Tag: stories

I Have a Skeleton in My Closet!

My Great-Grandmother, Mabel Applegate, wrote a book of her life that began at 2 o’clock in the morning on January 2nd, 1897.  She had quite a few of the books coil-bound and gave them to all her children, grand-children and great-grandchildren.

It’s marvelous.

I wanted to add on to her story.  I wanted to preserve the family history, so I started working on my parents’ story several years ago.  It’s been a LOT of work!  I scanned almost 800 photos to save on a stick to be shared so everyone in family could enjoy them.  I spent hours and hours talking with Mom and Dad, taking notes and asking questions.  Then I started writing the book, deleted it, started over, tried editing it, deleted it and started over again.  Eventually, I found my way through it and can finally say:

I’M DONE!!

It’s true!  I sent the entire manuscript to one of my sisters, Janine, and she went through it all for me.  I was worried.  What if she thought it was terrible?  What if I insulted someone?  It’s terrifying to put your work out there for everyone to critique.  My anxiety is through the roof, but I’m in too deep to back out now.  Thankfully, Janine loves it and says I shouldn’t change a thing.

The last thing to do before having it printed, is to transcribe Mabel’s book into the back of my parents’ book.  Since Mabel’s book was printed, there have been great-great-grandchildren born and I want to make sure that her story isn’t lost to the following generations.

While I was transcribing, I came upon a story she told about Andrew Hellman, alias Adam Horn in 1820.

What?!  Now, that’s interesting!  An alias?  Ooooo…..I hope it’s because he’s a pirate and that he collects powdered wigs, pinching them off the person’s head without them even being aware that it is gone!

I’ve read Mabel’s book several times but for some reason I’ve completely forgotten about Mr. Andrew Hellman and why he needed an alias.  He was only a tailor, after all.  This story was passed around in the family, but Mabel copied the text out of a book from that era.

According to the author of that book, Hellman was…

“…a young man of good personal appearance, sober, steady, and industrious, well behaved and mild in his demeanor and withal, intelligent and well informed.”

That doesn’t sound like someone who would need an alias.  I continued transcribing.

“He seemed, however, to have imbibed a lasting dislike to the whole female race, looking upon them as mere slaves to man…..a convenience for the other sex, to serve in the capacity of hewer of wood and drawer of water: to cook his victuals, darn his stockings, never to speak but when spoken to, and to crouch in servile fear whilst in his presence.”

Ugh!  I think I know why he needed that alias!

Hellman met a farmer named George Abel who was Mabel’s great-great-grandfather.  Hellman managed to hoodwink the entire family, by

“…restrain[ing] the fiendishness of his disposition.” 

Isn’t that Fabulous?!

Completely taken in by Hellman’s act, George lets him marry one of his daughters – Mary.  She is described as

“…in the twentieth year of her age, a blithe, buxom and light-hearted country girl, with rosy cheek and sparkling eye, totally unacquainted with the deceitfulness of the world.”

What a delightful description!!  The entire story is written like this and it’s fantastic!

Long story short:  Hellman begets a child with Mary – a girl and he’s not happy about it.  He begets another child with her – a boy but he’s not happy about that either because he thinks Mary was screwing around and refuses to acknowledge the boy as his.  The third child is another boy who is, you guessed it, apparently not his either, and Hellman threatens to kill Mary if she has another child.  She doesn’t.  Hellman tries to poison Mary, but she figured it out in time.  He then poisons all three children, two of which die.  Then, Hellman chopped Mary up with an axe.  Henry, the surviving poison victim, was visiting his Uncle at the time or he would have been chopped up as well.

Hellman escapes custody before he can be brought to justice, flees to Baltimore, assumes the name Adam Horn, and marries another woman.  He kills her, too.

“On the 4th of December 1843, the prisoner [Hellman] was brought into Court to receive the awful doom of the law…..that he be taken to the jail of Baltimore  County, from whence he came, and from thence to the place of execution……there be hanged by the neck until he be dead.”

So, pinching powdered wigs wasn’t the reason for the alias.  I’m disappointed, to be honest.  A powdered wig pinching pirate (say that 3 times fast) is so much cooler than an axe murderer on a branch on the family tree.  On the other hand, Andrew Hellman turns out to be a celebrity among the Unquiet Souls enthusiasts.  I checked.  He’s the unwanted gift that keeps on giving.

“He haunts his former house/the road by his house/the local lovers’ lane, ax at the ready for new, teenaged victims…”  taken from:

http://hauntedohiobooks.com/news/hatchet-man-a-story-for-atlas-obscura-day/

I suppose I shouldn’t complain.  We do have a skeleton in the closet and that’s more than some people can say, right?  And maybe, if I put a teaser at the front of the book, it will get new generations interested.

 

 

Thunder Thighs and Sabre-Tooth Gophers

Everything we’ve been taught about evolution is wrong.  No, seriously.  I’m not saying that creationism is real, I’m just saying that evolution is wrong.  Hear me out.

The accepted theory is that humans evolved over millions of years into what we are today.  Some scientists say we walked upright somewhere between 6 million and 2 million years ago.  Whatever.  I don’t dispute this.  However, they all seem to agree that hominids started using tools about 2.5 millions years ago and, in my opinion, that’s where the evolution theory falls apart.  Tools changed everything.

Let’s take one Australopithecus – Bruce.  Bruce was walking upright and, from the new and lofty perspective of his eyes, found a stick that looked like it could be used for something.  He wasn’t entirely sure what it could be used for but he didn’t want to leave it behind and run the risk of never finding it again.  So, he packed it around for a few days, poking things, trying to eat with it (Asians mastered this far sooner than anyone else), riding it like a horse, etc.  Then, one day, he sees a fine-looking female Australopithecus and thinks he’d like to get to know her better.  She’s fucking fast though and he can’t catch her.

via GIPHY

He wishes there was some way to slow her down.  He sits down under a tree (this was still a safe thing to do because Newton hadn’t been born yet) to think.  He’s playing with the stick, twirling it around, and it gets away from him.  He lunges after the stick but knocks it further away and that’s when the gorgeous female Australopithecus(Cheryl) came running past, probably chasing a sabre-tooth gopher.  The stick tripped her and she slid face-first into the dirt only a meter away.  Bruce, knowing a good opportunity when he sees one, sat on her back so she couldn’t get away and began telling her all about himself.  Voila!  The first tool!

It didn’t take him a million or two years to figure out how to trip women so he could sit on them, now did it?  You have to catch her before you can get babies.  Let’s just carry this story for a bit longer.

Bruce is now walking upright and using a stick.  He may have found several other ways to use the stick, especially the pointy end, because he’s packing it around with him everywhere he goes.  Then one day, he’s fucking around and tossing the stick in the air and catching it.  Cheryl ran past, probably chasing a sabre-tooth rabbit………

via GIPHY

and Bruce got distracted and the pointy end of his stick got stuck in the top of his head.

“Ouch!  Fuck!!”

Bruce just became the very first klutz.  After 1257 times of getting the stick stuck in his head, he learned to flinch to the side.  It stuck in his foot 713 times before he mastered the art of the ‘Foot Flinch’.  You get my meaning here, right?  I’m pretty sure it didn’t take Bruce a million years to develop evasion reflexes and that brings me to…..well….me.

I was sitting at the computer, eating a piece of delicious 3-year old cheese last night and because the cheese is 3 years old it crumbles easily and a piece of the deliciousness broke off and headed for the floor except my thighs slammed together with loud clap (thunder-like) and caught the cheese mid-fall!  I couldn’t do that when I was a kid.  I was always picking my food up and brushing the bits of dirt off before I could eat it.  Over the years, my thighs have evolved into powerful tools that keep dropped food/breakables/paperclips/pills from hitting the floor/dirt/pavement.  The skill also came in handy when Jerry thought he could cop a feel at a social function.  It didn’t take my thighs a million years to develop their speed – it happened in less than 50 years.

And it’s not just my thighs.  My feet have developed the ability to flinch away from falling knives/bricks/glass.  My feet and thighs are literally supersonic.  My hands are a different matter; it’s like they don’t even belong to me because they are always getting cut and poked and crushed.  They try to evade but for some reason they are just evolutionary-ily challenged.  As are my boobs.  To be fair though I’m fairly certain that boobs weren’t intended to have built-in evasion abilities because how would babies chase down a boob so it could have breakfast.

So, there you have it.  Necessity is the mother of invention (I think someone said this before but I can’t be bothered to look it up).  If it took a million years to develop adaptations to new circumstances we would have died out as a species before the end of an ice age.  It’s the Slam and Flinch that saved us from extinction.  Sorry Scientists, you’ll have to go back to the old drawing board.

Pains In My Ass

Izzie woke me up this morning – she started the exercise by dancing a German Polka on my stomach and ended with a sharp, single claw stab through the soft tissue in my armpit.  “OW!!  FUCK!”  In between those two events were whispered threats of the dire consequences should I not get out of bed and a fairly lengthy litany of curses.

I muttered a few curses of my own as I stumbled to the bathroom for my morning pee.  Izzie took a position on top of the vanity where she began poking my left cheek with increasing insistence while Teddy swarmed around my panties, purring and feathering my inner thighs with his tail.

“Teddy, I have paperwork to do – get out of my panties.  Gawd!  Quit poking me Izzie!  Geezus!  Teddy!  You’re not helping!  For fucksakes!  STOP POKING ME!!”

They want out, of course.  I slept in a bit and she’s late for her Queendom Inspection where she’ll be handing out Stink Eyes and slaps to anyone or thing that happens to get in her way.  She’ll belittle the two Labradors on the other side of the alley, the orange cat down the block will be mocked and she’ll stop to extensively cuss out Charlie next door just to set a precedent since he’s new to the neighbourhood.  And Teddy, bless his kind-of-dumb but sweet soul, will most likely follow behind at a safe distance apologizing.

When she returns from her reconnaissance she bellows for admittance into the house and then demands prolonged loves.  It was at that point this morning that I started to wonder why the fuck I even have pets?  Honestly, they annoy the hell out of me.

Over the years I’ve had quite a few pets and they have all been a nuisance in one way or another.  Dogs are needy and smelly and dirty and you have to pick up all the poo that is never in one convenient location but spread around the yard like Turdstools.

Birds…..well who really wants squawking, shitting, molting pets that fly around the house if they happen to get out of their cage.  I have enough problems without trying to catch a damned bird with a fish net.

Fish.  I had one of those Siamese fighting fish once which actually was fine.  I would say “Good morning” and wiggle my head back and forth and Norman would swim over and wiggle his head back and forth.  I really liked him; he lived in a small and pretty tank that was easy to clean and the fish food was cheap.  Unfortunately, Norman only lived for about a year and Norman 2.0 only made it 6 months.  I asked for a young fish next time but Norman 3.0 only lived for a couple of months so I gave it all up.  Fuck fish!

Hamsters.  Well I didn’t mind the one hamster I had.  Tubbs was a goofy and chubby little thing and was only awake during the night.  I accidentally killed him because I wanted to find a little house for him and when I couldn’t find what I wanted in the pet stores I decided to make one with a relish jar, fake jewels and spray paint.  RIP Tubbs (I think either the fumes killed him or he chipped the paint off the jar).  Tubbs 2.0 wasn’t nearly as sweet as Tubbs 1.0 and he bit me, the little fuck.  I gave him away to a friend – good riddance.

Cats!  I’ve had a few over the years and the only one I ever liked was the one I got strictly for the kids.  Guess who she ended up loving the most though?  Maggie was a great cat; she was sweet and clean and we didn’t bother each other except for the odd conversation.  She developed Kidney Disease though and I had to put her down.

Three years later I kind of wanted another cat.  Idiot.  Izzie was adorable but her personality turned out to be somewhere between Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Freddy Krueger.  It was a blood bath for nearly a year.  I have scars.  The Viking has scars.  Seriously.  Scars.

We finally convinced her to stop trying to kill us but she’s still loud and belligerent and she shouts curses at us and stares at us like we’ve tragically disappointed her..  Thank Gawd for Teddy who, despite his sweetness, manages to put up with her shit and curtails the worst of her homicidal tendencies.

And she’s a sneaky little shit, too!  She looks all sweet and love-y and approaches like she would welcome a chin scratch and just when you fall for it and put your hand out……SA-LAP!!……and she walks away laughing while you are cradling your severed hand to your chest.

All of this brings me back to my initial question of ‘Why the fuck I even have pets?’  I suppose it’s a moot point because there is no going back; we can’t get rid of them now.  Despite all the apologies we have to make we love Izzie.  And Teddy…..well, who wouldn’t like Teddy?  We’ve had to frisk people to be certain they don’t take him home with them.  It’s a package deal, people!  You take Teddy, you have to take Izzie too!

So, my giant pains in the ass won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.  Sigh.

Troll – Friday Fictioneers

Hello friends!  Welcome to Friday Fictioneers hosted by the incomparable Rochelle Wisoff-Fields.  I had 100 words to tell a story about the photo above, taken by CEAyer.

A huge troll lived in a cave by a fjord.  He loved the peace and quiet of the ocean.  One day there was a terrible din across the water.  Humans were building a church.  He hated humans; worse, he hated churches!

He howled…..growled but the church was getting bigger and taller.  Then bells, clanging, clanging, driving him mad.

He awoke one morning to the horrible sound of deafening bells and many humans singing.  He could take no more.  He picked up an immense boulder, hurled it across the fjord and squashed the church. 

Then he went back to bed.

This is a much edited story from Denmark.  A friend took me to see the Troll Stone at a nearby Kirke, complete with a plaque that tells the story. The Viking translated it for me so I could condense it down for this week’s challenge.

Want to read more wonderful stories at Friday Fictioneers?  Click the button.

An Alien Broke the Car – Friday Fictioneers

“CHERYL!!”

She looked at the clock – he’s right on time.

He was standing beside the car, hands on hips, a fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth.  “What the hell happened?!”

“Happened?”

“THE CAR!  THE MIRROR!!”  Steve jabbed violently toward the side mirror.

She had considered pleading ignorance but the broken, dangling mirror was hard to miss, or going on the offensive, blaming him, but for that to work she should be the one hollering and pointing.

She settled for, “Oh, that?  Well, it all started when I went for groceries and an alien spacecraft landed in the……”

 

 

Huge thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for hosting Friday Fictioneers and for this week’s photo prompt.
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