Quarantine Monster Short: No Children Allowed

“The older ones aren’t too bad… What am I saying? Of course they are. They sulk most of the time but when they make noise, it’s loud and grating. The little ones are the worst, though.” The ghost kept up the mumbled tirade as it paced in the attic of the old Victorian it had called home for the last forty years.

It passed through the boxes, furniture, and studs of the unfinished wall as it paced. Sheets rustled and dust bunnies ran in the faint breeze it created, but otherwise its passing went unnoticed.

It had a need, a drive, to interact with the human tenants of the house but five things were stopping it from its traditional role.

The children.

The ghost paused its pacing when footsteps raced passed the door at the bottom of the stairs that lead to its sanctuary. The children weren’t allowed in the attic alone and that rule gave the ghost a safe haven in the otherwise terrifying house.

The sound of glass breaking and screaming filtered up from the upstairs study. The ghost poked its head through the floor to see what the little monsters had done now.

A tall floor lamp was laying on its side on the floor, its antique glass shade was splayed around it in a rainbow of shards. The two middle children were screaming at each other, deciding who deserved the blame for the latest mishap. The ghost jerked its head back into the attic when the youngest child toddled into the room. The two-year-old had a way of staring at the ghost that was unnerving and it avoided the smallest human whenever possible.

The ghost resumed its pacing, trying to figure out how it could go back to its haunting ways while avoiding the children.

It didn’t notice the tiny footsteps on the stairs until it was too late.

The tiny, redheaded toddler stood at the top of the stairs with a blanket draped over her shoulder and jelly smeared across her face. She stared at the ghost.

If it still had skin, it would’ve jumped out of it. The ghost froze, unsure what to do. After a minute that felt like an eternity of being stared at by the child, the ghost frowned. “Can you actually see me?” the ghost asked before slowly shifting to the right. The child’s eyes followed the ghost’s movement. The ghost glided behind the toddler, hovering over the stairs.

The girl turned around, her eyes never leaving the ghost.

It shuddered, fully creeped out by the small human. It raced away from the girl and hid behind a tall stack of boxes in a corner of the attic.

It waited, hoping the child would leave the attic and it in peace. The sound of something scuffing against the dusty floor had the ghost turning around.

The toddler had found it.

“Stay away from me!” The ghost yelled before dropping through three floors to the basement. It crouched in a dark corner, trying to recover from its encounter with the little girl.

It froze when it heard the sound of tiny feet stomping down the wooden stairs. “No…” It turned.

The small human was silhouetted in the doorway.

Quarantine Monster Short: Happy Bigfoot

This was actually the first monster short I wrote when I decided to start this project. Just a happy, little Bigfoot.

Picture from Disney's A Goofy Movie

In a sunlit meadow, somewhere in the forest in the Pacific Northwest, there is naught to be seen or heard but nature.

Bigfoot dances through, tossing wildflowers from the bouquet he holds while he sings Born Free in his head.

He skips over to the first human he has seen in weeks, a stunned hiker standing at the edge of the meadow. Bigfoot hands them the rest of his bouquet and gently pats them on the head.

Their knees buckle under the force of the pat.

Bigfoot spins around them and dances off into the forest.

Quarantine Monster Shorts: Hangry Vamp

I fully intended to post this yesterday but for some reason I felt that separating the cat food that Toothless likes from the food he doesn't like, piece by piece, was more important. Cat parent life.

Enjoy!

Hangry Vamp

“This is getting old.”

Vivian didn’t look up from her book as Marco unceremoniously plopped down next to her on the bench. She just raised an eyebrow as she turned the page. “Get used to things getting old.” At Marco’s extended silence, Vivian sighed and closed her book. Setting it on the bench between them, she turned to study her friend.

He tended to dress along the romantic Goth lines with his all-black ensemble: lace cuffs on his shirt, black-on-black brocade vest, trousers, and knee-high leather boots. The one thing that kept him from being mistaken for full Goth was his golden blond hair. A little too obvious for their kind but the world glanced past Goths more now than it used to.

Her own look leaned more toward punk with her biker boots, jeans, Iron Maiden tee, and leather jacket. After centuries in corsets, dressed, and various other restraining clothes, Vivian reveled in the freedom of her modern wardrobe.

“What, pray tell, is getting old?

Marco glared at her for her droll tone. “The humans.”

Vivian rolled her eyes and picked up her book. “That’s what they do.”

“Would you stop lecturing me?!” Marco exploded, his voice cut through the night and startled birds from the nearest trees.

Vivian’s eyes widened minutely and she put her book back down. “I don’t feel like that was warranted,” she said, her tone even.

Marco ran a hand through his hair as he tried to get his temper back under control. “I apologize, Viv. It’s been a while since I fed, I —”

“You’re hangry!” Vivian laughed.

“I’m what?”

“Hangry.” Vivian laughed again as Marco glowered at her. “Your hunger is making you angry, so ‘hangry’. When was the last time you fed?”

Marco leaned back, counting on his fingers. “Two weeks, I think.”

Vivian’s humor dissolved into concern. “That’s not good. You’re not old enough to go long stretches between feedings. You have probably another couple of days before bad things happen. Why have you waited so long?”

Marco rolled his eyes and spread his arms wide, taking in all of Griffith Park. “There aren’t any humans around to feed off of. They’re all behind locked doors. And the few that are out avoid people like the plague.”

“It is a plague, but this one is much cleaner than the Bubonic.” Vivian shrugged off Marco’s wide-eyed stare. “You knew I was really old.”

Marco shook his head. “No, not that. It’s how you commented on the cleanliness of this plague vs. Bubonic when I am in a crisis right now!”

“Oh my god, dramatic much?” Vivian stood, tucking her book into her bag and pulled Marco to his feet. “We will find you someone to feed on, if there aren’t any rule breakers out, we can find some bagged to tide you over.”

Marco made a face. “I hate the bagged stuff. So many preservatives that make it taste fake and it’s so gross cold. Microwaving it makes it stale. Who knows where the person’s been. You —”

Vivian slapped the back of Marco’s head to stop his list of grievances with donated blood. “Beggars can’t be choosers. You’ll take what I give you because I don’t want your hangry ass making noise and risking us all.”

Marco fell into a sullen silence as he followed Vivian through the park to her car. “Have you fed on somebody who as sick?”

Vivian glanced up at him with a smirk. “Worried about catching it?”

Marco shook his head. “Just wondered if they taste different.”

“Oh, yeah, they do. Kind of… musty.” Vivian frowned, looking for a better word. “Kind of like a closed basement: kind of damp, maybe a bit of mold, a little earthy. A taste that’s better in cheese, not blood.”

Marco made a face.

Vivian reached up and patted his shoulder. “We’ll try to find a healthy one for you. The people who have recovered from it still taste a little off, so watch out for them, too.”

They reached Vivian’s blood red Barracuda and climbed in. The engine roared to life as she took them out onto the open road, going twice the speed limit without fear of accident or police.

“So, why haven’t you eaten?”

“I told you, nobody is out and those who are, scurry away from other people faster than a vamp can run.”

“So.”

“So?”

Vivian swept her hand through the open window. “Chase them.”

“Chase- Viv, we aren’t animals hunting our prey.”

“That is exactly what we are, Marco, and if you had waited much longer to feed, you would’ve done it without thought. The hungrier you get, the more humanity you lose. Don’t let yourself go more than a week again. Keep bagged on hand if you have to.” A shadow crossed Vivian’s face that had nothing to do with the streetlights they passed under. “Decades ago, I knew a vamp a little younger than you who tried to go a month without eating. We found him in an elementary school. He had gotten twenty or thirty of the little buggers before we got him stopped. It took a lot of money and fast talking to keep the humans from suspecting.”

Marco’s white complexion took on a gray hue. “What happens if I get that bad?”

Vivian took his hand with a kind smile. “I’ll rip out your heart.”

Introducing: Quarantine Monster Shorts

I don't know if you've noticed, but 2020 has been kind of insane. Pandemic, murder hornets, coin shortages, and meth gators just to name a few have been flooding news sources and social media since March. A random conversation with my best friend about the water in the Great Lakes clearing because of decreased shipping started a project about a very important topic: 

What are monsters doing while the are humans locked up?

So, to help keep myself sane during the dumpster fire that is 2020, I have been trying to answer that question in a series of short stories. They range from funny to sad, ridiculous to bittersweet, covering a wide range of emotions that humans and monsters are feeling during these uncertain times. 

My end goal is to release an anthology of them but I thought it would be fun to share a few of them with you here on The Blank Page. The first one will be posted next Tuesday, August, 11th.

I have lucky 13 stories completed and have ideas for more so this project will keep me busy for a while. I'll let you know more about the anthology when I have a better idea of what I want it to look like.

Some of the monsters featured in the shorts:

Ghosts

Vampires

Big Foot

Witches

Nessy

Cats

Gremlins

and more... 

Picture from Metro

I want to thank my friends in the Central Nebraska Writers Group who have been giving me feedback on my monster shorts for the last 6+ months and giving me more ideas to keep the stories going. 

If you have any monsters that you would like to see featured in the Quarantine Monster Shorts, please comment below or email me at katherine.wielechowski@gmail.com.

Make sure to follow me on facebook, Katherine Wielechowski- Author so you know when new posts go up.

Stay safe, wash your hands, wear sunscreen, and don't forget to take a towel. Love, Katherine

Poem: We are the Tired Generation

We are the tired generation

Not millennials

Not snowflakes

Not you damn kids

We are tired

Tired of being told we can't or we won't

Tired of being told we're wrong

Tired of being told we're unskilled

Tired of being the hopeless while being seen as the helpless

Tired of being told we killed this industry or that product

Tired of being told we're the ruin of this country

Tired of being unheard

When it was you who failed to teach

It was you who failed to lead

It was you who failed to train

It was you who failed to care

It was you who made us helpless and hopeless

We are the inheritors of a wrecked economy, drowning in debt and in hate

We were expected to do as you did without knowing that what you did doesn't work anymore

You tell us to grow up, take a stand, fight for what we want

But when we do, you tell use to sit down, be quite, mind the status quo

Now we say the status quo doesn't work for us

You fight us, fight for how it's always been done

Instead of listening to how we want to see our future, you tell us to live in your past

You had your chance to be teachers, instead you chose to be anchors

So now we say, sit down, listen, and learn from us

You've had your future, it is time for us to have ours

We are the tired generation

And we will rise

Cat, peanut butter, and working from home

I just had to clean peanut butter off my desk, my carpet, and my cat. How is your morning going?

 

This is the early morning text I sent my family and friends this morning.

This is my "I forgive you" face

 

What happened:

 

I was logging into my computer, getting ready to start working for the day with my breakfast sitting on the desk next to my keyboard (toasted blueberry bagel slathered with peanut butter) when Toothless decided to jump onto my desk.

 

Right onto the bagel.

 

I grabbed him and, in the scramble, the plate and half of the bagel ended up peanut butter side down on the floor, the other half stayed on my desk with a perfect pawprint in the peanut butter.

 

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with Toothless. I didn’t want to set him down somewhere and risk him spreading the peanut butter all over my apartment so I locked both of us in the bathroom, put him in the sink, and turned on the water.

 

For somebody who is always so curious about the wet sink and enjoys standing in it after I wash my hands, he was hella not happy to be in it with the water running. He kept trying to escape while I was trying to clean out as much of the peanut butter as I could, using hot water in the hopes it would cut through the oil in the peanut butter while trying to not burn him or me.

 

Funny story: peanut butter doesn’t come out of long cat hair.

 

Halfway through this mess, I was wishing I had grabbed the Dawn out of the kitchen to help with the peanut butter removal but I didn’t trust Toothless to stay put if I left to go get it. Plus, I didn’t know if I could keep him still long enough to get the Dawn on him and then rinsed out. Having a pissed off cat is one thing, having a pissed off cat with a mouth full of dish soap is a completely different can of worms.

 

So, I got as much of the peanut butter off of him as I could, grabbed the bath towel I use for my hair because I couldn’t reach any others, and got him wrapped up in it. Toothless hates being burrito wrapped because it usually means he’s getting his nails trimmed so that was fun. Took him back out to the living room so I could sit with him in my lap as I finished toweling him off.

 

As soon as I let him go, he stood in the middle of the living room and did his version of yowling (he’s a very quiet cat so his yowling is the same as a normal cat’s standard volume meow), then retreated to the corner to start licking himself clean.

Scruffy tail from this morning's shenanigans

 

It was 45 minutes straight of listening to him groom across the room from me.

 

Forty. Five. Minutes. *eye twitch*

 

Then, he went in my room to continue the process, before coming back out to the living room to lick some more.

 

The cleaning process of this wasn’t over for me, either. I grabbed a bowl and filled it with hot water and Dawn, then scrubbed the peanut butter out of my carpet. Thankfully, it’s brown so it blends right in. Tossed the bagel (sad face), cleaned the peanut butter off my desk, and returned to work.

 

One of the bad things about the whole situation is that the bagel was still warm from the toaster and the peanut butter was in a near-liquid state so when Toothless landed on it, it splattered all over. I found a couple of drops on my computer monitor almost 2 feet away from the crime scene.

 

I ended up bleeding, Toothless ended up looking like a half-drowned rat, I had cereal for breakfast, Toothless got a bunch of peanut butter and a sink bath. His tail still looks terrible, but he’s napping in his cat tree and all is right with the world.

 

So how was your day?

Four Horsemen Novel Excerpt

With everything being a dumpster fire right now, I thought it was the perfect time to share an excerpt from 1-800-Henchmen: Four Horsemen, since, you know, the world's ending. Enjoy!

“Meet the Four Horsemen: War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death.”

“Do they have real names?” LeRoy frowned.

“I’d imagine they do, but we could not find anything anywhere on the planet that reveals them.”

“What do we know?” Ray asked, studying the pictures.

The first one was a picture of War, -the woman Ray had found on the footage that had started their search. She was short and stocky with chin-length black and red hair. She had a tattoo on her neck that curled from just under her jaw down into her shirt. The picture looked like it was a mug shot from a prison in a third-world country and War was not happy to be there.

The second, Pestilence, was a man who greatly resembled War except he had white streaks in his long black hair and multiple facial piercings. The picture was from a security camera taken in a train station somewhere and showed Pestilence glancing covertly over his shoulder, a laptop case clutched tight to his chest.

The third picture showed a handsome blond man in a black-on-black-on-black power suit. Famine had been photographed stepping out of a black Maybach sedan in front of what looked like a country club somewhere tropical.

The fourth was of a beautiful blond woman with her hair pulled back severely from her face. Death was in a sharp charcoal suit, heels, and had large jade jewelry on that should have ruined the professional outfit but somehow enhanced it. She was standing in front of a steel-and-glass office building with a phone pressed to her ear and a briefcase in her other hand.

“Very little, actually.” Gibson sat down and gave his team a rueful smile. “This picture was from when War was captured in Russia after leading an attack on a government building in Moscow. She is a combat expert and a fairly popular mercenary. Very few people have been able to best her, and the only reason she was captured in Moscow was because she was drugged by a person on her own team. Even then, it took three Russian soldiers to take her in.”

Nikolai bristled at the thought that a small woman could get the better of his countrymen. “I will show her.”

Gibson chuckled. “Pestilence is War’s brother. As far as we can tell, they were born in Eastern Europe somewhere but spent a significant amount of their lives in the US. He is a ghost in the system and one of the best computer hackers I have ever seen or heard of. He is probably the reason the Four Horsemen don’t seem to exist. It’s tough to completely erase somebody from every computer system in the world, but a good enough hacker could do it, given enough time.”

“He better than you, cap?” Alfie asked with an impish grin.

“Yep.” Gibson’s eyes glittered dangerously. “But that’s not going to stop me from trying to bring him down.”

“Those are some crazy eyes, you got there.” Alfie leaned back with an exaggerated leery expression on his face.

Gibson shook his head and turned back to the pictures. “Famine is the idea man. He is the one who makes the plans and oversees execution. He creates relationships with powerful people in banks to get information about computer systems, layout, et cetera and then uses that information to make his plans infallible.”

LeRoy scoffed. “No plan is infallible.”

“La Grenouille Bouché would know,” Ray teased.

“Last, but not least, is Death.” Gibson cut them off before LeRoy could retort. “She is the one who gets the impossible information. No one seems to know how she does it. Even the people she has worked over can’t explain it. They just know they gave her the information but they can’t remember what kind of coercion she used. She works closely with Famine on the planning process.”

“What’s the plan?” Nikolai asked.

“What the plan normally is: direct confrontation, divert catastrophe, capture the bad guys.”

“Make the AOJ look good,” Ray muttered.

“We leave for London on Thursday morning. Let’s get prepped.”

Find the rest in 1-800-Henchmen: The Complete Series on Amazon.