Bob Boyd's Mini Stories

“Why did you bring that evil-looking doll into our home?” I asked my wife Gena.

“There’s nothing evil about it. It was a sweet gift from the nice lady at the Thrift Store,” she said.

But I wasn’t so sure. The damn thing had evil eyes that surprisingly my wife couldn’t see.

“She has the cutest eyes,” she said when she showed the doll to me for the first time.

I couldn’t figure out why what was obvious to me wasn’t to my wife.

Did the doll show different sides of itself to different people? Was it that deceptive and supernatural?

Then I started thinking about how people showed different sides of themselves to different people, like the way they acted with close friends compared to how they acted with people they didn’t know as well. I had to stop that line of thought when I considered that I was giving human attributes to a lifeless doll. Yet, I remembered hearing about evil dolls who did have human attributes. And some dolls gave people eerie feelings because the dolls had scary eyes.

Our dog, a feisty Chihuahua named Taco, knew the doll was evil. He barked and growled at it when he first saw it.

“See?” I said to my wife. “Even Taco knows the doll is evil.”

“Oh, hush,” she said. “Taco growls and barks at people and things all the time. He’s just high strung.”

I knew better. Just like dogs can hear sounds we can’t, I believed Taco had a heightened perception for detecting evil. But it may have been at the cost of his life. The first night the evil doll was in our home, we found Taco dead the next morning.

“I know your devil doll did this,” I told my wife.

“Don’t be silly,” she said. “Taco was 15 years old and many dogs die when they are old. It was just a coincidence, a sad coincidence. I miss Taco. He was a good dog.” My wife’s eyes teared up.

“Maybe you’re right about the coincidence,” I said, not wanting to argue with my wife, especially when she was so sad over Taco dying, and I realized she had a point. Taco was an old dog and his death could easily have been a coincidence. But still ….

After Taco died, I walked past the doll and punched it in the head. I couldn’t help myself. I hated that doll so much it felt good to hit it, but, granted, it was immature behavior.

Shortly after I hit the doll, I got a wicked headache and severe dizziness. I fell to the floor barely able to talk and unable to get up. My wife called 911. I got diagnosed at the ER with a stroke and returned home in a wheelchair. Luckily, I was able to talk, and the doctor at the ER told me after I started my treatment plan and did some rehab, I’d be out of the wheelchair soon.

I knew that goddamn devil doll caused the stroke. When I arrived home and saw it in my wife’s arms, I swear for a few seconds it had an evil smile on its face. At that moment, my hatred for the doll increased a hundredfold. Reining in my anger, I silently vowed to kill the devil doll and rid our house of its curse.

That night after my wife fell asleep, I wheeled into the kitchen and pulled a steak knife out of the knife drawer. I wheeled back into the bedroom and reached for the doll that was in our bed next to my wife. Though it seemed to have supernatural powers, it offered no resistance when I yanked it off the bed by the neck. Capitalizing on that, I quickly sawed the doll’s head off with the steak knife. I wheeled out to the kitchen with the doll’s head and body in my lap. I unrolled a trash bag from the roll of trash bags kept in a cabinet in the kitchen. I spread the trash bag out and put the doll’s head and body into it. I wheeled it out to our condo’s dumpster and threw the bag in it, relieved to be finally rid of the devil doll.

After I wheeled back into our condo, I didn’t have the energy to hoist myself into our bed. I fell asleep in the wheelchair at the foot of it. When I woke up, my wife wasn’t in our bed. In her place lay the devil doll with its head intact. A horrible thought entered my mind. As if reading my thoughts, the devil doll sat up and smiled the most wicked smile I’d ever seen. Too distraught to be terrified by the devil doll’s animations, I wailed and wailed as I wheeled to the dumpster.

Bob Boyd

When I was nine, I had two friends the same age, Andy and Bart. Bart was the brave one. Andy and I were the chickens. Bart would climb high trees while Andy and I watched in wonder. Bart was the fearless daredevil. I never understood how he could be so brave and do dangerous things. Like when he ran in front of a moving train just in time for it to miss him by a few feet. Or when he climbed up the top of a school gym building that had only small ridges to grab onto.

In the summer of 2003, our parents took the three of us to the Sequoia National Park in California. Bart, Andy, and I went exploring there. We saw thick, giant trees and weaved in and around them. They were amazing to see. After walking for about ten minutes, we saw a small cave with an entrance about five feet in height.

“Let’s go in,” Bart said.

“No way,” I said.

“There might be a bear in there,” Andy said, staring at the mouth of the cave.

I agreed. Something seemed spooky about that cave, and Andy was right. There could have been a bear there. From what I’d seen on TV, you didn’t ever want to mess with a bear, especially a mother bear with cubs.

“Bart, don’t go in there. It’s too risky,” I said.

“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Bart said and marched toward the cave. He ducked his head and walked into it looking like he was just taking a casual stroll.

“Come on in,” Bart yelled with an echo.

“Come out of there,” I yelled, worried for Bart.

He didn’t answer, and he was quiet for the next fifteen minutes.

“Bart! Bart!” Andy and I called, but he didn’t answer.

“C’mon, Bart, quit kidding around. We’re worried about you,” I yelled.

“Should we go in after him?” Andy said.

“No way,” I said, too scared to go in there.

After half an hour, we decided to go back to the camp where our parents were. We told them we were worried that Bart was lost in the cave. Our parents told us to show them where Bart was. We led them to the cave, and braver than Andy and I, they went into the cave calling Bart, but we didn’t hear him answer. After a while, we couldn’t hear our parents calling Bart anymore.

“Do you think we should go in there and look for them?” I said to Andy, not really wanting to go in because I feared we would never come out.

“No way,” Andy said, and we waited for everyone to come out.

Neither Bart nor our parents came out. When it got dark, Andy and I tramped back to the campsite and went to bed hoping Bart and our parents would be back at the campsite in the morning. We woke up alone. We hiked to the forest rangers’ station and told them what had happened. They told us there were no caves where we said the cave was.

We led them to the cave, but it wasn’t there. We and the rangers searched all over the park where it had been and never found it.

“But our parents and Bart are lost then,” Andy said.

“We’ll find them,” the rangers assured us.

They searched for days, then weeks, and never found Bart or our parents. Luckily for Andy and me we both had grandparents who took us in and adopted us. To this day twenty years later, we have no idea what happened to Bart or our parents. It was as if the national park swallowed them.

Bob Boyd

Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.
— Luke 10:19

Reverend Notts, a brawny, big-eyed man was one of the best snake handling preachers in the Appalachian Mountains bar none. He’d handled rattlers for years. He claimed he felt the power of the Holy Spirit enter into him as he took up serpents. He danced wildly, possessed by the Holy Spirit, and ecstatic, while he talked in tongues to the rattlers.

On Christmas Eve in 1953, he made the mistake of trying his luck with an Eastern Diamondback Rattlesnake, one of the most dangerous rattlers on the planet. When holding the rattler, he started hooping and hollering and talking so much gibberish that the rattle had had enough of his nonsense.

Exasperated with Reverend Notts, it reared back, hissed, and bit him on the neck, delivering a massive amount of deadly hemotoxic venom, enough to kill a bull elephant.

The Reverend, as mad as a raging bull, bit the rattler back on its neck. They both fell to the ground unconscious. The Diamondback rattler died, the Reverend more venomous than the ratter lived.

Bob Boyd

Even as a baby, he had an evil look about him. So, it wasn’t surprising that my kid brother became a bully and always got in trouble in grade school. He was destined for infamy. Our parents were sure he’d end up in prison. He had an incredibly high IQ, which made him doubly dangerous. When a little older, he began torturing and offing neighbor’s pets and not getting caught, I wasn’t surprised.

The signs were there. I knew like beasts in jungle born to kill, he was born to kill and a bit more, to kill and torture people. Because he was my kid brother, I didn’t want to believe what I knew – that he was destined to become a serial killer. I stuffed what I knew deep in my mind and locked it away.

I left home at 18, when my brother was in the 9th grade of high school and still getting in trouble. I joined the Army, having no skills and not cut out for college, with the hope of getting some training I could use for a good job when I got out. I was thrust into a deadly war zone, a place I never wanted to be in. I didn’t sign up to be killed or have to kill. But after killing a few enemy soldiers, I learned I loved to kill, a compulsion that gave me thrills and made me unimaginably high.

When I came home from the military 8 years later, I lost control of my civilian restraints. The compulsion to kill, the thrills and the high, ruled me. I became the serial killer I always thought my brother would be. My brother became a pastor, perhaps because God delivered him from his demonic infamy, and service to God was my brother’s way of thanking Him. Even our parents said he’d changed and called it an act of God.

I sit in a prison cell, the clock ticking down the days till my execution. I keep tearfully praying to God, begging for forgiveness for my murderous sins and some leniency when I die. My pastor brother is praying for me too. I hope despite the seven women I murdered, he hears my and my pastor brother’s prayers and doesn’t send me forever to Hell.

Bob Boyd

When my friend Monty got driven into the arms of a life size, fake, female doll, I couldn’t believe it. I knew he’d become soured on relationships with women after three disappointing ones. I knew he’d become like a card carrying member of MGTOW, Men Going Their Own Way Without Women. But a doll, a freakin’ doll! I felt like he’d lost his mental faculties, and, as if his unrewarding outcomes with women, drove him into the arms of a fake woman doll.

He even introduced me to her, called her Sally. However, I must admit, Sally, who Monty said he bought in a thrift store, looked a damn sight better than those sex dolls with overblown boobs and big round, gross lips, like a freakin’ carp fish. Sally looked … real … natural. And she was pretty enough without fake, unrealistic beauty. And her body was far more natural than those grotesque sex dolls. As a man who swore off women, myself, had I been as desperate as Monty, I might have said, “Does she have a sister?”

But I’m a realist and lack the imagination to pretend I’m having conversations with a freakin’ doll. But as the days, months, and years passed with Monty still in love with his doll, I began to see the advantages: no arguments, no compromising, no complaints, no conflicts of interest, no having to do things for love you wouldn’t ordinarily do, no breakups, no broken hearts.

And despite my reservations, more than a few times, I dreamily thought about a relationship nirvana in a female doll. But that all ended, when Monty called me sobbing. He tearfully said he and Sally had broken up, and he was going back to MGTOW for solace and camaraderie.

That was it for me. I returned the 5 star female doll I’d secretly bought on Amazon. I tail-between-the-legs sheepishly phoned an ex-girlfriend I’d sworn I’d never go back with and never answered her many phone messages pleading to get back with me. Sure, it’s going to be complicated, and it might cost me, but at least a living breathing something is better than a lifeless doll nothing. At least for now.

As for Monty, a hot, real life, aggressive woman just snagged him. So far, he seems happy.

Bob Boyd

I met a woman named India. Her name annoyed me. It made me think her parents must have been hippies who thought it would be cool to name their daughter after a country, or they were on drugs when they dreamed up her name. I hated that hippy dippy crap. I’d seen it before. I knew a guy named Tibet, of all things. He went nuts in high school, and, far as I know, he’s in a psychiatric hospital to this day 15 years later. Maybe his weird name destined him to weird out and screw up his gray matter. At least they didn’t name him Jesus, who knows what kind of God complex that could have hung on him, and he’d have a lot to try to live up to.

“How did you get a name like India?” I asked India, hiding my dislike of her name.

She said, “My parents were hippies, and still kinda are. My mother always wanted to go to India but never got the chance, so she named me India.

That makes a lot of sense, I thought to myself. Typical hippy dippy thinking. I felt even surer her parents were stoned when they came up with that ridiculous name. Because India was beautiful and built and had an engaging smile and seemed nice in spite of her annoying name, I put my bias aside. I had been unfair and decided to accept her beyond a name she had no choice in receiving.

We made a date for the next night. I picked India up at her apartment in a quiet apartment complex with tall, leafy trees in abundance. She strolled out of her apartment smartly dressed in a white blouse and a long blue dress. I liked that she dressed conservatively instead of how I imagined her hippy parents must have. I had a retro mental picture of them as aged poster parents for the misbegotten age of Aquarius.

We had dinner at Red Lobster. I liked her table manners, how elegantly she handled the silverware, and how she didn’t talk with her mouth full.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked her.

“I’m an Administrative Assistant for Floyds & Reynolds, a company that sells imported women’s handbags. You’d be surprised at how much money there is in handbags.”

I had no interest in women’s handbags, but I liked that India had a stable job and normalcy in her life. She was nothing like the images her name conjured in my imagination. I felt palpitations of love beginning to stir in my heart. As animated as our conversation was for the rest of the evening, I got the feeling she felt those stirrings too, but with women, you never know. So I kept my casual front up and didn’t show even a hint of my feelings.

I saw her three times after that. On the third night she invited me into her apartment. After she closed the door, she put her arms around me and said, “I love you.”

I couldn’t believe my luck. I said I love you too, and we spent the night in bed together. Before I left the next morning, she said, “I want you to meet my parents tonight.”

“Okay,” I said, realizing she must really love me to want to introduce me to her parents, though I felt a bit uneasy and didn’t want to meet them. What would I have to talk about to aging hippies? I hated what I read about the sixties. Lost kids doing drugs and joining cults and thinking they were going to change the world with their peace and love songs. Yet, all they did was open the door to widespread drug use throughout the world. I wondered if her parents still took LSD and would they be stoned when we met. And how could they spawn such a beautiful, stable woman with a name that could have consigned her to become like a sixties freak living on LSD and all the craziness of that era.

When I met her parents, her father, Daniel, looked like what I thought Jesus would, with his shoulder-length dark, brown hair and his peaceful, brown eyes. But at unguarded times, his eyes turned evil. The incongruity of his appearance disturbed me. Her mother, Serena, had straight black hair flowing down her back, mysterious eyes impossible to read, and a welcoming smile. I didn’t know what to make of her. She was a puzzle to me. I wondered if Daniel abused her when his eyes got the evil look in them. I got angry wondering if he ever abused India. India wasn’t there. She had to visit an aunt in the hospital emergency room and would join us later, her mother told me.

Sandalwood incense permeated the house. Flowers graced the windows. Pictures of the Hindu Goddess Kali hung everywhere. She had four arms. One held a trident, one a bloodied sword and one a hacked off head dripping blood into a pot held by her fourth hand. Multiple skulls hung around her neck like a macabre, Hawaiian Lei.

The images of Kali were only pictures, but they alarmed me. I remembered reading about the Thuggees of India who robbed and strangled people to death as rituals for the goddess Kali. I chastised myself for being foolish and put my fears aside. These were just old hippies still obsessed with Eastern Spirituality.

Daniel smiled. “I have a surprise for you. Go get it Sandra. Sandra marched into the kitchen and came back with a pitcher of a red liquid.

“Ever try watermelon wine?” he said.

“No,” I said. As a lover of watermelon, I wondered how it tasted as a wine.

Sandra poured the wine into my glass for me to sample.

“Thanks,” I said, and took a sip. It was the best wine I ever tasted. Sandra poured more into my glass, noticing the delight on my face. I finished the watermelon wine and said, “How do you … how … do … you ….” and I passed out.

I woke up sometime later tied to a post in the house’s cellar that had an ungodly smell. More pictures of Kali were in the room. The pictures sat on shrine tables, two shines had a pile of ashes on trays in front of the pictures.

“What the hell is this!” I howled. “Why am I tied up?”

Daniel grinned devilishly. “You are going to have the supreme honor of being sacrificed to Kali, just like Jeff Steward and William Banes did. Did you hear about them on the news?

I shook my head. The news ran reports on the missing young men daily, and the police had no leads in the case. They vanished and no one knew what happened to them.

“You see those ashes on those two Kali Shrines?”

I nodded, my body perspiring. Fear paralyzing me, I knew where the conversation was going. I knew where I was going.

“Oh, don’t look shocked,” Daniel said. “They will be reborn as holy men devoted to Kali and will have many followers. It’s the greatest honor to be sacrificed to her.” Daniel looked at the pictures of Kali with sickening reverence.

“Why don’t you sacrifice yourselves to her then?”

Because our seva, our service, is to bring sacrifices to Kali. Because of our service, we will cross the ocean of life and death and attain full enlightenment when we drop our bodies and leave the earth plane.

Piss poor excuse, I thought, for psychopathic behavior. What the hell happened to the peace and love?

Daniel told me to get a good night’s sleep. “Tomorrow you will be purified in the fires of cremation and on your way to becoming a great holy man in service to Kali. You don’t know how lucky you are to have been chosen by India for this supreme honor. She could have picked anyone, but she picked you for this greatest of all earthly honors.

“Good night,” Sandra whispered, like a mother about to tuck in a child. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was furious with India for deceiving me and setting me up to be murdered. But, I calmed and wished she could be brought to justice along with her murderous parents. I wondered if she helped with the cremations. At that moment, in the darkness of that cellar, she crept into it and approached me.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I am going to help you escape. It was different with the others. I didn’t love them. I love you, my future husband.”

“Others,” I said, surprised at how calm I was. I believe seeing a chance to save my life calmed me down a little.

“Yes, Jeff Steward and William Banes. You heard of them?”

“Yes. I guess that’s them over there,“ I said, pointing to the ashes.

“Exactly. They are holy men following Kali now, a higher honor you could not find.”

“But, because I love you and don’t want you to leave me, I’m going to set you free. But you must promise me one thing, that you will always love me and not tell anyone about this. And that you will marry me. Promise?”

“I promise,” I said.

“Swear it in the name of the goddess Kali and know if you break your promise in Kali’s name, she will come after you.”

“I swear in the name of Kali I won’t break my promise to you. Now please untie me and let me get out of here!”

“Swear to Kali you will marry me.”

“Okay. Okay. I swear to Kali I will marry you. Now get me out of here!”

India untied me and led me out a back door and to my car. She kissed me and said, “I love you forever and please keep your promise, my darling, future husband.”

I raced to the police station and told them everything. Months later, India and her mother and father got sent to prison. I received a letter from India that read something like even though you broke your promise to me, I still love you and always will. Please come visit me and marry me. I should be out in seven years with parole and we can live happily ever after. I know now what I did was wrong, and I want to make it up to you. Please come see me, my love, my future husband.
Love,

India

I tore the letter up and threw it in the trash. I just couldn’t forgive her for what she did, and I could never trust her. I suspected she was as screwed up as her parents, the apple not falling far from the tree thing, and could one day try to kill me in a whacked out religious frenzy.

I haven’t get over the horror of what she and her parents tried to do to me. Every night I have terrifying nightmares. Kali comes after me in all her horrifying fierceness. She chases me around a dark cellar, her arms waving in the air, her sword poised to hack my head off. Just as she is about to catch me, I wake gasping for breath, my body trembling and covered in sweat. I fear one day she will catch me and kill me in that nightmare and drag my soul to some Hindu hell. I pray I’m wrong!

Bob Boyd

I walked to the edge of a cliff admiring the surging ocean and the jagged rocks below. My wife Janice was walking behind me. I heard her steps quicken. I turned in time to dodge her running attempt to push me off the cliff, but not in time to save her as she plunged off the cliff, her arms waving aimlessly like a wounded bird no longer able to fly. She screamed like a long winded banshee on the way down before her body shattered on the jagged rocks below.

It may surprise you that I wasn’t heartbroken at the loss of her life. We’d been having marital problems for some time, and I read in Janice’s diary that she wanted to kill me. I didn’t tell her I’d peeked into her private diary and learned she wanted to kill me. But I was cautious around her, especially in the kitchen where we had a collection of paring and carving knives. When she was at work, I meticulously checked her belongings for any signs of poisons that she may have hidden to poison me to death with. I’d seen on crime shows that women often used poison to get rid of their husbands, so I wasn’t ruling out that dreadful possibility.

I called the police to report the accident. At first, they suspected I pushed Janice off the cliff and called me a person of interest. But they lacked sufficient evidence to tie me to her death. I attended her funeral and her burial playing the part of a grieving husband, but I felt no sorrow for her. After all, she tried to kill me and we hadn’t gotten along well. I guess we stayed together out of habit, a bad habit. We hadn’t had sex in years. I found that in other women without Janice knowing about it. She suspected I was unfaithful and told me she didn’t care because she had fun too. That was about a month before her death, and I’d thought about divorcing her. But I couldn’t bring myself to taking that irrevocable step. Maybe somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I still felt the marriage could be salvaged, crazy as that may seem.

I made the mistake of having an insurance policy for a lot of money which made me worth more dead than alive. I have no doubt Janice had that on her mind when she wrote she wanted to kill me in her diary. Her life insurance policy was a pittance compared to mine, but at least it covered her funeral and burial expenses.

A few weeks after Janice died, I began dating or re-dating Ginger, a woman I had had a few dalliances with while married. She broke things off with me back then. She had gotten a conscience about, in her words, “Sneaking around with a married man.” I tried to persuade Ginger that I would eventually get divorced from Janice but she asked me to do it asap. I couldn’t, and I’m not sure why. So Ginger tearfully bid me goodbye and that was that until Janice died and Ginger felt she could start up our romance with a clear conscience.

At first, our romance felt like the stuff soulmates are made of. I wanted to spend every minute of every day with Ginger. Being away from her was like being thrown out of heaven. When we finally got to make love at my home, an invisible cracking whip began lashing us, and we both had welts on our bodies. At that moment, I heard Janice’s voice inside my head. She said, “Get that bitch out of our bed and our home, you cheating bastard!”

Scared and not knowing what else a disembodied Janice was capable of, I whisked Ginger out of my house and into my car to get her away from Janice. I was so frightened I could barely drive. I told Ginger about Janice talking to me in my head and what she said.

When we reached Ginger’s apartment, she got out of my car and said, “I’ll never set foot in that house again.” She slammed her apartment door without even giving me the usual goodnight kiss.

A day later she called me at work and said, “I can’t deal with this. It’s like you’re still married. We’re done.”

Strange as this may sound, I’m back with Janice. I know. You are wondering how I could get back with a dead wife. Being dead eventually mellowed her out and made her a nicer person, almost saintly. I feel her loving presence every day and hear her endearing words in my head. At night her spirit is next to me in bed, and I feel her caresses instead of the painful, invisible whip she punished me and Ginger with. We’ve realized we’re soulmates that even death cannot separate. I know when I die we’ll be together in the afterlife, and like in the fairy tales, we’ll be in love happily ever after.

Bob Boyd

I warned my neighbor, Rodney, to beware of the forest behind our homes on full moon nights. Rodney loved the outdoors more than the indoors. He pitched a tent in the forest behind our homes on many nights. I told him I don’t believe in werewolves, but of late, I heard howling in the forest on full moon nights.

I shrugged it off as some human lunatic and told Rodney a deranged lunatic could be more dangerous to his life than a fictional werewolf. Rodney didn’t take my warning seriously. He laughed it off, ignorant of the danger it held. And the next full moon night, he went camping, seemingly to spite me and prove no danger lurked in the forest when the moon was full.

And, sure enough, I heard the howling that full moon night. But with human screams for help. I called the police and saw what looked like a werewolf enter Rodney’s home and turn on the lights. In the meantime, the police arrived and found two dead people in the forest, newly weds camping. The police followed up on what I said about a werewolf entering Rodney’s home and found only Rodney in his pajamas complaining about being woken up. He said I was crackers, just seeing things and that I was a little off my rocker.

Rodney hasn’t been speaking to me since then. When I see him, he looks at me with hard eyes. He knows that I know what he is. I’ve no doubt he’ll be speaking to me when the werewolf in him comes out. So before the next full moon and Rodney break loose, I’m stocking up on silver bullets and pinning wolfsbane on my home’s doors and windows.

Bob Boyd

I met Gwendolyn at a ghost tour in Greensboro, North Carolina in the summer of 1981. She was a tall and beautiful willowy blonde who seemed a bit otherworldly. She confirmed the otherworldly by smiling and saying, “I’m from the Astral Plane.”

“Is that somewhere in the continental United States?” I asked, smiling mischievously.

“Ha, ha,” she laughed, and said, “Nope. It’s near where these ghosts are from.”

“What ghosts? I hadn’t seen any ghosts,” I said, wondering why Gwendolyn would say she was from someplace near where the ghosts were from. I thought she had to be joking, but she seemed serious.

At the end of the ghost tour, it hadn’t yielded any ghosts or anything remotely scary. I turned to complain to Gwendolyn, and she wasn’t there. I looked around and didn’t see her. Since I just met her, I figured she must have drifted away in the crowd, so I didn’t worry about it and went on my way.

Arriving home, I thought about Gwendolyn. Dreaming a little, I wondered if we could have been an item if she hadn’t wandered off. I kept thinking about her and how I was beginning to feel more haunted by her memory than the no show ghosts on the lackluster ghost tour.

Then I heard her voice in my head. “That’s because, unlike the ghosts, I showed up,” her voice said.

At first, I wondered if it was my meds talking. I got put on a new medication for my heart problem and sometimes with a new medication I suffered side effects. But to dispel that mistaken notion, Gwendolyn’s voice said, “It’s not the medication. It’s really me.”

“How can this be?” I asked.

“I told you I was from the Astral Plane, and I decided to go back there and walk into your mind from it. What you saw tonight wasn’t real. It was like a reflection from the astral plane, like seeing the image of a ghost, which by the way, I am way more than a powerless ghost.”

“You’re something more powerful than a ghost?” I said, fear rising in me.

“Yes, and didn’t you want to experience something paranormal when you went on the ghost tour?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t want something paranormal in my head.”

“Well, you got a paranormal Babe and I’m yours.”

“Yours?” I said, trembling.

“Yes, kind of like that “till death do us part thing, except even death won’t be able to keep us apart. How about that?”

“I don’t like it. You’re possessing me. It’s not right.”

“So,” Gwendolyn’s voice said and laughed.

“I know how to get you out of my head and my life forever.”

“Oh really?”

“Yes, really, and you’ll soon see how.”

“I know how. You think that priest, Father John, can exorcise me out of your mind.”

“I know he can,” I said. I was shocked she knew my plan as if she was not only in my mind but could read it too.

The next day I made an appointment with Father John to rid me of Gwendolyn.

After he questioned me about Gwendolyn inhabiting my mind, he doused me with holy water. Gwendolyn didn’t protest or say anything. I wondered if the holy water had rid me of her until Father John began the exorcism prayers. Then I heard Gwendolyn’s voice say, “Watch this.”

As if on cue, Father John’s body levitated off the ground and spun around faster and faster until he was just a blur. He screamed, blacked out, and fell to the ground dead. Without checking his pulse or listening to his heart, I knew he was dead, and for the first time, I knew beyond doubt Gwendolyn was demonically evil.

I left the church horrified. As I crossed the street the church was on, a black sedan ran a red light and plowed into me on the street crossing. The impact flattened me on the street with searing pain all over my body. I was conscious but feeling faint. Before passing out, I heard Gwendolyn’s voice say, “See what happens when you try to get rid of me?”

After I got patched up in the ER and put in the hospital, a young hospital chaplain, a Catholic priest, came to visit me. I was surprised to see him. I hadn’t asked to see the chaplain. I thought about telling him what happened to me with Gwendolyn, but he looked so young I was afraid he could be killed by Gwendolyn. Despite my reservations, I began telling him what had happened and how Gwendolyn killed the exorcist priest. Gwendolyn’s voice rang in my head telling me to shut up repeatedly. Surprisingly, I had the will to ignore her.

When I finished my story, the priest took a chain with a pendant on it off his neck and slipped it around my neck. “Saint Michael will help you,” he said. He smiled, made the sign of the cross, said what sounded like a prayer in Latin and left.

I felt heat emanating from the pendant. In my mind, I saw a tall male angel on a battlefield dressed in blue with a sword in one hand and a shield in the other. He looked like a fearless mighty warrior angel. Then I saw Gwendolyn removing some of her clothes with a seductive look in her eyes. She looked so beautiful and irresistible. I felt the angel didn’t have a chance against her womanly and paranormal powers. The warrior angel showed no signs of weakening. At that moment, Gwendolyn, enraged her plan hadn’t worked, changed into a demon with a fiery sword. Her eyes glowing, she charged the warrior angel. With phenomenal speed, she hacked away at him, but he blocked her every strike.

The demon elbowed the warrior angel in the head knocking him to the ground. The demon lifted its sword in the air clutching it with both hands and slashed it down at the warrior angel. The warrior blocked the blow with his shield and thrust his sword into the demon’s heart. The demon changed back into a profusely bleeding Gwendolyn. She shrieked and vanished, presumably back to hell. And I knew I was free of her forever.

Bob Boyd

Sarah and I had a lot of good times. We were in love. I wanted to marry her, but the last time I saw her I had a feeling something was wrong. She met me at O’Brien’s Coffee House and I could see something was wrong with her that she was trying to hide from me.

I got worried for her and said, “Are you okay?”

“It’s nice out today,” she said, sitting down across from me.

“It is nice, but what’s the matter?” I said. I wondered how bad the thing was she was hiding.

Then she cried and blurted out, “I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer and I may not have long to live.”

My heart sank. “I’m so sorry. What can I do to help you?” I said.

“I’m too depressed to say anything else about it, and I don’t want to die at age 27,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes with a napkin.

“Maybe you’ll survive it. I’ve read there are new cancer treatments discovered every day and cancers that killed people in the past can be healed now,” I said.

Tearfully, she said, “I just can’t talk about it, and I have to get going. I’m sorry but I need to be alone.”

Respecting her wishes, I didn’t push things.

“Okay,” I said, “But call me when you feel up to it.”

Days later, Sarah called me.

In a trembling voice, she said, “I’m sorry. I’m going to have to stop seeing you. I don’t want to burden you with this. The cancer is spreading throughout my body, and based on what I’ve been told and read, I’m sure I’m going to die in a few months.”

I tried to talk her into not leaving me at a time when she needed me the most, at a time when I wanted to be there for her, but she wouldn’t relent.

And as she predicted, she died three months later. My heart and my life were shattered. I didn’t want to live. In a delusional moment, I thought if I killed myself, I’d be with Sarah forever. In a trance-like state, I drifted to my bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. I grabbed a bottle of aspirins out of the cabinet, opened the bottle, and poured half the aspirins out of the bottle and into my hand.

Just as I was about to swallow them, Sarah’s spirit appeared inside my mind like seeing her on a small TV screen. I was a little startled at first but felt profound peace seconds later. She looked ethereal but more beautiful than when she was alive, and she seemed blissfully happy. I remember thinking she looked angelic. Then I thought about how much I missed her and tears trickled down my face.

She smiled, blew a kiss, and said to me, “Don’t do it, my Love. Be patient. We’ll be together again soon.” Then she faded away into a luminous, white light, and I remember saying, “Come back. Come back,” and sobbing because I missed her so much.

It’s been three months since Sarah’s visit from the afterlife. I’ve been diagnosed with lung cancer that is spreading to other organs. If all goes miraculously well, supposedly, I could live five more years. But based on what Sarah said about us being together again, now I know what she said was true. I know I’ll be dead soon and with her forever.

Bob Boyd

“I don’t belong here. I’m not crazy,” Joshua said. He winced when he told that to the head of the psychiatric hospital.

“Nobody is here who doesn’t belong here,” Doctor Matthews said, taking a closer look at Joshua, tired of hearing hundreds of patients saying the same thing. “Sure, you are all here by mistake,” he said. “When you’re all a danger to yourselves, and we have to try to clean up the messes of your unmanageable lives.”

Doctor Matthews didn’t realize despite his decades of experience with patients that Joshua didn’t belong there, and he would find that out before the night ended.

“Okay, but I tried to tell you,” Joshua said as he strode away to the recreation room. After Joshua left, something eerie hung in the air that made Doctor Matthew shiver. For the first time since he took charge of the psychiatric hospital, he felt a chill over what a patient said. And the entire hospital grew colder as if the electric power had dimmed down supernaturally

Then he saw red lights emerge from the floor. What the hell, he thought. As if the word hell summoned dark things from that fiery pit, he saw red horns poking up from the floor. He rubbed his eyes thinking he was seeing things or if he had taken too many meds that day. No one knew Doctor Matthew should have been a patient there too instead of its director, but he was good at hiding his symptoms. He sensed Joshua knew this. He sensed Joshua really didn’t belong there. He believed Joshua was the cause of the strange things he was seeing and feeling.

“Your right,” Joshua said, alarming Doctor Matthews and appearing to have materialized out of the ether.

“Joshua!” You startled me. “What’s the meaning of this?”

“What’s the meaning of life?” Joshua asked, a freakish smile lighting up his face that seemed to glow.

“I don’t know what games you’re playing, Joshua, but it’s time for you to go to your room.”

“It’s time for you to go to hell,” Joshua said, and Doctor Matthews, a secret serial killer, felt the ground give way under him and dropped into the fiery pit screaming with flames shooting up from hell. When he hit bottom, he saw Joshua there.

“Who are you?” the doctor said.

“You remember the line from a song that went, “Pleased to meet you glad you know my name?”

“Yes, it’s from a Rolling Stones song, one of my favorites, Sympathy for the Devil.”
“Bingo! And welcome home!”

At that moment, flames licked the doctor’s body all over, and he screamed and heard Joshua laughing hideously behind him.

He woke up terrified at first but relieved when he realized he’d had a nightmare. He wondered why he had dreamed of a man named Joshua. He didn’t know anyone with that name and never had a patient named Joshua … until a patient named Joshua was admitted to his psychiatric hospital later that morning. And the doctor saw red lights rising from the floor.

Bob Boyd

Timmy was born in September 1962. I think it was a Friday. He came into the world blind and unable to walk. I was only a year old when Timmy was born. When I turned six, I remember feeling bad for him and wondering why God let Timmy be born blind and unable to see and walk like other kinds. That might have seemed like a lot of curiosity for a little kid. It kind of was. I was born curious though and often wondered about many things.

I used to wonder why the planes in the sky were so little and what the tiny people in them looked like and where they were from. I wondered why old people came into life old instead of young like me. But this is about Timmy.

Though he couldn’t see, Timmy was the nicest kid ever. He always said kind words and never got in trouble like most of my friends did. Timmy sang like an angel. When he sang in the pew in church, everybody looked at him with wonder. He was so good Pastor Jenkins allowed him to be the only kid singing in the church choir. Geez, he was so good. I thought I could sing but people told me to stop or held their ears when I wrecked songs with my off-key voice. That ended my future as a famous singer. I was no Timmy.

Timmy was a brainiac. It was as if God had given him extra smarts to make up for not being able to see. Some said blind people got other abilities to make up for being sent into the world blind. Others said that wasn’t true. I never knew what the real answer was. But I knew it seemed God had given Timmy more smarts than anyone else. Timmy could hear a book read once and tell it back to you like he was a recorder. I guess he had what is called a photographic memory. I didn’t have that. I had to study a lot to remember even a little.

Timmy did something I thought was crazy for him to try. He learned Jujitsu. I thought to myself how can a blind kid learn something like that? I was wrong. Timmy got so good at Jujitsu that he beat up a bully who was picking on me, a big bully. The bully got pinned on the ground by Timmy and cried and ran home when Timmy let him up.

I never saw the bully after that. I heard he was so embarrassed by being beat up by a blind kid that he begged his mother to send him to another school. I also heard he got hit by a car and died like a punishment from God for fighting a blind kid. I don’t know which was true or if there was another reason I never saw the bully again. I only know he was never seen again at my school or anywhere else. It’s strange how in your life you only see some people briefly and then you never see them again. It’s kinda like they die on you and are out of your life just like a person who really dies. I often wonder what happened to many of those disappearing people like I wondered what happened to Timmy.

At age 18 he decided he wanted to turn his wheelchair into a rocket ship. I thought he was joking until a few months later when I saw what looked like a big fake rocket on the back of his wheelchair. Timmy started counting down 10 … 9 …. 8 …. And I laughed at Timmy’s antics. 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … Blast off!

Then zoom! Timmy and his wheelchair turned into a vibrating translucent green color and blasted into the sky above the clouds. I heard the sonic boom you hear when an airplane breaks the sound barrier, and Timmy was gone. As I stood there staring at the sky, I kept thinking Timmy and his wheelchair would appear out of the clouds at any time and land on the ground where Timmy started from. But Timmy never came back. And nobody ever found him. I wondered if when he broke the sound barrier he broke into another dimension. Otherwise, I’m sure the many search and rescue efforts on land and in the air would have found some trace of Timmy and his wheelchair.

My other theory was that the translucent green color Timmy and his wheelchair turned into might have meant Timmy was an alien, which could explain his super intelligence and how he was good at everything. It could have meant he went home to some distant planet. I learned later this was probably the best theory because Timmy’s mother was a UFO fanatic and before Timmy was born claimed she’d been abducted by aliens. When I first heard that, I wasn’t sure about her claim because she believed in the abduction when she was hypnotized by a crazy lady who dressed like a wizard and often predicted the aliens were coming on certain dates, but they never came. Just like Timmy never came back.

Bob Boyd

I live in an undisclosed town. I write undisclosed because if I revealed the name of our town after writing about what happened here, thrill seekers and nosey tourists would overrun our peaceful paradise and spoil our tranquil existence. Although the unwise to the world among us will probably wreck the secret by phoning relatives and breathlessly telling them about the strange things that happened the day the phenomenal flying humanoids visited us.

First came the dark rolling clouds, which scared the hell out of everyone in town that beheld the scary sight. When the clouds stopped, six flying humanoids descended out of them like raindrops.

At first sight of them, women and children screamed and ran into their homes. Some men followed. Others, like me, ran into our homes and grabbed our guns to defend the town against what we thought were dangerous invaders until the humanoids waved white flags midway down. We knew the flags were a sign they wanted peace, but we were still cautious. It could have been a ruse to make us believe they weren’t entering our town to kill us. So we kept our guns in hand and had 50 men assembled to blast the odd-looking humanoids out of the sky if necessary.

I write odd-looking because they had human faces but metallic-gray slim bodies with large wings that beat rapidly and kept them afloat in the air. As they floated closer to us smiling and waving their white flags, we felt compelled to lower our guns. But just as we lowered our guns red laser beams shot out of the flying humanoids’ eyes and killed half of us. Those who survived ran for cover and started shooting at the humanoids, but our bullets just bounced off them, and they kept firing their lasers at us. Their lasers killed more men as well as striking buildings that burst into flames. And they kept flying closer to us.

I knew soon we’d all be dead and our town would be burned down. Then a crazy pre-teen kid named Jessie started rapidly shooting pottery clay ammo balls at the humanoids with his slingshot and his perfect aim, and the humanoids began falling dead from the sky. He picked off three of them. Another pre-teen kid inspired by Jessie killed the remaining humanoids with his slingshot’s pottery clay ammo balls. I don’t know why the pottery clay ammo balls were so effective, but when we examined the corpses of the six flying humanoids, they turned into regular humans and their skin changed from metallic gray to Caucasian white, and their wings fell off their bodies.

We never told the authorities about the incident. We disposed of the bodies in a secret location. We didn’t want those thrill seekers and nosey tourists tramping all over our city or turning it into something like an Area 51, and we prayed we’d never see any flying humanoids again.

Bob Boyd