The Grim in Grim Reaper
I saw a young adult woman shopping for a Halloween costume in a costume outfitter store. In an aisle promoting Jason, Freddy Krueger, and Friday the 13th movies, the woman theatrically demonstrated various instruments of torture. I stopped shopping to watch her prop chopping. I found some macabre pleasure watching a delicate creature acting out make-believe horror in the aisle. A writer always takes timeout for a story in the making.
Stationed beside a bottomless pit of plastic blood splattered hatchets, sickles, axes, and swords, ironically it was her cell phone that startled her. Force to interrupt her exaggerated sense of play with a phone call, I figured on disappointment. Instead, I turned out to be frightened.
“I couldn’t make it.” she protested into her flip phone. “I got arrested on Saturday night.” After a long pause, she elaborated. “I’ll tell you what happened. I stabbed my boyfriend with a steak knife.”
Somehow the steak knife impaled in comparison to the slice-and-dice weaponry she just modeled. Something told me that this wasn’t love at first sight. This was two people taking a stab at romance in a grim fairy tale.
“That’s the funny part.” she laughed. “Danny was cool about it even with the knife sticking out of his neck. He was nice enough not to press charges so there was no bail. Ha! What a break?”
The caller got in a few words edgewise. She couldn’t just listen. Temptation got the best of her. As if she couldn’t be away from mayhem for too long, she returned to finger more weapons.
She interjected, “Oh, Paul will be okay. He’s a big baby and it’s not like I hit a major artery. Can we change the subject? Are you and Bob still going to the Halloween party? I’m shopping for a Halloween costume this minute. Do you think Danny would like to see me as the grim reaper?”
If Danny didn’t see her as the grim reaper before, come Halloween the black robe and swinging sickle will surely convince him otherwise. Sometimes love cuts like a knife. Labels: short story
posted by Joe Tornatore | 7:37 AM
11 Comments:
You have such luck, running into stories such as these! This is a great one! Scariest Halloween story I've read in a long while! LOL!
armaedes,
i think the costume store could have bought her out.
Erin,
it doesn't pay to be a writer or a voyeur.
I love cell phones for this reason. People become so unaware that there are other ppl around them and start to spew out stuff like this. I once heard a woman talking about her 'female' problems while she was shoppin at Target. So I pretended to talk in a loud voice about my bowel movements to my wife on my cell phone. The funny thing I was standing right next to the high fiber section-laxative city hehe!
honkeie2,
we all get LAX with our conversations. lol.
That is either a very brave or very STUPID man. No sex is that good! LOL
LOL....we all need to get regular at times lol
honkeie2,
he has to grim and bear it.
lost,
You haven't met Dr. Seymour Tush.
What’s really scary is her casual attitude towards violence. She could have killed him and she sounded more concerned about not having to pay a bail to get out of jail. Is it OK now to do anything you want in the heat of the moment as long as the other person is cool about it? Is violence OK as long as the results aren’t too bad? Doesn’t intent count for anything? Doesn’t anyone accept the consequences for their actions anymore?
Is our attitude about violence such that we makes jokes about it instead of feeling outraged that she’ll just get a slap on the wrist and a “Naughty Girl, Don’t do that again” type of sentence if she even gets that?
Maybe she was a prop. Or practising improv for acting school. Pretty scary young woman.
merci,
cutting edge I would say.
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