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Let’s Play: A 60 Seconds of Midnight Story

October 26, 2017

Kiera and Freddie stood in their front doorway, bodies intertwined for warmth, amazed that it was finally happening. The small car came to a stop in their driveway and the door opened. The couple knew that all of the final approvals were complete but had no idea until two days before when their new daughter was coming home for the first time. When Kiera received the call she was excited, but nervous since her husband was due for a business trip at the end of the week which would leave her to parent the child alone at the very start. Ms. Alice of Alice’s Angels Adoption Agency bumbled out of the car, spilling some papers unto the ground, then hastily gathering them up again before opening the back door and allowing Gentry to place one then two small boots on the pavement. Kiera could hardly hold back the tears as the girl ran toward her, her red puffer coat covering a corduroy dress of the same color. “Mommy” She yelled. Kiera hugged the girl, picking her up and swinging her around. Freddie pulled his wife and new daughter close as Kiera’s shoulders heaved and dropped with her sobs.

Over the next hour, Kiera showed her daughter around her new home and introduced her to Pinky, a pet hamster they had purchased especially for Gentry. In love with Pinky at once she could hardly keep herself from the little animal or from Doc, the family’s golden retriever. Kiera and Freddie then hosted Alice for tea and cake and they talked for an hour before Ms. Alice finally announced her departure, “I really should get going and allow you all some time to spend with Gentry, especially since you will be away for a couple of days soon, Freddie. I want to give you as much time to spend with your family this week as possible.”

“We could not be happier, Alice.” Kiera whispered as she walked the woman to the door.

“Don’t thank me. It’s what I do.” The woman said as she barreled toward her vehicle. With a quick wave she ducked in through the car door and was soon out of sight.

That night as Kiera tucked her daughter into bed for the first time, she read her a story. “Can I play with Pinky?” a sleepy Gentry asked. “Not anymore tonight, sweetie. You are tired. We can play with him in the morning.” Kiera turned off the lamp leaving the glow of the night light to cast ominous shapes on the walls.

Morning seemed to come earlier than usual with Gentry’s excessive knocking on her parents’ bedroom door. “Mommy, daddy! Can I play with Pinky?” She was asking. Kiera and Freddie looked at one another before he smiled, “So this is what being a parent is like, huh?”

Kiera adjusted the thermostat to warm the chilly house before she came up the stairs and made her way to Gentry’s room. She crossed the room to take Pinky’s cage off of the high dresser and placed it on the floor. “Pinky.” Kiera said trying to rouse the little rodent. “Perhaps he’s still sleeping. Pinky?” She called again as she swished her fingers through the dressings. She felt a cold, hard mound. Kiera jumped, pulling her finger back. Shaking the dressings away revealed Pinky’s stiff body.

“What’s wrong, Mommy?” Gentry asked.

“Nothing, I just don’t think that Pinky is doing too well this morning. I’m going to have daddy look at him, ok? Wash your face and come down for breakfast.”

Freddie seemed somewhat relieved, “He was a rodent, and they die all the time. I’m kind of glad he’s gone, those things are nasty. She can play with Doc.”

“I guess. Can you get rid of him?” Kiera asked before going into the bathroom and closing the door behind her.

“Sure thing.” Her husband said, disappearing with the cage.

It was Gentry’s first night in their home and her animal had died. It was Kiera’s second day having a child and she was now going to have to explain life’s biggest catch…death.

“Can I play with Pinky?” Gentry asked again over her eggs.

Kiera looked nervously over her coffee cup to her husband then back to Gentry. “I’m sorry, honey, but you can’t.”

“Why not?” She wanted to know.

“Because Pinky is…dead.” She finally said.

Gentry looked bewildered then spoke again.

“So?” Gentry asked again, her brown eyes completely blank.

Kiera stopped short and turned to face the girl.

Freddie quickly cut in. “Because when something dies, it has to be buried. It goes away.”

“Oh.” Gentry said, returning quickly to her breakfast.

All that day Kiera kept an uncomfortable feeling in her stomach that could be traced back to the breakfast conversation, but her husband was convinced that it was not strange, nothing more than a child’s simple reaction to a complex concept. Kiera wasn’t convinced, but she would not put up a fight. Still she wished that Freddie didn’t have to leave for his business trip the following day. The next morning as Kiera started to wake Gentry, the girl popped up almost as if she hadn’t been sleeping at all, “Can I play with Doc? Huh, momma? Can I?”

Instantly a dread crept up in the new mother. Doc was a good dog, but during the night Kiera would usually hear him bark at least once or twice, but she realized that the night before he had been exceptionally quiet. Scrambling down the stairs, Kiera called for her dog, “DOC!”

Freddie emerged from the bedroom. “You can’t find Doc? Did you let him in last night?”

“Of course, I let him in.” she snapped. They both searched the house but no Doc. In the backyard Kiera noticed that the gate was flapping open, “Doc” she called as she crossed the yard. Her husband was close behind her. She closed the gate and then turned back to the house and that was when she saw something brown on the side of the air conditioning unit. “Doc.” Kiera called nervously as she ran up and touched her dog’s rigid body. His head was a mess of wounds and gashes. “Jesus.” Freddie said, pulling his sobbing wife away from the animal into the house, passing Gentry who watched with a dull expression.

That evening Kiera lay in bed, sipping tea. The television was on and her eyes were trained on it, but she wasn’t watching.

“I really wish that I didn’t have to go, but my mother is coming in the morning to stay until I return, ok.” Freddie informed her. “I made sure to lock the gate so that whatever came out of those woods and attacked Doc can’t get back in.”

Kiera’s eyes darted toward her husband. “The woods…” She said.

“Sure, what else could it have been?” He asked. Kiera’s eyes rolled up into her head.

Before leaving for the airport, Freddie put his daughter to bed and Kiera was so exhausted from the emotional stress, she was sleeping no later than he was gone. Something in the dark house woke Kiera in the middle of the night. The hallway light flicked on and she heard massive footsteps crashing down the hall until the shadow stood right outside of her door.

“Mommy, can we play?” A deep, guttural voice asked.

Jean Nicole Rivers

Jeannicolerivers.com

@jeannicole19

https://www.facebook.com/JNicoleRivers/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5832487.Jean_Nicole_Rivers

The Soul Seeker By: Jean Nicole Rivers

October 5, 2017

As the wind picked up, Arlene tightened her ill-fitting coat around her and then knocked on the door again, harder this time. Over the last few days, since her husband’s unexpected death, her eyes had dulled, her hair grew unkempt and her body had taken to inconspicuous but constant trembling.

An older man finally pulled the heavy wooden door open without a word of greeting. The silent man with the lines of worry cut deep into his face already knew why she was here, same reason as the others before her. The pair eyed one another solemnly until Arlene managed to swallow the lump in her throat.

“Th..the Soul Seeker…is that here?” She asked, her voice shuddering.

The man’s body deflated immediately expressing more sadness and even a hint of anger, anger at himself for still having hope that for once someone at the door would be a regular visitor, a jovial family member or loyal friend, the type they had not received since Betty was able to walk and talk. While he still refused to speak, he stepped aside and allowed her into the home. He started down the hall and Arlene followed. As they made their way to the belly of the old home they passed an opening into a parlor area where a woman whose appearance told a story of such pain that her eyes never had a chance to dry spoke to a priest in murmurs that ended snappishly when they saw Arlene pass.

At the end of the hall the man opened a door and allowed Arlene to step inside of a room filled with as much sunlight as the dim day offered. He closed the door behind her without ever speaking a word and for a moment she listened to his footsteps disappear in the distance. Arlene searched the room and in the corner spotted a little girl draped in a colorful frock.

“You? You’re the soul seeker?” Arlene spoke, her confusion obvious.

“No, of course not silly, I’m just a little girl…but, I am the vessel for her, she speaks through me.”

Arlene suddenly felt as if all of the terror in the world had been bottled up and was now being pumped directly into her veins, she turned and twisted frantically at the unmoving knob on the door.

“You found my information in your husband’s things, right? He came a few weeks ago with his desires and I told him what needed to be done as no dream comes to fruition without sacrifice. He had ten days to deliver the blood of an innocent.”

Arlene was quaking now. “He tried to kill a man and was shot and killed himself in the process.”

“His failure is a pity as now the responsibility falls to you. His debt to the soul seeker must be paid by you, his next of kin. If you do not deliver the blood she will take yours and your debt will be passed on to your next of kin.”

“My son? No! There has to be some other way. Please, I am begging you! My son is just a child.” Arlene said throwing herself to her knees.

Betty stood over the kneeling woman as a dark figure grew out of her, towering over both humans covering them in shadow. “10 days.” It growled.

Jean Nicole Rivers

Jeannicolerivers.com

@jeannicole19

https://www.facebook.com/JNicoleRivers/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5832487.Jean_Nicole_Rivers

3 Seriously Disturbing Mother/Child Relationships

May 5, 2016

Mother’s Day is just around the corner and it’s the perfect topic for my blog because, let’s face it, who is more frightening than your mother? Though most of us love our mothers dearly we still have some serious fears related to them that range from losing them to being just like them. Here I give you my top 3 seriously disturbing mother/child relationships.

  1. Goodnight Mommy

 By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47698633 

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47698633

  • In this film we aren’t really sure who to be afraid of, mom or the boys, until the very end. Children certainly aren’t perfect but neither are parents and we learn that time and time again in this film. After a strange surgery that sends their mother home with her face wrapped in bandages, these twin boys are not sure if the mother that left them is the same mother that has returned and neither is the audience. The boys struggle to resolve the love that they have for their mother with this new woman and wonder if they can ever really love her. Is this new mommy really out to get them? Watch to the very end to be sure.
  1. Mama

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37412343

By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37412343

  • Did I mention that this is one of my favorite movies? Yes, it is. As the name implies, this film is all about Mama and full of disturbing connections and correlations. Despite the fact that these two darling little girls, Victoria and Lilly have a very short relationship with their biological mother, who is killed by their father when they are very young, they develop a deep connection with a ghostly mother that cares for them when they find themselves alone in an abandoned house in the woods for years. A mother who becomes dangerously jealous of any attention or affection the girls give anyone else, especially the mother figure that they find in their uncle’s girlfriend once they are rescued from the forest. In the end, Lily follows her ghostly mother as she has never known any other, but Victoria who remembers her life and parents before Mama stays behind to develop an earthly relationship with the real woman who has taken a mothering role in her life, which does not make Mama happy, but in the end, each mother gets their daughter.
  1. The Babadook

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42530460

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42530460

  • Clare is the single mom of Sam, a troubled little boy and it literally drives her to the brink of madness. The dark, terrifying monster that symbolizes her child’s issues, Mister Babadook, haunts this mother relentlessly driving a wedge between her and her boy so deep that the monster comes to possess her physically and motivates her to try to kill her child. The relationship that this film illustrates so cleverly is so terrifying because it plays out in real life more often that anyone would like to admit. In the end, this mother digs deep to find and rekindle her unconditional love for her son, despite the influence of the monster and the two of them, together, conquer Mister Babadook and are able to keep him under control enough that they can revitalize their relationship and grow. We learn that Mister Babadook isn’t so scary once we learn how to deal with him (by chaining him up in the basement)…if only our real mothers could be that easy to control.

Hug your mom and thank the universe that your relationship is not nearly as “interesting” as any of the ones above. Happy Mother’s Day.

Jean Nicole Rivers

Jeannicolerivers.com

@jeannicole19

https://www.facebook.com/JNicoleRivers/

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5832487.Jean_Nicole_Rivers