This is bogus!


Tomorrow is not even guaranteed.


And that's the point.


52 short stories before 2022.


Every day is a chance to use the skill/talent/genius/abilities that I have.


Dear reader, Hadeh will be telling 52 short stories before the year runs out. This author is inspired by the number of outstanding talents on this forum, and he wishes to be part of that.


SO, LET’S DO THIS.

NOTE: Every story here will be appearing on https://www.facebook.com/Hadehsblog-113251860812182?_rdc=1&_rdr/ before it will be shared here, precisely three days later.


Thanks for coming and for sticking around.


Chairs are in abundance.


Want to read something I have completed


You can find “An Escape To Rendezvous,” through the link below.

https://bambooks.io/book/13888/an-escape-to-rendezvous

ONE

Writers’ Block and A bit of Horror

You stared at the cup of juice on the table, trying to think of what to write.

You had postponed it through the weekend till Sunday evening, and it seemed you have run out of time. The time was 11:30 pm. Your deadline was 8 am. You needed to write, sleep, share the article on a company website, and prepare for work in the morning. God help you! you don’t know what to write yet.

You sipped the juice and remembered what happened during the day. It was what delayed the project till this night. You would have… You could have finished writing instead of drinking juice and thinking you could survive with it. You needed real food, but there was nothing at home for you. So yeah, you would have to manage the juice and hope you would not wake up in the morning with pains in your stomach.

‘And doctor Aproko warned me about eating at night o,’ you muttered.

No, drinking doesn’t count. It doesn’t. Doesn’t it, really, as in, does it? You wondered.

You lay your head on the table. You held the pen and paper you wanted to use yo write your ideas, playing with it between your fingers.

Your mind went to the event that happened that kept you awake till night. You had gone into a club, after church service, as a lively girl that you were. You wanted to have fun, and somehow you had found blood on your way to the restroom. You called the police, of course, and they came and took corpse. They had to question you — kept you waiting and you were tired when you returned home.

What would you write for your company website?

The pencil fell off your hand.

You heard a knock, and you opened the door. You squinted to see who it was. But there was no one.

Not today, please. Who could be playing pranks on you in your own house? You lived alone. Had someone broken in? Or were you hallucinating about the corpse and the panic at the club earlier during the day?

You rubbed your eyes and stared around. You stepped out of the bedroom. The lobby felt cold to your feet, and you looked down.

That was when you saw it. Blood was on the floor like someone was dragged in its own blood. It was almost like painting the floor. You held on tight to your pyjamas and put the fabric in your mouth, stiffening a scream.
Your eyes followed the path of the blood, and it led to your guest room.

That door had been locked for ages. Bloodstains were on the floor. You gawked, shaking, legs buckling severely with fear.

Kakaka! The sound of knock came behind the guest room door like someone hammered it. You couldn’t help it now, so you screamed.

You jumped up. The pencil flew out of your hand. You have been dreaming, and you were so scared. You put your hands on your chest and tried to calm down, but your heart pounded like a giant generator set.

You looked at the wall clock over the top of your nightstand. Gracious God of Nazareth! It’s 6am.

TWO

LOST KEYS CAN LEAD TO A BROKEN NOSE


I had lost my keys. They were a bunch of keys of all rooms and drawers in the house. I used to put them in my car, but the vehicle slept at the mechanic. I wasn't sure it was there, though. I had been to a million places after parking the car at the mechanic workshop at 2 pm — my office, my girlfriend place, the restaurant, the bar... I guessed the keys could be anywhere. I stared at my house door and checked the time on my wristwatch: 11:00 pm.

I brought out my phone and dialled my mechanic’s number. It rang and rang and dropped. Then I sat on the terrace and thought of what to do. My joints ached from fatigue. I had stayed back and worked some more with the thought that I would not go to work the next day.

How would I spend the night when the door was locked? How would I find my keys?

I stood, picked my phone and was about to leave the house and sleep in a hotel when I heard someone sliding a louvre above my head. I looked up to see Anna, a gorgeous teenager who lived around.

I remembered how I got to know her name; it was like an assignment. She was the quietest and ghost girl in the apartment. The first time I saw I was mesmerised by her beauty, the way her dimples decorated her face and her thin lips made her smile adorable. I stopped her, introduced myself and asked of her name.

“I won't tell you that cos you ask.”

“Why?”

“You might forget.”

“Trust me; I won't.”

“I will tell you on another day,” she had said.

Then I waited for days until I ran into her one Friday. She glared at my girlfriend who was standing beside me, but I smiled and asked again. She managed to tell me her name. Anna

Anna was looking down at me, and she seemed like she wanted to help.

“Hey, hi, wait,’ she shouted.

I waited for her, my hands in my trouser pocket. She used the elevator down and rushed out of the house.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Well, as it seems, I am going to a hotel for the night. I lost my keys, and I don't know how to break in. I won't — even if I can. And I can't even call a handyman at this time... So, what's up?”

“Sorry,” she said.

“Yeah, thanks.”

“Maybe... Maybe I can help.”

I eyed her. “In what way?”

“You can stay over with me. My parents aren't around, and you can use the couch till morning.”

“Goodness gracious, thank you.”

We flew to the fourth floor through the elevator and walked into the apartments, which she claimed she shared with her parents. Her parents hardly showed up; I had never seen them.

I sat on the couch and removed my shoes. Without much time, I was preparing to sleep. She made me comfortable by bringing a pillow and a blanket. I said thanks and lay on the couch. But I didn't sleep. I kept scrolling the internet, listening to the continuous shrrrrrrrrr sound of her frying what smelled like meat in the kitchen.

I looked at her and wished to eat some of those meats. I kept quiet anyway, telling myself she had done great for giving me the chance to sleep.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of something crashing to the ground. I ran towards the kitchen. It was followed by the sound of the central door opening, and Anna screamed like she was shot. Hot oil had poured on her laps, and she was crying, lying on the floor, crying, and waving her fingers.

I shifted her dress upward and held her hands so that she would stop touching the burns.

“Is there ointment in this house?” I asked and she pointed at the cabinet, all. I rushed to get it.

I finished applying it, and when I looked up, Anna was looking behind me. I looked back. A woman with the same kind of small long nose and blonde hair was coming towards us like a drunk driver.

“No, no, no,” Anna shouted.

The woman picked the hot and empty frying pan and smashed me on my face. I fell on the floor with a blood-filled nose.

***

https://www.facebook.com/Hadehsblog-113251860812182?_rdc=1&_rdr

NO CATS

The weather over the city had just drawn dark outside the bungalow. Mary was sitting on the couch inside the house, reading the newspaper, wearing a pair of recommended glasses. Having returned from the busy city a few minutes ago, she wanted to read the news before going to sleep. From a shelf behind the dining room, a small radio played John Lennon’s song, Oh My Love. That was one of her favourite songs her previous marriage gave her, and now at sixty, she still smiled while listening to the music alone. It was like time traveling to when her ex-husband was alive, and they used to play childishly and listen and sing together. She had tried to get married again, and her second marriage was half a loaf better than none.

Her house was sitting among a load-some of pines. During the day, when the winter heat got too much, she would sit outside with a jug of juice, listening to songs, watching her grandchildren’s photos, or reading literature. The house was a bungalow with three rooms for Mary and her second husband. But now it was dark outside. From inside, she couldn’t tell if those were pines or just trees.

The song had changed. It had begun playing another of her favorites from the past, Imagine by John Lennon. This one got her to turn around and walk to the dining room, holding the dining chair to steady herself. Her old legs could not support the best of her when it comes to standing and dancing. But at the moment, she couldn’t help it. She was filled with so much nostalgia from her past relationship that she wanted to dance, maybe hold her former husband’s hands too. She smiled and smirked her lips simultaneously.

While she was thinking of her deceased husband, a cat crawled past her window. It was her cat, Maverick. She had no idea how the thing got out of the house, except, of course, it had climbed the ceiling. Hey, damn it, Maverick, whata do outside, she said. She walked towards the window and saw a boy followed the cat. He was more like a toddler than a boy because he wobbled after the cat; he walked like he would fall — yet to get a good grip of his walking abilities. He wasn’t fast enough as an adult, and the cat stepped away slowly, meowing at the inconvenience the toddler was making her pass through.

Mary called on the boy, hey, boy, stopped chasing after my cat. But the boy wouldn’t listen, or he seemed to have one thing on his mind, and that was the cat. Mary went to the window and pressed her nose to it, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose. Whose son are you, and where do you think you are going? She asked, but her voice was limited to the room. She was alarmed to see the little boy running after a cat in the dark. Mary had children and grandchildren, and seeing one of those troublesome and cute little things in danger was never an inviting thing to see. She slammed her hands on the radio to stop the song, and she went to her bedroom.

It was a large bedroom with a large bed. The floor was made of tiles, and a portion had a rug. When she turned the light on, the room walls were plain, the color of wine and butter. On a small nightstand were two framed photos, one with her two children and their partners, and the other was with her grandkids. She picked her coat, an umbrella, a torch and hobbled out of the bedroom. She turned off the lights and locked windows before she walked into the dark front yard of pines.

She listened to the nights as if she was waiting to hear a call, and then she turned on the torch. She couldn’t hear the meow of the cats again, but the boy’s cry cut through the standing pines like lightning. There was something dangerously fearful with a crying toddler in the darkness that touched Mary, and she began to run into the dark as fast as her legs could carry her. Her feet felt too big in her flip-flop, but she bounced ahead even if it were hard to lift her feet off the hard ground. Her torch flashed through the stems of pines and flowers. Some animals scurried around. They must be raccoons, but there was something more urgent, the cry of a toddler all by himself, in the dark that bothered her than raccoons. When she was still in the job of nursing a baby, she would not let her kids out of the house when the time was 7 pm. What kinds of parents were called millennials? Even her own children didn’t know what was good for kids.

She was close. She could hear the cry louder. Her torch flashed at two eyeballs in the distance, and they were looking so afraid of the light. She stopped running. Boy, come on here. What are you doing alone there?

He wouldn’t bulge. He held on to something, and Mary pointed her torch, adjusted her glasses, and took one step closer.

It was the smell that got to her first: blood and heat. The body was fresh of death; you could tell from the twitching hands that just collapsed. The bushes had been disturbed as if there was a fight. Now they were two bodies apart. A man and woman had been badly beaten in the head that she could hardly make up one side of the faces. They lay one after another, more like on top of each other, the ladies heard partially resting on the man’s boots.

Mary staggered back. Her leg failed, and she collapsed on the floor. The evil had come to a peaceful place, she muttered. She tried to get up, hearing the toddler’s steady cry as he held onto his mother’s corpse.

Mary pulled herself up eventually, laying the torch on the floor and picking it up when she got to her feet. She staggered toward the boy. Her feet were off the hard floor and on the greens, then her next step landed on something soft that frightened her. She yelped and pulled her feet off quickly. She pointed her touch to the ground. Oh, goodness, Maverick. It was her cat, Maverick. It was dead, head smashed off completely that you thought it didn’t have one.

Mary saved the tears and extended her trembling hands to the toddler.

Come on, boy, let’s get out of here, she said.

She heaved the boy up into her arms and turned around.

Following the route Mary had come through, a figure in a hoodie was hurrying away.

Fear guided Mary’s hands to point the torch at the figure. On the back of his hoodie was the image of a cat, two red signs crossing it off. No cats.



The End

Thanks for reading

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