillwell, who lived in the neighboring town of Middlesex and attended the same high school as Guy, that he was going to be a famous writer someday and that he already had three stories published and a book in the works. By his accounts, that seemed to impress her. What he had failed to tell her was that all three stories had been published in the school paper and it was only he and two others that made up the paper's authors. Besides that, it was more of a newsletter than anything and each of the three that created the paper's contents only had about a page to themselves.
Guy's and Amberly's relationship, that he had created in his head, was only about a month old and Guy was finding it hard to deal with his first love being shipped off to her grandparents' house for the remainder of the summer. It wasn't far to drive, but his license and a car were quite a few paychecks away. At his age, you didn't ask your parents to drive you anywhere anymore unless it was just that far away. But even then, not to your girl's house to where your mom would have to sit and wait for you. But seeing her could wait, for now. He wouldn't think about that now. He would write her a letter, for the time being, and that would have to impress her enough to make her wait for him and not to find another while he was so far away. As Guy told it, nothing mattered but getting the letter written. But he had impressed her… and she would surely be expecting the letters that he would send to come looking as if from the desk of a professional writer with only his signature being penned. Writers hardly ever used the pen anymore, he had read somewhere.
“The age of the machine is upon us and all will be controlled by the machine,” he was stated as saying. “All that is will bow to the machine and all that don't will be lost.”
Guy's complexion had suffered a horrible bout of acne but had cleared up rather well two months prior to his first encounter with Amberly and reports suggests she may have said a kind word in that regard to Guy and to a teenage boy not used to being noticed, this may be where his infatuation began. It may very well have been that kind word and lack of follow up kindness that ultimately led to what can only be assumed as a series of events that played out in Guy’s mind that led to whatever he did. In short, he fell in love with her way too soon based off a misread smile and many believe Amberly Stillwell paid with her life.
Guy told police that he found the old word processor on the shelf directly in front of him, in a store that he had never seen before in his life. Guy walked the same way to get to the bus everyday, either to get to school or to get to work during the summer and had never seen the store before—nor could he at all recall a building being in the spot where the store stood. It had been—and still is to this day—a trash filled lot where the bums burned trash in a barrel, (even during the summer nights).
As taken from scattered stories printed about the incident, Guy described the store as dark around the windows and the door; yet, Guy claimed he could see the word processor clearly, sitting in the back of the store with its price tag displayed right across the screen above the keyboard. Guy went into a trance of sorts. His blinders narrowed him to the stretch of cloth rug that led him right to it. He walked up on it as if greeting an old friend after years of separation. His hands caressed the sides of the dustless plastic with the touch of a lover. Slowly, his fingers rolled around to the front, and finally, they settled on the breast of it—staying there for quite some time like a perverted robot. The old man behind the counter only stared at Guy the entire time as Guy was admiring the machine. During the moments when Guy was faced to where he could no longer see the store clerk—not even from the corner of his eye—he sensed that, whenever he turned away, the old man and the store behind him were no longer there.
There were no letters or numbers on the keys, most likely worn out from use, but Guy had taken three years of typing and was well aware of where each symbol and letter should be. There was no name brand tag that he saw.
He read the tag with the price and calculated the tax with ease. He checked the cash in his pockets, including the coin, and checked the last line in his check book ledger. He smiled a crooked smile and took his pen from its slot between the check book and ledger—he had exactly enough!
He paid the grim faced man behind the counter, who said not one word and offered no receipt. There was a moment when Guy felt the odd emotion of sadness as his finger tips touched the palm of the clerk, but not the sadness of the clerk, but of his own impending sadness, or quite possibly not sadness at all, but pain. The feeling passed as Guy raised his hand away and he bundled the machine into his arms and ran it home.
That night was to be its maiden voyage in which Guy would send his very first letter to Amberly and proclaim his love for her in the most professional letter format that the word processor's memory would bring up.
He plugged it in where his stereo used to get its life's blood and a sudden scream of pops and clicks filled its oddly shaped boxy rear end. The screen burped on in a flash of quickened bright lights and then died down to a steady gray glow. A solid hum moaned from its belly.
Guy stood before it with its hazy screen flashing a cursor at the very middle of the screen and the gray glow filling the room in a perfect circle behind him. His eyes closed in on the cursor and the crooked smile from earlier returned after the initial fear of the thing blowing up passed.
"Coool," he whispered to it fondly.
He fumbled with the top row of keys and was reported nothing until he reached the next to the last key that sat with a set of three. It depressed and brought out the menu in another flash of white bursts until the screen came to a calm gray again.
Guy's brow curved down over his eyes with utter confusion showing surely on his face. He watched the screen in hopes that whatever tube within it hadn't caught fire, as yet, would do so quickly and straighten out the picture. He soon realized that the slanted and misspelled menu prompts were just as they were meant to be. The two icons that appeared were: a roughly drawn picture of a typewriter and the sloppy image of a monitor with the words "typeriter" and "word posseser" printed proudly below the appropriate icon.
With some reluctance, Guy pulled himself in front of the keyboard and ran his fingers across the flat white tiles and felt the energy rising from them. He pulled away and at first thought there was static causing the sudden rise of the hair on his arms, but then it quickly made its way up his arms and down his back. It passed just as he released the tips of his fingers from the unseen letters. He sat there, very briefly, before he felt his hands pulling back to the keys and typing without his consent. He dawned a more favored smiled to how comfortable he was already feeling in using it and at the thought of having his first letter to his dearest sweet printed and in the mail. He thought it over and thought that he could truly say that he did, indeed, fall in love with Amberly.
Dear Amberly, he began and then back spaced it out to replace it with the title of his letter. At the top of the page he managed to center and under line and then he popped out "Evidence of Hell" and thought of how true that statement would be, once he explained the time spent apart from his one true love.
In a fury of finger movements, Guy spent his first line and gave up his feelings in one sentence.
Dear Amberly:
How do I dare say I love an angel when that angel may break my heart and fly away some day?
It was corny, but it spoke from the heart. And besides, Amberly surely wouldn't see it as anything other than the love of her man. Guy sat and smiled at what he had written, then, he claims, the screen belched a puff of blue smoke and then went black for a quick second before it clicked back on and showed his sentence in its inverted, contrary meaning.
Guy leaned back in the chair and felt a jolt of shock as he reread the words as they were now printed. The previous had been replaced with a vulgar statement regarding Guy's undying "hate" for his beloved Amberly.
Startled, he withdrew away from the machine and nearly spilled onto the floor.
"My God," he said to the empty, uncaring machine. “What is that?”
The machine only stared back at him with its black, faceless head.
He stood in the flat glow of the screen with his hand flopped over his mouth in a spread net and bobbed his eyes over the crooked letters with the blinking cursor at the end of them.
He finally felt himself being drawn back to it and his fingers found the home keys in a sliding motion from the bottom of the keyboard. He typed a little more and sat carefully to see what would occur. He typed out a few quickly stroked sentences that spoke of love and admiration and waited patiently for something to rear its head and eat what he had written and vomit out its awful false. Only the hum of the old tubes and bad wiring were heard for some time; and just as Guy's heart settled to a heavy thump, it happened again.
From its belly there was a moan of circuits popping before the screen did its dance and then there the words were, sprawled across the top of the screen in a ragged script that looked as if it were written with a bleeding pen. Again it spoke of hate when he had typed love or evil when he typed good. He had to stop, he told himself. This thing was possessed and he felt the urge to get it out of the house right then and there. Never mind the store he bought it from. It was closed and he had to get rid of it now! Now! It had to go!
Guy told police that the machine began to demand he use it. It began to display the word “type” in random intervals at each pause he took. As noted below the word “type” appears quite often in the body of the “letter”, most notably after each story. Clearly, this was some form of self made proof on Guy’s part, planned ahead of time as part of his mental breakdown.
Guy stated hours had passed since turning on the machine before he returned back to where it sat. Out of nothing more than obscene curiosity and unwavering attraction, Guy typed at a furious pace and tried to finish the letter meant for his love, or more so, to see what the beast would do to it. His eyes locked on the screen in a magnetic embrace.
Do what the machine says, his mind told him. The machine is the key. The machine is the way.
The letter became the key piece of evidence during his trail and sat in a cold case storage facility for nearly twenty years before this writer found and old clipping and a renewed interest in the story. Oddly enough, the pages were as white as if they had just come from the printer. I was allowed a copy of the letter by a young cop, who should have known better, but I have a copy and that’s all that matters. The letter was stored in an unassuming box with the word processor covered in plastic beside it. A gruesome looking thing.
Guy has spent those same twenty years in a mental facility. Police records state that Guy spoke openly about the letter and walking to Amberly’s grandparents’ house some 150 miles away when she failed to answer his call, but when asked where she was his face became blank and empty. He has never spoken another word that anyone can claim to have heard since.
My interest in revisiting this case has caused anger among the folks in Essex. I live in D.C. and luckily don’t fear they will make the trek this far to express that anger in person. I have, however, not used complete names or have omitted names all together except that of Amberly Stillwell and Guy out of respect of the town. It is an interesting case if you are ever so inclined to go back and read the stories written on it. I won’t rehash much of them here. Either way, the letter is provided below in its unedited form and just the way police found it the night Guy was found in the driveway outside Amberly’s grandparents’ house—the body of young man [name omitted] Amberly had been dating at his feet. Amberly is presumed to have been dropped off by the young man and the two were walking towards the house when they were attacked from behind. Again, I won’t rehash those details here.
Guy claimed to have written the “letter” in an hour before making the eight hour walk to Ocean City, Maryland. Sometimes scary, sometimes humorous, it is quite a glimpse into the mind of person screaming for help.
The rest of his letter went like this...
typetypetypetypetypetypetype
typetypetypetypetypetypetypetypetypetype
A Fairy Tale
Time upon a once...
...there lived an ogre in a small patch of woods known as Hidden Streams. This ogre lived alone in a secret cave and guarded his berry patch from the early morning hours--when the sun was still a few hours away--up until the darkness would swallow all. He would he keep watch until he had fallen to sleep. It seemed that the only other time he did not watch after the berry patch was while he was out hunting the woods for and even then he left them guarded by a number of carefully placed traps.
The berries he guarded were said to be no ordinary berries; they were claimed to be magical berries that would make one sing with joy at the sweet, delicious zest. It was also said that if they were eaten every day of your life then the duration of your life would run in keeping with the berries.
They were rare berries and the only other berry patch in the country belonged to King Ranamere. Rumor reported that the monarch kept his berry patch under a sever casting of twenty-four hour guard; it is again supposed that a guard questioned the need for such an onslaught of soldiers to see over a patch of berries and tasted one out of curiosity--he was beheaded and his skull was burned clean and posted at the foot of the berry patch.
Rumor also had it that the king had enjoyed an evening of wine and women and bragged himself to own the berries to the two ladies in his company. The king had always been one to brag of any accomplishment he felt could raise a ladies skirt. It took little more than a subtle wink and a doubting thigh before the drunken king relieved the guards at the post and dared the young maidens to taste a sweeter fruit in all the land. It would not be until the morning hours and until the sun had shone across the king's face that he would discover that the women he had hosted had eaten the vine empty. And without at least one berry left on the vine no more could grow.
It was well known that there was a second berry patch and that it belonged to the ogre. The king had given the berries to the ogre in return for his life when the ogre caught the king fishing in his pond. This was at a time when the ruler was but a boy. The king (prince as it was then), offered to the ogre all the fish he had caught and a vine of magical berries that belonged to his father: King Taylon. When the ogre agreed, Prince Ranamere ran to the castle and split the vine in half and ran the promised half to the ogre.
"Do not trick me young prince," the ogre had said. "You live in the castle. I know this and it is just as easy for me scale its walls to retrieve you as it has been for me steal your chickens. Trick me boy and I will come to you while you sleep and eat you from your dreams."
King Taylon never suspected the fact that his berry patch had been halved. For he had his servants pick just one berry a day--with satin gloves--to insure the longevity of the vine. He would then have the marble of fruit blessed time over time by the castle's priest before being brought to him on his death bed, where he finally ate it. The king--having been diagnosed with the "red plague" that summer--had not been expected to live to see the spring. His only hope was that the myth of the berries was more than just that.
In his haste to fulfill his obligation to the ogre, the young prince cut the vine at its roots and carried the rooted end to him--leaving the king's berries to lie in the dirt where they died from their uprooting. And so, the king died that winter, and it would be thirteen years before the remains of the king's berries would bloom its fruit.
Remembering that there was a second vine of the berries, king Ranamere sent out horseman in all directions to find them and to bring them to him. But alas, the berries were well hidden by the ogre, and despite the huge reward offered by the king, the ogre kept his patch in secrecy and watched over them with a sharp eye.
Every evening the king--who had become fat and obsessed with substituting the flavor that he could not replace--would leave the dinner table and walk to the balcony of the dining room and await the word of his horsemen.
"What say, ye?" he would call to them, rubbing his ripe belly. "Do you carry my berries?"
"No, my lord," each horseman would return. "We have not completed your command."
"Search the hills," he would bellow back. "They are here within my kingdom."
And another horseman would return.
"What say, ye?" the king would say. "Do you carry my berries?"
"No, sire. We have not completed your command."
"Search the valley then. They are within my kingdom."
His quest for the berry patch lasted a week and had turned up nothing. His childhood memories of the fishing pond were all but erased in his matured years. Try as he did to recall the pond in which he fished, he could no longer locate it within his mind. Besides, the ogre would surely have moved himself by that time. He would not stay in the same home once its whereabouts were known; his choices were: to eat the young prince once he had the bush or to leave his cave and find other, suitable housing in the moon-covered hours of the night. Above all else, the ogre kept his word and let the boy go free.
At his table, where a feast for twelve sat, the king tossed the meal to the floor. Pies and cakes that had been baked to appease the king's hunger for the sweetness of the berries were flung from the table and flopped on the floor and covered the walls.
"Half my fortune to the man, woman or beast who finds the berry patch and brings it to me," the king bellowed as he roamed the kingdom.
In a short time, paupers and housewives searched throughout the kingdom for the fruit. And as all the country side wandered and wondered for them, it would be an old woman from the valley who would unknowingly stumble upon them.
The old woman awoke in the den of the ogre--tied to a chair. The ogre had found her hiding around the bushes near the water of the hidden stream and crept up behind her as she was heading for his cave.
"Where am I?" the old woman said looking up at the plump, hairy ogre. "Why did you sneak behind me and hit me in the head?"
The ogre turned from sharpening his knife and waddled his plump body to the woman watching him from her chair. She was an old woman who had lost most of her teeth. Her dress was old and faded from constant wear and her hair was a wild assortment of tangles.
"You were in search of my berry patch," the ogre said after some time. "The entire kingdom is in search of it and I will eat anyone who comes too close. I spared the life of the king, when he was but a boy, for the berries now he sends the country side against me to regain them."
"Oh, no," said the old woman in an almost jocular drawl. "I know nothing of any berries. I was fetching water from the hidden stream when you found me, you see."
"Why do you seek water from my stream then?" demanded the ogre with an unbelieving grin.
"I am a fairy," the old woman responded. "I need the water from your pond to work my spells. It is wonderful stuff you have there. It's the only water in all the land that I can use. I've been using the water from that pond for thousands of years."
"You lie!" proclaimed the ogre--cutting off the old woman's rant. "I've watched over my pond for fifty years and never have I seen you take water. You would have truly been eaten by now. And what had you planned to carry the water in? You had no pail when I found you." And the ogre laughed despite himself.
"As I said, I am a fairy. I've visited the pond as a bunny, as a butterfly and once, I became a tree so that I could carry as much water as possible; there had been no rain to fill the pond in some time and I feared it might dry up. My pail was full when you jumped out and attacked me; it sank to the bottom of the pond when I let it go. I've seen you several times while getting my water. All day you sit and guard your pond and wait for someone to come along. I did not know that you were home and without my magic I cannot transform myself; yet, I needed the water and had to take the risk."
"Then why did you not turn into a butterfly or something small and fly away before I caught you? Truly you could perform that much magic if you are a fairy. A fairy would not let herself be caught so easily. And so as soon as my pot is hot enough I am going to throw you in and cook you for dinner."
The old woman looked up at the ogre, who was grinning in his own pleasure and returned a smile. The ogre rubbed his hands over each other then lowered his grin from his face.
"Why do you smile, old woman? Did you not hear me say that I was going to eat you?"
"Yes," smiled the woman.
"Then why do smile?"
"I have lived for thousands of years," the old woman started. "I have seen many ogres live in this cave and have seen them all live till their last day. I have been caught and eaten hundreds of times and always I come back while the ogre suffers the worst stomach ache in his life just before he dies. And the only thing that can save him is if I take the one thing he treasures the most as an offering of what is more important: his life or his possessions. And as a fairy I am obligated to take that item as payment for the return of that ogre's life. But never has an ogre's greed allowed him to live again. No such beast exists as an intelligent, greedless ogre. I have also been set free and granted that ogre one wish for doing so. And always it is the same wish. Yet, if I am set free and return before I have granted the wish the ogre may eat me and still have his wish granted. But the same rules apply as far as the ogre eating me. So it does not frighten me that you will eat me. I will return as a moth and flutter around the light of your candle while you cry and wail all through the night and then die before the sun smears its glow across the sky.
"The only reason that I did not turn into something was because, as I said, I needed the water from the pond to work my magic. But it concerns me not what you will do. Either way, I will live."
The ogre perched himself above the pot--on the rim of it--then threw an onion into its bubbling waters. Then he turned his attention back to the woman.
"So it does not frighten you that I will eat you?" There was concern in his voice now.
"No," the woman calmly said. "Do you not wonder how I managed to avoid all your traps?" A look of wonder pressed the ogre's face.
"And how would a mere woman know of the traps set by a clever ogre such as yourself? Surely you must know that your traps were well placed and hidden as to keep any mere woman from here."
The ogre quietly agreed and questioned the old woman more.
"Would it frighten you that and will carve you like a turkey before I cook you?"
"No."
"What if I were to cook you alive?"
"No."
"It would surely scare you that I might not cook you at all and eat you little by little while you watch. Or perhaps it would please me more to see you suffer; I would not eat you at all but feed you to my pet and watch as he slowly crunches your bones. Surely this would frighten you old woman."
"No," the old woman said with a popping giggle behind it.
The ogre stared the woman in her smiling face and sharpened his rusty knife on a wet, flat stone he had taken from his shelf. He dipped the knife into a bucket of water before her face and proceeded to spark a freshly silver edge to the dull blade. The old woman sighed and smiled.
Over in the corner, the berry patch was growing wildly and was full of ripe berries that the ogre had neglected to harvest. They hung from the wild vine--that trailed across the floor--and flashed their purple, shiny skins across the bleak cave by the light of the cooking fire. The ogre commented on them after he noticed the woman finding them with her eyes.
"Yes. Those are the berries that the king has sent the country side against me for and the berries that you seek to claim his reward," the ogre said. "Look good, old woman. You shall die because of your king's greed of that vine."
And the old woman ignored the berries from that moment with ease.
"They are delicious," he continued. "I shall probably pull a few from the vine and feed them to you. I may even squeeze the juice of them over you before I cook you. It will make your tough, old meat taste sweet and tender."
"Do as you will," the woman said. "I have fulfilled my obligation to warn you. Your death is no longer a burden of my repair. Those berries that you hold so dear have sealed your fate and I shall not dare be involved with them once you are dead. Such a thing seems only to drive its possessor mad."
"I do not believe that you are a fairy. A fairy would not bother to entertain me so as you have. A fairy would have turned me into a toad or a rock before now."
"Believe as you will," the old woman said and her voice was a tone of annoyance by then. "But I have explained my reasons and will not do so again. If you plan to eat me, do so that I might be on my way. I don't believe that I shall even bother to stay long enough to watch you die from the pain. You have wasted much too much of my time already."
The ogre sat and watched the old woman's face with a probing eye. In his head he fought to disbelieve the woman but found himself being a little more reluctant to. His crooked fingers played with the hair of his chin it thought. The old woman did not seem worried any in the least and this had started to cause some thought in the ogre's tiny brain.
"What would you give me to let you free?" the ogre asked.
"You have held me here so long that I don't know if I will offer you anything for my freedom. I would just as well have you eat me and die and for me to fly from here in the morning."
"But, will you offer me something?" the ogre had asked, greedily and in an almost timid voice.
"It would weigh my decision further if you were to loosen my binds. They are burning into my arms something terrible."
The ogre jumped to his feet and hurried over to the old woman. Cautiously he loosened the ropes that held the old woman to the chair and sat back in his own seat.
"Now! What will you offer me to set you free?"
"Well," the old woman started. "What is it you would most--"
"Wait," the ogre screamed and sat with his eyes to the side of his head as if pondering a thought then sprung from his seat to tighten the ropes once again. "You are not as clever as you thought, old woman! I have seen past your lies. It has just occurred to me that if you were a fairy you would not be as quick to bargain for your freedom! Why would you not just as soon have me eat you and die. You are trying to trick me and I am not a stupid being, old woman. I, myself, have lived for many years and have heard all lies told. You are not a fairy and as soon as my pot is hot I will throw you in!"
He then pulled the ropes tighter.
The old woman threw her head back and laughed at the hysterics of the ogre.
"What a fool you are," she laughed. "It is known throughout the world that a fairy must grant one wish to her captor in order to remain a fairy. Surely you are only testing me and thought that you could frighten me. A fairy cannot be frightened; therefore, your test was in vain. And before you question why I sometimes visit your spring as another species is because a fairy is only granted one wish to give out every hundred years and if I have spent that one wish I must remain in the servitude of my host until I can fulfill my duty. Surely, a well taught ogre such as yourself knows of these things or at least can understand my position."
Three more onions and a tomato plopped into the warming pot and the ogre answered the old woman with a twisted smile of discomforting, denying ignorance.
"Then what shall you offer me to set you free, old woman?"
"Will you not loosen my binds again for me? They burn terribly."
"It eases my mind to know that you cannot move your limbs. And since you are a fairy you can heal your wounds once you've made your way home-- can you not? And since it is so well known that you must fulfill my wish I see no need to play host to you in order for you to do so."
The old woman forcefully agreed with the ogre's point and the ogre placed his wish before the fairy. After attempting to wish for a hundred more wishes the ogre narrowed his selection to a very simple request.
"Is that all you wish for?" the fairy said. "Is there nothing more substantial you would like? As I have said: An ogre's greed and idiocy will doom him in the end."
"No," the ogre cried. "That is my wish, old woman! Now grant it and I shall set you free!"
"Your harsh tones do not threaten me. If I so chose, I could wait a thousand years before I granted your wish. I do not advise you to attempt to scare me again."
And the ogre rubbed his fat stomach and unrolled his face from its knot. As patiently as he could, he waited for the old woman to grant his wish.
"Why do you wait?" the ogre asked. "Grant me my wish."
"You have not untied me, yet. I cannot work my magic if I am still bound. Release me and I shall perform my spell."
The ogre snarled in the fairy's face and balled his forehead around his eyes. "Do not trick me, fairy--I will feed you to my pet for your treachery." And the ogre untied the fairy and perched himself on the table beside the boiling pot. The old woman stepped towards the door and the ogre lunged over her to block her path.
"You dare try to trick me, old woman," the ogre blasted through the cave. "Did you think it would be that easy to flee?"
"I am not trying to escape," the old woman calmly explained. "I have told you I needed the water of the pond to work my magic and it would only make sense that I would require my wand to fill with the water. I am a fairy, but I am old as well. I could never out run an ogre as fast as you. So why would you suspect anything of the sort?"
"Your point is clear, old woman. You never would have made it past my pet! anyway," the ogre said and the fairy dismissed it as another attempt to put fear into her.
"Go retrieve your wand and the water, but know this, if you so decide to renege on your promise I will find you and bring you back here to have you for supper." And the ogre stepped aside and allowed the old woman to pass.
Halfway through the darkest part of the tunnel leading to the cave, where the door was well hidden beneath the fallen leaves and the grass outside, the fairy stopped at the sound of something dragging a heavy, metal chain behind the curtain of shadows that surrounded the tunnel. She smiled and thought of the ogre. The chain drew closer and the woman angered at the constant testing of her story.
"Walk faster," a voice yelled out from behind the woman. "My pet has awakened and will swallow you whole if you do not hurry from the cave!"
The old woman turned around and quickened her steps. The rattling of the chain quickened as well and moved ahead of her behind the darkness; it ended in front of her where the door would be and not a speck of light seemed to dwell. Off to the right of where the woman stood, the chain seemed to be pulling out from its origin. Something was in front of her and was breathing hot steam down the tunnel and into her face.
"Do not move and he will ignore you and go back to sleep." The ogre was watching from the pit of his cave. "Move, and he will attack you and I will be denied my wish."
A loud bark flew past the tiny fairy and bounced from the walls of the cave behind her--blowing her hair back as it passed and ringing in her ears. The ogre screamed to the old woman in a frantic voice.
"Run! Run towards me! Its chain cannot reach this far." And the old woman started to run towards the ogre. "Faster, old woman! Run faster! I do not wish for my pet to die and I not to have my wish spent! It's right behind you!"
The sound of the chain chattered as if it were being flung about--striking the cave walls and snarls of the beast followed closer.
"It's going to get you, old woman, if you do not speed your steps! It's right on your heels!"
And the old woman screamed as she cleared the tunnel and the mouth of the beast closed down on the tail of her dress and tore it from behind just as she reentered the cave where the ogre stood in wait. The chain of the beast in the tunnel tightened and lifted up off the floor just before it would have run into the cave. It was choked back and all that could be seen was its large snout and grinning teeth…teeth that gleamed from the candle light. Its silver eyes, which stared from the black, withdrew into the darkness--dragging its chain along with it.
The old woman held her heart and struggled to catch her breath. The ogre perched himself above his pot and cut up a cube of salt while he smiled at the woman.
"Almost," the ogre calmly said. "Almost."
And the old woman could not catch her breath long enough to explain why she had screamed before the ogre had her in his pot and had clamped the lid down. The old woman's screams drowned away in the steaming brew.
An hour later, the ogre ate his dinner and fed what was left to the beast in the tunnel. When he was done, he patted his tight belly and rested himself for a nap.
The evening sun melted into the earth and before the night had ended and the morning sun could rise, the ogre died with his pet in the dark, cold cave as a tiny, white moth fluttered around the light of the candle. Unable to touch the berries and claim that which the ogre held so dear, the fairy few from the cave to drink from the magical pond and the ogre's wish of having no one, but himself, able to touch his berries came to be.
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Warped Minds: Part 1
"GOD NO! Oh God please, God no!
"What have you done? What have you done to my family? My dear, sweet family. What have you done to them? Oh God no. Oh GodohGodohGod nooo. You bastard. I should've killed you ten years ago. I knew I should've. I knew you'd be back if I didn't and I didn't and now... now... oh God.
"Oh, Kimberly, Kimberly, honey, I'm sorry. If I had known he would've hurt you or David I would have never let him back in. I would've killed him dead--right then and there. Just like I know I should've. But, I didn't know.
"You fuckin' animal! Back in April, when you showed up again, it was like somebody's idea of a sick joke. When all that strange shit started happening around the house, I blew it off as normal occurrences for a recently married couple in a new house. Noting about it said you. Even when Kim said that knives started missing and reappearing, covered with dog blood, I still said it was nothing. I had my suspicions, but I never let on to Kim that I did. I tried my damnedest to believe it wasn't something your sick ass had any part of.
"When those two Everly brothers, from 23rd street, turned up missing, a week after egging every house on the block on Halloween, I admit, I thought of you. But I refused to believe you had come back. Even when they were found, stabbed to death and with their stomachs spilled out on the ground behind Houston's playground, even then I said it wasn't you.