6 posts tagged “vl2f”

It would take him a while to find the body; by then, she would be long gone.

“Dammit! I don’t have anything to wear!” A pair of hand-tinted Christina Velati jeans flew over the railing and hit the floor in a crumpled heap. Angie yanked open her dresser drawer and threw it on the floor.

Charlotte cringed at the drawer’s high-pitched, grating squeal of protest—just before the loud thump overhead shook the ceiling light fixtures. “Angie, just find something to put on and let’s go! You’ll be late for school!”

“I don’t care. I’m not going. I have nothing to wear.” Angie stood in the doorway wearing nothing but a flimsy, nylon kimono to which she’d helped herself from her mother’s closet. The sullen teen threw herself melodramatically across Charlotte’s bed and sighed.

“You are going. Now get dressed. You have a closet full of clean clothes; go find some and put them on. Now. You have five minutes.” Charlotte bit her lower lip hard to rein in her temper. This little scene was merely another encore in a year-long run of bad performances by her daughter. Charlotte massaged the back of her neck and pressed her fingertips to her temples. “Christ,” she muttered, half curse, half prayer.

“Fine. Why don’t I just go in this?” Angie stood in front of her mother, feet planted defiantly apart, hands on her hips, and let the kimono fall open to reveal last summer’s barely-faded tan lines.

“Why don’t you, Ange?” Charlotte shrugged and grabbed her car keys. Angie would not have the satisfaction of shocking her mother or hearing one smidgeon of outrage or indignation in her voice. “If that’s the look you want to be remembered for in the yearbook, let’s go.”

“God, you are such a bitch. Mother.” Angie practically spat the word “mother” and added to it under her breath. She snatched up the discarded jeans and tugged them on, hopping first on one foot, then the other, as she struggled to pull them over her hips. Charlotte noticed that her daughter hadn’t bothered with underwear, but she said nothing. She just closed her eyes and counted slowly to ten. When she opened them again, Angie was dressed. The girl’s eyes were like smoldering coals burning into her mother’s heart, searing her at the very core of her being. This child she had loved so completely, so unconditionally, so fiercely from birth now seemed, more often than not, her bitterest enemy. Charlotte craved a respite from the neverending war their relationship had become. She felt sure that Angie craved it just as desperately, but neither of them knew how to bring about a truce.

The two of them rode in silence to the high school. Angie got out of the car as quickly as she could, slamming the door hard on her way out, just for good measure. Charlotte burned rubber in the school parking lot; it had been hard to hold the anger in check, and she felt an immature need to make a statement.

Angie looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes, then linked arms with a lanky, sloe-eyed boy and headed to class. “She’s insane,” the girl confided in her friend.

~=*=~

Charlotte had an idea. It seemed a brilliant idea, but she knew that she could never share it with another living soul. She drove to the hardware store, smiling to herself as she tuned the car radio to the Oldies station and started to hum along with the Beach Boys.

~=*=~

After several productive hours spent in the dim light of the old cellar, Charlotte emerged in the kitchen covered in sweat and light gray powder. She had never imagined she had any talent for remodeling, beyond choosing trendy wallpapers and countertops for others to install. She definitely had a talent for spending Peter’s money, but for the first time in her life, she had built something substantial with her own two hands. Thinking back on the transformation she’d wrought in the cellar, Charlotte grinned with pride. She would have to finish the job later, of course, but the hardest part was done.

The thought of ending a life brought her nothing but a sense of peace.

~=*=~

“Hi, honey, I’m home!” Peter’s voice carried up the stairs, clear as a bell. “Charlotte? Angie?”

“Up here,” called Charlotte, straightening up from what felt like a permanent crouch after spending the last thirty minutes cleaning junk out of the hall closet. Charlotte massaged her lower back, kneading tension knots with her fingers as she flexed her spine. Aches and pains in muscles and joints Charlotte didn’t know existed were the fruits of her day’s labor.

Peter met her at the top of the stairs and gave her a perfunctory little peck on the lips. “I invited Joe Johnson and his wife over for dinner tomorrow night – you don’t mind, do you, Char?” Peter surveyed the mess on the landing - the unsorted odds and ends that spilled out of the closet and defied explanation as to how they fit in there in the first place.

“Oh, no, of course not,” snapped Charlotte sarcastically. She was hot, sweaty, and aggravated. The thought of entertaining the Johnsons tomorrow night on short notice was just icing on the cake. “Shall I cook a standing rib? Whip up a little crème brulée?”

“We could do burgers on the grill...”

“Oh, that’s sure to impress your boss, Peter.”

“I’ll call and postpone.” Disappointment was evident in his tone. “I’ll tell them Angie’s sick, or something. Where is Angie, anyway?”

“I don’t know, Peter. Out. Wherever it is teenage girls go to defy their embarrassingly horrid mothers.”

“Isn’t it a little late for her to be out?” asked Peter. He was concerned for his daughter’s safety, but something in Charlotte’s voice set off alarms in the back of his mind.

Charlotte gave Peter a look guaranteed to wilt lettuce. Imitating her daughter’s all-too-familiar, scornful expression, she rolled her eyes and said, “Duhhhh.”

“I’ll go look for her.”

“You do that.”

Peter frowned, started to say something, then shut his mouth quickly as he thought better of it. He hurried downstairs, grabbed his keys, and went to comb the neighborhood for Angie.

~=*=~

Charlotte stepped back and gave a small nod of satisfaction, pleased with the work she had done. The stones fit together perfectly. The mortar was smooth and even; it dried quickly, and the wall was good and solid.

It would take Peter a while to find the body; by then, Charlotte would be long gone. Charlotte smiled.

~=*=~

One by one, Charlotte lit the fat candles she had brought with her. Their soft radiance cast dancing tongues of light and shadows upon the walls. The silence was so complete that Charlotte could hear the sputtering of the wax as it was sucked up the wick and drawn into the flame.

Charlotte opened a bottle of Satterfield Chardonnay. It was the bottle Peter had given her for Mother’s Day. Feeling decadent, she swigged it straight from the bottle. There was no one around to care, or to be grossed out about the backwash. She cracked open the new Sharalyn Feltzer novel she’d been saving for—for what? Six months? Waiting for a quiet afternoon, when she could read for a few hours, uninterrupted?

Ahhh, thought Charlotte. This was better than a hot bubble bath. She stretched and turned, cradling the book comfortably on her forearm, losing herself in the story. There was no one to disturb her, now. Charlotte read until her eyelids grew heavy. Her arms felt like they were made of lead, and she let sleep overtake her. The book fell to the floor with a heavy thud. Charlotte, who had never known an uneventful night’s sleep, slept the dreamless sleep of exhaustion. A smile curled the corners of her lips. One by one, the candles hissed and died for lack of the oxygen needed to burn. Charlotte could not hear the voices on the other side; she could not hear the soft, fleshy fists pounding on the unyielding stone fortress that she had built around herself. She could not hear her daughter, who had been hanging out and smoking pot with friends – could not hear her apologize. Charlotte could not hear Peter’s desperate attempts to smash through solid rock and well-made mortar. She would have told them, if she could, that her walls were built to last.

"Just a Little Peace and Quiet"
Copyright 2002 H. Jahangiri.

~=*=~

If you enjoyed this story, you might enjoy these, as well:

Hidden Lies and Other Stories

Vivian Gilbert Zabel and Holly Jahangiri

How do you beat writer's block?

Submitted by marvel is my pen name.

I'm not really sure I believe in Writer's Block. There is "I don't really feel like writing, but admitting that doesn't sound as dramatic and serious as 'I'm suffering from writer's block.'" And there's "I really want to write. In fact, that's all I want to do. I don't want to go outside or do a damned thing worth writing about, and unfortunately - for the moment - I've run out of things to say, so that every drop of ink wrung from my pen looks like something the cat barfed up while walking across the keyboard. In fact, the cat wrote a whole novel last night and is currently tying up the phone line, talking to his agent. I wonder if Fluffy needs a manager?" There are other manifestations, of course, but most are variations on a theme. Some involve intense fear: Fear of failure, or fear of success. A good walk to clear the head, or time spent on an unrelated hobby (photography, drawing, playing a sport, building model ships and shoving them into bottles - whatever floats your boat) may help. Some involve a lack of skill or talent that can only be cured, really, through training and practice. Apply butt to chair. Write. Repeat. Enroll in a class, if necessary. Or find other things to do with your time. Maybe you don't really want to write, but someone's sold you on the notion that you must, in order to be a true citizen of the new Millennium. And if you just really feel a need to wear a beret and a turtleneck and sip black coffee in a coffee shop and scribble notes on napkins so as to be mistaken for a writer, go ahead; I won't tell.

You're not a failure in life if you're not a writer.

Some of us can't really do anything else competently, and rely on our words to support us and help build our retirement funds. But we have days when we don't feel like writing, too. We have days when we feel we've run out of things to say - or rather, things we think anyone cares to read. Amazingly, I earn a pretty decent income writing things I know only about three people on the planet want to read. Product manuals. Technical documentation. Next time you sneer and curse at the nameless author of a user's guide, you'll have a face to imagine behind it. Mind you, if it sucks eggs, I didn't write it; I don't do tech support, so don't call me when your toaster starts speaking in tongues and turns your bread into oatmeal.

It's hard to be "blocked" when writing instructions for using a piece of equipment. But that's my day job. By night, I'm an intrepid storyteller and poet (when I'm not cooking dinner for five; helping my 5th Grader with his homework, refereeing fights between him and his sister, or getting into one myself; writing in my blog; or walking, taking photos, engaging in other creative pursuits, and telling myself I don't believe in writer's block).

We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us*

I do believe in the evil inner critic. Sometimes, she masquerades as my evil inner Muse. Sometimes, giving her a good, swift kick in the teeth will jump-start a stalled brain, spur my itchy fingers into action, and result in a pretty decent yarn. Sometimes, it just results in my throwing myself across the living room couch, popcorn in hand, with no more resolve or strength of will than what's required to flip through channels and see what's on the telly.

Never mind all that. Facing down the evil inner critic - nay, making him or her the object of ridicule and creatively imagined torment - is a great way to forcibly shove aside this thing called "writer's block," because nine times out of ten, either you just don't want to write for whatever reason, or you're falling victim to the voice of the evil inner critic. She says, "You're not good enough. What do you think you're doing, mucking around with this 'writing' thing?" Or he berates you, "What a load of insipid tripe! You're really going to commit that to paper and let the world know what a fool you are?" Hogwash, all of it.

Well all have one. Perhaps you're due for a little chat with yours. If nothing else, it's great practice in creating characters and writing dialogue, so some good ought to come of it. Here's a flashback from 2004, my fourth attempt at that Marathon novel-writing session known as "National Novel Writing Month," or "NaNoWriMo" (which still sounds a lot like something a tired novelist says on November 29th: "Naaaah, no wri' mo'...me sleep now"). Ironically, the only novel I ever attempted and completed was my first, in 2001. Doesn't matter...I had a lot more fun with this one.

Prologue

I seriously thought about quitting.

Then I recaptured the true spirit of NaNoWriMo. I remembered what it was all about: to write a truly hideous novel of 50,000 words in 30 days.

"Nobody said nothin' about 'publishable.' Nobody ever suggested that a 30-day novel should be 'great lit-rah-chure' (Gesundheit!)" my Muse snickered.

"What was I thinking, to put such expectations on myself at a time like this, when all the world's gone mad around me?" I cried, throwing a forearm dramatically over my forehead and letting out a piteous wail.

"That's the spirit."

My Inner Editor foamed at the mouth. Only, the foam came out the bitch's nose, since my Muse had had the foresight to bind up her mouth with duct tape.

"Look, you're an overachiever, but you're a burnt-out overachiever seriously in danger of looking like she's got a bug up her ass. So write this one just for fun. And if you must compete, consider it your entry into the Bulwer-Lytton fiction contest next year." The Muse shrugged.

"That's just supposed to be one sentence," I said. I was pouting. I had my heart set on writing great lit-rah-chure.

"So write a novel that gives you nothing but hard choices as to which sentence you should enter."

"There are multiple categories," I said, warming to the idea. "I could have 'em all covered, by the time I'm done."

"There you go. Enter in every category. Just be sure to win a 'Dishonorable Mention' for me."

"I'll do it!" I sprang to my feet, energized. It took less than a NaNoSecond for reality to sink in. "Oh, God, I'm so far behind. All I have so far is three death scenes and an aborted suicide."

You can imagine the withering look my Muse gave me.

"I know that, Dear. It's pretty fucking pathetic, if you ask me." She picked up my daughter's TI-83 calculator and pushed some buttons at random. "Don't think of it as 'behind.' Think of it as an adjustment, from 1667 words a day to 2800 words a day. You can do that, can't you? I mean...if you're enjoying yourself."

"Can I use this conversation?" I asked. I was reluctant to admit it; it seemed so...puerile. But I was beginning to enjoy myself. Guilty pleasures are always the best kind.

"No."

"Will you take that thing away?" I asked, pointing at the Inner Editor. The IE growled and struggled against the ropes that bound her to her ergonomically-correct office chair. Gleefully, I smacked her over the head with an ergonomic keyboard, breaking the device in two. I dumped it into her lap.

"Absolutely." My Muse poured two glasses of cheap cream sherry and we raised them in a toast. "To fingering Bulwer-Lytton's proboscis in April!"

"Here, here."

"Isn't that 'hear, hear'?" squeaked the Inner Editor, who had managed to bite through the duct tape with her jagged fangs.

"Good God. Does 'anal-retentive' have a hyphen?" sneered my Muse. Grabbing She-Who-Inspires-Writers-to-Write-Heinous-Scenes-of-Gruesome-Torture by the neck, my Muse saluted me and disappeared. The Evil One vanished, too, and I could breathe again.

I sat down to write...and this is what my pen barfed up.

Excerpt: The Muse and the Critic

Bob grabbed his laptop from the back room, and plugged it in. He settled into a comfy armchair and began to cogitate. The harder he thought, the fewer ideas occurred to him.

“Hey.”

“Hey.” Bob looked up from the laptop. “Hey! Your hair’s on fire!” He started to jump up from his chair, but she pushed him back into it. “Lady, your hair is on fire!”

“It’s always like this, Bob.” She laughed.

Bob looked around frantically. Some crazy woman had set her hair on fire. With a little bad luck, she’d take Rayne’s shop with her - probably burning Rayne and Bob in the process. And yet, she was alarmingly calm about her flaming hair. Where the hell was Rayne?

“Relax, Bob. She can’t see or hear me. Only you can.”

The woman was insane. Either that, or Bob was insane. Had to be one or the other, he mused. Had to be. And that’s when he noticed that the hot-headed, almond-eyed stranger was a cross between Angelina Jolie and Pele, Goddess of Fire, dressed in a sleek black, skin-tight, flame-retardant bodysuit. Bob couldn’t help but lick his lips. She was the woman of his adolescent fantasies. She laughed. Bob concluded that he was the one losing his marbles. The woman didn’t exist. “Damn,” he muttered. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am!” said the woman, laughing. “I’m your so-called Muse. I’ve been looking over your shoulder since you were fourteen.”

“You’ve been what?” Bob looked up in horror. When he was fourteen, he’d figured out an easy way to forestall the urges that threatened to overcome him each time he laid eyes on a girl. It was a solitary pleasure, one he knew better than to do where others could watch. The thought of this creature looking over his shoulder…” He shuddered.

“Oh, Christ, Bob… I’m talking about your writing, idiot.” She ruffled his hair.

Bob groaned. She may not have watched over his shoulder constantly, but she could read his mind. That was just as bad.

“You created me, remember?” Her voice sounded smooth as silk and burned like whiskey. Bob felt dizzy.

Bob vaguely remembered doodling sketches of this woman - his supposed Muse - on his History spiral back in high school. Implausibly large boobs, curvaceous hips, a dancer’s legs, stiletto heels…but he couldn’t, for the life of him, remember flames for hair. Took some getting used to, but the warmth her tresses gave off was helping to dispel the tremors in his hands.

“Bob, you’re shaking like you’ve got the DTs.”

“I’m, um, wow. Yeah. Yeah,” Bob looked stupidly at his hands. The tremors spread up his shoulders and down his spine. He was ice-cold, and yet his skin burned.

“Bob, get a grip.”

Bob did just that. He gripped the armrests of the chair in which he was sitting. He gripped the faux hide of nauga until his knuckles turned a ghastly shade of white. “Could you - not - do that?” he asked, prying one hand loose long enough to point at the Muse’s hair.

“Whatever floats your boat, Bob.” Suddenly, an auburn-haired Angelina Jolie sat in the chair opposite Bob, and looked far less threatening than the incandescent goddess who’d stood before him a moment earlier. “Is this better?”

Bob nodded. “What’s your name?” It felt bizarre, having a conversation with what had to be a hallucination, albeit a gorgeous one.

“Fred.”

“Fred?”

“You named me Fred, Bob. It’s not my job to explain why you named me Fred.”

Given the thoughts Bob was having about the illusory Fred, this was disconcerting news, to say the least. He scratched his head, trying to remember why in the name of God he would have named this woman “Fred.”

“Frederica?” he asked, voice full of hope.

“No, Bob. Fred. Just plain Fred.”

“Sorry. You don’t look like a Fred.”

“Never did, Bob.”

Bob cringed. “And I was fourteen, you say?”

“That’s right, Bob. Fourteen.” Fred shook her head and looked down at her well-endowed chest. “Gads, I wish you’d learned to write when you were ten, or waited until you were twenty-something.”

“Why?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Fred hefted her breasts with both hands. “Only a fourteen-year-old boy would endow his Muse with such…gifts.”

Fred’s hair burst into flame, sending Bob burrowing deeper into his armchair. “I’m sorry?”

“No, I can see that you’re not,” said Fred, her hair still smoldering. “So let’s cut the crap, Bob. You have a novel to write.”

“I do?”

“You see the problem with being a Muse created by a fourteen-year-old boy? It’s distracting, Bob. It’s keeping me from being all I’m meant to be.” Fred looked mildly annoyed, but at least her hair didn’t burst into flames. Bob was relieved.

“I see.”

“No, you don’t see. You’re just all fascinated because you can actually see me, and I look like some prepubescent fantasy doll…”

“No, no - I understand how that could be a hindrance. I’m sorry. I - I think I’ve matured since then.”

“No you haven’t.”

“Have to!” Bob was not about to sit here and be insulted by his own Muse. “Why, I--“

“Bob, get real. That deal you made with the cops, earlier? That was real mature.” Fred rolled her eyes.

“Oh, Rayne’s a good sport, she’ll--“

“Bob, do you have any idea how many guys are on the force? Rayne won’t be able to walk for a week if she makes good on her end of the deal.”

Bob snickered. Fred’s hair began to crackle and spark. He quickly tried to look contrite.

“Sir? Sir!”

Bob woke with a start. A little old lady was leaning over him, smelling of lavender and potato chips. “Wha--?”

“Your laptop’s about to slip off your lap. I think you dozed off. Didn’t want it to fall on the floor, you know.”

Bob grabbed his laptop computer just in time to save it sliding off his thighs and onto the ceramic tile floor, where it would surely have broken into tiny bits. Although that might have saved Bob considerable trouble, it was an expensive toy he could hardly afford to replace, given his and Rayne’s recently precarious financial position. “Thank you,” he murmured. “Very kind of you.” He blinked a few times and rubbed the sleep sand from his eyes with his knuckles.

“No problem, son. No problem at all. Say, I couldn’t help but wonder what you were working on that put you so soundly to sleep. I suffer insomnia, you see. I’d love to learn your secret.” The old biddy chuckled.

Bob yawned. With his hands firmly grasping his prized possession, Bob was unable to stifle himself. His mouth opened wide. The only difference between Bob and a yawning cat was the cat’s needle-sharp fangs. And claws. And tail. But the yawn was similar, and from the look on the old lady’s face, she was a cat fancier. “Sorry. I was working on my, er, book. I’m a writer. Sort of a writer. I’m working on a novel. In my spare time, you know.”

“Ahhh. Yes, a writer. How nice for you, dear. And what do you do with the rest of your time?”

“I, uh, my wife and I, we run this shop.”

“Looks to me like she’s doing all the running. I’m Edna, by the way. And you would be…?”

“Bob. Very nice to meet you, Edna.”

“Really? That’s a first. Most people aren’t pleased. Not pleased at all.” Edna sat down in the chair across from Bob, a chair warmed, just moments before, by the enigmatic Fred.

“I can’t imagine that, Edna. You seem like such a kind soul.”

“Not at all, Bob,” said Edna. Her expression hardened as she pulled out her knitting. Her fingers moved deftly as the needles clicked and clacked. Knit and perl, perl and knit…Edna seemed hell-bent to burn her name into the Guinness Book of World Records by knitting what appeared to be a dingy gray and red woolen scarf in under three point two seconds.

“Why’s that, Edna?”

“Don’t you recognize me?”

“Should I?” Bob squinted to get a better look at Edna. Five foot two, maybe one hundred thirty pounds, Edna looked like somebody’s grandmother. A third grade teacher, perhaps, with her tightly-curled indigo hair. Bob had never understood why elderly schoolmarms insisted on dying perfectly good white or gray hair a hideous shade of blue that never would have occurred to Mother Nature to create from scratch. That’s it! Third grade teacher… Of course! Edna must have been one of Bob’s teachers.

“Oh, worse than that, Bob,” said Edna, as if reading his mind. “Your third grade teacher was a dear, sweet old woman. She didn’t have the heart to give you the D you deserved on that science report, so she gave you a C and package of crayons to soften the blow.”

Bob swallowed hard. “Who are you?”

“Edna Jacobi Pringleheimer-Smith. I’m your worst nightmare,” hissed Edna. Her eyes were dark and beady, but they smoldered with hate. “I’m your inner critic, Bob. I am a part of you.”

Bob suddenly had an urge to hum, but he felt his blood run cold. “Can Rayne see you?”

“Only if I want her to, Bob. You wouldn’t like that, would you? You’d like for her to think that you were a capable, talented man…”

“I suppose,” said Bob, trying to stifle another yawn. “What the hell is that?” Bob reached for the woolen scarf that was growing, in faster, tighter rows.

“It’s an afghan, Bob.”

“It looks like--oh, Good Christ, woman! That’s my third-grade report card.”

“Tsk, tsk. Says here you got a big fat F in English. Bob, English is your native language. You’d have to be dumb as a rock to flunk English.”

“Mrs. Denhameyer didn’t like me.”

“Didn’t like you? Didn’t like you? What sort of asinine excuse is that, Bob? Ranks right up there with ‘my mother beat me and my father drank,’ in my opinion. Cut the crap.”

“It’s true! She hated me.”

“No one hates a third grader, Bob. You’re delusional, to boot. But never mind that. Why aren’t you working on that stupid novel of yours? I mean, it’s not like you’re helping your wife out, there.”

* Walt Kelly, in the comic strip Pogo (1971).

• When writing fiction that is clearly labeled "fiction."
• When answering questions like "Does this dress make me look fat?" but only when changing clothes or otherwise fixing the problem is not an option.
• When talking to college-educated adults that could not reasonably be expected to believe such a hare-brained tale as this one... I mean, really!

Consider the source

There's a little game I refuse to play. It's called, "You can't be friends with me if you're friends with [fill in the blank]!" My stock answer to that is, "Fine, I'm sorry you feel that way. I guess we can't be friends." I don't care if the person saying it is my best friend at the time, and [fill in the blank] is someone I hardly know.

I also learned, back in grade school, not to judge someone based on others' opinions. Oh, granted, others opinions hold some sway; I may be more cautious in getting to know someone if I've been given specific reasons to be, or I may be more open if people I trust and respect speak highly of the person. I can also be persuaded by facts - like rap sheets. But opinions and hearsay have no power.

The Witch

One Halloween, my friends and I dressed up and met on the road to go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. It was a small, close-knit village; my mom had grown up there, too, and many of my friends were children of her school friends. None of us could make a move without it getting back to our parents, so we were all pretty well behaved. And the neighborhood was safe; we were allowed to roam, mostly unsupervised, for several blocks at night, ringing doorbells and begging for candy, provided we only went to houses that had their porch lights on.

Just around the corner from my house, there was an older wooden home set back from the road, almost within reach of the railroad tracks. I'd never been there before, on Halloween, but the light was on so I started up the sidewalk. My best friend, Mary, and her sister, Val, stopped me.

"You can't go there!"

"Why not?"

"Because that woman's a witch. She hates kids. She's got a gun, and she'll shoot you. And she's got a guard dog. He's mean. He'll eat you."

I thought this was the stupidest thing I'd ever heard, but they were quite serious, judging by their wide eyes and pale faces. They tugged at my sleeve and tried to drag me away from the house. "The light's on," I said.

"So?"

"Well, wouldn't the light be OFF if she didn't want us to come to the door?"

"She'll shoot you with her gun. She'll sic her dog on you."

I pulled free and marched right up to the front door. Val hung back, on the road, ready to run for help. Mary timidly joined me. I rang the bell.

The door opened, and the woman who answered it peered out at us through Coke-bottle glasses that made her eyes seem three times larger than normal. "Hello," she said. She looked like somebody's grandma.

"Trick or treat!" I said.

"Oh, do come in. You're the first trick-or-treaters I've had all night. I was afraid no one was coming!" Her dog, a tiny little bundle of energy and enthusiasm, pressed his nose to the door and wagged his tail. "I'm Mrs. Morgan. And you are…?" She opened the door and we introduced ourselves. We stepped into a well-lighted foyer, where card tables were covered with little cups full of apple cider and plastic bags filled with homemade cookies. There were enough treats, there, for all the neighborhood kids.

Mary and I looked at each other. How could we tell this sweet old lady that the other children wouldn't be coming? That the word on the street was, she was a mean old hag who liked to shoot kids and feed their bones to her dog? I bent down to pet the vicious mutt. He licked my hand.

We couldn't do it. We drank some cider, took a bag or two of cookies, and told Mrs. Morgan we had to go - but that we'd be back.

After knocking some sense into Val and goading her into walking up to Mrs. Morgan's house for cookies, herself, the three of us made the rounds and told everyone that they'd better go to the "witch's house" or be branded chickens and idiots for life. We showed them the cookies they'd be missing if they didn't. We told them all about the nice old lady and her yappy little furball "guard dog." I think we made her night.

Mary and I became frequent visitors at Mrs. Morgan's house after that, bringing her flowers from our gardens: bright yellow branches of forsythia, fragrant purple lilacs, red and pink tulips, and the occasional sticky, ant-covered peony bouquet. She always seemed delighted to see us, and spent hours telling us about herself, her family, her dog, and the history of the little town we were growing up in. She had an old-fashioned crank telephone and lots of antiques. Her house was one of the original resort homes back around the turn of the century, when the whole village was a resort and amusement park.

I finally confessed to my mom that I had befriended the woman everyone had said was a witch, despite worrying a little that my mom would be mad I'd spent so much time talking to a "stranger." She laughed, and told me she knew Mrs. Morgan - who, Mom said, seemed old back when she was a kid. The kids had called Mrs. Morgan a witch back then, too, and Mom was glad I'd discovered the truth for myself.

The Bitch

Each year, on the last day of school, we were told who our teacher would be the following year. I was delighted to be moving on to Second Grade, but terrified by the news that my teacher would be Mrs. Hansen.

"Oh, she's mean."

"She hates kids."

"You won't like her. She's strict."

I went home in tears and begged my mother to call the school. I just couldn't have the dreaded Mrs. Hansen next year - for a whole year. After all, she was mean. And I had worked myself into a state: my eyes were red and puffy, my cheeks stained with tears, my whole body heaving with sobs at the utter injustice of it all. I knew my mom would come to my aid and save me from a fate worse than death. After all, we had moved so that I wouldn't have my awful Kindergarten teacher in First Grade. (That's another story for another time; suffice it to say that the woman truly did dislike me and actively worked to make me miserable. Furthermore, she "kidnapped" our entire class - okay, not kidnapped, exactly, but she took us on an unauthorized field trip to the donut shop on the city bus, because for some unfathomable reason she decided a class full of Kindergarteners needed to learn how to use public transportation. So yeah, my parents had reason to move when they learned she'd been "promoted" to First Grade at the same time I was.)

This time, though, my mom just smiled. "Have you met this Mrs. Hansen?"

"No. But everyone says she's mean."

"How would you feel if everyone said horrible things about you, called you mean, and people believed them, without getting to know you first?"

This was a trick. I knew it. I just wasn't smart enough to avoid it. "Pretty bad, I guess."

"Would that be fair?"

"No."

"Isn't that what you're doing to Mrs. Hansen?"

"I guess." I sniffled.

"Do you think maybe you could just give it a try? Get to know her for yourself, see how it goes?"

"But Mom--"

"If it turns out that she's really as mean as everyone says she is, I'll call the school and insist they move you to a different class, okay?"

"Okay. I guess. You promise you'll get me out of her class if she's really mean?"

"I promise."

I tried not to spend my summer worrying about it. In fact, I pretty much forgot about it until the first day of school. I went to class wary. But the blue-haired old lady known as Mrs. Hansen didn't seem all that scary. She wasn't particularly mean; she simply laid out the rules and expected us to follow them. But she smiled, too. She might be okay.

A few weeks went by, and I don't remember much about them. They were unremarkable. Mrs. Hansen was just a teacher, like all the others, only older than most I'd had. Probably eighty, at least. And she had that funny, blue, curly hair.

One day, she gave us a worksheet. I don't know if I was bored or what, but I didn't bother to fill in any of the blanks. I hadn't been paying close attention, and didn't realize we'd be required to turn it in - or that we'd be getting a real grade on it. I turned it in blank.

And I got my first "F" the next day.

"F"? Oh, my God. My parents would be furious. I was horrified. Little Miss Smartypants got an "F." I grabbed my #2 pencil and proceeded to grind "I hate Hansen" into the margins of my paper, while my classmates corrected their errors. Apparently, I'd missed the part about correcting errors and turning the paper in again.

"Five minutes," called Mrs. Hansen. "You have five more minutes, then I want those papers on my desk."

I was screwed. I didn't know the word "screwed" back then, but I understood the concept, and knew I was screwed beyond redemption. I frantically tried to erase the hateful words. Not because I didn't mean them, but because now I'd added insult to "F" and that would surely mean a call home to my parents. They would not be amused.

Have you ever tried to erase ground-in pencil marks from manilla paper? Hmm? It can't be done.

I turned the paper in. I don't remember breathing, after that. The phone became a deadly snake, coiled and ready to strike. My adoring parents were going to kill me for this one.

The next day, Mrs. Hansen passed our papers back to us. I still had a big red "F," of course. But beside my horrible, half-erased sentiments, the woman had written - in bright red ink - "I'm sorry."

What?

She was sorry? Oh, God, no one could be sorrier than I was at that very moment. What did Mrs. Hansen have to be sorry for?

Then the worst happened. Those of us who had failed to raise our letter grade would have to come up to her desk for a private chat. I stood in line. My feet were made of lead. I wished God would just strike me dead. And then it was my turn.

Mrs. Hansen stood up. Our eyes met. And she did the strangest thing: she hugged me. "I'm so sorry," she said.

"So am I!" I said. We both cried. The rest of the kids thought we were crazy, but in that fraction of a second, I had found my favorite teacher ever.

Mrs. Hansen never did call my parents. About a year later, my grandparents were throwing a lawn party some twenty miles away, and who should be there but Mrs. Hansen and her husband. I was still afraid she might call - what teacher wouldn't? - but she hadn't. I didn't like her being there at that party at all.

"What is she doing here?" I asked my mom.

"Who? Mrs. Hansen? Oh, she and your grandmother have been friends for years. Didn't I ever tell you? Mrs. Hansen was my Eighth Grade teacher!"

Uh, no, Mom…you omitted that little detail.

Once again, my mother let me discover the truth on my own. And years later, when I 'fessed up to what I'd done back in Second Grade, my mother assured me that Mrs. Hansen had never betrayed me to her. "It was between the two of you. You resolved it, didn't you? That's all that mattered."

I kept in touch with Mrs. Hansen until the day she died, sometime when I was twenty-one. Her son wrote to me and told me how much my friendship and letters had meant to her over the years, but words were inadequate to describe how vitally important her teaching and friendship had been to me over the years.

I love you, Mrs. Hansen. I miss you, but you live on in my thoughts. You are a part of who I am today.

Would you rather go back in time or visit the future?
Submitted by Auds.

I'm just cynical enough to think the future would depress me, and just Pollyanna enough to want not to go there, in order to preserve the illusion that it wouldn't.

I think I'd rather go back in time; however, I'm not at all sure I'd survive it. Much as I love reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, I know I'm not as resourceful as her Claire. My idea of "roughing it" is a hotel without room service. So let's get real - chamberpots? Outhouses? Herbal poultices? No antibiotics? Please. Even the most pampered royals had to deal with things middle-class America would consider "hardships." But if I get to visit, and don't have to stay, I think it might be entertaining. (And we wonder why people in developing nations find tourists annoying.) Do I get to choose who I am and where I go and when? Do I get to do this only once, or do I have a time machine to use over and over again? If it's a one-time shot, I need to think more deeply on it. Oddly, that wouldn't apply to a visit to the future: it's all unknown, all a crapshoot. Let's just fire up the machine, spin the dial, and go! Not so with the past. We know enough about the past to have some preferences. We know what events throughout history to avoid, even if we don't know them so well as to prevent repeating them in the future.

Seeing a glimpse of the future, then returning to the present, would feel like "cheating." That said, it would also be cheating to take, to the past, our modern-day technology, like indoor plumbing. There, the temptation's a toss-up. What to pack, what to wear - how much empty space to leave in the suitcase for "hostesss gifts" or "souvenirs"?