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“Bethany” A Travis Sloat Story.

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The past couple of weeks, a new blog buddy of mine, Mr. Jenks, has been doing scary stories instead of TMI Thursdays. Since my TMI well has dried up briefly, I decided to go with what he has been doing and post a scary story. Bear in mind, this is the first time I’ve ever written anything for anyone else to read that resembles a story. It hasn’t been edited except for spelling, and I really don’t know how scary it is. I enjoyed writing it though, and maybe I’ll do it again sometime. So. Without further ado, I give you…

“Bethany”

The knock on the door only grew louder. “Bethany! Open up!” screamed her little brother as he was resorting to pounding on the door now. “I have to talk to you! Something is wrong!”

“If I ignore it, he’ll go away,” thought Bethany, as she crouched in the corner of her tiny bedroom. She cranked up the volume on her IPod, and drifted away into her fantasy land. Bethany was only 15 years old, but she knew how quickly her younger brother lost interest when he was ignored. She didn’t need to be interrupted right now. She was making plans. She was going to get married and leave her stupid family behind. She had a new boyfriend, and it was him she was fantasizing about at this moment. Todd was 17. Todd was good looking. Todd drove a motorcycle. Well, maybe it was technically a dirt bike, but she liked to think of it as a motorcycle. Todd was a rebel. He smoked Lucky Strikes and he partied on the weekends with the SENIORS. As she leaned back on her bed with the sound of Silverstein pounding in her eardrums, she imagined giving herself to him for the first time. Todd had been pushing for it for about 2 weeks. She’d declined, but only because she’d never done it before, and she wanted to be sure she pleased him. She’d been watching online videos for the past 2 weeks, and now she felt she was ready.

She never heard the knocking stop abruptly, and she never heard her brother say his last word, which was…

“You?”

When Todd opened her bedroom door, she was somewhat surprised. She’d never been allowed to have him in her room before. “It’s about time they loosened up a little,” she said as she smiled brightly at Todd. “Yeah babe, you wanna go somewhere?” Todd looked like he’d just got done working out. He was very sweaty, and she had to admit, very attractive. He was wearing a wife beater and a pair of jeans, which was his usual attire for riding his “motorcycle.” She made her decision then. She was going to take their relationship up a notch. Right now. Parents be damned, hell, she’d already gotten them to let him in her room. As she stood up and took her shirt off, she said, “How about we stay here for a while…” “Naw, we have to get going,” he said, and walked across the room, picked her shirt up and handed back to her. “This isn’t how it happens in the videos,” she thought, but she put her shirt back on. Feeling hurt, and just a little bit more in love with him for rejecting her, she followed him out of her room and down the stairs. Why was Todd in such a hurry? “I’ve got to let my parents know we’re leaving,” she said, because she didn’t want this newfound trust in her to go unrewarded. “I’ve talked to them already,” said Todd. “Let’s go. Now.” He grabbed her by the arm and forcefully yanked her towards the front door. She resisted briefly, but not for long. He punched her. As her head lolled back, just before she passed out, she looked back into the kitchen. The table was set for dinner, but no one was seated. As she sank into unconsciousness, her eyes moved towards the stand alone freezer in the kitchen. While darkness settled in her mind, she saw that the head looking through the crack in it was her brothers. And the severed hand on the floor beside it had her mothers wedding ring on. The blood smeared all over belonged to all three of her family members.

When she awoke, she had no idea where she was. Todd was on top of her, grunting. She felt a horrible pain down…there. “Did you kill them?” she asked. He punched her again.

She spent the next few months in a dream state. She never was sure of her surroundings, because they seemed to change constantly. She was vaguely aware that she was getting bigger around her belly, but she never thought anything about it. She ate ravenously. She slept often. She rarely saw Todd, and when she did, it was usually brief, because he usually punched her. She often thought of her family, and how sorry she was for treating her little brother so horribly all the time. If only she had a second chance, she’d fix things.

She awoke one day to a searing pain in her abdomen, and a group of people standing around her. She didn’t recognize any of them, but she thought one of them looked like a clown. Todd stepped into focus. “Don’t worry, babe, this will only take a second,” he laughed. He was holding something. Was that a knife? She put her hands up. They didn’t move. A spasm of pain wracked her body, she felt things tearing. She was crying. She was yelling something, but she couldn’t understand her own words. Todd came back into view. “Don’t take this personal. I just really need this baby,” he said. His voice was crystal clear. The look on his face was one of jubilation and a wickedness she’d never seen before. He brought down the shiny thing in his hand. A new pain, this one just melting in to all the others. Something warm and wet fell into her hand that was strapped down on the table. It felt like a… Like a… Was that her intestine?

As death came for her, and the vision darkened in the corners of her eyes, she saw something sitting in Todd’s arms. Something crying. No, not crying. Screaming. Todd was laughing, and the last thing she saw before her eyes glazed over was the monster. “Not a baby…” she thought. She knew that whatever it was, it couldn’t have come from her. In a moment of clarity just before her death, she remembered everything so clearly. And dying, she vowed her revenge.

6 months later, with the newborn asleep in the crib beside his bed, Todd was woken from a disturbing and fitful sleep. As he opened his eyes, the first and last thought to ever cross his mind was, “No. Ghosts aren’t real. Are they, Betha…?”