20 Weeks – Chapter 1 (Part 2)
 
 
 
Legs shaking, toes curled into tight knots, her fingers grasping the blankets like they were a life-line, the last life-line left in this world…
 
“You sure get horny a lot lately,” a ghost intoned, in a dry and dull voice, from deep within an over-filled closet.
 
Bijuu, though, was used to her ghost’s rude interruptions and so instead of answering, she focused her eyes on the poster opposite her bed, and thought again what it must be like, to be with a man… like him.
 
“It’s the beard.”
 
Bijuu’s thighs trembled, and her panting nearly ceased…
 
“I mean… it’s not like you’re gonna find yourself a Viking warrior this day-and-age… now are you?”
 
Bijuu fought to keep her mind focused on the fantasy she had built inside her mind, before she was so rudely interrupted.
 
“Plus… he’s married!  Now that’s like some kind of adultery… right there… you thinking about a married man!  With kids!”
 
And just then… a knock came at the door.
 
“Fuck.”
 
The 20-something-year-old female ghost climbed silently from the closet then, and floated over to the door.  And then, sticking her head out, and then back in, she simply said…
 
“It’s Ritchie,” in unison… with Ritchie, who was just then standing on the opposite side of the door.  And together, their voices gave the murdered-ghost’s presence an even creepier vibe. 
 
If that’s even possible… Bijuu thought… and then once again climbed back out of bed.
 
“You’re so helpful,” she told her ghost, just before pulling open her door.
 
“Ummmm,” the twenty-year-old Korean boy with the kindest face you ever saw, said then… as he suddenly couldn’t really recall why he’d knocked.
 
Bijuu looked down at herself and realized then that she was still in her boxers and a tank-top.
 
“Can I help you?” she asked, looking back to the headlight-struck man.
 
“Ummm,” he began again.
 
“Your dad wants you to come downstairs and clean the kitchen,” he told her, with an instant cringe.
 
Bijuu though, was more than accustomed to her life, and the unfairness of it all.  And so, she just smiled… and said, “Fuck off.”
 
“Were you just… I thought I heard…” he said then… as if his mind had been suddenly overwritten by some new thought, that simply was not letting him go.
 
“He heard you flickin the bean,” Nyx, her ghost, intoned then from somewhere over Bijuu’s head, most unhelpfully.
 
“What?” Bijuu asked, always preferring to deflect, than answer.
 
“Nothing.  I’m just supposed to tell you he wants it done before you go to work.”
 
But Bijuu, though only sixteen-years-old, had - because of a life that had been jam-packed with tragedies that most people never want you to speak about - just stared at the young man, as if his eyebrows had suddenly caught fire.
 
And then she threw her right forearm up on the door jam, and leaned way in…
 
“Well you can tell my father, I’ll be down… when I’m down.”
 
Ritchie, the boy most likely to give CPR to a dying hamster, just smiled at the girl he’d been crushing on for the past two years, and then leaned in... and gave a quick sniff to the fingers of her right hand, as they dangled there, between them.
 
And then, with a large smile, he turned and rushed away.
 
“Now that,” her ghost began.
 
“Was creepy as fuck.”
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2020
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.
 

20 Weeks – Chapter 1 (Part 1)
 
 
 
     A coward is what a coward does.
 
 
“I don’t think anyone is coming to save us…”
 
“What gave it away?”
 
“Oh… I don’t know… the sirens.  Or maybe the naked dead man running across the lawn.”
 
“You gave it a good shot, though.”
 
“Thanks.  I tried.”
 
 
 
Ten Hours Earlier…
 
 
It’s one thing working night shifts when you live alone.  And… it’s quite another when you still live at home with your half-wit brother who thinks he’s the next Sid Vicious.  Which… Bijuu wouldn’t exactly be opposed to… if it meant the same quick and painful death.

Sadly… her older brother, Chad, wasn’t dating any psychos… that she was aware of.

And so, when Corn laid in on the drums, smashing a riff he’d been working endlessly on for the past two months… all the sixteen-year-old could do was bury her head further into her pillows and pray for a quick death.
 
“You’re going to be late.”
 
Bijuu groaned, by way of reply, and then pulled on a pair of dirty boxer shorts she grabbed off of a bedroom floor - that looked nearly post-apocalyptic.
 
“You’re getting fat.”
 
Again, Bijuu groaned, threw open her bedroom door and trudged down the stairs, and into a nearly-as-filthy kitchen.
 
“I’m trying to sleep, you know!” she hollered at the living-room full of mismatched punks that ranged in age from twenty to thirty-five.
 
“No one’s stopping you, little sister,” the lead singer crooned into the mic, that he was clearly getting ready to rip in front of.
 
Bijuu rolled her eyes at the grown man with the blue-mohawk and silver eye-teeth.  And then looked around the kitchen for the source of a massively offensive odor.
 
“What the fuck is that smell?” she asked of the room in general, though no one was paying her any attention.
 
Picking up a lid off one of the nearby pans, Bijuu immediately regretted it, as it appeared to be harboring some kind of new and definitely alien life form.
 
“Jesus do you guys have to be such pigs?” she asked, again… of no one in particular.
 
“Well don’t just stand there… get to it,” her older brother said then, as he moved past her into the living room that doubled as their rehearsal studio.
 
“I’m not cleaning this up…” Bijuu began… but the smell had taken its toll and before she could get another word out she was hurling into the sink.
 
“Goddamn it Bij’!  That’s so fucking gross!” he sniped at her.
 
“And, go put on some pants.  This ain’t some strip club!  Goddamn… nobody ever teach you any manners?” he asked, tossing her a dirty rag to wipe her mouth with.
 
“Tastes all right to me,” Ritchie said then, taking another large bite of whatever was in the pot.
 
Bijuu, shaking her head, and totally unable to articulate the absolute disgust she felt just then for the very smiley Korean boy that always had nice things to say to her.
 
And so… she just ran.
 
Ran back to her bedroom.
 
“I give up,” she told her ghost.
 
“It’s about time,” her ghost replied.
 
Bijuu grabbed a dirty pair of jeans off a chair in the corner, sniffed the crotch, and then decided they’d work.  So she stripped off the boxers and began tugging on her jeans.  Only… they were a definite no-go.
 
“I told you, you’re getting fat,” Nyx, the ever-angry ghost said from the overstuffed rocking chair, as she picked under her nails with a big, shiny knife.
 
“Yeah?” Bijuu, asked, looking up at the twenty-something-woman that had haunted her as long as she could remember.
 
“Yeah,” Nyx said then, and blew a bubble… like she was just too cool for school.
 
So, of course, Bijuu just snorted, ripped off the too-small jeans, that had clearly shrunk in the dryer, and then pulled back on the dirty boxer shorts.
 
She then began throwing bits of clothing into an empty clothes basket.
 
“You’re going to have to face it, sooner or later,” the irritating ghost said, from the top of the dresser, where she was perched now, like some kind of deranged parrot.
 
Bijuu froze for a second and then whipped a shoe at her ghost, and as it sailed through the not-so-friendly apparition it took the head off two of the 'Demented Demon Dolls' she collected.
 
“Fuck!” Bijuu swore then… and then collapsed into a heap onto her pillow-strewn bed.
 
“I give up.  I literally don’t care what happens.  Fuck the world.  And fuck god… if there even is one.  I mean… what else could he do to me that’s worse than all this shit?” she asked, just as the punk band downstairs started up their first set.
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2020
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.