Please Welcome Muskoka People

On our wedding day, wearing a new suit, shirt and tie and all his wedding
bling, Dave had to do some fixing on our old outboard motor.
Photo by Erin Monett of Everimages.

It's a special day for me!
No, not Hallowe'en (although I am looking forward to taking young Sam out trick or treating and I do wish all of you a happy and spooky evening).
Today I have officially launched a new business venture. It's a new blog called Muskoka People and it's all about putting the spotlight on people and their businesses in my community. Muskoka is a big place, encompassing the towns of Gravenhurst, Bracebridge and Huntsville with all kinds of smaller villages in between. It's the jewel of Ontario's cottage country, less than three hours north of Toronto, and its beauty is legendary. Clear, beautiful lakes. Unending forests with towering sugar maples and majestic pines. Craggy outcrops of the Canadian Shield. No wonder so many cottagers and tourists come here year after year. No wonder people like me call it home.
Muskoka People is a place where local people and their businesses can be showcased with a professionally written profile, a photograph, a logo and contact information. Customers will pay one low fee, and their story will be online for as long as blogger exists. Every time someone googles their name or their type of business, their story will show up. As far as I'm concerned, it's the best advertising money can buy. With this, they pay a one-time fee (I'm starting out for the unbelievably low price of $100) and that's it.
I know with my experience from this blog that people searching for stuff online continuously hit old stories of mine, especially posts with specific titles. So I know that if I label each post with a general title, like Muskoka Mechanic, anybody searching for a mechanic in this area will see my website.
Anyway, that's the idea.
 I hope you like it. I hope you can support me. For now, I would appreciate comments, followers and pimpage on your own blogs or through facebook or Twitter.If you live in Muskoka or in the area (I'll definitely take Almaguin, Parry Sound and Haliburton) and would like a profile written about you, don't hesitate to send me an e-mail. I would love to do it. And, at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, if you're among the first few people to contact me, I'll do your profile for free, just to get the ball rolling.
Speaking of rolling balls, my first profile is my new husband, "the most photographed man on the internet" according to Alan W. Davidson. My Dave is an awesome mechanic, one of the best, as honest as the day is long. I figured he would be the perfect first profile.
Above is a photo of him on our wedding day, all gussied up in shirt and tie, making a quick fix on our old outboard motor so our photographer, Erin Monett, could take photos from the river.
Please drop by the new site, say hello, and spread the word for me. I appreciate all of my internet friends so much and hate to bug you, but I know you'll help because you're special as they come. What would I do without you?
Hugs to you all.
oxoxox

The Fine Print - #fridayflash

The widow of Scarlett Pimm's ex-boss placed a red rose on top of his coffin, then stepped back.

Scarlett watched this from a hill overlooking Craggy Bluffs All Saints Cemetery. Gangly and string-tied, she stood hollow-eyed in the shadow of a dying sugar maple, waiting for the graveside service to end. From this angle the mourners resembled fat black beetles, blundering blindly around the widow, licking up to her painted sorrow like it was a dark jewel. Their shiny umbrella backs swarmed around the widow, carrying her to her limousine on a sycophantic cloud, then skittering to their own mini-vans to follow her for pickle-wrapped sandwiches and tepid funeral tea.

A backhoe rolled in, covered the corpse with dirt, then rolled away.

Scarlett waited for a while, waited until the sun was starting to flatten in the tender sky, waited for the world to forget the man in the hole, then slid down the hill on the skin of her own shadow.

She stood in front of the tombstone, so fresh that marble dust still lay in the letters of his epitaph.

Andrew Joseph Williams 

Born June 1, 1942. 

Died October 28, 2010. 

Husband & Corporate Giant 

Respected by all.

She took the hammer and chisel from her tool belt and began inscribing an epitaph of her own. She had waited 12 years to do this, ever since her job had been outsourced to some febrile curry town across the ocean.

"You may have the people of this community fooled into thinking you are someone honourable but I know who you are," she told him on the day she was fired, "and I am going to put it on your tombstone some day."

He had just laughed at her. Laughed, and had security escort her out the front door.

But now it was Scarlett who was laughing as marble chips flew, as sweat soaked her hair, as grave dirt crusted into the knees of her jeans, as four words emerged on the back of Andrew Joseph Williams' tombstone: Lying Sack of Shit.

She finished by chiselling a neat little asterisk beside his name.

"Unlike you," she said, "I always keep my promises."

Why I'm Lucky

No matter what happens, I am lucky.

Luckier than most.

He loves me.

(running away with me) - #fridayflash

What was that?

Under a handmade quilt festooned with moose and forest fauna, an electric blanket, a plaid flannelette sheet and a scrunched goose down pillow, was Mrs. Nessie Kempenfeldt, a pretty young newlywed with eyes currently as round as dinner plates.

Mr. Rick Kempenfeld, Nessie’s knight in shining ball cap, was away for a few days, taking in a manual transmission workshop for automotive technicians.

This was Nessie’s first night alone in the home they had just bought, a log cabin built in 1880. By day it was a charming place. Squared log timbers stained dark brown, chinked with white cement, sitting in the middle of a forest on the edge of a wandering river. There were no neighbours for miles. Nobody to complain if they laughed too loud, or cranked their music up. No nosey-parkers to spy on them as they fooled around under the giant pines.

Rick had called her a couple of hours ago, to see how she was.

“I’m fine,” she said. But that was when there was still light in the gray skies.

Now there was a storm brewing and the power was out. Lightning flashed in the forest. Thunder rumbled and rolled through distant hills. Wind shrieked and howled, buffeting her windows, tearing at the clothesline, flapping tarps covering the woodpile, swirling autumn leaves in a centrifuge of black, whistling fury.

Nessie was hearing things.

Creaking, moaning, crashing things.

Things that weren’t the wind nor the thunder.

She huddled under the blankets, under her pillow, afraid to look, afraid to move, wish-wishing with all her heart that the storm would move on.

Lightning flashed.

Something shuffled. Something close.

Nessie squealed.

The shuffling stopped.

She tried to calm herself. 

There’s nothing there. It’s just my imagination.

Thunder rumbled. It was getting closer. 

There, that shuffling noise again. 

Nessie bit down on her pillow, trying not to scream.

Something scraped against the windows. It sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. 

Just branches rubbing on the window. Not skeletal fingers scraping the glass, trying to get in.

Something moaned. Something close.

It’s not moaning. It’s my imagination.

Nessie was scared, crazy scared. Her heart thumped so hard she could feel it, like it was outside her body, and there was a stink. A horrible stench and she realized it was the sweat that ran out of her, that poured out of her on her breath every time she exhaled. And she was breathing hard, raspy, noisy, shallow breaths.

I feel like I’m having a heart attack. 

Something crashed out in the living room.

This time Nessie couldn’t hold it in. She screamed bloody murder and whatever it was out in the other room kept crashing, bumping into things, bouncing off the furniture.

It’s just my imagination.

She said it again and again, like a mantra, as the storm intensified and that thing, whatever it was that was in the house with her (my imagination) scritched and banged and scuttled in one room, then another, then another.

Breathe, she told herself.

She shut her ears and eyes to what was going on outside her bed and she tried instead to focus on what was going on inside her head.

Why am I scared? I’m scared because it’s storming and I have an overactive imagination. If I could just shut my imagination down, bury it, I could relax and go to sleep. What do I do when I can’t sleep? I deal with whatever is worrying me. Worried about money? I go the computer, check my bank account and pay bills. Or I draw up a budget. Whatever it takes, I resolve the problem and I am able to sleep.

Fine, she thought. I’ll just bury my imagination.

She tried deep breathing. She shut her eyes and concentrated first on her toes, squeezing them, releasing them, willing them to relax; then moving on to her ankles.

Thunder boomed, simultaneous with lightning. She heard wild laughter from the kitchen, scuffling in the bathroom. Nessie forgot all about her toes and unwound a ferocious ear-bleeding scream.

“THAT’S IT! I’VE HAD ENOUGH!” And she threw the covers back and leapt from her bed, running through the house in her t-shirt and her underwear and her bare feet, keeping her hands out in front of her like a blind man, hitting her hip on something sharp on the way out, screaming obscenities as the pain exploded. But not stopping, afraid to stop, afraid to see.

“You’re just my imagination!” she screamed, grabbing the barn jacket she kept hanging on the hall rack by the front door, throwing it on as she threw open the door, as lightning lit up the front yard and thunder masked the sound of her blistering anger and her pounding heart.

She ran across the yard through the pouring rain, bare feet splashing through the muck, heading for the garage where the shovels were kept. She yanked open the door. Lightning flooded the shed. She saw the spade she was seeking, clutched it in both hands, like a weapon, and headed back into the yard, into the storm, into the maelstrom of fear that was orchestrating her every move.

In the middle of the yard she started digging at a frenzied pace. Sod, pine needles, dirt, they sprayed away from her shovel as she dug in, dug down, dug out. Rain drenched her hair, drenched her clothes. The storm raged all around but at least, out here, there were no other noises. No shuffling. No moans. 

Nessie dug the grave until it was a couple of feet deep, then she flung the shovel aside and yanked off her imagination, pulled it off like she was shedding a skin. It didn’t come off easily. She had to pull with all her might, digging in with her fingernails, which came away bloody and dripping, but off it came, like a shroud of slippery flesh. She dumped the heavy thing awkwardly into the hole, then covered it over with dirt, stamping on it with her bare feet when she was done, laughing all the while like a loon on a lonely lake when summer is over and everyone is gone.

“THERE YOU GO!” she laughed, looking up to the stormy skies. “Can I sleep now?”

No one answered. Just the rain. Just the thunder.

She walked back to the house, feeling better, feeling calm. She went to the bedroom with a light heart, wet hair and dirty feet, smelling somewhat of goat, but not caring. Nessie was sleepy now. She crawled into her bed, pulled up the quilt and the electric blanket and the flannelette sheet, and closed her eyes. In moments her breathing slowed and she started to make that funny little snoring noise her husband always teased her about. A small noise, not quite a snore, but almost.

Nessie dozed, at peace.

She awoke a few minutes later when something tapped her on the back.

“It wasn’t your imagination,” something said. “It was me.”

Beside the bed a chainsaw fired up.

Nessie screamed.

Goldilocks & the Three Critiques

One day Goldilocks entered a novel marathon.
She got three critiques from three different judges.
Each critique came on a form with three different categories:

Manuscript Strengths

Areas of Improvement

Final Comment

All three judges had vastly different takes on Goldilocks' manuscript.

One judge seemed to really, really like it. This was probably the mommy bear judge.
Manuscript Strengths: Terrific dialogue - you've got a really good ear! These folks sound very Maritime-y – is that intentional? This is very funny and I enjoyed reading it. You conjure up the small town cheating husband with real credibility & humour.
Areas of Improvement: The sex is a bit more graphic than some readers will like. You've got a knack for hilarious similes but be careful not to overuse it – there are four great examples on the first page alone and you may want to be judicious about them. I want to believe in Lou as a journalist but perhaps this case needs to be made a bit more strongly? Mostly we see her as a last-to-know, angry wife.
Final Comment: Don't stop! This has potential and I hope you press on with it. Will Lou find Lavalife love? Will Jimmy redeem himself somehow? I'd love to know.

One judge had balanced comments, like the porridge that was just right or the chair that fit Goldie's butt perfectly.
Manuscript Strengths: Intriguing opening. Good description, metaphors and similies. Humour and drama intermingle quite well.
Areas of Improvement: Some of the dialogue is inappropriate for the character - for instance, Lou's dialogue seems too rustic/rural for a career writer, and Spencer's is too sophisticated for a four-year-old. (ex. a young child wouldn't say 'woman' or describe eggplant as 'disgusting' or wish that he could be rid of the 'damn backpack' ... and 'flake out' on the couch.)
Final Comment: It's difficult to judge the plot's direction on a small portion of the intended novel: certainly there are good possibilities here, and you clearly have a talent for descriptive narrative that is engaging and entertaining. The characters are interesting and I hope you enjoy continuing to develop them.

The last judge (grumpy old bear) didn't like anything. 
Manuscript Strengths: (this area was left blank by the judge. apparently nothing was strong about the manuscript, not even the spelling)
Areas of Improvement: Where are the likeable characters? Jimmy's revolting. Lou doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities. Aside from extramarital sex, sexual problems (which are described in way too much detail) and needing to have sex, nothing happens.
Final Comment: If you're going to write a story about a dysfunctional family, I'd suggest inventing a town name and not set it in actual small town Ontario.

Um, in her own defence, Goldilocks wants to point out that she stumbled over a name for the town but decided to let the muse take her and keep writing, rather than wasting time thinking of a town name. She figured she'd change the town name in the editing process.

Oh sod it, Goldilocks is me, of course. I just wanted to share what the judges had to say about the marathon. And I'm a little perplexed by the third judge's comments.
Although, seriously, I shouldn't complain. Some of my fellow marathoners got just plain nasty critiques. I mean, terribly nasty. On balance, mine were pretty fair. And I did get a big giggle out of the last judge not writing ANYTHING in the strengths category.
I'm not sure how to take them, though. Do I believe the happy judges? Do I believe the judge that had nothing good to say? Do I find a happy medium?
I'm curious to hear how other people handle their critiques. How much do you "take in" what they have to say? How much do you change?
Must go now. I suddenly have a craving for porridge.

Behind

I took my own advice this afternoon, taking some time, taking some photos.

It was a gorgeous day here in Muskoka. Wish you were here.

I am so behind.

The car rattles along the highway.

Going home. 

Going to work.

Doesn’t matter. 

It just goes.

On a track. 

On a one-way street.

On a wheel that never stops turning.

Behind at work. 

Deadlines loom like

monsters in grown-up closets,

hiding behind the dresses

and the sensible pumps.

I start one thing.

Almost finish another.

I lose myself in the middle

of three more.

People interrupt.

Phones ring.

Tempers burn. Hearts race.

I hide in the bathroom

because it is safe.

Behind at home.

Dishes grow black in the sink.

Laundry moulders in the machine,

wrinkles in the dryer,

breeds on the bedroom floor.

Stuff overwhelms me,

begging to be put away.

I don’t know where that is,

Away.

Maybe, if I find it, 

I could go there myself.

And let the dishes, the laundry,

and the dusty knick-knacks

find their own way.

Behind everywhere.

Cards to write.

E-mails to send.

Stories to read.

Apologies to make.

Thank you for the crystal vase,

it will look perfect in the hutch

with the doors shut

alongside the dishes

I only use at Christmas.

Hey friend, how are you?

I’ve been busy, I’m behind,

I’m sorry I haven’t written sooner.

I’m sorry I haven’t read more.

I’m sorry I said those awful things.

I’m sorry I’m not the person

you might have thought I was.

I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother,

daughter, sister, wife, friend.

I’d try harder but I’m so behind.

Unread books pile up

beside my bed.

They are guilt, printed on paper.

Unwashed hair,

unmade bed,

unsomething else.

Alone in the car,

on the way home,

or to work

(does it matter?),

I catch my breath.

Sunlight filters through the forest,

golden leaves, the stubborn ones,

still clinging to hope,

glow yellow in waning afternoon.

I want to stop the car,

jump out, take a moment

to walk through the forest,

crunch brown leaves underfoot,

smell the earthy wonder

of the changing seasons.

I know it would be magic.

It would bring me back

to childhood wandering,

destination-less, timeless.

Stop the car,

my heart sings.

You won’t be sorry!

This moment won’t last,

I tell myself.

Take it while it’s here.

But the car rattles along the highway.

On to the next thing.

The next thing.

The next thing.

I am so behind.

By the way, if you have a moment, pop over to the Canadian Blog Awards, where my good friend Laurita Miller's blog, Brain Droppings, is up for a prize in the Culture & Literature Blog category.

Just go to the Canadian Blog Awards website and cast for your vote for dear Laurita. She is an outstanding writer and has a most elegant blog, full of wonderful stories, poems and photographs.

Good luck, Laurita! Hope you win!

Why Mabel Stopped Going to Church - #fridayflash

“Did I tell you about the new minister?” asked Mabel MacFarlane.

“No,” replied Olive Ferguson. “Is he new, then?”

“Well it’s not a he,” said Mabel. “It’s a she.”

“Oh,” said Olive, nodding her head. “Very modern.”

“Too modern for me,” said Mabel. “I stopped going.”

Olive put down her teacup with a startled clink. “Stopped going, Mabel? That’s not like you, hmmm?”

Mabel stole a swift glance around the social room at Bonnie View Vista to see if anyone was listening. Not that anyone was. Old George Stanfield was leaning heavily over the tea table, stuffing arrowroot biscuits in his toothless gob. Caroline Stapleton was dealing a hand to her tittering euchre cronies and Margaret Fields was batting her eyelashes at the orderly. They were all stone deaf anyway, except for the orderly, and he didn’t care what any of the old codgers had to say, thinking them drooling and daft.

“Look at him over there texting his girlfriend,” Mabel said.

“Who, the minister?” Olive said.

“No you dumb cow, not the minister, the orderly.”

“Oh,” said Olive. “I thought you said he was a she. Is she a lesbian, then?”
“Who?” asked Mabel.

“I don’t know,” said Olive, “you brought it up. I’m terribly confused. The minister, I think.”

Mabel stared at her friend. 

Her forehead with its hand-drawn eyebrows, painted more in the style of a Van Gogh than a Maybelline, wrinkled while she tried to focus.

Olive sipped tea. Lipstick stained the rim of her cup.

“Oh yes,” Mabel said, “I remember now. We were talking about the church and why I stopped going.”
“You stopped going?” Olive asked. “Whatever for?”

Mabel’s left eyebrow twitched. Ever so slightly. “It was that new minister, that woman. Oh, it was all fine at first. Her sermons were nice; didn’t put me to sleep like old Rev. Harold did, bless his soul.”

“It was a heart attack that got him, wasn’t it?” 

“No, Olive, he was run over by Harvey Ashby’s honey wagon.”

“Oh yes, I remember now. Terrible that was. Harvey had been pumping out the holding tank at the manse. Poor Rev. Harold, run over by his own excrement. Was it hard to get a replacement, then?”
Mabel nodded. “Oh yes, it took months to find that woman. The elders did all sorts of interviews but they’re all a bunch of wishy-washy picky-pants and couldn’t decide on anyone. Finally they picked Rev. Amber Spencely, of all people. Probably won over by her straight teeth and yellow hair. Straight out of nursery school by the looks of her.”

“That young, was she? I thought there were rules about that sort of thing.”

“Oh Olive,” Mabel said. “Of course she was old enough. She went to university down in the city. She had to be old enough. But she sure had young ideas.”

“Such as?
Mabel finished the last bit of tea and looked Olive straight in the eye. “She didn’t call God a He.”

Olive gasped a little. “No!”

“Oh yes! She said there were arguments on both sides of whether the Holy Father was a father or a mother. She talked about it in church! Right there in church!”

“Well I never,” said Olive.

“That’s not all. She said the Bible wasn’t necessarily God’s word.”

“What?” said Olive.

“That’s what she said! That it wasn’t to be taken as God’s word, but as a collection of nicey-nice legends and fables – she called them fables, Olive – that show us believers how to live our lives.”

“Fables!” said Olive, suitably aghast.

“The worst thing, though, the very worst thing, was what she said to me and Pauline Rosseau after a church supper one night. We were just finishing up the dishes and Pauline, you know her, she’s that French widow that lives over there on the east side of town.”

“Oh sure,” said Olive, “nice lady that Pauline. Too bad about her husband.”

“He was old, though, lived a long life. Pauline, she’s a lot older than she looks.”

“Dyes her hair black,” Olive said. “I can tell.”

Mabel looked at her friend like she was a bug. “And me I thought that it was natural on an 90 year old woman.” She scowled. “Like I was saying, Pauline was telling Rev. Spencely how important the church is to her and how she tries her best to do everything according to God’s wishes because she wants to get to Heaven and that’s when the Reverend said Heaven wasn’t real.”

Olive’s eyes widened. “No!”

Mabel nodded. “Yes! I heard it with my own eyes! Rev. Spencely said that Heaven was like the fables in the Bible, designed to keep people on the straight and narrow, like a carrot in front of a donkey. And to give us comfort in the shadows and valleys of death. Well, that was precisely the wrong thing to say to Pauline. She kept her composure in front of the minister but the very moment we were outside she started to cry.”
“Oh dear,” Olive said. “Poor dear.”

“Pauline was looking forward to going to Heaven and seeing her husband again. Hearing there was no Heaven meant she would never see his sweet face. And here she had been following all the church rules for all those years – for nothing!”

“She might as well have been swearing and fornicating,” Olive said.

“Might as well,” Mabel said.

“Huh,” Olive said.

The two women were quiet for a moment, lost in thought.

“So what happened?” Olive asked.

“What do you mean what happened?”

Mabel looked around the room. The euchre ladies were gone. Margaret and the orderly had disappeared some place. George was reclined in an easy chair, snoring, little bits of biscuit crumbs around his open mouth.

“Well, Pauline and I stopped going to church, for one thing. She said what’s the point of going when there’s no Heaven and I agreed. I have better things to do on Sunday morning besides listening to boring sermons. That’s when Coronation Street is on the television.”

She leaned towards Olive. “And I heard the new minister disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” asked Olive.

“Into thin air,” said Mabel. “Didn’t show up for Sunday service. Didn’t leave word she wasn’t coming. Nobody has seen her since.”

Olive’s eyes lit up. “So what do you think happened to her then?”

“How should I know?” Mabel said.

Olive looked disappointed. “Oh. I thought you might, for some reason.”

“No dearie, not me,” Mabel said.

“Oh,” said Olive. She sighed. “Well, then, what else is new?”

“Not much. I’m going over to Pauline’s later on. She’s expecting Harvey Ashby over to pump out her septic tank. She has some kind of clog.”

“A clog?” Olive said. “Sounds nasty.”

“You have no idea,” said Mabel.

Honeymoon Hotel - #fridayflash

Tiffany-Britney Anderson-Smith-Blake and Dylan-Hunter Morrison-Blake of North River, Ontario, were newlyweds. 

Mrs. Anderson-Smith-Blake was 17. She worked part-time at Tim Horton’s.

Mr. Morrison-Blake was 18. He was actively seeking employment; at least that’s the box he ticked off on his unemployment insurance papers every week.

There was no shotgun. Not that anyone knew of. 

Tiff-Brit’s 34-year-old mother had paid for the wedding and the Legion reception using money she had borrowed from her mother, with no real intention of repayment. The bride had spared no expense, ordering a strapless satin gown with a Princess Diana train from some online version of Wal-mart Couture. The groom spent his suit money on booze and Indian smokes and wound up borrowing an ill-fitting pinstriped number manufactured sometime during the 1980s, judging by the shoulder pads. 

Still, they looked fine. More than fine. Teenagers in love have a glow that no amount of polyester can cloud.

The happy couple had travelled down East to visit family. They hung out at his uncle’s house in Nova Scotia for a few days, splashing in the ocean, drinking rum and Cokes and eating fresh lobster. The visit itself hadn’t cost Tiff-Brit and Dylan anything because they had mooched off the old uncle, but the drive itself had been expensive. Stopping twice  a day to fill up their aging Neon had pretty much tapped the money they had received for wedding presents. Dylan figured he had just enough money to make it home.

They had hoped to make it home that night but driving through Montreal in rush-hour traffic when it was pissing down rain put them almost two hours behind schedule. They’d been on the road since Moncton and, by the time they got to Ottawa, they had been driving for 13 hours.

“Only six more hours and we’re home, Tiff-Brit,” Dylan said to his exhausted bride.

“Six hours, Dylan? Omigawd, honey, I’m tired.” She started to cry. He could see the tears running down her face in the green glow of the dashboard light. The windshield wipers pushed back at the water, pushed back whatever energy he had left.

“Tiff-Brit? Listen to me babe, I don’t have much money left. If we stay somewhere tonight, it ain’t gonna be fancy. Just a no-tell motel, that’s all, you understand?”

Tiff-Brit nodded, wiping the tears from her pretty face. “Like maybe a Best Western or a Howard Johnson’s?”

Dylan shook his head and pointed to a sign just ahead. “More like that one, Tiff-Brit.”

The big tacky sign proclaimed, “Super 6.” Somebody had spray-painted a couple more sixes on it. A blinking neon sign said, “Vacancy,” and another sign said, “Rooms $68 per night. Cheapest rooms in Ottawa, guaranteed!” There were a few other cars in the parking lot but it didn’t look overly busy. Dylan pulled up to the office and went inside to see about a room. 

Tiff-Brit waited in the car, looking around nervously. There were a few people milling around, smoking cigarettes under the office awning, trying to stay dry on the rainy night. They were talking low but every once in a while they seemed to look her way and laugh. Tiff-Brit slunk down in her seat a bit and mentally urged Dylan to hurry up. On one hand she was hoping he’d come out and say he had gotten a room; on the other, she was kinda hoping there were no rooms. The place was kinda creepy.

The office door pushed open and Dylan came out with a grin on his face, giving her a thumb’s up. She smiled back, then gathered up her purse and got out while her husband grabbed their suitcase out of the trunk. He locked the car doors then rushed ahead to unlock the door to unit six. He held the door open for her and Tiff-Brit stepped into the gloom.

“Omigawd, Dylan, get the light, it smells like someone died in here!”

Dylan fumbled around for a switch and snapped it on. A dim fluorescent bulb tried its best, but the shadows still overwhelmed the brightness. And there was this stench, this unbelievable stench.

Tiff-Brit gagged a bit. The room smelled like a combination of musty basement, cat pee, stale cigarette smoke and something else. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

Then Dylan said, “It smells like the back room of the butcher shop I worked for one summer,” and Tiff-Brit thought, yeah, that’s what it smells like.

“We’re not staying here,” she said.

Dylan said, “We gotta. We’re paid up. No refunds – the guy in the office told me that flat out.”

“I don’t care,” she said, “we’re not staying.”

Dylan sat heavily on the bed and looked up at his wife. “Well, Tiff-Brit, if we leave here, we gotta drive all night, out there in that storm where I can’t see shit – and a moose or a deer could pop out in front of us and we wouldn’t even know it until we were nose first into those flailing hooves.”

He paused. Tiff-Brit was caving a bit, he could tell. 

“I gotta tell ya, honey, I’m tired. I don’t think I could drive anymore tonight. You don’t want me falling asleep at the wheel. Your mama sure wouldn’t want it, I know that for certain fact.”

Tiff-Brit sat down on the bed beside her young husband and gave him a pout.

“This place freaks me out a little,” she said. “And it stinks.”

Dylan put his arm around her, gave her a good squeeze and told her he’d spray some of her cologne around, check to make sure the sheets were clean and run a bath while he ran out to pick up some food. 

“When I get back with dinner, you’ll be clean, the room will smell better and you’ll feel differently about things,” he promised.

He forced a cheerful whistle on his lips while he started running water in the motel-issue bathtub, sprayed some of his wife’s perfume around, unwrapped a package of soap and poured a dribble of shampoo in the water to simulate bubbles. He gathered up his keys and counted out enough coin for a couple of burgers, then hugged his wife.

“You go get in that tub. That’s an order,” he said. “There’s a McDonald’s just down the street. I can see it from here. I’m just gonna go through the drive-through and I’ll be back before you’re even out of the tub. So don’t worry.”

Tiff-Brit nodded from where her face was buried somewhere near his armpit.

“Okay,” she said in a small voice.

He kissed her quick then hustled her into the bathroom, then kissed her again and yelled, “Love ya!” as he went through the door.

Tiff-Brit stared at the closed door for a moment. Sighed. Looked around nervously, then closed and locked the bathroom door. Dylan was right, with the bathroom door closed and fragrant water filling the tub, it didn’t smell quite so bad. She took off her clothes and stepped into the tub, enjoying that moment when the hot water greeted her road-weary toes. She sat down gingerly, then exhaled deeply as she sank into the bubbly, watery warmth. When the tub was full, she turned off the faucet with her foot, then closed her eyes and relaxed.

Time ticked by. She drowsed, then awoke to cooling water.

“Dylan?” she called.

No answer.

Chilled, she turned on the hot water with her foot. She was in no hurry to return to the stench of the room, not without Dylan. And he was sure to be back any minute. 

Still, she was a little worried. He should have been back. Ages ago.

The water pouring out of the faucet caught her attention.

It gurgled, glugged, stopped for an instant then belched a glutinous mass of quivering crimson. Tiff-Brit shrieked as the bloody mess poured into the tub, getting thinner, getting redder, getting fresher, somehow. Her shriek turned into a full-on keening scream as she scrambled to get out of the tub, slipped on the bar of motel soap and fell back into the foaming, frothing, bubbling mass. She lay there, dazed, as the faucet slowed down, burped again, and spewed out what looked like a finger.

Tiff-Brit stared at it, dumbstruck, as she realized the finger was wearing Dylan’s shiny new wedding band, the one she’d ordered from Sears.

She started screaming again, this time in pain, as the bloody mess started eating through her skin, working quickly, dissolving tissue and then bone, mixing her flesh with the bloody acid still pouring from the faucet. She screamed until she was hoarse, until enough of her body was dissolved that she no longer could scream, and the tub overflowed with the melted, melded flesh of her, and of her husband, onto the floor, across the tile and into the musty room.

Her last thoughts were of their wedding, their beautiful wedding, and the minister saying, “And two shall become one.”

Outside, the smokers listened as the woman’s screams faded, sucking every last bit of her pain into their lungs, hauling it deep into their scarred, soulless psyches; then waited to see what weary travelers would check in next to the honeymoon hotel.