Tag: Monsters

“Black Fairies” by Holly Sheidenberger

It’s Mother’s first night home since the acquittal.

The silence is rigid and oppressive. I shudder, repulsed by her mutilated, sightless eyes.

One questions still burns. With all their probing interrogation, the attorneys never demanded an answer.

“Why?” I ask. “Why did you do it?”

“I didn’t,” is her sharp reply. “They were accidents. Both of them.”

“I mean your eyes.” I swallow. “Why did you blind your eyes?”

The thick blankness in the air echoes the emptiness of her stare.

I push away from the table.

“Black fairies,” she says, unmoving.

Thinking thoughts I dare not voice, I’m mute.

“I saw black fairies. Behind Jamie, just before he fell down the stairs. And in the bathtub with Annie before she drowned. I didn’t want to see them anymore.”

“You’re safe now, Mother,” I soothe. “Safe.”

“But you’re not,” she whispers. A glint flickers in her visionless eyes.

“The black fairies. They’re at your throat.”

“Homesick” by Holly Sheidenberger

Something smells foul. My sense of dread grows as the noxious odor fills my nostrils.

Suddenly a rock smacks into my shoulder. I stagger backwards, clutching at the hot, searing pain.

That’s when I see the Beast.

Our eyes lock. I’m paralyzed, frightened by his disturbingly human-like gaze.

His huge hairy hands grab my throbbing shoulders and drop me into a deep, dark hole.

I am captive.

He brings me raw meat each morning and sleeps next to me at night.

He is not cruel, but he smells.

Finally, I escape. I run, desperate for the sanctuary of home.

But my story is received with taunts, jeers, ridicule, and suspicion. They whisper that I am stupid and crazy.

I am shamed, a fool. I want to hide.

I am homesick for that deep, dark hole. I think I miss the Beast.