Tag Archives: original stories

Mabel Marie

Photo courtesy of Sue Vincent’s #writephoto prompt 01/24/19

The suffocating stench of corn liquor filled the small room as Harlan Givins grunted and cussed his way to climax, his eldest daughter Mabel Marie, stick still beneath him. It lingered long after he’d hitched up his trousers, and the little ones had fallen back to sleep. 

Mabel Marie lie awake for a long time afterward, the stink of stale sweat rising from her night shirt, her daddy’s man-spittle drying to a crust between her thighs, and thanked the same god she used to curse for her daddy’s attentions, for seeing fit to still steer him- to her bed -at least for tonight.

She had seen the way Daddy had taken to looking at her baby sister, Ella Lee. She had once been a young girl of eleven herself. Her own budding breasts just starting to poke at the fabric of her tee shirt, as she flitted about, just doing the things little girls do, and she remembered. 

She remembered the way he rubbed his work worn hands up and down the span of his own thighs, the way he rocked back and forth on the hard wood of the kitchen chair those nights, early on, but most of all she remembered his eyes. How the sadness she had never before seen leave them, had been erased. How they twinkled, and twitched, and sparkled, as they followed her, drinking in her every move. Devouring her, just like they had recently taken to devouring Ella Lee. 

As she lie awake that night, knowing what lay in store for her baby sister, knowing nothing short of murder would stop it, she knew what she had to do. 

She had to get out. Out of this room. Out of this house. Out of this family. Before.. 

Before it happened. Before he passed her by one night, soon- stinking of corn liquor and sour sweat- and toppled into her beloved Ella Lee’s bed. 

Before- she had to kill him.

I started out to write some background for a character I first came to know when I was introduced to her during the writing of a story called Ginny Combs as my response to one of Sue Vincent’s amazing #writephoto prompts almost a year ago. It had been my intention to include the three phrasal prompts provided by the OLWG #32. I never got past the first one.

Stories related to Mabel Marie and Ginny Combs can be found by following the Ginny Combs category header located in the drop down menu on the blogs home page.

Peccatorino

Image by Vitabello from Pixabay

Damian lost his cherry at the tender age of thirteen- and ‘lost’ is putting it delicately. 

More appropriately, it was ripped from him by Tommy Patrianni’s older sister Nucci, the night she gave him a ride home from the college campus where he had been setting baseball bat precedent for prompt payment- making mincemeat out of a local football hero- who owed him money for the Civic’s paper that had made possible his retaining a starting position on the team.

In the months that followed, Nucci made herself available to Damian at his every convenience. Despite his having little interest in her in the upright position, she was a soft touch when it came to copping a couple a bucks on a regular basis, and she did have a car she’d let him borrow if he timed the asking just right, so he strung her along like the hungry little puppy she had fast proven herself to be.

Saturday mornings, Nucci opened the dry cleaners where she worked, alone. So Damian took to waiting for her at the back door. She’d start up the machines, and put the coffee on. He’d bend her over the folding table, and walk away with the keys to her car.

One Saturday afternoon as Damian was dropping the car back by the dry cleaners, Nucci happened to be taking in four suits to be cleaned and pressed. All tailor made. All the finest Italian silk. The kind of suits only a guy that was ‘somebody’ could ever hope to wear. 

The thought that he should be able to wear such a suit to his upcoming Confirmation occurred to him, and just as quickly, he decided it would be so. That same afternoon Damian broke it off with Nucci. 

By the end of the week, she was begging for it. She’d do anything. Anything he asked. 

So he asked. 

The following Saturday, he was back in Nucci’s car, driving to his families tailor with a $5000.00 charcoal gray, two button, notched lapel Stefano Ricci.

The day of his confirmation, when Damian entered the church dressed like a Don in his precision cut Italian silk, it mattered little that Nucci had been sent off to Boston in disgrace following her being fired from the dry cleaners. Nor did it matter that half the neighborhood was silently aghast that he should enter into the Holy Sacrament of Confirmation in the same Italian silk suit Nucci had been accused of stealing.  

In fact, nothing could have been further from his mind. That is until his grandma Abruzzi put her arm around him in the vestibule of the church and whispered, “Peccatorino, la notte dorme la sola.” –  My little sinner, the night sleeps alone. 

For weeks, as Damian lie awake in bed, he heard Grandma Abruzzi’s words being whispered into his ear. And although his grandmother Abruzzi would die many years before Damian would ever really feel the weight of her words, pondering them did bring him to a life altering conclusion.

A real man should never find it necessary to shit where he lives.

This piece, which includes Misky’s twiglet #149, ‘the night sleeps’ is a follow up to Las Donnas Fatales. The serial, should it continue will be available by following the Las Donnas Fatales category header.

Las Donnas Fatales

Image by Vitabello from Pixabay

Damian Wojciehowicz was raised Italian. Not just Italian. North Jersey connected Italian. 

His mother, the former Lily Abruzzi married Jackie Pescatore when Damian was three. Her family, having all but disowned their precious Lilianna when she turned her back on their strict Italian culture and married ‘a Polack’, was so thrilled when Lily announced her engagement to Jackie, a good Italian boy, they chose to overlook Jackie’s alleged connection to the Family that was rumored to have executed Damian’s father, whilst liberating a truck load of cigarettes- from a truck Damian’s father had the ultimate misfortune to be driving at the time.

Out of what Jackie insisted was respect for Damian’s dearly departed father, (though some whispered it was to assuage his Family’s guilt) Damian retained the sir-name Wojciehowicz. But that is where his ties to the Polish American community ended.  

By the age of fifteen, Damian, or ‘Wojo’ as he had come to be called, was already well on his way to making a name for himself. Not only was he the cutest, most sought after boy enrolled at Immaculate Conception High School, but he had already carved out an earning niche for himself running a profitable ‘homework for hire’ racket on several local community college campuses. 

Though his money making prowess originally put him on the Family’s radar, ultimately it was his shoulder length black hair, piercing blue eyes and the uncanny ability he possessed to manipulate anything wearing a skirt that allowed him to carve out one of the most prestigious earning slots ever created to fund a north Jersey Family.

Las Donnas Fatales. Drop dead gorgeous, single use killing machines- that could be had for the price of a good fuck.

To be continued?

Further installments can be found by following the Las Donnas Fatales category header.

Mrs. Oswald

Photo courtesy of bestlifeonline.com

Inevitably, every morning as I pass on my way to the bus, Mrs. Oswald is outside in her curlers and night clothes.

“Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Here kitty.”

“Morning, Mrs.Oswald. Saemus giving you a hard time?” I’ll ask her.

And she will answer, “Aye! He’s tommin’ it up again, no doubt. Just like a man.”

I asked her one day, merely in making conversation mind you, what exactly she meant by that, ‘just like a man’.

“You shouldn’t ask me that! Why, you’re nearly a man! Too soon you’ll be gettin’ away with it yerself. Cattin’ about all night, with any pussy that’ll have ye. Lying about all day, sleepin’ it off. Lived through thirty-six years a that with me Harry. Never knew a moments peace. Wonderin’ ever night where he was. Waitin’ for ‘imself till all hours. Till the night.. He didn’t… A’tall…”

She left off her story there. Drew her terry robe up tight and pulled herself woundedly up the stairs by the hand rail, leaving the screen door to slam itself closed behind her.

Although I’d never mention it, I decided that day that Mrs.Oswald must have loved her Harry, very much. 

I think that is why she keeps herself in cats. If one fails to come home, she can easily get herself another. 

Not so with a man. At least not one- with whom a woman is truly in love..

This piece came to me based on the three phrases offered by the OLWG #27 prompt. The phrases were:

  1. get away with it
  2. Here kitty, kitty, kitty
  3. You shouldn’t ask me that