Recently, I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing. For my final capstone piece, I had to write a 15-page short story, so I thought I’d experiment a little in the suspense genre. Here is the result.

 

The Light Show

 

“She shouldn’t be in here with decent folks.”

The angry voice bored into the back of my head as I returned the menu to its place between the sugar and creamer shakers envious because it had a place. Waves of heat crept down my spine and I forced myself not to turn. I shouldn’t have come in here, not today. The whole Goddamned world had tipped on edge waiting for the show tonight. It would be a great party—sparky. There’d even be a real, live monster sitting center stage. Get your tickets at the door.

“Hush Rodger, she’ll hear you,” a frantic woman’s voice whispered in something no louder whimper. I could hear a tremor over the squeak of the vinyl booth and glanced over my shoulder at the window. Their reflections appeared in a booth just this side of the door. Hers rested a hand on his arm, more affection than restraint. The purple storm outside tainted her perfect manicure and blacked the roses on her sundress, too cheery for the murky day. The play of harsh fluorescent light across her face made it appear almost porcelain, fragile in the shadow of her husband’s rage.

“Who gives a shit? Her daddy killed Bruce’s little girl. Left her beside the road like….like garbage, Candace.” The voice seemed to be getting louder and more agitated. I expected him to be in ratty jeans and a Bulldogs cap. Bullies here always were. However, he appeared surprisingly normal for his volume in khaki pants and a button up shirt the color of the summer sun. The contrast striking against the dark gale beyond the glass, but every bit as angry. I didn’t catch what he said next, but it didn’t matter, in this town their words were all the same.

“Miss Maddie, can I get you something to drink?” I glanced up to see a pair of sad eyes in a face older than it should have been. Thelma and Mama had been the same age, but I remembered her as a young woman. I also remembered her thinner, but oversized clothes hung off her thick frame. She glanced over at the couple near the door, a dead woman walking, resigned to her fate.

“Coke, please,” I grabbed the menu again and tried to ignore the pricking at the back of my neck. Electric hatred, theirs and mine, flashed like lightning, making the hair stand on end. My anger swelled at the intrusion. A burger and fries might not be a celebration to some, but for a charity case, finally affording it on my own meant everything. Hell, maybe I’d even throw in a shake. I didn’t give a shit what they thought—about my father or me, the poisoned apple who fell way too close to that tree. They really had no idea.

“What can I get you?” I hadn’t noticed Thelma return, but I ordered my cheeseburger and fries. She wandered back toward the counter and I continued to watch the rain buffet against the window. The sound felt like an old friend, like the music it played on the top of the tent when my dad would take me camping. Didn’t matter that it rained, all we ever needed was a tent, some sleeping bags and a couple of fishing poles. We’d caught spotted bass in one of the small tributaries off the river with water so clear you could see their fins gleaming under the surface. One by one, me and dad would pull them out, then he would gut them. Their innards spilled across an old sports page, leaking down the two-dimensional face of the hero of the week. But they fried up nice.

The world had seemed so big then—infinite in every direction. As an adult, I’d learned how small the world was with its back-handed whispers and the eyes that seemed to follow me everywhere.

“Rodger don’t—” was the only warning I got before the man stood over my table. His face was mottled, nearly purple in his rage above the sunshine shirt with loosely frayed cuffs. Its discoloration showed clearer without the reflection. Up close, the thing had clearly seen better days. The whole town had seen better days.

“You need to leave. Decent folk’s trying to eat here,” he said, his reflection menacing in the stormy window. I’d learned in too many school yard fights just to stay quiet. He’d rant for a bit and then leave. They all did.

I took another drink of my Coke and watched his reflection. His hands balled in rage at his sides, but I simply ignored him, bullies hated that. Fighting his kind had gotten me kicked out of high school. No scholarship. No escape. But then, they probably wouldn’t have given a scholarship to the daughter of a monster. And not in the state of Georgia, not while Johnny Lee Parker lingered on death row like a weight around my neck, drowning me the contempt of his home town.

“Do you hear me, missy?” he asked, and I simply continued starting at his reflection in the mirrored window, distorted by the glare of the diner’s harsh lights. His righteous anger glowed against a violent storm.

“Rodger Dixon, you go sit down with your wife,” Thelma said, a hint of sandpaper in her voice. I didn’t turn to look at her, but he flinched as it ground against his anger. It stopped him for a moment, but then he barked at her.

“Mind your own business.”.

I saw it happen in the window before I felt the hot food land on my head. In perverse slow motion, a tomato slid down my cheek and ketchup splattered on my face. The rest of my celebratory meal clattered to the floor, loud in the sudden silence. I turned from the window and faced my attacker. I don’t know what he saw in my face, but his eyes widened and he stumbled back a step.

“Ma’am, could I get another burger, please?” I asked and I picked the lettuce from my hair. “This one seems to have fallen.” My eyes continued to bore into him, and I became very aware of the fork lying next to my plate. My hand itched to pick it up and hold it.

“Sure, sweetheart,” Thelma said as she took a step back as well.

The rest of my lunch passed without incident, though my shoulders sagged once the restaurant door closed behind me. It had been a long day, and the clock over the town hall read only four in the afternoon. Like one of those times you’ve made plans to go out and you dread each moment until you actually get there. Then, it’s not so bad.

I opened the door and got into my car, a blue Plymouth I’d inherited from my father ten years before. The day they dragged my only living parent off to prison. Water dripped from the roof as hot stale air rushed out to meet me. The downpour had stopped, but a drenching spring rain in Georgia left everything in a haze of soggy yellow pollen. I turned the car’s nose toward home and pulled the behemoth onto the main drag in town. In Aster, Georgia, it meant a one-stoplight road. Everything in this town turned out to be just up the street. One street with everyone’s business flowing up and down it like Midtown Atlanta traffic.

Less than five minutes later, I turned left onto Bassett Street and then into the entrance for the clinic. The parking lot overflowed so I drove around to the back of the building. One news report of distemper and suddenly everyone in town thought their poor little fur baby was infected. Same thing with food recalls, then every dog has botulism. Hysteria fuels half the practice. I slipped in through the back and to my small room.  Lots of people in town had told Doc Nancy that I’d kill her in her sleep or steal drugs from the clinic, but she hadn’t listened. After my last relative threw me out, she took me in. I was almost eighteen, so old Sherriff Thompson couldn’t say boo about it, except that I would be trouble. But I never had been, not in the year I’d lived and worked in this building.

Today would be a different story.

I dug through the closet and found my old high school backpack, the one I hadn’t used since my freshman year. It took just a minute to toss most of my clothes into it. The ones that wouldn’t fit inside, I left in a pile on the floor of the closet with an old CD and a cracked hairbrush. The sad remnants of nineteen years of life. I dropped the rubber-banded cash, everything I’d saved over the previous year, into a pocket on the front. Finally, I picked up a framed picture of Dr. Nancy and my mother which she’d given me when I moved in. Sometimes I couldn’t remember my mother at all, but I know she’d be deeply ashamed today. Maybe it’s better that she’s gone.

The room seemed smaller then, not much more than a closet. I tossed a fresh set of clothes on the bed, traveling clothes, and went into the miniscule bathroom to take a shower. The room contained a shower stall, toilet, and sink, and had just enough room to turn around in a circle. But, it would allow me to wash the tomato guts and ketchup from my hair and maybe a little of their contempt from my soul.

I wouldn’t tell Dr Nancy goodbye. It didn’t matter much to me and I didn’t want to see the relief on her face. Who have you become when people are relieved you’re gone?

When I’d dressed again, I locked the door to the little room and grabbed the chair from a desk I’d made with milk crates and a spare piece of wood. After placing the chair directly under an old N’Sync poster of my mother’s, I climbed on the padded seat and gently pulled the tape from the bottom corners. The poster hung on the remaining tape and I grabbed the paper lunch sack hidden behind. I’d noticed the missing brick the day after Dr. Nancy gave me the poster. She thought it would be some big deal to me. It was, but not for sentimentality. It meant I had one space in the world that was completely mine.

The Tramadol bottles clinked together as I slid the bag into my backpack, the clothes would cushion the glass within. I added my father’s hunting knife, which besides the Plymouth, was all I had left of him. Well, and some pretty fucked up genes. That was it, aside from a battered copy of Catcher in the Rye, everything I owned in the world sat at my feet. I took a long last look around the room and wondered if I’d made the right decision. Here, in the private sanctuary of my borrowed room, it felt like maybe the world didn’t hate everything about me. I could hole up in here and dream of better things. But if I didn’t work, I’d starve.

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing either.

A knock on the door made me jump, and immediately, my cheeks started to burn. I’d always had a guilty conscience. It must have stemmed from always having something to hide. I kicked the pile of clothes under my desk and pushed in the chair. Then I threw the backpack into the bottom of the closet and pulled the sheet tacked over the front.

The lock popped when I turned the knob and opened the door. I didn’t want her to think I had something to hide so I stepped out of the way and she came in. With two people, the small amount of space in the room slimmed to none at all.

“Hi Dr. Nancy.” I backed up but didn’t sit down. She stood all of five foot six in heels, and I hadn’t been that short since grade school. Her brown hair made mine look almost dark, but her fair skin had nothing on my near albino paleness. I was used to staying away from people, inside, sometimes in the dark. Kind of like white asparagus, grown in the absence of chlorophyll—aberrations among the perfection of the world.

“Hi Maddie.” She glanced around the room as if she were searching for words. I didn’t have them either, so I waited.

She leaned over and straightened the quilt on my bed, one that my grandmother had made for my mother. I’m not sure how it ended up on my bed, but it kept me warm enough. Dr. Nancy tucked in the pillow and smoothed out the corners. Still, I said nothing.

“Are you still planning to go tonight?” It took a moment before she turned and faced me. I nodded and she sighed.

“I wish you wouldn’t. Nothing good could come from it.” She put a hand on her hip, the stance she always took when she argued with someone, either friend or foe.

“Closure will come from it. I’ve been standing under my father’s cloud my entire life.”

“His execution isn’t going to make that cloud go away. The people in this town will still remember what he did.” She must have saw something change in my face because took a step forward.

“No, I suppose not,” I conceded, with no intention of changing my mind. Anger flashed in me at the suggestion that I would have to live in this Hell until I was too old to remember why.

She stepped back and gazed up at N’Sync.

“We went to one of their concerts in high school. Did I ever tell you that?” It looked like she wanted to pet it, touch each of the boys in the band, but she was too short and the poster too high.

“No. I don’t remember much about my mother, to be honest,” I said and wished for the tenth time that she’d just say her peace and leave. The closer the time got to my father’s execution, the less I wanted to be around people.

“She was a wonderful woman. Everyone said so.” Her hands fluttered in the air in front of her as she used them to make her point.

“I don’t know. I’m sure she was.” Mostly, I just knew people lamented that I’d grown up nothing like her. They should have blamed her for not spotting what my father was, but her death made her into a saint.

“Maddie,” she whispered, the strength suddenly gone from her voice. “What if he killed her? They never found her body and she never would have run off without you. What if he did something to her? Do you still want to be with him in his last hours?” She put her hands on my shoulders and I stepped back, into the wall, breaking contact. I didn’t want to be touched. I didn’t want to be consoled. I certainly didn’t want to be lectured.

“Then, I’ll be there to see him pay for it.”

“I just…you’ve had just a hard time growing up. I don’t want to see this hurt you.” She raised her hand again, but something in my face stopped her.

“I want to do this so I can get on with my life. You can’t understand that—you have a life. I simply exist. Nothing makes me feel alive, Nancy. I’m just drifting.”

“You’re leaving Aster aren’t you?”

I sighed.

“I didn’t want to do this, but yes I have to get out of here. I have to start my life.”

“I get it, Maddie. I’m surprised you didn’t leave as soon as your aunt sent you to me. It’s been so hard for you, but I’m glad you stayed. It was like having Claire with me again, at least for a little while.” I didn’t know what to say to that. No one had ever told me I reminded them of my mother. We had nothing in common.

“No one wants the prison orphan.” I shrugged, not meeting her gaze. “I have faulty wiring and it’s just a matter of time.”

“His crimes aren’t your fault.”

“You’re the only one who thinks that way.”

A high-pitched bark prevented the sudden silence from getting too awkward. Nancy glanced toward the open door before turning. She stuck her head out into the hallway and listened, but the barking had stopped.

“What time does the…thing start?”

“I need to be there by eight.”

“Do you want to have dinner together?” She asked, leaning out of the door. I could tell that Dr. Nancy Cartwright had already stepped half-way out of my life.

“I already had dinner, but thanks.”

The relief on her face nearly offended me, except I didn’t want to spend more time with her either. I had other things to do.

I had plans.

“Call and let me know where you land?” She stepped out fully into the hallway and took a step back toward the main part of the clinic.

“Sure,” I said with half a nod, knowing that I would never see or hear from her again.

 

We are about ninety minutes from the execution of notorious serial killer Johnny Lee Parker, known to many as “the Southern Butcher”. He sexually assaulted and murdered ten young women before being convicted in 2009 with the help of his own nine-year-old daughter Madison. She testified that she saw him kill his final victim Jenna Phillips. She described how her father stabbed the young woman in her own haunting words.

I flipped the knob all the way to the left to turn off the car’s ancient radio and slid into the far-right lane, just waiting for the I-75 exit. For the ten years my father had been incarcerated down in Jackson, I’d never been there—not once. I’d had no interest in seeing him or hearing any explanations because putting him there had been the worst thing I’d ever done. I lost everything.

My fingernails dug into my palm as I turned on my signal and slowed. After a moment, I hit the off ramp, glad the rain had held off. The air felt like soup, heavy and wet. Rain would have hampered my errands and I needed something to take the edge off the anticipation of seeing my father again. I stopped for gas and to grab a few things to keep myself occupied after watching him die.

Flashes came like a movie I couldn’t turn off. Memories of the night that ruined my life. I knew they would come, in fact I’d expected it to happen earlier. The dark empty road ahead coupled with the sheer silence made for a fertile playground in my mind. Mama’d been gone for about six months, just up and vanished between the time I went to bed and the next morning when I got up for school.  Daddy just got me ready himself, gave me lunch money, and dropped me off in front of the building in Mama’s car. It felt like he didn’t even know anything had happened. It took years for me to realize that he hadn’t been worried because he knew exactly where she was. He’d put her there.

A scream in the dark had woken me that night.  Without Mama to comfort me, I went in search of him. He wasn’t in his bedroom or the study or the kitchen or even camped out in front of the TV. He simply wasn’t anywhere. The scream came again, higher pitched, desperate. I remember thinking that I was supposed to be a big girl. Nine years old felt like practically an adult way back then. So, I grabbed my softball bat from next to the door and crept outside.

The ground beneath my feet barely registered, soft earth and cool grass, the same stuff I played on all day, but somehow it seemed less substantial then. The crickets sang to me and I felt better with their company. Nothing else moved in the darkness, not even a breeze, which strengthened my resolve. I marched on, bat held off my shoulder at the ready, as if I waited for that perfect pitch. Faint noises I didn’t understand pushed through the closed barn door ahead. I would later, though, when Ben Jennings took me out to the back of this very piece of land to look at the stars. I thought he saw past my name. I thought he could get other people to like me. I’d been wrong on both counts. That’s when I really started to understand hate.

The door still felt warm on that late summer evening. I didn’t want to open it, didn’t want to see what was making that sound, but it was like someone had a hold of my guts and pulled me forward. At first, I didn’t see anything but my father buttoning his jeans. Then she moved, a naked girl no older than I am now. Even now, I still feel conflicted when I think about it. Her bare, unblemished skin shone in the stark overhead lamps hung around the table where she lay. I recognized it as the one my father would set up for backyard parties. This didn’t seem like a party because she struggled against the ropes that bound her to it.

“Maddie, honey, go on back inside,” my father said, as if I’d just walked in on him making toast instead of being in the barn with some naked girl tied to a table.

I couldn’t stop staring, at her face, her breasts, and that tuft of hair in the place we weren’t supposed to talk about.

“Now, Madison.” He turned to me with a pained expression I didn’t understand. I nodded and left the barn the way I’d come, leaving the door cracked. Then, I held my breath and hid behind it.

“Sorry about that, lovely. Young girls are so inquisitive.” My father touched her hair like he’d done with me so many times. It gave me a chill even in the oppressive heat. I waited there for what seemed like an eternity, shifting from one foot to the other. I wanted to see him untie her because she looked so sad. Instead he did something that would haunt my sleeping and waking dreams.

The moon peeked out, just a sliver between clouds and I began to see protest signs on the side of the road. Some of them were for capital punishment talking of God’s vengeance. If God had vengeance for these crimes, he met it on the families, not the perpetrator. Some guy had spent an hour with a piece of poster board and sharpies for nothing. There were also signs against Capital Punishment. One talked of how the innocent were being slaughtered in a flawed and unjust system. I didn’t think it was unjust. Dear old dad would be getting exactly what he deserved, a two-thousand-volt dose of God’s vengeance.

The exit lane for the prison stalled about halfway up with cars waiting to get there. I sat in line for my father’s execution as I would to get concert tickets. More signs littered the side of the off ramp, some next to empty folding chairs. It seemed the show would be starting soon because little else would lure the righteous from their make-shift camps.

A cop stood at the top of the hill directing traffic, letting us make our way unimpeded. I glanced around and saw nothing out of place so I followed the car in front of me toward the massive set of institutional buildings ringed in a mountain of barbed wire cyclones. We snaked our way to the entrance, and I gave my name to the guard. He scowled but gave me a visitor’s badge anyway.

I dodged a pot hole the size of Savannah and continued up to the lot. It seemed surprisingly full considering the number of cars lined up behind me. Seemed we were about to get a sold-out show. Good thing I had a VIP pass. No backstage access though—I’d told the warden I wouldn’t be needing it.

The next open space sat in the direct center of the lot, so I popped into it and turned off the ignition. Sweet silence permeated the car, bringing a measure of peace, pushing away the anxiety. A woman in black, dressed to the nines, clicked along in four-inch heels next to a man wearing a navy suit and an expression that said he’d rather be anywhere else. As they reached the security gate, the couple became lost in a sea of reporters.

God, I didn’t want to go up there with the reporters and the guards and the people. Maybe I should just cut my losses and run. What would I get out of witnessing the execution besides peace of mind?

“Fine,” I said aloud, to nobody, just to break up the silence and give me a bit of confidence. An elderly couple looked over at me from where they tried to push their way through the crowd. They didn’t have the strength to shunt chanting protestors aside. I drove my elbow into a blond soccer mom’s gut, and she doubled over, allowing me to get past. Her sign fluttered to the ground. A large cop glowered at me, but he’d taken it upon himself to help the elderly couple, so I slid between two entitled college students waving signs. It didn’t matter what they said, for or against, nothing would stop the show short of a call from the governor and that wasn’t about to happen. We were coming up on an election year.

The guard on the gate did a double-take at my name but didn’t say it aloud. Maybe he didn’t want a riot or my blood on his hands. Either way, he simply waved me through with constantly repeated instructions for the event. No eating. No drinking. No outbursts. Just sit there quietly, watch the man die, and then go home.

I sat in the back of the viewing gallery in the right corner, prime seating for someone looking to be away from the crowd. I didn’t see any family or recognize anyone in the room. They’d written us both out of their lives. Several older folks sat up front clutching framed photographs. I recognized the girl I’d seen on the table. Her picture was held by a couple in the direct center of the glass, sure to miss nothing. They sat away from each other in their adjoining chairs, as far away as social niceties would allow. The man gripped the picture while the woman turned to inspect the onlookers with dead eyes.

As the room settled and chaos turned to somber quiet, the warden came in to tell us that it wouldn’t be long now. They were bringing him in to the chamber. Soon, they would be strapping him into that chair, much like he’d strapped all those girls to a table. Then, they would cover his head with a hood and light him up.

“Miss Parker?”

I turned to my left to see a man with a notebook, his pen poised. Soon other people began to turn as well. A room full of hate just shown its spotlight on my face. I reached into my pocket and rubbed the arrowhead between my fingers, the rough edges soothed me as the hostility around me crested. I said nothing but waited for him to continue, because they always continued.

“Miss Parker, how are you feeling?” he asked. Sweat blotched his face, beading on his forehead. For getting such a great scoop, he appeared to be having some kind of episode.

“Annoyed.” I replied. “I’ve got nothing to say.”

“Nothing to say?” A man asked, his body turned awkwardly two rows ahead of her. “How about you say that you’re sorry your father murdered beautiful, innocent…” he choked on his own words, unable to finish. I said nothing, but neither did I break eye contact. The reserves of patience I’d tapped for the last decade had run dry. He took a breath to say something else, probably ranting about me being a rotten apple or that I’d be going to Hell with my father or some other nonsense people had been spewing at me for as long as I could remember.

Fuck them.

I watched the little curtain over the viewing window with singular focus for nearly forty-five minutes, cataloging every ruffle and each jostle. They’d brought him in, so it wouldn’t be long. One jolt of electricity and my life could begin—like Frankenstein. We’re all monsters here.

The warden’s voice startled me when it came over a small speaker mounted on the wall. It reminded me of the one that used to call my name all the time summoning me to the office for some dickhead’s trumped up slight.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the time has come for John Lee Parker’s sentence to be carried out. All appeals have been exhausted.” The speaker went quiet for a moment except for a quiet shuffling. Then, the curtain opened, and I saw my father for the first time in ten years.

“John Parker,” the warden said again, only it sounded farther away, like he wasn’t speaking through the microphone. “Do you have any final words?”

The shuffling sound returned, and I held my breath as the microphone got closer to my father’s face. I didn’t know what I wanted him to say, what I expected him to say, but he said nothing. No apology to me. No apology to the families of the girls he killed. No admission that he’d killed my mother. Nothing. My hands hurt from gripping the bottom of the plastic chair, so I peeled my fingers away.

“No final words, interesting,” the reporter murmured to himself, breaking my attention. I didn’t glance at him. Instead, I watch water slip down my father’s forehead from the sponge on top of his bald head. A metal head piece fit over the sponge, nearly hiding it from view. But I’d read all about electrocutions. I knew every piece.

A guard wiped away the water with a rag when it reached his eyes. I wondered if he could see me. Should I wave? Flip him off? It seemed childish, but the anger welled. I refused to cry lest the reporter think it guilt, or worse, grief.

“Okay,” the warden said to a smaller guard off to the left. The man pulled a black hood over my father’s face and I forgot to breathe again. The lights didn’t dim like they did on television. Instead, the hum of a generator started and that of an exhaust fan. Twice, I saw my father’s body stiffen, arching as far as the restraint would allow. Then, a dead shell landed in the chair and the warden declared the sentence carried out.

No one moved for a long moment, letting their grief swell, and their sense of justice fill. I closed my eyes, exploring my own emotions. I’d expected to feel some sense of loss or horror, something. After all, I’d just watched my father die right in front of me.

Mostly, I felt relief.

As a herd, we stood and stared vacantly around like sheep in headlights. Finally, a shepherd in a guard’s uniform led those closest out the exit and the rest of us wandered behind them. I made sure to stay far away from both the grieving father and the reporter. I didn’t need any altercations right then. The open road called my name, and for the first time, I’d decided to answer.

Twenty minutes later, I pushed the accelerator and flew onto the Interstate with the windows down and the wind whipping my hair. I found a hair tie in the center console and put it up without another care. The music blared out into the night, raging against the machine. I wondered at that moment who my father killed in the name of—didn’t matter now.

He was gone, and I was free.

 

 

JP Barnaby is an award-winning gay romance novelist and the author of over two dozen books. Her heart and soul, the Survivor Series, has been heralded by USA Today as one of their favorites. She recently moved to Orlando to appease her Camaro (Jake) who didn’t like the blustery winters. JP specializes in recovery romance but slips in a few erotic or comedic stories to spice things up. When she’s not working on her latest novel, she binge-watches superheroes and crime dramas on Netflix with her husband and Jack Russell Terror.

 

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