Short Stories 

Honey

- an experimental short horror story

“Isn’t this house just great babe?” Jeremy asks, coming up behind me and startling me out of my stupor. “I know there’s no beach, but who cares when you’ve got a house like this, right?”

            I resist the urge to sigh as my mind drifts to my family in Florida. The wistfulness I feel must be showing because when I look at Jeremy I see his teeth clench. “Yes, it’s truly perfect” I say, hoping the lie is convincing enough. It must be because Jeremy’s jaw muscles relax, and he grins. “I’m glad you’re grateful babe. This is home now. Be a doll and get this living room unpacked already so I have a couch to sit on when the game’s on later. I’ll be back in a bit.”

            As soon as I heard the door close behind him, I let the tears fall. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I open a box to try and distract myself and sitting right on top is a picture of my mom, Aunt Kate, the boys and me. I begin to cry harder, thinking about those early years filled with so much joy and grief. After my mom died, my mom’s best friend Kate took me in as her own. I sniffled and looked at the next picture in the box. This one is of Aunt Kate’s boys and I on the beach, the sun in our eyes and all of us holding up the shark teeth we’d found that day. My grief was the ebb and flow like the waves rolling in the background, and Aunt Kate and the boys made sure I didn’t drown.

            I close the box, because it feels like I’m drowning now and there’s no Aunt Kate to save me. Over the years, Jeremy has found various ways to isolate me from my family- especially now that we may as well be a million miles away in the Dallas suburbs. When we arrived a few days ago after the millionth move for Jeremy’s career in the last several years, I told him I wanted to give Aunt Kate the new address and he said, “Now Nichole, we don’t need to give our new address to everyone do we?” As if Aunt Kate were an acquaintance and not my adoptive mother. And I let him get away with this behavior because if I don’t, the consequences of my “bad behavior” are unbearable. So, I stopped fighting. And now here I am in a stupid house in a stupid suburb with a zillion pictures of family I can’t see. I want to scream.

            I move to the kitchen and begin unpacking our China cabinet and in this box is a Tweety-bird mug from my mom. I flash back to the day of the wreck, the rain and all the blood, and my mom’s last words to me. “Everything will be alright honey.” This time I can’t control my emotions any longer and I pick up the big serving platter and hurl it across the kitchen. I’m expecting to feel satisfaction in the way it will shatter, jealousy that it’s allowed to shatter, and I am not. Except, it doesn’t. My first reaction is relief because I can’t imagine the consequences if that plate broke. Confused, I moved around the island to investigate. Crouched down and holding the serving platter is a woman. At first, I think I’ll scream but I’m just so stunned I stare. She stands up to her full height, her long blonde hair falling over her face. Her head bobbles and I see that her neck is purple and bent at an unnatural angle. Mascara-stained tears roll down her cheeks and I meet her intense green eyes. She hands me back the dish and whispers, “I’m Honey.”

            I swallow hard, and all I can manage to say is “Hi Honey.”

            “Honey?” Jeremy’s voice booms from behind me and I whirl around to face him. “You know I prefer it when you call me babe, babe.”

            I turn back around but the woman called Honey has vanished. I look around the island, in the living room, scratching my head and feeling suddenly tired. Jeremy just frowns at me and says, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

            The next few days pass mostly uneventfully with one exception. I made Jeremy meals that he criticized, wore things he said made me look to ‘emo’ and changed, and tried to find solace in running. The feelings of isolation were so bleak that I even had the gall to mention to Jeremy I was thinking of getting a part time job, to which he responded, “Why? So you can leave me?” The only hope I had during these days was Honey. She would appear from time to time, when I was most desperate it seemed. When I would be in the kitchen alone cooking, she’d be there in the corner with a sad smile on her wobbly head. She was behind Jeremy when he said my clothes were inappropriate, boring a hole in the back of his head. One day I thought I heard something behind me on my morning run and she was standing there, a genuine grin on her face, her trademark mascara tears gone.

            Eventually I started talking to her. She didn’t always talk back, but she’d nod along and her bent neck and listen. Her appearance always startled me, but I wasn’t afraid of her. If anything, I was grateful for the company and to not feel so alone. Jeremy was always around for the most part, but he only made me feel lonely. Honey was my friend, even if she was a ghost with blonde hair and a bent neck.

            Then the week of my period comes and goes, and I get another shock. Despite taking my brith control meticulously at Jeremy’s insistence, the positive pregnancy test says otherwise. I’m sitting on the bathroom floor crying and then Honey is there next to me, stroking my hair and rubbing my back. Her broken neck is even more pronounced in the fluorescent bathroom light, and she is crying too.

            “I think it’s time I told you my story,” she whispers.

            “I lived here once with my husband. For many years I convinced myself that we were happy. He isolated me from my friends and family, and he controlled every aspect of my life. I bought it all because I thought that was what I was supposed to do as a good wife. I always thought, maybe if I’m on my best behavior and please him, eventually things would get better,” she takes a raspy breath, her tears falling more earnestly. “But things didn’t get better, they only got worse. One day I was heading to the store, and he stopped me, suggesting I order whatever I needed.”

            I realized then that Jeremy had already begun doing this to me. Little things, like taking my phone in for an upgrade and now it’s been days and I’m still without a phone. Ordering all the groceries to the house. I wanted a gym membership, but he insisted on this house because of the home gym. So now I don’t have to leave the house for that either. I don’t know if I have said all of this out loud, but Honey is nodding, and I know she knows it’s already happening to me.

            “I couldn’t escape. I had no hope,” she whispers, her head lolling on her broken neck.

            “Is that what happened? You killed yourself, didn’t you?” But she’s staring straight ahead now, and I can see she’s starting to fade.

            “Honey?” I say, but before she can answer the bathroom door flies open and Jeremy is standing there panting, his eyes going from me to the test on the sink.

            “Stop calling me honey! And what the hell is this,” he yells, yanking the test off the counter. His eyes bulged. He hurled the test across the bathroom along with a slew of words that berated every part of my being. Before he slammed the bathroom door, he looked at me and said “This is not part of the plan. You will not have this baby Nichole. Get rid of it.” Then he slammed the door so hard behind him my teeth rattled in my skull.

            As soon as he was gone Honey was with me again. She held me and cried with me. “Honey, what am I going to do” I choked out through my sobs.

            She tilted my chin up to meet her eyes, her head bobbling on her purple neck and said, “It’s you and the baby or him. It’s time to make a choice.” And I knew she was right, that if I didn’t do something to change my circumstances now, I would end up having a purple neck to match hers.

            Jeremy had a work trip that weekend and Honey and I spent the weekend planning. We talked through everything and giggled and cried together. It had been a long time since I felt good about anything and even though I was scared, it was nice to have a friend and no longer be alone. For the first time in a long time, I had hope, and it was all thanks to Honey. When Jeremy returned that Sunday evening, I knew exactly who I would choose between the baby and I, and him.

            It had been years since Jeremy had taken his sleeping pills (probably so he could keep one eye on me) but I managed to find them in all the unpacking. By the time he arrived home exhausted from his trip, I was sitting at the table in my best good girl clothes. I had spent hours getting everything just right, preparing his favorite meal; chicken bourguignon.

            “Hi babe,” I said. I forced a genuine smile and served him dinner. I gave him a healthy pour of his favorite whiskey and soda and unbeknownst to Jeremy, a healthy serving of sleeping pills.

            He smiled coyly at me and sat down. I expected him to take a bite and begin with the criticism, but to my surprise he dug in. In between bites he took long gulps of his wine. He smiled sweetly at me and for a moment my heart sank, remembering the Jeremy I thought I had fallen in love with.

            “Wow babe,” he said, after swallowing his last bite. “That was almost perfect. Almost. I knew you had it in you. Oh, and next time, remember this pairs better with a drier white wine.” I bit my tongue so hard it bled and waited for the alcohol and sleeping pills to work their magic.

            An hour later, Jeremy passed out in bed, snoring. As soon as he was asleep, Honey appeared. I started crying, having second thoughts, and she soothed me and walked me to the guest bedroom. I laid down and continued to ramble about whether he was capable of change and maybe I could try harder, and if I was just a better wife. I crawled beneath the covers and Honey tucked me in, soothing me, running her fingers through my hair and letting me cry and ramble. I cried to the brink of exhaustion and began to drift off. Honey’s fingers were still in my hair and right before I drifted off, she whispered, “I’ll take it from here.” I slept better that night than I had in years.

            When I awoke the next morning, Jeremy was swinging from the banister, the sheets around his neck bending it an eerily familiar angle. As I stared up at my dead husband I expected to feel a plethora of emotions. But the only thing I felt was relief.

            I called the police and waited, my hand on my belly. It turns out, Jeremy’s narcissistic tendencies had landed him in some trouble at work and there were talks the weekend he was away about his future employment. By all accounts, the suicide was believable. I mean the police certainly weren’t going to suspect I had conspired with a ghost and heaved him over that banister myself, right?

            I didn’t see Honey anymore after that. I never got a chance to thank her.

            A year later, I’m sitting on the beach with Aunt Kate, my brothers, and my beautiful baby girl. I’ve decided to finally open up to my family about what my marriage to Jeremy was like, and why I was distant for so long. Aunt Kate and I go for a walk, and it all comes out and by the time we are turning around to walk back towards my daughter and brothers, we are both crying.

“What made you finally realize what was happening to you? All those years of abuse and being controlled, it’s amazing you realized it all. Some women don’t” Aunt Kate said.

“I sort of had help from a friend. She made me see my worth again, and once I saw that I couldn’t unsee that Jeremy was a monster. Him dying was the best thing that could have happened to me.”

Aunt Kate sort of laughed and said, “A friend, huh? You weren’t talking to Honey again, were you?”

I almost choked. “What did you say?”

“Honey,” Aunt Kate said, “she was an imaginary friend you had when your mom passed. I’d hear you talking to her at all hours of the night, giggling, and getting through what you needed to. At first it worried me, but then I realized you must have created Honey to help deal with the trauma of losing your mom. And if she was helping with that, she couldn’t be all that bad. Even if she wasn’t real. And I thought it was sweet, being that your mom always called you Honey.”

I had a clear flash of tying the bed sheets around Jeremy’s neck, of thinking of my baby and supernaturally being able to heave him over the banister, the distinct snap of his neck when the sheets pulled taught.

I look up across the sand where my brothers are sitting with my daughter. She is asleep on a blanket and Honey is above her. She strokes her cheek and looks up at me with tears in her eyes. “Thank you,” I mouth. She smiles and for a moment, her face is somehow mine.  Then she vanishes for good.

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