Scary Mary and friends...

I started this story, Scary Mary, several years ago, and decided to include it in this blog. But I've neglected the blog -- and writing in genral -- for much of the time since then. I have three episodes posted here, and they need some serious editing. But it's all for fun anyway, so if you find some of it dragging, please let me know. I'm ready, I tell ya . . . let's do this!

If you haven't already read Episode One of Scary Mary, please click on the archive on the right side of the screen.

Since I posted the first episode of my Scary Mary serial, it feels logical to plan on posting successive parts every Wednesday.  We'll call it Weird Wednesday.  That's the plan.  But don't be a stranger the rest of the week -- I'm cooking up a little lune-acy for Mondays as well.  Let's see, how about Lune-y Lundi (Monday).  Got your curiosity piqued?  I hope so.  Drop by and see how lune-y it gets here.  Invite your friends over, there's plenty of room!

 And check out my friends' blogs if you haven't already...
http://markrhunter.blogspot.com
http://linrobinson.com
Norma Beishir

Have a great weekend!

"Scary Mary" - Episode One

by Robbie Lewis Lowe

"What the hell is she doing over there?" Jeff Stockard asked, squinting.

"Who, hon?" Diana Sorenson handed Jeff one of the beers she had gone into the house to fetch from the fridge and peered in the direction Jeff was looking. "Oh," she murmured, "you mean that new girl?"

"Yeah," Jeff answered, "that weird chick in the old Harper house." He pointed past Diana's vegetable garden toward the back yard of a ramshackle house that was largely hidden behind trees and vines. A woman with long black hair wearing a wine-red ankle length robe was striding barefoot across the grass. She carried something in her hand that she appeared to be talking to.

"What is that?" Jeff asked. He gulped some of his beer.

"In her hand, you mean?" Diana took a sip of her own beer. "Maybe it's a butterfly or something."

Jeff sat his beer on a post of the porch. "Give me your binoculars," he said.

"Jeff! Get your own binoculars if you're gonna be a peeping tom," she teased, "and spy on my neighbor from somewhere besides my porch."

"No, really, Di," Jeff insisted, "I wanna see what she's got there." He turned and went to the table under the window where Diana kept her binoculars and bird book. "The last time I saw her she was just standing on her front porch staring up at the porch roof."

Diana chuckled as Jeff snatched up the binoculars and hurried back to the porch rail. "I guess now I know what brings out the paranoid in you – a woman in red who talks to butterflies." As she watched the woman approaching an old pomegranate tree, Diana lowered her voice and added, "Although, that definitely could be the leader of an alien force preparing to invade Earth. Maybe Mary is their local contact." Diana couldn't stifle a giggle at her own cleverness, but all she got out of Jeff in response was a distracted "Hunh." Diana looked back at Mary who indeed appeared to be carrying on an animated conversation with whatever was in her hand. It looked to Diana like a small mayonnaise jar. Mary carried the jar in both hands, apparently holding something over the top of the jar.

"That's no butterfly she's got there," muttered Jeff. Mary had stopped underneath the pomegranate tree. With a flourish, she slid something flat – a piece of cardboard, Diana figured – off the top of the jar and turned the jar over, giving it a slight shake. Something fell out of the jar.

Diana was about to say that it looked like the butterfly was dead or injured when Jeff hissed, "Told you! That's a damn spider, a big one, too, the size of a tarantula!"

"Now you're just trippin' out," Diana drawled. Mary straightened and stood looking at the ground in front of her.

"I'm clean and sober," Jeff retorted. "I know what I saw. That weirdo just set a big-ass spider loose."

"Well, maybe she didn't want it in the house," Diana suggested, although she, too, had begun to wonder about a dainty looking thing like Mary having the nerve to capture a large spider in a mayonnaise jar.

Jeff picked up his beer and took a swig. "If she had the balls to trap that thing in a little jar," he asked, "why didn't she just stomp it?"

Diana shrugged. "I've seen stranger things, I guess."

Mary had turned and was walking back to the rickety looking steps that led up to a rusty storm door near one corner of a screened porch. The screens were a patchwork of squares of new screen where the old screen had finally rusted away. The glass windows were rolled open, but the afternoon sun reflected off the screens making the interior of the porch invisible. Jeff raised the binoculars back up to his eyes.

"Checking to see if she tucked her orders in her bra?" Diana asked. But she leaned forward and leaned on the porch rail and watched her neighbor's progress across the weedy lawn, disappearing twice behind some old rambling roses that had overtaken some bushes. Just as Mary reappeared the second time, she turned her head toward Jeff and Diana.

"Shit!" Jeff said as he lowered the binoculars and turned quickly aside. Diana stifled a howl of laughter behind her hand as she ducked a little lower so that a branch of one of her rose o'sharon bushes hid her.

"Busted," she said, still laughing. She let a few seconds go by before asking timidly, "Is she still looking?"

Jeff had retreated all the way to a chair beside Diana's porch table. He stood half-way up and looked toward Mary's house. "Nope, she's closing the door behind her." He sat back down and said, "She looked straight at me. She knew we were watching her the whole time. She's probably got ESP or something. She probably read my mind. Unh!" Jeff shook off a little shiver.

Diana straightened up and turned around. She leaned back against the porch rail and tucked the waistband of her peasant blouse into her hip-huggers where it had pulled loose in back. "I feel so stupid," she said, rolling her eyes. She toyed with the end of one of her blond braids. "We're like two old people with nothing better to do than spy on our neighbors."

Jeff looked up at his girlfriend and chuckled. "I guess you're right," he said. "I don't know what got into me." He shook back his light brown Beach Boy shag and intoned, "Paranoia strikes deep. Into your heart it will creep!" nodding to the beat of the lines from Edwin Starr's recent hit song.

"WAR!"

The sound was so loud and so sudden it made both Jeff and Diana jump and cry in unison, "What the hell?"

"WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?"

"Gregory!" Diana yelled. "Turn that off!"

"ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN'!"

The blaring music was replaced by a childish giggle from within the house.

"Gregory," Diana called, "get your little tail out here right now!" She tried to sound stern, but she was stifling a giggle of her own at Jeff who was standing at the porch rail in front of the porch table with his mouth open as if trying to form the most perfect string of curses for the kid who just scared the pee out of him.

"I'm sorry, Mom," called a little boy's voice from inside.

"What about me?" retorted Jeff indignantly. "Don't I get an apology?"

"Get out here," Diana insisted.

The screen door creaked slowly open and a seven-year-old towhead peeked out. He looked up at Jeff, who growled.

Diana covered her mouth. With an effort, she pulled her hand away from her ;mouth and addressed the towhead. "Gregory Lee Sorenson, what possessed you? And what were you doing messing with my stereo?"

Gregory stepped out onto the porch and closed the screen door behind him. He crossed his arms and looked up at Jeff again. "I'm sorry Jeff," he said.

"You don't look sorry," Jeff said. He was right. "But, okay, apology accepted." Jeff stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down on Gregory with his chin up and his eyes half-closed and lips presssed together. Gregory made a sorrier face and looked over at his mom.

"I thought y'all were goin' out tonight," Gregory said, "an' go dancin'..."

"What did I tell you," Diana interrupted, "about messing with my stereo?"

"I just pushed the switch to on," Gregory answered defensively. With wide blue eyes he continued, "That record was already on there, I didn't touch anything else, I swear!"

"Gregory," Diana said, "I know I didn't leave the volume up that loud, so don't give me that stuff about you didn't touch anything else."

Gregory ducked his head and mumbled, "I'm sorry, Mom, I won't do it again."

"Why won't you do it again?" Diana tested.

"'Cause it's dis'spectful to mess with other people's stuff."

"That's right." Diana walked over to her son and took his hand. "Yes, we are going out tonight," she said as she walked him back into the house. "Miss Lucy'll be here any minute."

Jeff watched his girlfriend and the kid who might some day call him Daddy go through the wood framed screen door and mused on how he would be expected to deal with the boy whenever Diana finally decided to say "Yes". He pushed off the porch rail and walked to his left back over to the side of the porch from which he and Diana had been spying on Mary and retrieved his beer. He took a sip. It was no longer cold – tepid, in fact. He took another sip anyway and gazed across Diana's little vegetable patch at the screen door at the back of the old Harper place. He took one more sip. "Scary Mary," he whispered.