Thank You for Nothing: The Time I Rewrote an Award-Winning Short Story (Or the Peak of a Still-Fragile Ego) - Part 3
Hey, Alexa... Play "White Noiz" by Akira Yamaoka.
The following post is a work of fiction. For context, catch up here and here before reading on.
The Craving
Leaving the city she’d grown up with, Mallory approached the countryside brimming with excitement. She took in the sights that sped by as she rode in a smoke-scented, worn-out taxi, scuffed leather seats and all. Bringing down her window slightly, she was greeted to an unknown ambiance where car horns, sputtering engines, and strangers shouting were replaced with the fresh scent of pine needles and the shifting shades of a dwindling sunset breaking through the trees.
She clutched her leather bag tightly despite her eagerness. Typical thoughts of self-doubt continued to echo in her skull as the car made its way over a grassy hill. Was this the right move? What if they had good reason for letting me go? Images of sullen second-grade students waving farewell overtook her mind. Then she remembered why she was here: she needed money.
Shades of moonlight shone off of the moistened grass on the waysides as the taxi approached the front of a lone mansion whose best days were behind it. As she exited the car and stepped out onto the pasture, she took a deep breath.
Mallory turned around and paid her fare to her driver. The gruff, potbellied man counted the bills and checked the meter on his dash to make sure that she wasn’t shortchanging her. After he was satisfied with the amount in his hand, he tossed the cigarette nub between his fingers into a cold cup of coffee next to him.
“You shouldn’t do that, you know,” Mallory said. “It’s bad for your health.”
The driver replied with silence as he popped another smoke into his mouth and lit up in front of her. That was the last time that Mallory spoke to someone from the city before disappearing into the forest.
Turning back to face the mansion, Mallory marched forward. Butterflies were still fluttering in her stomach as she made her way through the field and approached the entrance. But before she could make contact with the coarse mahogany of the door, the door swung open, surprising her with what almost looked like sunlight.
A young girl with blonde hair stood in the doorway dressed in a cozy grey sweater, a pleated skirt, knee socks, and dirtied sneakers. She rested an old wooden baseball bat on her shoulder as well. Mallory, startled, looked back at the teen’s apathetic expression written across her jade eyes.
“Who is it, Bea?” a voiced called out behind the teen.
“Take a wild guess, Lucy,” Bea yelled, refusing to break eye contact with Mallory. “It’s her.”
Soon enough, more and more girls began to crowd the vestibule. Each of them scowled and gawked at Mallory as if they were a parliament of owls.
From the top of a spiral staircase, a slightly older raven-haired girl approached the railing, looked down and saw Mallory standing at the door before making her way downstairs.
Mallory cleared her throat as she struggled to make a good impression. “Good evening girls,” she said, hoping that the girls wouldn’t notice the nervous tremble in her delivery. “I’m Mallory Blanchard—your new housemother.”
The girls continued to gawk awkwardly at her. None of them sneered, jeered, or heckled and none of them smiled either.
“Um… I suppose coming in all professional and hoity-toity like Mary Poppins is a bit much, huh?” she mumbled. “Anyway, I look forward to getting to know you all individually.”
As Mallory continued to take the stares, another sight came into view as a little 10-year-old tomboy came rushing down from the second floor.
“New mom! New mom!” the kid said as she leapt at Mallory and clung to her mid-section. Luckily for Mallory, she wasn’t heavy enough to topple her in that moment.
“God dammit, Abby, control yourself,” said Bea as she poked at the tyke with her bat.
“Oh, no, it’s alright,” Mallory said. She chuckled and patted Abby’s short hazel curls while verifying 13 children standing in the vestibule.
Mallory looked at Lucy who glared at her with tightened brows. Lucy fiddled with her hair as she studied the newcomer with pale blue eyes that almost looked violet under the lamplight.
Mallory’s attention returned to the 13. Following Abby’s lead, more of the girls approached her with questions which led the naïve Mallory to believe that her first impression went over better than expected.
“Hold on, one at a time please,” Mallory chuckled. She eyed the older girls who stood behind the clamoring with unimpressed faces.
“Your bedroom’s upstairs,” Lucy said smiling. “I can show you if you’d like.”
“That would be great actually. Thank you,” Mallory replied.
The group paraded up the groaning steps of the wooden stairwell that led into a lengthy hallway with dusty chandeliers that could barely light the floor.
“Do you girls take care of this place yourselves?” Mallory asked as she glanced at the sun-bleached oil paintings hanging in the halls and the occasional cobweb on the ceiling.
“We do our best,” Lucy replied.
When Mallory was finally brought to her room, she was surprised to see red. The bedsheets, the drapes, and the curtains veiling the four-poster bed were all deep crimson. She made her way across the room over to a large armoire next to the doorway and piled her belongings onto it. She noticed the breeze coming through the open window and decided to savor the view—outlines of a darkened forest under the light of a lonely moon. It was unlike anything she’d seen in the city. After her heart had had its fill, she closed the window and clicked on the radiator beneath the sill.
Meanwhile, outside the door, the girls stood by—the younger ones closer to the door than Lucy and the other big kids—waiting for Mallory. When Mallory turned and saw them, she jumped a bit before realizing that she’d forgotten to close the door and to take note of the time.
“You girls haven’t eaten dinner yet, have you?”
Whispering excitedly amongst themselves, the younger girls eagerly led Mallory back downstairs to the dining room while the older girls trailed behind.
The girls certainly didn’t have a shortage of food based on how many canned goods there were in their pantry. Somehow there was even a walk-in freezer that had quite a few frozen slabs of meat hanging on hooks. Mallory poked at a few of the slabs and took one of the fresher cuts out of the freezer before carefully laying it on the empty kitchen island. Mallory looked inside the refrigerator across from the island and looked for fresh vegetables to slice up. Even though she wasn’t expecting to have to cook dinner for her students, she did a good job hiding any look of uncertainty and anxiety that she might have been feeling as she grinded sizable cubes of red meat, shaped them into pucks, and seared brown crusts on all sides of those patties.
After a good half hour, Mallory came out of the kitchen like a waitress making her way to the dining table with an uncomfortable amount of plates balanced on each arm.
“Sorry to keep you guys waiting,” Mallory said. The girls, however, awkwardly stared at their naked burgers as they gripped to their forks and knives. “Did anyone tell you I’d be coming? I’m just surprised that my message got over here that fast especially since this place is pretty… remote.”
“No,” Bea said, “but we’re always expecting people like you.”
“Housemothers come and go frequently at our estate unfortunately,” Lucy added.
“It’s not like we’re princesses though. Quite a few of us are old enough to take care of ourselves now. I’m pretty sure Lucy can tell you more about the boring administrator paperwork stuff later if you’re so interested,” Bea said.
Mallory, as she took a seat and served herself last, nervously grinned back at Bea and Lucy. “I’m just curious, that’s all. I mean, if you girls don’t mind me asking, what happened to the last caretaker who came through here?”
Some girls began to look at whisper to each other before looking at Lucy for an answer. Their leader scribbled in a leather-bound sketchbook until she noticed the deafening silence that quieted the room.
“It’s the place,” Lucy sighed, closing her book and setting down her pen. “Not everyone can see past the venue. As you’ve probably noticed, this place is quite old, arguably creepy, and somewhat isolated from the rest of society.”
Lucy’s gaze peered through Mallory’s apologetic hazel eyes.
“Well… I promise that I don’t spook so easily,” Mallory said, putting on an optimistic grin.
“We’ll see,” Lucy replied.
“I promise. Why don’t I get to know you all a little better right now by learning all of your names?”
She’d already been acquainted with Lucy, the acting head of the house, and Bea, the standoffish teen who’d answered the front door. There was also Abby, the most enthusiastic and welcoming one out of the 13. So, Mallory focused her attention on the remaining unacquainted girls: Bethany, Josephine, Pollyanna, Annalise, Hanna, Maria, Victoria, Rosa, Jessica, and Zel. As she was learning every person’s name, Lucy reopened her sketchbook and seemingly checked out of the goings-ons at the dinner table.
“I see that you like bows, Zel. Is that one your favorite?” Mallory asked, pointing to the redheaded girl’s scarlet satin hair bow as she went around the room.
“Yes! Lucy tied it for me!”
“Oh, how sweet!” Mallory replied. “I’ll bet that Lucy’s a wonderful sister, isn’t she?”
“She’s the best,” Zel replied with a beaming smile.
Lucy carefully eyed Mallory and Zel before returning to her sketchbook, detaching herself from the conversation yet again. Unbeknownst to her, Mallory had come full circle with hearing each one of the girls at the table.
“Well, it’s been really great meeting you all,” Mallory said, taking in the girls’ stares yet again. She looked down at her feet at a loss for words. “I suppose we’ll learn a little bit more about each other in class tomorrow?”
“Class?” Bea asked.
Mallory nodded. “Sorry to break it to you all like this but the sooner we start, the sooner we all get to finish all of the boring stuff!”
Bea sighed along with some of the other older girls seated next to her, but Abby, Zel, and the younger children’s faces lit up with elation. Lucy, without raising her head, simply replied with a question.
“I thought you were looking forward to getting to know each and every one of us?”
Mallory let out a chuckle. “I didn’t mean it like that. We’re going to be playing while we work. It’ll be fun, you’ll see.” Then she noticed something off about the table in front of her.
“I’m sorry, but you all haven’t even touched your guys’ burgers,” Mallory said. “I know that they aren’t ‘restaurant-quality’, but, uh…”
As her words trailed off, her mind began to panic—every anxiety and insecurity began to remind her of her inexperience and her naivety in the current setting that she was in. All she could do in that moment was take a deep breath and apologize to all of them.
The girls, on the other hand, swiveled their heads back and forth, whispering to each other, until their eyes settled on Lucy again who was still focusing on whatever was in her book.
“Sorry, Ms. Blanchard,” Abby said, “we just ate before you came, that’s all!”
“Oh, well, you all should have told me sooner,” Mallory replied. “I wouldn’t have made all this food.”
Of course she wouldn’t, and she realized that as those useless words were leaving her mouth and, frankly, it made her want to slap herself across her forehead.
When the candles were finally blown out and the chandeliers were switched off, darkness followed suit. After dinner, Mallory gazed off into the distance from the comfort of her bedroom window. She watched the moonlit clouds drift as she enjoyed the quiet.
The cozy room that she was in began to remind her a bit of her apartment back in the city. An odd feeling of emptiness began to flood her head and trickled down to the rest of her body like an overflowing pail. She tried to remind herself that the feeling would eventually subside like always. She thought that the girls might even help with that in the near future as they gradually bond and learn more about each other together.
Mallory stepped away from the tapping radiator, walked over to her bedside table, and opened the drawer to find a copy of the Bible inside. She picked the book up and tucked herself in bed before noticing a silent figure in the corner of her eye, peering through the door.
“Settled in?” Lucy asked. Her delicate, pale finger tapped against the rough leather of her sketchbook which was clung to her chest. Tap. Tap.
“Oh,” Mallory said, just a tad bit surprised, “I didn’t realize you were standing there.”
Tap. Lucy’s pupils became more visible under the room’s solitary lamp which stood in the corner behind the door. Tap. Tap. She murmured something very low, something that Mallory could see but couldn’t hear before speaking up. “I just wanted to make sure that you found everything okay.” Tap. Tap. Tap.
Mallory nodded and she looked at Lucy who still stood next to the door in the hallway, partially held by the shadows in the hallway.
Lucy’s eyes trailed slowly back to Mallory as she turned to leave. “Bundle up,” she said. “It gets a bit chilly here at night.”
And she wasn’t kidding. Hours of lost sleep later, Mallory switched the lights back on, grabbed her bible, and tried to read herself to sleep. Instead, she began to imagine herself standing at the front of a second-grade class room, trying to recite scripture until one of the nuns brought the ruler down on her hind end for screwing up. The memory proved too much for her and she dropped the book down after only flipping through two or three pages when the sound of classmates’ laughter began to haunt her.
Mallory froze as she put down the book as the laughter in her head seemed to become clearer in the form of giggling echoes outside her door.
Rays of moonlight shone through the faded glass next to her. She glanced over to the clock and saw that it was well past midnight.
Mallory got out of bed and carefully shuffled to the door. She slowly turned the cold bronze doorknob to find that it wouldn’t budge. She jostled again to no avail and began to protest while throttling the handle. A sick lump in her throat began to form as she began to panic.
Loud thuds shuddered the floorboards beneath her cold feet, thumping past her door. Laughing echoed again, this time coming from further down the hall. Mallory raised her palm and slapped the door several times.
“Hey! Girls? Girls, this isn’t funny, come on now! Unlock the door!”
No response. All was silent behind the door. The only sound that Mallory could hear was the blood pumping in her eardrums. The whole house seemed to hold its breath, something that Mallory was struggling to do.
Dawn’s first light broke shortly after Mallory tucked herself back in bed. She hadn’t slept, but rather laid down on that mattress with closed but restless eyes. Mallory, befuddled, was surprised that she’d been up for so long so much so that she had to squint with bloodshot eyes and double check the morning rays coming through the window. That was when the lack of rest began to hit her head—she woke with intense throbbing at her head’s temples and a sick haze from within that made everything feel like a yellow-tinted fever dream.
A click followed. Mallory’s door slowly opened and in came Lucy, dressed like Bea was the night before.
“Lucy! When did you get here?”
“The door was unlocked,” Lucy said.
“Last night, I heard something out in the hallway but when I tried to open the door, it was locked.”
Lucy tightened her brows at Mallory before looking at the door. “I told you, it’s an old house,” she scoffed. “Try not to worry about it too much. Something similar happened to Bea the other week and it wasn’t until noon that we discovered it and let her out. Luckily, she didn’t mind.”
Mallory nodded slowly and eyed the drifting dust in the air as she took in the response. “I also heard someone in the hall last night too, running around and laughing.”
Lucy stepped further into the room with her sketchbook in hand. Abby and Bea trailed into the room behind her, and Bea turned to smack Abby on the shoulder.
“Nice going. She’s hasn’t been here for a full day and you’re already creeping her out with your sleepwalking,” Bea said.
Rubbing where the annoyed sister slug had landed, Abby looked down and tried to hide a pout. “Sorry, Ms. Blanchard…”
“We tried locking her in her room but she panics,” Bea explained, looking down at Abby. “It was really annoying.”
“Oh, well, that’s a… little bit extreme,” Mallory said, “but sleepwalking in a place as big as this is pretty dangerous.” She figured that she’d have to do something with the locks at some point in time, but that thought quickly dissipated as she eyed the clock and realized that she had to get ready for class.
The dining room acted as the classroom for the girls. Something about morning rays coming through the windows, gleaming off the table’s lacquer, made the room seem brighter in more ways than one.
Thirteen seats were open at the table, but only 12 were taken.
“Where’s Zel?” Mallory asked.
Most of the girls looked down at their notebooks. “She isn’t feeling well this morning, Ms. Blanchard,” Abby explained, before the Mallory began her lesson.
The sparrows chirping outside stopped as the lesson dragged on. When lunch came around, none of the girls seemed particularly hungry. As for Mallory, before continuing class, she excused herself to head upstairs to check on Zel.
She noticed that one of the doors in the upstairs hallway was open but only entered through when she heard pained groans growing louder as she approached the room. As Mallory entered, she saw Zel virtually lifeless in bed—she was covered in cold sweat and her puffy bloodshot eyes that seemed to almost pop out of their sockets.
“Hey, Zel. How are you feeling? I just wanted to check up on how you were holding up.”
Zel responded with a terribly smoky, soaked series of coughs. “I think I have a fever.”
Mallory had to move in closer to hear her wheeze her response.
“It’s alright,” Mallory said. “I’ll take care of you. Do you guys keep any medicine here?”
“Should we call a doctor?” Abby asked, who was standing in front of her sisters who were watching quietly behind Mallory.
“Didn’t I tell you all to stay downstairs?”
“No,” Bea scoffed as Lucy glared at her housemother.
Mallory shook her head and turned her attention back to Zel in bed. She didn’t know how to deal with this sort of situation, but then she reminded herself of why she was here in the first place. She began to question whether or not the money would be worth it, trying to pretend to be a chef, a nurse, and a goddamn super-nanny of all things. But she knew that if word got out of anything suspicious happening at the girls’ estate or if anything tragic had happened to any of the girls, it might put her out of her current job and any possibility of any future jobs. So, there was only one solution that she could come up with: try.
“Don’t worry,” Mallory assured Zel, “I’ll go find some medicine. There’s gotta be something in this house.” She turned and left and nearly bumped into Lucy, who was still standing in the doorway.
“Good luck.”
As Mallory was about to make her way downstairs to search the kitchen’s cupboards, she looked back at Lucy who didn’t bother to turn around. Lucy instead came into the room to console her sister alone. It would be the last time that the two saw each other.
Mallory managed to find some old syrups scattered in different parts of the house. Most of the labels were either caked in dust or sun-bleached off of their bottles but the medicines’ potent odors made each of them stand out. She didn’t have a clue if any of them would help, but it didn’t stop her from giving them to Zel.
And so, a week passed. Despite all that was done, nature claimed Zel at that estate.
Crows cawed while perched on a naked branch over a hole in the ground in the backyard of the manor. The birds stood over 13 bodies dressed in black. Twelve of them stood close to the pit and began throwing handfuls of dirt onto a covered corpse, and with each pile of dirt thrown over the dead body, the crows grew more and more rowdy and violent with one another.
Mallory tried to continue as if all was normal, but even she couldn’t lie to herself about Zel. The next few days grew longer. The girls’ heads were off in another place during class with Mallory, either staring out of windows with solemn looks on their faces or distracting themselves by drawing in their notebooks. Lucy in particular was always sketching. She sat at the opposite end of the dining room table, directly across from Mallory, and Bea watched her pale hand scrawl across the page. And as much as Mallory hoped, the girls wanted nothing to do with her after class.
The girls refused to eat even more than before. Mallory kept at trying to be their chef, even managing to not screw up with making a blueberry pie somehow, but nobody except Abby bothered to take a bite. She continued to struggle with brainstorming ways to keep the girls’ minds occupied, but everyone was still thinking about Zel. Time would be the only remedy for the plague of grief that infected the house. As long as things remained extra quiet, Mallory figured that the best way to fight against the sadness was to keep busy.
“Screwdriver please,” Mallory requested, holding out her hand as she kept her eyes on her door’s lock. Thunder crackled and rain poured outside as Bea handed her the tool. “So… How are you holding up?”
Bea responded with half of a side glance.
Mallory took a moment to turn to face Bea. “Look… I know it’s hard. Even if you don’t feel comfortable talking with me, you should at least try to reach out to your sisters. Try to get them to eat something. You’re all growing girls.”
“If Lucy doesn’t eat, we don’t eat,” she replied.
Mallory wasn’t finding any luck with fiddling with the lock from a different angle. “Don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?”
“Lucy is everything to us,” Bea said. “She took care of us. She knew what to do when our first caretaker died. She’s just been there for us when nobody else was.”
“I’m sorry to hear about that. You all must have been close with your caretaker.”
“She was the best one we ever had.”
With a frustrated grunt, Mallory threw down her screwdriver before quickly catching herself. “What was she like?”
“I dunno. Nice. Polite. Had a goofy British accent,” Bea said. “You almost look like her.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” Mallory said.
“Enjoy the comparison. It’s the only thing the two of you have in common.”
Those words bounced around in Mallory’s head for the rest of the night. She often wondered if the girls were getting enough sleep because she wasn’t. She stared at the ceiling of her room, lying awake, and listened to the slow tapping of the radiator. She couldn’t ignore the burned image of Zel’s lifeless stare in that hole in the ground. She cursed into her pillow and lost another hour of sleep.
She reached over to the radiator in a burst of rage. Her fingers clutched the paint-flaked metal, feeling or the switch, but the entire thing was cold.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Mallory turned and saw a figure standing next to the armoire in the darkness clutching a sketchbook, silently watching her. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Mallory wasn’t sure whether or not she wanted to sink into her bed and disappear or to blink until the figure vanished. Adrenaline flowed straight into each and every chamber of her thumping heart in that moment.
It felt like ages before Lucy turned and stepped toward the door and closed it quietly behind her. The shadow of that girl branded yet another image into her brain as the sound of tapping faded out. She exhaled slowly and tried to stop staring at that spot next to the armoire. Her gaze was only pulled away when that dark rhythm sounded off again in the hall.
She crept out of bed and carefully made her way through the door and into the pitch black hall. Thankfully, the doorknob was cooperating on that night.
The sound of creaking floorboards came from below the corridor towards the vestibule. A familiar shadow could be made out in a brief moment before its outline disappeared. Mallory wondered if it was still Lucy wandering about for whatever god-forsaken reason in the middle of the night.
Mallory snuck down the stairs, tracking the slow-moving shadow that seemed to drift and float though the dark. Whatever moonlight was outside was obscured by grey clouds outside and could barely come through the windows of the manor.
The shadow weaved between the living room furniture and made its way into the kitchen. Mallory hissed at the shadow, assuming that it was still Lucy, as it opened the walk-in freezer in a trance-like state. An icy wave of cold rushed out into the kitchen, but the shadow remained silent and unfazed.
The shadow walked in and latched onto one of the frozen slabs of meat hanging from a hook like some impish parasite before sinking its teeth in deep. Audible gnashing and open-mouth chewing began to send a different chill down Mallory’s spine as the sounds began to sound more and more familiar with each passing moment. And with each passing moment, the noises began to sound more and more human.
“Lucy?” Mallory called out. In return, the shadow chirped.
“Ms.… Blanchard?” Abby asked. The bottom half of her face was caked in flakes of ice and blood. “I can explain.”
Another voice sounded from behind Mallory. “What’s going on down here?”
Mallory turned around and saw Bea standing by the doorway of the freezer, shivering in pajama bottoms and a worn-out t-shirt. “What? It wasn’t cold enough for you upstairs?”
Mallory rushed Bea and grabbed her by the shoulders. “One of you little brats had better start explaining what the hell is going on. Right now. Because I’m standing in front of a 10-year-old with blood all over her face in the middle of the night.”
Bea pushed Mallory off of her and immediately stormed off. “Typical. You’re just like all the others.”
And it was in that moment that Mallory began to choke up. “Bea,” she called out, but Bea hasn’t having any of it.
“Good night, Ms. Blanchard.”
The look on Mallory’s face spelled pain and her sigh confirmed it. “Come on, Abby. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
After all of the commotion had settled, Mallory managed to get some portion of sleep before sunrise. When she woke, she trudged downstairs and stifled a yawn. At the bottom of the stairs, Lucy sat on the last step dressed in her rose-patterned nightgown moving a pencil across her sketchbook again.
In that glimpse, Mallory saw the elaborate detail and accuracy of Lucy’s drawing—it was her. She’d gotten everything right from the mole under Mallory’s left eye, to her gold earrings to the way her simple and straight brown locks fell just past her shoulders.
Once Lucy noticed that Mallory was peeking over her, she quickly shut her sketchbook and looked up at Mallory with a somewhat annoyed gaze.
“It looks incredible,” Mallory said. “Where’d you learn to draw like that?”
Lucy stared down at her chest with detached look on her face. “I’ve had lots of practice.”
“You’ve really got talent. Ever thought about pursuing it further in the future?” Mallory asked.
“What do you want?”
Mallory bit the inside of her cheek. “I just wanted to let you and the girls know that I’m going to be cancelling classes for the next few days. Given what happened and how I’m seeing you all cope… I think that this is best for everyone.”
Lucy was busy staring off into the space in front of her. A violent wind howled outside and rattled the frames of the windows with each blowing gust.
“Of course, Ms. Blanchard,” Lucy said. She left without another word and made her way upstairs to clean herself up before breakfast.
Mallory was taken aback. “Great,” she said, “I’ll go make some breakfast.”
Lucy waved a dismissive hand with her sketchbook nestled under her arm. “Don’t worry about it. Bea and I have it covered.”
As she turned away, Mallory asked her a question. “Hey, why were you in my room last night?”
Lucy stopped briefly after hearing the question, but then continued to make her way to the top of the stairs. Mallory heard the wind howl and the dead trees’ branches sway outside. None of the other girls had gotten up, and for some reason Mallory grinned before heading back upstairs to make herself decent before the rest of the girls got a chance to see her.
She could hear the ancient pipes rattle and the high-pitched squealing of water rushing to the bathroom. Mallory also noticed a door slightly ajar—Lucy’s room. Curiosity drove her into her room and helped her eye her sketchbook on top of her armoire.
Mallory snuck the book out of her room and scurried downstairs to peruse for no longer than five minutes. Standing near the front door, she flipped through the book. As she skimmed and looked for Lucy’s portrait of her, some of the pages seemed to be on their last legs and were starting to fall out. Turning past the portrait of her she found more sketches of her from various angles, all of them as intricate and accurate as the first.
She kept looking through the pages. She saw drawings of women she didn’t recognize, with expressions twisted and contorted more and more as she turned over a page.
More and more pages detailed more of the same, each more disturbing than the last. Skinless figures with dead faces stared back at her from the parchment. Labelled beings stripped down to their organs and bare flesh with open mouths screaming in fear as their torsos were hung on hooks. Some of the pictures were accompanied by bits of information—numbers, names, and instructions.
Mallory slammed the book shut, trembling in place. And a voice called out from behind her.
“What do you think of my work?”
Mallory quickly turned around and held her hands out before making her way backwards into the hallway.
“Mallory, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Everything will be okay,” Lucy said as Bea waited outside with her bat.
Bea swung and a sickening crack echoed through the house. Mallory fell forward as blood ran from the grotesque indent in the back of her head and began to pool onto the wood flooring. Suddenly, the other girls came out of their rooms and huddled close to Mallory’s downed body. All of them stared at her as she groaned like Zel.
“P-please… Why are you doing this?”
Lucy knelt down next to Mallory and caressed her head, gently shushing her as Bea began to hogtie the woman.
The girls answered their teacher with silence.
As soon as Bea finished binding Mallory, she flipped her over, gagged her with a towelette from the bathroom, and told one of the girls to bring her one of the kitchen knives. As the knife began to plunge slowly into her sternum and as she felt her insides go painfully warm, Mallory screamed as nobody came for her.
Crows cawed outside and the wind continued to rattle the windows. As Mallory continued to scream, the last thing heard were 12 little stomachs growling in anticipation.
Well, that’s that—the climax of the TYFN: TTIRAA-WSS(OTPOAS-FE) series. I hope you all got something out of it because I think I did. With all of this said, tune in next week for the conclusion of this series and, thus, the beginning of newer pastures for newsletter content. Like I mentioned before, there will be a smaller post following next week’s conclusion just as a cleanser before I start getting to work on the next series I’ve got planned which happens to be a bit similar to this series. So, I hope you all get to see that.
In other news, I’d also like to give a shout out to some of the most recent folk over discord who’ve personally reached out and told me that they like what I’ve been putting out. Receiving praise like that feels weird every time for me but it’s a welcomed weirdness, I assure y’all. So, thanks to all of those people and everyone else literally just bored enough to read through my long-ass sentences.
Unrelated, I would like to take the opportunity to help an old friend of mine. The long story short is that he and his sister were very lucky to survive what could’ve easily been a horrific accident and is in need of some financial assistance. Of course, don’t feel obligated or anything like that but if you’ve got some charity to spare, I suggest helping my guy out (link to pictures of friend’s update, Venmo, and Cash App can be found here).
Anyways, as always, take care and have a lovely weekend. I’m gonna go ahead and destroy myself (it’s leg day) and prepare for a family dinner later this evening.
Have fun now. Or else.
Click here to read Part 4 of “Thank You for Nothing: The Time I Rewrote an Award-Winning Short Story (Or the Peak of a Still-Fragile Ego).”
Thank you for reading this edition of The Morning Owl. If you liked what you saw here, it would be please leave a like, subscribe, leave a comment, and share this degenerate’s blog to other sentient folk with internet access. Until we meet again, drink plenty of water and take care.