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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

Train To Busan: Easily a Top 10 Zombie Film

October 4, 2017

Train To Busan is a South Korean zombie film that is currently on Netflix and you cannot in good conscience call yourself a horror fan let alone a zombie fan unless you have seen it. It is easily a top 10 zombie flick and here is why.

  1. Unique Setting
    1. A train! It’s extremely difficult to make a zombie film work in such a small space because how long can you run from hordes of zombies in a confined space? Not long, but Train to Busan somehow manages to keep us entertained in this narrow space. There is a point where the action moves into the train station but only for a short period of time then it’s back to the train. The closest that we’ve come is Quarantine 2: Terminal where the action starts in a plane, but quickly moves to an airplane terminal which gives them much more space to run and hide from the undead.
  2. Unlikely Hero
    1. How often is the funny, quirky guy also the film’s action hero? Whelp, that’s exactly what we get with Sang-hwa who makes saving his pregnant wife his number 1 priority. He is smart, strategic and kicks zombie butt which gives him a special place in the true zombie lover’s heart.
  3. Constant Action
    1. The action is fast-paced, hard hitting and almost nonstop once it gets started which takes about 20 mins. The film is a little slow at first as they set the story, but once we get on the train, things pick up fast and rarely slow down. Zombie films have a tendency to lull strategically in order to give the viewer a false sense of security and the survivors time to bond and set up rules and routine of the new world as they know it, but Train To Busan gives us NO time to breathe.

Good zombie films are the rare gems of the horror industry and we definitely found one with Train to Busan.

Jean Nicole Rivers

Jeannicolerivers.com

@jeannicole19

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

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

He Was A Good Boy

October 27, 2016
Creepy Sammy

Drenched, Timmy 2007 (Marla McGinley) From Pinterest.

By Jean Nicole Rivers

Avery sat in the dark, stone silent room waiting patiently for her boy, Sammy. He was a good boy. Sure, growing up, he had been a little mischievous, wild and adventurous at times but nothing so different from any other boys at similar ages. Boys will be boys was her motto.

By age 6 he no longer had many play dates with his cousins. Many of them, he had quarreled with over a toy or something similar and while Avery did not make excuses for her son, the toys often times were rightfully his. On occasion, yes, he would yell at them but he was so spirited that it was difficult for him to hold back his passion. Soon he was playing all alone as the last cousin that played well with Sammy had stopped coming over when Sammy blacked his eye but regardless of what the family said, he was a good boy.

When he was a little older the neighbors’ small animals would come up missing and of course they would all always try to blame Sammy and sure he had hurt Mrs. Lucille’s cat that one time, but his curiosity had gotten the better of him, you see he wanted to be a doctor, he was SO smart. No matter what the neighbors said, he was a good boy.

His junior year in high school he made the basketball team and I was so proud of him but it wasn’t long before he was targeted by those callous coaches and other boys who wanted nothing more than to bring him down and when he broke the head coaches’ nose by throwing the basketball in his face, why yes, he could have found a better way to deal with it, but, he was just a child and I hate to say it, but that Coach Melbourne kind of deserved it. And I made sure to try to have that nasty coach fired because, despite what Sammy did to him, he never liked my boy, never treated him right and should have never been allowed around children like my Sammy.

Accepted to the state university, I could not have been more pleased with Sammy and I shed tears when we packed up his truck but I knew it would not be long before those college transients took issue with my baby, they were jealous of him, of his intelligence and style and that little tramp wanted him, she had been making eyes at him for weeks, Sammy told me so and what did she think would happen, allowing him to come over to her dorm for an evening “study date”, give me a break. He is a man and men have needs, even my good boy and she knew that.

And now this. I told Sammy that Carol, that wife of his, would be his downfall. Everyone said that he beat her up for years, lies of course, but even if it were true, Carol was no angel. That woman nagged him so, always wanting him to help with things around the house. He went to work and made the money and she should have been satisfied, but she wasn’t, she wasn’t ever satisfied. He didn’t mean for her to break her neck when she fell down the stairs, Sammy would never do anything like that. And I told the police and I told the judge and I told everyone that he was a good boy but they didn’t listen.

Avery perked as the black curtain opened. She watched quietly as her shackled son was led into the room and strapped to the gurney. It was over now for the boy that the world had shunned and tried to make feel less than human. Avery had made her peace with the fact that her son was too good for this world.

“Goodbye, my good boy.” She whispered as they plunged the needle into his arm.

Jeannicolerivers.com

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

@jeannicole19 (Instagram and Twitter)

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

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOU4nXpJy5vMTkWOhjuS5yQ

Amazon Page for BWT: The Unwanted:  http://tinyurl.com/hqnhrj2

Amazon Page for BWT: The Secret Keepers: http://tinyurl.com/hnyztjo

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