The Awful Quiet

Here's the very penultimate chapter of How To Own And Operate A Haunted House. I aim to be finished in the next few days. Hope your week is going well!

Of course, I’ll never know what happened that night Charles and Wanda left to celebrate their wedding anniversary at Shotguns, but I can imagine that Angela Dawn picked up her mother’s knitting needle, carefully extracting it from the half-finished afghan (pink or blue, a detail I’ll never know) and took a match to it. Fire sterilizes, that much we learned in Girl Scouts and Angela Dawn was always a better Girl Scout than me. She must have looked at the needle before inserting it, must have thought, It just might work, that even if it hurts, it’ll be over soon, that worst things had already happened. I know she would have prayed, oh Lord take this cup from me, say the word and I shall be healed. The television left on in the next room, a sitcom playing where all the problems are solved in half an hour.

When she began to bleed, I’m sure she felt relief. Rinsing off the needle and making a new stitch so Wanda couldn’t tell that it had ever been touched. And then getting tired and sleeping, faking the flu the next day as her blood became septic, the slowing down of everything except the heart which beat faster and faster, trying to keep everything going until it gave out, her parents having no idea, Wanda going to check on her at the end of the work day as she did when Angela Dawn was a child, to bring her 7Up and crackers. The awful quiet. And then the scream.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Never pray for justice, because you might get some." Margaret Atwood

Cocktail Hour
Did anyone try making the cheesecake?

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Monday!