Blackout Wednesday
by Andrew Michael Flynn
Blackout Wednesday is a harrowing horror story!! Here’s the first chapter:
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Chapter 1: PARTY
KELSEY ROLLED UP to a tope-colored, cookie-cutter suburban house in her decade-old Toyota RAV4, questioning her ambition to even get out of her car here or just get the hell home and smash her body into her mattress in the most horizontal way possible. She threw it into park after this brief deliberation and slowly twisted her key from the ignition so it would be in her dry, fatigued hands. The clock and information gauges stayed on for their final thirty seconds before automatically shutting off until next time, and Kelsey sighed when the temperature outside still read 82 degrees even though it was nearing 7 p.m. Her smartphone’s screen awoke and displayed an incoming call from Jane. She pressed the green “accept” button and brought the device to her ear, but didn’t say anything at first, so there were a few seconds where silence reigned.
“You do this sometimes, you know,” the female voice on the line said.
“I do this, Jane, don’t I?” Kelsey asked, hardly caring at the moment about her attitude. “I wonder what that says about me besides I’ve had a sh–ty day and it’s still so g–damn warm for November 23.”
“I’m seeing which K that I get tonight,” Jane said.
“In living color, girl. Tell me you’re on your way.”
“Running a tad behind. My dad needed me to help him with hanging a frame and other dumb house stuff. Should be like 30, 40 minutes tops.”
“Ugh. I hear ya.” Kelsey said. “Maurice at work had me stay on two hours longer because of three no-shows. He’s never going to figure his staffing sh– out.”
“I’m sorry, dolly,” Jane said. “Everyone’s so selfish and up their own ass.”
“Yeah, I dunno.”
“Save me some vodka, m’kay?”
“If I’m not already asleep on Fred’s couch when you’re here, bish.” Kelsey said, taking the device away from her face. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks, see you in–,” Jane said, before Kelsey dumped the call mid-sentence and tossed her phone in her bag without caring that much.
Vodka, Kelsey thought to herself. That would be lovely right about now. A couple of them even. Perfect capper to this trash day. Putting a different and somewhat positive face on, she took a deep breath and exited her RAV4 and shut her driver’s side door. Kelsey stood five-foot three and had shoulder-length brown hair that was decent for tugging at in times of stress and mental dysfunction. She was wise to have changed into a pair of slacks and a different top right after work. But she wasn’t wise enough to have remembered her deodorant, so there was a somewhat raised level of self-consciousness happening at the moment.
Rapp-rapp-rapp-rapp. No answer at Fred’s front door. A slight new tinge of regret entered Kelsey’s mindset, only to be interrupted by Fred himself.
“Well hey, Kelsey,” Fred replied. He stood nearly a foot taller than her, but with slouched shoulders. “You’re like, the first one here and whatever.”
“Hey man,” Kelsey said. “I like to make an impression, you know?”
“Come on in, it’s Downey fresh in here.”
“Smells like it. Tell me you stocked this party.”
“I did, I did. There’s a few kinds of everything, check it out.”
Fred led Kelsey into the kitchen area of his house. Along the way, it was noticeable that there weren’t really any holiday decorations up except for the junky, uncarved set of pumpkins just inside of his entryway.
“Hot as Satan’s armpit out today, again,” Fred said.
“Yeah, I guess,” Kelsey said, grabbing a familiar-looking vodka bottle.
“That’s your Snow Queen, ha.”
“I know it is, I worship at this b—h’s altar.”
A fat, orange Tabby housecat appeared almost out of nowhere and slithered around Kelsey’s feet, purring a hearty welcome as only a friendly cat could.
“Man, this is one Garfield-looking motherf–ker,” she said, kneeling down to give some love to her new furry friend.
“That’s Clownfish, she’s a sweet girl,” he said. “She’s being a little weird, she usually just stays upstairs and keeps it anti-social for the most part.”
“Yeah, well, maybe it’s the 11 hours of work smell coming from me,” she said.
“I’ll drink to that,” Fred said, as he threw back his red Dixie cup and sloshed some previously-poured whiskey down his gullet. Kelsey scoffed at this notion and rolled her eyes, yet also raised the her own glass and drank from it even if it was just a sip.
“Just got a new TV, want to check it out?” Fred asked, pointing over to the large black widescreen in the adjacent living room.
“Eh…sure,” Kelsey said, but with little conviction. Fred was her guide once again, thankfully this time it was a much shorter tour.
Fred grabbed a slender remote from the glass side table just to the left of his brown corduroy fabric couch. He clicked a few buttons on the remote as he plopped himself down on the cushy love seat. “Join me, my homie,” he said.
Kelsey sauntered over with her nearly-ambitionless self after pouring herself a double vodka tonic and plopped down with equal force as her host. “Look, man, you can’t pull off ‘homie’, so you should stop trying,” she said. “White meets rice and all that, comprende?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Fred said, glancing at Kelsey and then doing a kind of dead-stare at his television. “Just got it a few days ago, early Black Friday special,” he said. “Best Buy was desperate to get this off their shelf, and I talked the guy into free delivery.”
No response from Kelsey. She couldn’t care less about most things as she fidgeted in her seat while being sly about checking her watch more than a few times over the next couple minutes. Fred landed his channel-flipping onto QVC, where a lady that was easily in her seventies was playing second-fiddle to a man in his fifties as they talked about the emerald jewelry that was for sale.
“Yick,” Fred said. “These two couldn’t get me to buy a bag of ice in August.”
“Yeah, that’s some terrible-looking ugly bling,” Kelsey said.
“Could I call that ‘blung’, you think?” Fred asked, with a half smile.
It hit Kelsey as humorous, so her involuntary reaction caused a spit-take, yielding her slight alcoholic spray to land a few feet ahead of her, not quite on the television itself though. “Sh–, sorry,” she said. “Blung, though, yeah, that’s funny.”
“Eh, I was overdue for something to hit,” Fred said. “But seriously, these two are hucksters and don’t belong on TV. My dad, though, he almost had this kind of gig, you know? He was a sales guy. A good one, too.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Sure. Man, my whole family’s like that. But especially my dad. Ketchup popsicles to the white-gloved opera crowd and all that.”
“What does your dad sell?”
Fred got quiet all of the sudden and took a long beat. He tapped the side of the remote a dozen times, but was careful not to change the channel.
“Sold,” Fred answered, as he crossed his right leg over his left. “He sold used cars. New ones too when he could, but mostly used cars. But he doesn’t sell anything anymore. He’s gone.”
In Fred’s house, there was silence except for the low murmur of the two televised idiots hocking jewelry in a TV studio somewhere far away. Kelsey began to ask a question, but decided to keep it inside, although her lips and facial expression indicated she had something more to inquire on the subject. Fred crooked his head to the right, and glared at her for a few seconds. Every trace of the genial host was gone, at least for now.
“He’s dead, Kelsey,” Fred said. “Dead and gone. No more Dad. No more sales.”
“Hmm, well, I’m sorry, man,” Kelsey said.
“It’s funny. My dad didn’t like selling cars even though he had the innate talent for it,” Fred said. “He was one of those ego-driven guys who thought that just because he could read people well that he also knew something about how to solve everyone’s problems. Like, everyone everyone’s problems. It was like 12, 13 years ago that he started holding these meetings at home. This house, same place and all that. Sometimes we’d have 25 or 30 people here. These weren’t dinner parties though, these were special religious meetings, and I couldn’t ever really grasp what he was talking about with these meetings. He used to say that he would eradicate the real problems of the world, and everyone would be so happy after. I don’t know. I try to piece it together sometimes, but a lot of it I can’t remember. It’s kind of screwed up that way, even though I really want to understand it.”
“G–damn, Fred,” Kelsey said. “I wonder if like seeing a therapy doctor or whatever could help.”
“Maybe,” Fred said. “It’s something I want to do after college for sure. Spend like a few months or something retracing the little things. I just know that I miss him so much. He was such a great dad. He’s been dead and gone for almost a decade now. It was when I was in fifth grade when Principal Groff pulled me out of gym class. Man, that was a weird day.”
“Yeah, I can imagine. I’m sorry.”
“Just a weird freakin’ day,” Fred said, as he uncrooked his head and faced the blue light of the television again. “See, we were playing basketball, and all the sudden Coach Howell blew his whistle and came over to me. Everyone was just like staring at me. But Coach came up and put his hand on my shoulder and said I needed to go to Groff’s office. Didn’t have a clue why, but now that I think about it some more, Howell’s face had all the blood drained from it. You remember Coach, right?”
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Kelsey said. “Sure, Coach Howell. Coached our high school baseball team a couple years when we were there, too.”
“Coach was a darker-skinned White dude, too. It was like he was that Powder guy in the movie who lived in the basement or something, that kind of white. Totally weird day.”
“I bet,” Kelsey said, as she finished her vodka tonic and began to act like she was going to stand up. Fred threw his right arm out like it was the seat belt on a rollercoaster.
“Hold up a sec,” he said, still gazing at the television. “Something else about those meetings my dad had here.”
“Hey, what the f–k?” Kelsey demanded, upset at Fred’s arm gesture in the attempt to lock her into place.
Fred made a sharp move with his left hand and hit the recline button on the couch they were sitting on, only the footrest didn’t shoot out of the couch like it should have. This button-push began to throw gravitational force towards both Kelsey and Fred. More than a rollercoaster. This was like the kind of gravitational force that astronauts have to learn to withstand before they go into space. This was like those G-Pods that NASA has. As the force became greater, Kelsey dropped her rocks glass and was otherwise frozen inside of the current moment. Her brain swirled as purple and blue fluorescent lights filled the walls, which morphed from Fred living room into black space, yet these new lights flickered and danced in the new black space. No more television either, hell, no more anything else of Fred’s house. Just them on this brown couch and the gravitational force that overtook them.
But it was only for ten seconds, and then it was time for the jarring stop.
“This is what the f–k,” Fred said, grinning ear to ear. “You’re in the Light Room now.”
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Blackout Wednesday is now available at the links above! Thanks for reading another quality OHPFstory!