Short Stories

-Every story that appears on NickShamhart.com is held under copyright by the author (Hey, I have trust issues)

There is not a Timeline, as such, with the short stories from The Balance Series. But, if it would be advantageous for the reader to have read to a certain point in the series I will say where the story should fall by the title.

Dolly  (read after Grey)

 

           Do you ever wonder what happens to you after you die? Dying is the easy part let me tell you. The rest can be some scary shit! My name was Robert Dollence, but all my fellow Klan members always called me “Dolly”. I thought that stupid ass nickname was so funny, that one night me and the boys got lit, and I got a Raggedy Anne tattooed on my ass. That fuckin’ tattoo ended up getting me killed.

***

            “I hereby call this meetin’ of the Polk county Ku Klux Klan to order,” said Klan Wizard Rufus Stubbins. “Before we get into any new business, I wanted to congratulate my granddaughter Tammy, on makin’ us just the best darn blueberry pie workin’ men could want.”

Tammy waved her delicate twelve year old hand demurely as the men clapped. She held her pig-tailed head low, staring at the stained concrete floor, not making eye contact with any of the men. When the applause died down Rufus spoke up again saying, “Okay sweetie, you go along, because we got ourselves some grownup things to discuss.”

Tammy knew better than to hesitate or argue with her Grampy Stubs. Years of being drug out to the woodshed for the slightest infraction had taught her to mind her elders. She walked past the rows of men, seated in folding metal chairs, set up in her grandfather’s garage. The smells of body odor, stale beer, and motor oil drifted off the congregation in waves. She did not want to call attention to herself by holding her nose, but the urge to do so was strong. Tammy had had her olfactory fill, and was about to risk another trip to the shed by holding her nose, when the clean smell of Ivory soap cut through the miasma of funk. She looked up and met the eyes of the man all the others called Dolly.

Dolly smiled and winked at the young girl as she passed him. He turned to watch her leave the fluorescent lighting of the garage for the dark southern night. She turned back as well and gave him a slight wave, when she saw that he was still watching her.

***

            Y’all think I’m some kind’a sick perverted son-of-a-bitch. Maybe I am, but at twenty-five it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Thirteen years ain’t all that big of an age gap. I seen plenty of them movie stars who have younger wives. So don’t you go gettin’ all high and mighty on me just cuz I bedded a twelve year old girl. She was beautiful.

***

            “Dolly, I don’t know if we should be doing this here,” Tammy said while Dolly tugged at the waist of her pants. They were on her bed in her grandfather’s house, where she slept five nights a week while her mother worked down at the truck stop diner along the highway. She barely made enough money, serving bad coffee to long-haulers to keep making the payments on the trailer they called home.

“Shh,” Dolly said, “we’ll just be quiet. If it feels too good honey, just bite down on your pillow, so your gram-pappy won’t hear you.”

“Okay,” she said. “But first, you gotta show me again.”

“Aw, come on, Sweet potata,” Dolly said. “It ain’t that funny.”

But he did as she wanted, dropping the seat of his worn denim trousers, so she could see the Raggedy Anne tattoo he had on his right buttock. She giggled and slid out of her pants, so when Dolly turned back around she was ready for him.

The lights stayed off, for fear of discovery, as Dolly stayed through the night, without either of them taking time away from their activities to sleep.

***

            I believe in the lord almighty. He cast me down for the wrong I done. I never did think it was wrong to take Tammy to my bed, or her bed, or wherever we could find a quiet place to be together. What I done wrong was not runnin’ away with her and gettin’ hitched. God would’a forgiven me then, and I wouldn’t have turned into this.

***

            “Who done this to you, girl?” Rufus asked every time he struck his granddaughter with his belt. He had started beating her the second she told him that the pregnancy test was positive. In between blows he continued to ask, “Who done this? I tell you right now I will beat you senseless if you don’t tell me.”

Klan Wizard Rufus Stubbins was many things: a braggart, a zealot, a racist, a bigot, and many more. But, a liar, he was not. He continued to beat Tammy, causing welts to form on her arms, legs, and anywhere else he could reach. It was not until she lay still that he stopped. She had blood oozing from her mouth, nose, and ears. The whole reason she was in this predicament seemed to be a moot point to her now, as she felt her wounded body cramp and miscarry her child. As she cried, barely coherent, Tammy muttered, “tattoo…Raggedy Anne…tattoo.”

“Gawd damn it,” Rufus swore. “You get yourself cleaned up girl and clean up this here mess before I get back too. I’ll take care of that perverted little cock sucker,” he said, slamming the front porch door and stomping out to his truck, as his granddaughter wept in a pool of her own blood.

***

            Whew boy, I tell you, I had been on the Klan side of things a couple’a times when we was scarin’ us a coon or some stupid kike. Tryin’ to get them to leave town, but man, I never thought I’d see them boys in their hoods comin’ for me. That was scary. It was scary all the way up to the end when they hung me from a tree out on Jimmy’s back forty, but it was scarier still to watch huddled from under Stubs’ tool box as they slid my body into the swamp. When I died I didn’t know where else to go. I rode home with Stubs because I was scared that all them critters I saw, with red eyes and sharp fangs were gunna come after to me if they saw me, so I hid.

***

            It had been a decade since Tammy had lost her first and only child. Her grandfather had beaten her so badly that the doctors said she would never be able to conceive again. Her mother had died five years earlier when a semitrailer crashed into her head on, as she drove home. Sadly, people said it may have been one of her customers that killed her. In those years Tammy had stayed with her Grampy Stubs. She helped take care of his house as he aged. Retiring from the lumber yard only a year ago he started to take a close interest in Tammy as she worked. He would sit in his stained and battered lounge chair as she went about her chores, watching her with gimlet hateful eyes, punishing her for any imagined infraction.

“You missed a spot girl,” he said knocking a peanut shell from his end table, as Tammy vacuumed. She turned to stare at him, returning his tired hurtful glare. He motioned with his nicotine stained fingers, “Go on, don’t leave it, or I’ll get my belt.”

A lifetime’s worth of injuries and insults had been enough for Tammy. She dropped her vacuum at his feet and walking over toward the door where his belt hung, she said, “I’ll get it for you.”

Rufus was so accustomed to having his orders followed that he did not bother to turn around. He assumed that she was fetching his belt for him to beat her with. A good southern girl who knew her place and followed orders, that was his granddaughter alright. The belt slipped around his neck as he sat. Rufus did not have time to realize what was happening until Tammy had pulled the buckle taught. She completely crushed her Grampy Stubs’ windpipe when she yanked the strap though the brass eagle, whose talons acted as both buckle and clasp.

***

            I stayed, watchin’ Tammy all’a those years. She didn’t know I was there, but I’d talk to her at night sometimes when I could come out’a hidin’. Sometimes I’d whisper idears to her and sometimes she’d do those things I’d suggested. I ain’t sayin’ she wouldn’t of killed that old bastard on her own, but maybe she had a little help, I don’t know.

***

            Tammy ran from any possible repercussions over her grandfather’s murder. The country was a big place for her to get lost in and the authorities were not so all fired up to go chasing after a girl who killed the man they all knew had beaten her since early childhood.

It was five years after she had killed her Grampy Stubs that Tammy found herself up north on the Canadian border. She had changed her name, her hair, and lost as much weight as she could in case someone was looking for her. She had taken up with a man named Stu, who had been charming when she first met him, but once they had been together a while his true colors came through.

One night Stu had been drinking and he thought it might be a good idea to blame his financial problems on that girl who had moved in with him. All he had wanted was a little tail, not some damn live in mistress, jacking up his water, electric, and gas bills. During the commercial break from his race Stu turned to Tammy, as they sat together on his sofa and said, “Damn it woman, why can’t you just leave! It ain’t like you keep this place clean.” He said the last, pouring the dregs of his beer out onto Tammy’s lap. She was so surprised that she slapped him across the face. Getting just the reaction he wanted out of her Stu struck her on the jaw with a closed fist.

Tammy fell to the floor. She did not cry, no, years of beatings at Grampy Stubs’ hands had taught her more pain tolerance than what Stu could dish out. She got to her feet and ran to the kitchen. Stu mistook her retreat as a sign of departure and he yelled, “Go on go, and don’t let the door hit your narrow ass on the way ou-”

He was interrupted as Tammy came back into the room holding a steak knife, “Now just what the hell do you th-” was as far as Stu could rant at her before he had the steak knife buried in his throat.

***

            I was never the violent type, you see that’s what they call tragedy, you know? Sure I might’a slept with the girl when she was too young for most people’s standards of decency, but I never would have hurt her none; never would’a laid a hand on her out’a anger.

I stayed with Tammy, every time she ran. And run she did. Form one place to the next. It got so it looked to me like she was searchin’ for guys who’d rough her up, just to have an excuse to kill’em. I lost count how many times she did it: belt, knife, gun, poison, over and over, across the country.

***

            Ten more years went by. Tammy had gone by many names and changed her look just as many times. She had found herself south once again, but this time she was so far south it was like another world from where she grew up. Florida had called to her after her last boyfriend had ended his days with a meat fork jammed into his eye socket after he had slapped her.

She walked along a quiet beach north of Miami, watching the crabs run back and forth between the crashing waves, as the sun set. A group of young men were playing soccer and they watched her pass, a woman walking alone as night fell.

Tammy kept her back to them as they started to follow her down the beach. She checked her purse to make sure the nine millimeter she had stowed away in there was accessible. Dolly ran around her feet, trying to keep up and stay out of sight, as larger demons prowled among the men chasing after Tammy.

When their footsteps took on the heavy pounding of running feet on sand Tammy spun around, gun drawn. She had been too slow, the first man tackled her, pinning her arm against her body so she could not fire. The others quickly joined him. They punched and kicked her until she lay still, letting them have their way with her. The larger demons that had been prodding the men on paced at a close distance, as they raped Tammy. Dolly watched in confusion – as a small demon the size and demeanor of a child’s toy he was used to larger predators trying to devour him – as the huge panther demons left him alone.

After the men had all taken a turn they argued over what to do next. One said that she would not be able to identify them, but another, the group’s leader by the way he took charge, decided to shoot her with the gun she was going to use on them. He claimed it would be justice and they could dump her body in the ocean, letting the fish finish what was left.

Having done as their leader instructed the men started to run away back toward their van. Dolly watched the panther demons sit like obedient pets, never moving as they watched the ink black surf. Too afraid to do anything Dolly sat down next to them and gazed like the other demons at the ocean. He jumped in surprise when a demon that looked like a girl he once fell head over heels for rushed out of the surf after the men who had murdered her.

The men screamed and wailed, praying to God for help as this nightmare given form tore them limb from limb. The demon that had been a girl named Tammy stood panting as blood dripped down her hands. She looked around at the night for the first time with the eyes of the dead, seeing the panther demons and Dolly sitting down next to them. She laughed asking, “Dolly, is that really you?”

The voice she knew from so long ago spoke from the creature’s stitched mouth, “Yeah, Sweet potata, it’s me. I’ve been waitin’ for you.”

“Ever since?” Tammy asked.

Dolly nodded his head.

A deep and bestial male voice spoke from behind her, “I’ve been waiting too.” Tammy and Dolly both watched stupefied, as a very tall and very thin demon slid up out of the sand. He beckoned toward the panthers and they trotted over to him like obedient dogs. The tall demon crouched down to be closer to Tammy’s level and said, “This world is a scary place when you live, but it is worse when you die. Ask your lover, if you do not believe me.” The demon gestured toward Dolly and the tiny demon nodded his head vigorously.

“I can offer you a measure of safety,” the demon promised. “I can protect you both. Help you and teach you to fend for yourselves. All I ask in return is your loyalty. Not too steep of a price, I should think. I am called Legion.” He said holding out his hands to both Tammy and Dolly.

***

            Yep, life and death are both scary. It don’t matter how you look at it, but I guess the best thing to do is join up with likeminded people, who can help you. I wasn’t much in life, or death, but me and Tammy together? Well, like Legion taught us, one is weak, but more than one can be strong. We are strong, we are more than one, we are many.