Straight or Left

lake-pontchartrain-ksbrooks-creditedBy M.P. Witwer

Taking a deep breath and pursing her lips, Tanya depressed the accelerator. Straight it would be.

Straight away from her lifetime home. Straight into the unknown. Straight onto the longest bridge in the world — ironic for someone panicky about crossing bridges, but that was how desperate her situation had become.

After discovering his great-grandmother’s “collection,” Jesse had immersed himself in the dark arts, over time morphing into a scary and paranoid Doppelganger, the very opposite of the man she had married.

When Tanya confronted him, he claimed it was all in fun, that the bizarre rituals he performed didn’t really do anything. But she knew better, on both counts. The last straw came when she found him, trance-like, mumbling an incantation over their wedding photo. Tanya waited until he’d left, then packed the car and headed for the bridge.

Her fear lifted as she drove. She felt ready to start over, comfortable facing the unfamiliar.

All too soon, however, the “other side” began to seem familiar. Frighteningly familiar. Spotting a Piggly Wiggly store just like the one at home didn’t unsettle her, but seeing the identical twin of their local diner next to it did. An exact replica of Pontchartrain Elementary three blocks away sent her into a cold sweat. Tanya haltingly followed her usual route, dread growing with each well-known landmark. She parked and sat in terrified silence, staring at her house — and Jesse out front, expecting her.

“Welcome home, darlin’,” he drawled, his eyes gleaming red. “Welcome home.

* * *
© 2015 by M.P. Witwer • All rights reserved

Originally published at www.indiesunlimited.com on April 10, 2015. Photo of Lake Pontchartrain © K.S. Brooks. Do not use without attribution.

Sweet Things

candy

By Allison M. Dickson

As the author herself puts it, this is a sinister little tale. Consider yourself warned.

It was Halloween night, so of course…razor blades. Also needles and wood splinters and rat poison. But just a dash. He didn’t want to kill anybody. He just wanted them to cry. Maybe they would never eat candy again. Maybe they wouldn’t turn into fat little slobs. Maybe they would live longer and have better teeth.

Maybe he was saving humanity.

Parents were crafty little inspectors, so he’d honed his skills over the years, each little candy bar a painstaking operation that would make a surgeon weep with envy. A singular puncture hole, a slightly imperfect seal, and all his hard work would be so much refuse for rats or other garbage bin carrion, and that would not do.

The right tools were essential. Fine tweezers for opening the ends of each package, a commercial heat sealer for closing them back up again so they looked fresh from the factory. A pair of tin snips for making the bits of needles and razor blades into devious silver confetti to be sprinkled carefully throughout each confection. A mortar and pestle to grind the rat poison into a fine powder so that he could combine it with a viscous mixture to be inserted with a hypodermic needle, undetectable particularly amid the caramel varieties.

He found a soldering iron to be useful for melting the chocolate back over the places he’d inserted his special ingredients. No one would detect his trickery—until it was too late. After his treatment, the candy looked just as it did before. Perhaps even better.

He was a maestro of the subtle. Continue reading