Here's another sample chapter of my paranormal thriller Chapel Street. Keep checking back for more!
Chapter 5
Gina
Sunday morning.
The bright, morning sunlight hit my
face from between the curtains of my bedroom window and awakened me gently. Blinking
into the warm light, the world felt reassuringly normal again. The purifying
rays washed away all of the weirdness of the day before. Maybe it was all a dream, I thought with great relief until I moved.
The residual pain in my neck and back dispelled my wishful thinking.
I crept out of the bedroom
cautiously. I expected the smirking face of Elisabetta Kostek to greet me from
my computer screensaver. Instead, I found a photograph of my entire family
taken at my grandparents’ house the Christmas before my father died. There were
not many pictures of the five of us. My father died when Janet was only
four-years-old. She had practically no memory of him. Sometimes I couldn’t
blame her for escaping to California when she had the chance. She didn’t experience
the good times so why should she stay and endure the madness?
As the image of my family dissolved
into one of the thousands of tombstones I had photographed for Resting Place, I
walked to the sliding door leading to the balcony. The overturned deck chair
was further evidence that I had…
I stopped in mid-thought. What had
I actually done? Really. I had a
nightmare, and I walked in my sleep. That was all. I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t
suicidal. I wasn’t like Lenny at all. Furthermore, it had nothing to do with
that stupid picture. I turned back to the computer, and there she was smirking
at me.
“It’s just a coincidence,” I said aloud.
There had to be a rational reason
why Elisabetta’s photo now appeared so regularly on the screensaver. While I
walked toward the desk, the image of her face dissolved into the photo of her
grave. That made me think. Perhaps the screensaver had some internal preset
that favored the more recent photos. That made sense. People would want to see
their most recent photos most often, right?
The people who designed the program probably took that into account. I
was just surprised I hadn’t noticed it earlier.
I sat down at the computer. While I
was reaching for the mouse to turn off the screensaver, the photo of the Kostek
grave dissolved into a photo of my ex-girlfriend Gina Holt taken at a party the
year we met. It was the first photograph of us together. She was smiling at the
camera, but my face was turned slightly. Still, it was a great picture. Gina
was quite fetching in it. Her hair was short, almost Tom Boy-ish, but nothing
else about her was reminiscent of a guy. She wore tight stretch pants and a
shirt that showed off her cleavage in a tasteful manner. Very sexy. I was
always attracted to voluptuous girls. She was Rubenesque, but my mother saw
things differently.
“You can do better than that fat
girl,” she always said. Not that my mother was into body shaming, per se. Why
would she limit herself to the physical when, in her eyes, every single aspect of
Gina was worthy of criticism?
Turns out I proved my mother wrong.
I had not done better since our
breakup.
The party picture dissolved to
another photo of Gina and me taken on Thanksgiving at her parent’s house. Her
family really liked me, and I liked them, too. They had even moved their
Thanksgiving meal to early in the afternoon so I could share it with them. That
was the only way I could have seen them. It was impossible for me to bow out of
spending a holiday with my mother. Even Lenny, at the height of his madness,
always found his way home on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter. None of his
inner demons were as formidable as our mother’s wrath.
The picture changed again to one I
took of Gina at an Orioles game. She was seated and looking up. Her smile
captured me. She seemed so happy that day. I could see the genuine love in
Gina’s eyes despite the seeds of doubt my mother planted in my heart. My mother
was relentless. She even got spiritual ammunition from a fortune-teller friend,
who predicted doom for our relationship.
I couldn’t blame my mother, despite
the heartache she caused. I understood what motivated her. Having tragically lost
her husband, she wasn’t about to lose another man in her family. Still, knowing
my mother’s motives didn’t prevent her words from poisoning me. I could see that
now. This picture reminded me that Gina truly loved me. She really did, and she
paid her dues by playing second fiddle to my mother for years.
The image changed to yet another
photo of Gina and myself. This was getting freaky. Although we were together
for five years, I only had twenty-seven pictures of us together. It was
statistically impossible that four of them would play randomly back-to-back on
the screensaver. Nor was it a good thing. The flood of memories they produced wasn’t
positive, especially this photo taken at her sister Kate’s wedding.
The wedding was the closest Gina
and I ever came to walking down the aisle together. Gina was the maid of honor.
I was one of the groomsmen. We stood on the altar during the entire ceremony.
Our eyes would periodically leave the happy couple and find each other. Her
smile nearly melted my heart. To cement things, I even caught the bride’s
garter at the reception, which wasn’t difficult since Kate had her new husband
lob it directly at me.
Our marriage was a given to everyone
but my mother. Neither of us doubted it. We often discussed where we would live
and how many children we would have. The one thing we never discussed was when. Although, the answer was obvious—when
my mother finally loosened her grip on me. Gina showed an extraordinary amount
of patience during her long, emotional game of chess with dear old momma. She
tried befriending her. She tried battling her. She tried indifference, but my
mother remained resolute and unchanging through it all. Even cancer didn’t
weaken her. In the end, mom managed to keep her grip on me beyond the grave
through those awful nightmares.
Gina thought it would be easier
after my mother died. I know I did, but that was before the nightmares began.
Still, even without the nightmares, I doubt the relationship would have ended
in marriage. I just couldn’t ask the question, and I couldn’t bring myself to
say yes when Gina did. Maybe if she waited until I was through the mourning
process, but I suppose she felt she had waited long enough. She wanted a
family, and it didn’t look like I would ever provide it. Studying this photo
with her arm looped around mine and that beautiful smile I took for granted, I
wish I could have married her. Instead, I had to endure the guilt of having
wasted five years of her life.
Then my cellphone rang. I turned to
it. The Caller ID displayed Gina’s number.
Impossible. This couldn’t be a
coincidence.
When Gina finally walked away, we
resolved to remain friends, but our phone calls grew fewer and further in
between. Most of her calls came when she needed a shoulder to cry on during her
break-ups with her subsequent boyfriends. She also gave me a heads-up when she
started dating a new guy. I got the latest call about two months earlier when
she began dating Chuck. There could only be one reason for her call now: Chuck was
out of the picture. I was fully prepared to console her as I reached for the phone
because I was genuinely sympathetic. I knew what it was like to be alone, and I
realized it suited me more than her.
“Hi, Gina,” I said. My voice was
cheerful. Despite the inherent awkwardness, I still enjoyed talking to her.
“Hi, Rick,” she replied in a voice husky
with excitement. “How are you doing?”
“Same as always,” I replied. No lie
there.
“I’m calling because I have some
exciting news, and I don’t want you to find out about it on Facebook first.”
“I’m not on Facebook.”
“I know, I know, but I’m still
friends with Mike and Bob and your sister, and I don’t want you to hear it from
them first.”
“What is it?” I asked, dreading the
news.
“Chuck and I are getting married,”
she said, barely resisting the urge to squeal girlishly.
“Wow,” I said quietly. Gina was
getting married. To someone else. I knew it would happen eventually, but it
still took me by surprise.
“I’m so happy.”
“I’m happy for you,” I said, before
adding, “But isn’t this a little sudden?
You’ve only been going out with him for about two months, right?”
“Almost three,” Gina corrected me, and
then she added, “But, yeah, I know what you mean. The timing was a little
unexpected. So was the way he did it. You know me, Rick. I’m a romantic. I
expected a ring at the bottom of a glass of champagne at an expensive restaurant,
but he just sprang it on me last night while we were driving back from his niece’s
wedding in Youngstown. God, it must have been three o’clock in the morning. I
was sleeping. He just nudged me and asked me to marry him. I said yes. When I
woke up this morning, I was afraid it might have been a dream, but it wasn’t. We’re
off to buy a ring this afternoon.”
“Well, congratulations,” I said
weakly as I turned to the computer where the screensaver shifted to yet another
picture of Gina and myself, as if to mock me. “I’m really happy for you.”
“Are you, Ricky?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “You deserve all
the happiness in the world.”
“Thanks. So do you,” she said. “I’m
sure there’s a girl out there for you.”
“You’re more confident than me,” I
said.
“You just have to step out, Ricky,”
she said. “Sometimes, I think you’re like The
Boy in the Plastic Bubble. You’ve got to let someone in.”
The Boy in the Plastic Bubble? Where had I heard
that?
Lenny.
Last night.
That couldn’t be a coincidence. What
the hell was going on here?
“What made you bring up The Boy in the Plastic Bubble?” I asked,
too quickly.
A cautious intake of breath came
across the phone. There was a moment of silence before she replied, “I’m sorry,
I shouldn’t have said that. I don’t want to make you mad.”
“No, no, I’m not mad,” I answered. “It’s
just that someone else said that to me last night.”
“Who?”
Who? An honest answer to that question would send
me to the loony bin. “It doesn’t matter,” I finally answered. “The only thing
that matters is that you’re getting married, and I couldn’t be happier for
you.”
“Thanks, Ricky. That means a lot,”
she said. “You’re always going to be one of my best friends.”
“Same here, Gina,” I said.
“I’ll try to get you an invitation
to the wedding,” she added, “But the whole ex-boyfriend thing might be weird
for Chuck.”
“You don’t have to invite me,” I
said. “I don’t need to go to the wedding to know that you’ll be a beautiful
bride.”
I heard her smile on the other side
of the line.
“I’ll tell you what, though,” I
added. “I promise I’ll join Facebook to look at the wedding pictures if you
post them.”
“Will do, Ricky,” she said.
Then she hung up.
I didn’t know what to think. Our
break up truly devastated me, but I also felt strangely relieved. I spent most
of my life living under the pressure of my mother’s expectations. Then, when
she died, I had to contend with Gina’s expectations. It wasn’t until after we
broke up that I felt I was truly charting my own course, as pathetic as it
might seem to others. Still, part of me clung to the option of going back to
her. She was my safety net. Now she was gone forever.
Man, I never wanted her as much as
I did at that moment.
I chuckled at the irony. I didn’t
believe in God, but, if He did exist, this proved He was a cruel prankster. He
fulfilled Gina’s most heartfelt desire at the same time I nearly sleepwalked
myself to death. Talk about freaky. I turned back to the screensaver expecting
to see yet another photo of Gina and myself, but instead, I found the dark lady
staring at me.
“No,” I said aloud.
I refused to believe the unstated
implications of that series of randomly selected photographs. The dark woman didn’t
have anything to do with this turn of events. It was just a coincidence. I grabbed
the mouse and made her disappear.
-->
Other Chapters:
Prologue - My Mother
Chapter 1 - RestingPlace.com
Chapter 2 - Elisabetta
Chapter 3 - The Upload
Chapter 4 - The Kobayashi Maru
Chapter 5 - Gina
Chapter 6 - Tombstone Teri
Chapter 7 - The Holy Redeemer Lonely Hearts Club
Chapter 8 - A Mourner
Chapter 9 - War Is Declared
Chapter 10 - The Motorcycle
Chapter 11 - Suspended
Chapter 12 - The Harbor
Chapter 13 - Bad News Betty
Learn more about the book Here.
While you're waiting for the next chapter of Chapel Street, feel free to read my memoir:
