Flash fiction

 My little girl's doll laid slumped over on the stairs, tripping me when I got up for a cup of water a little after midnight. I grabbed it on the way back up to bed and crept into Kelly's room to tuck it under the covers beside her.

But her bed was empty.

My stomach clenched in fear as I scrambled to the lamp, and the moment I switched it on, I realized with dreadful shock that Kelly didn't have any dolls.

Light filled the room, and I shrieked as I found myself staring into the sky blue eyes of Kelly - in the doll's bloody sockets.

 I think Grandma's ghost killed Grandpa.

Last Saturday, the morning after Grandma passed away, all three of her peach trees were found dead.

When she had planted those trees, Grandma also planted three peach trees for Grandpa Lewis to care for.

But, unlike Grandma's trees, Grandpa's trees were in bad shape. In fact, they were in bad shape since day one. Grandpa never bothered to tend to them.

I think that hurt Grandma. She was still angry about it when she died. Grandpa never apologized - not even on her deathbed. 

When we woke up on Saturday and saw that Grandma's trees were dead, we noticed that one of Grandpa's was dead too. 

On Sunday morning another one of his trees died, and the last one died Monday morning. 

Today is Tuesday and this morning we found Grandpa dead. Apparently he had a heart attack in his sleep.

But I think it was
Grandma.

I love you, Grandma.

 Once school was done for the day, Mike hurried out the doors and stood on the sidewalk, looking for Stanley. He spotted him crossing the street.

"Yo, Stanley!" Mike shouted as he jogged after him.

Stanley skidded to a halt on the curb and stood erect, looking around wildly for the person who had called his name. His glasses bounced on his nose and almost fell off.

"Hey," Mike said when he caught up to Stanley, but a big gust of wind muffled Mike's voice.

"What?" Stanley shouted. The wind had calmed, but Stanley kept shouting. "What? What did you say? What? What?"

Normally Mike would have replied by asking Stanley whether he had Tourette's or was just dumb as a sack of dung, but not today.

For the past few months, Mike had been working really hard on himself. His therapist had helped him see how his behavior was hurting others, especially Stanley, so he wanted to change for the better. He knew that he should look at Stanley and the other dweebs - er, kids - at school as potential friends, not freaks.

Mike smiled at Stanley, whose big, fish-like eyes stared back at him unblinking. His underbite made his jaw protrude quite a bit.

"Stanley, I'm really, um, well, I'm just really sorry for picking on you all the time," Mike said quietly. "I want to make it up to you, man. I saw the Happy Cat Comics pin on your backpack. Wanna go there sometime? I'll buy you whatever you want."

There was a long pause. Right when Mike began to ask Stanley if he had heard him, Stanley responded.

"Watch a movie with me," Stanley said in a toneless voice. 

"Oh, uh - well, okay!" said Mike.

"Now?" Stanley asked loudly. His eyes crossed slightly.

Mike chuckled and patted Stanley on the shoulder. "Works for me, Bud."

Mike and Stanley walked to Stanley's house together. Mike's friends had seen him with Stanley and jeered at him, but he ignored them. He wasn't sure if he really wanted to be friends with them anyway. 

Stanley lived several blocks away from school in a quaint, square-shaped house with dirty cream-colored paneling. The screen door screeched as Stanley pulled it open and led the way into a dark living room.

Still wearing his backpack, Stanley sat down in a faded blue armchair. Mike plopped his shoulder bag down  on the carpet and sat cross-legged next to it, since the only other furniture in the room was a three-legged wooden table that supported a big flatscreen TV. 

Staring wide-eyed at the screen, Stanley turned on the TV with the remote, which was covered in splotches of white gunk that looked like cottage cheese.

Mike tried not to gag, but was unsuccessful once the rotting smell of the house hit his nostrils. He tried to pass off the gag as a cough, but it didn't matter because Stanley hadn't noticed. Stanley was leaning toward the TV with his pale, bony elbows on his knees. 

The movie finally started to play, and the volume was so loud that it startled Mike badly, causing him to scream.

He expected Stanley to jump, to fumble with the remote as he frantically looked for the volume button.

But Stanley was unfazed. He sat still and his eyes, already magnified by his thick glasses, were bulging at the screen.

"Turn it down!" Mike yelled, covering his ears from the painfully loud voices on the screen. 

Stanley's neck jerked toward Mike. His face was twisted in a scowl.

Anxiety hit Mike like a big gust of wind. Something about Stanley made him feel uneasy from the start, but now he felt downright afraid. He wanted desperately to leave. 

But he owed it to Stanley to stay.

Mike thought about something his therapist had told him. "Just because Stanley is different doesn't make him any less of a person," she had said. Sighing, Mike reluctantly uncovered his ears and started to watch the movie. He told himself that everything was going to be fine.

It appeared to be a home video. A shirtless, middle-aged man was talking dirty while humping a big maple tree. He had so much thick chest hair that it covered his belly, stopping just at the waistline of his blue jeans. 

Mike gulped. What the hell was he watching?

"Yeah, like that," said whoever was holding the camera. The voice was toneless and seemed to belong to a younger male. He set the camera down and walked over to the older man, wearing nothing but dirty white underpants that barely clung to his bony waist. 

It was Stanley. Mike couldn't help but gasp.

In the video Stanley wrapped his lanky right arm around the older man's belly, who was still humping the tree, and began to hump his leg.

"Okay, I can't do this," Mike said as he grabbed his bag and stood up. He felt sick, violated. 

He glanced at Stanley, whose pants were unzipped. His left hand was inside his ripped brown underpants, jerking up and down quickly. His eyes were still bulging at the screen, his mouth agape and wet with drool. 

Horrified, Mike looked away as quickly as he could. He stood still in shock for a moment, his eyes fixated on the TV screen, where the image of Stanley was licking the tip of a bloody dagger while the older man was shrieking.

Stanley began to moan. As his moaning got louder and louder, he  stuck the remote into his underpants. Some of the cottage cheese-like substance on it had left stains on its resting place upon the arm of the chair, and Mike realized what the substance was.

Screaming, he yanked the door open and darted into the street.

He screamed as he sprinted away, not knowing what to do, who to talk to, or where he was going.

But he did know one thing: he was never going to eat cottage cheese again for the rest of his life.