Two Events: A Micro Fiction Story

Two Events

A Micro Fiction Story

Katherine Rochholz

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2019

            When I was sixteen I swore never to touch alcohol.

Never.

And I never even had a sip of a beer in college. I swore never to touch a drop.

I always felt there were only two types of people in the world, those who were drunks and those who survived them.

            My parents they were killed by a drunk driver, days after my sixteenth birthday. My life was shattered. I was sixteen! I needed my mom and dad! I was alone in the world. I swore to put an end to drunk driving.

            I became a lawyer. I was a prosecutor. I asked for the strictest punishments for drunk driving. I helped get laws written and changed to be harsher for alcohol related offenses. To tax it more, to make it harder for people to get, to destroy it.

            Then my world came crashing down around me… again.

            My daughter was murdered. By a man who wanted revenge. He hunted her down and killed her; because I had sent his lover to prison for twenty years, for killing a person while driving drunk.

            I couldn’t face life without my daughter.

            A friend handed me a glass of Whiskey.

            It numbed me… And I wanted to be numb.

            One event caused me to never to touch alcohol.

            One event caused me to be dependent upon it…

Letters to Santa: A Flash Fiction Story

Letters To Santa

A Flash Fiction Story

Katherine Rochholz

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2019

            Once I had turned ten I never thought I would write another letter to Santa, he hadn’t brought me what I asked for, a liver for my dad… My faith died that day.

When I was nineteen and told I would never have kids, I never thought I would have to think about writing a letter to Santa. After all, my life took a different path after that day.

When I was forty all I could think about was kids writing letters to Santa, and how my co-workers would be talking about their children. Always left out, always outside of the circle; but there was nothing I could do about it, for I couldn’t have children.

When I was fifty, I choose to foster a child, but they were older teens, so the letters to Santa never happened. But I was happy. I missed the small children mile stones, but I was there for them when they needed me most in their lives. I was finally getting a chance to be a mom.

When I was fifty-three, I received word that a four year old needed a home. I already had started the process to adopt the three teen boys I had been fostering for the last three years, I wasn’t going to take on any more children, but her story pulled my heart. So I agreed to meet her.

When I was fifty-three I adopted three teen boys and a small little girl. I was a mother.

When I was fifty-three years old I sat around a hospital bed with my three boys, as their sister laid waiting for a transplant.

When I was fifty-three years old, I wrote Letters to Santa with my boys and daughter.

            ‘Dear Santa,

                        I became a mom for the first time 3 years ago. Dear Santa, please work a Christmas miracle, send a bone marrow to my baby girl.

            Sincerely,

                        A fifty-three year old mother from Chicago’

           

‘Dear Santa,

                        I stopped believing years ago, but please, don’t let me lose my little sister, I just got her… I want to keep her. Bring her the marrow she needs to live…

            Sincerely,

                        A teen who just got his first taste of having a family.’

           

‘Dear Santa,

                        I don’t believe in you. I used to write for a family. When I stopped I gained my new mom. And I have 2 brothers. And a sister… I don’t believe for me, but for her I want to believe you would come for her. Please, it is all I will ever ask for again. Bring her what she needs to live.

            Sincerely,

                        A teen who doesn’t believe, but for her will turn the world inside out’

           

‘Dear Santa,

            I never had a chance to believe in you. Not until mom would write from Santa on my first Christmas gifts from her 3 years ago. I was 11. I never wrote a letter to you. I know we are supposed to ask for the newest electronic, or a game, but please, just bring a bone marrow to my sister. I just got her. And I can’t lose her.

            Sincerely,

            A teen who always wanted a chance to believe’

            Dear Santa,

            I got the most amazing gift already this year! I got a mom! And 3 brothers! 3! And they are all mine! And a mom who holds me when I am scared! I am not going to ask for anything. I have it all. Thank you Santa, you got me the family I asked for last year.

            Sincerely,

            A happy little girl’

When I was fifty-three I read four letters to Santa.

When I was fifty-three years old I found the faith I lost when I was ten.

When I was fifty-three years old I wrote a letter to Santa.

When I was fifty-three years old, I fell to my knees and begged a God I wasn’t sure existed.

When I was fifty-three years old, I begged whoever would listen for them not to take my child.

When I was fifty-three years old, I witnessed a Christmas Miracle.

When I was fifty-three, my four year old received a bone marrow transplant from a man with a long white beard, who was jolly, and was named Nicholas.

When I was fifty-three years old, my faith in miracles, God, and Santa were renewed.

When I was fifty-three years old, I sat in a Chicago hospital and wrote a letter to Santa.

When I was fifty-three years old, a stranger gave my daughter the gift of life.

When I was fifty-three years old, I wrote Letters to Santa…

Shades of Darkness A Micro Fiction Story

Shades of Darkness

A Micro Fiction Story

Katherine Rochholz

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2019

            As a child I was afraid of the dark. The monster that would come and hurt me. The monster that left scars and bruises. The monster that I called father. As a child I felt if darkness never came then the monster would never come. I kept flashlights, nightlights, glow in the dark stickers, anything to chase away the darkness.

            But the darkness always came…

            As a teen I left the house to avoid the lighted darkness. I sought pure darkness instead. Lighted darkness, where the light from the moon, the street lamp, the hallway light, brightens the room just enough to see every shadow, every fear as they come to life. So, I sought the darkness, for if I was going to be in pain, if I was going to have to deal with the monster, if I was going to have to live in the darkness I was going to not see it coming. I used everything and anything seeking the comfort of black…

            But the lighted darkness always came…

            As an adult I push my fear away. But there still is always a light on. Always. Now instead of trying to not see the monsters come, I want to see them, so I can face them. So I can destroy them, one by one. I couldn’t stay in pure darkness for my own sanity and quality of life. I can’t stand the lighted darkness, as I fear the darkness and the unknown. So instead I live in muted darkness, an internal darkness, where instead of truly facing my fear of the dark, I leave a light on and let it eat at my soul. I run from the darkness…

            But the shades of darkness always come…

Random WIP Excerpt: The Final Lullaby Tour

Random WIP Excerpt:

The Final Lullaby Tour

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2018

Excerpt:

Doyle sat on his bed with a smirk. He wrote in his journal what should be the last entry. But if things went to plan, it wouldn’t be.

‘I am a condemned man. I knew this day would come. One can’t kill like I do and not end up on death row. But I have my last meal. A bloody rare steak –Iowan Sirloin-, baked potato, salad, biscuit, and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Cliché. I once read most sociopaths name mint chocolate chip as their favorite ice cream. Mint chip. Perhaps it is true, my favorite is mint chip, and I am a serial killer, that is diagnosed as a sociopathic psychopath. It is sharp and sweet. Cooling in the sort of way that cool air after a burn is cooling. The best and worst of life is like that too; the sharp versus the sweet. Maybe that is why those of us with no emotions like it; it gives us both, the things we are missing in our souls… The Sharp… And the Sweet…’

Changes A Flash Fiction Story

Changes

A Flash Fiction Story

Katherine Rochholz

All Rights Reserved Copyright 2019

            I stand here over the most recent kill. The body that lay before me is perfectly sliced, cut, dissected, it is a masterpiece.  So different from my first kill.

            Blood, there was so much blood. I am so screwed. Was the only thought that ran through my head once I came down from the high of taking this person off the street and cutting them, bleeding them, until their heart stopped pumping, as I could feel and see the life leave their eyes; those once bright blue eyes, where now clouded over in death, the bright blue now nothing but hazy gray.

            I hadn’t planned to do my first kill that day. I had been working myself up to it. It was an obsession. The want to cut, to hurt, to take a life. The only rush that could come close was sex, and even that was called ‘the little death’, the body seeming to shut down just for that moment that one gains completion.

            She just called to me, the long legs, the blue yes, and the blonde hair. So typical, but so drawing, and young, so, so young and I wanted to cut that life short, to be the fates and cut her thread.

            I grabbed her, I pulled her into an alley that was in the bad part of town, and taped her mouth shut. And slowly tortured her. A cut there, a cut there, a slice, so shallow and painful, until I sliced opened her chest to see if I could see her beating heart, and I watched the life leave from her eyes. I gained euphoria at that moment, and I knew I would chase the high until my death.

            When I came down from my high, I burned her. I burned everything. Nobody ever suspected me, and I kept an eye on the news, they didn’t find her body for three weeks, and then it was a homeless man who found her bones, he just so happened was trying to find a place to lay down. And that was my first kill.

            Now, fifteen years later, I am looking down at my most recent, the plastic up, and the clean up a breeze. I clean the body after the blood had been completely drained. She would find her final resting place wherever I felt like dumping her. I started marking the bodies, with a signature and their number. I cut 179 into her forehead as well as my signature mark; I cut into her skin a V with slices coming from it, like broken bloody wings. They call me the Angel of Death. Fitting.

            I know one day I will be caught. It is bound to happen. But for now I am the most prolific modern serial killer, and nobody would ever suspect me. After all, who would suspect the local preacher was a serial killer? So I leave the body and remove the disposable overalls, and straighten my suit, I have a service to perform, the funeral for my victim before her, number 178. I smirk mentally as I move upstairs and great the family, the family that will never know how I was the last to hear the sweet screams of their precious daughter.

            “I am so sorry for your loss.” I state as I shook the man’s hand. All the while, reflecting upon the changes I have gone through in the last fifteen years. How I have evolved into a perfect serial killer, all while gaining the trust of the whole community.

            My wife, my blonde haired, blue eyed wife, came to my side and hugged the grieving mother. I am not sure what made her different, my wife, why I didn’t kill her when I first saw her. But I didn’t. Maybe change comes in many different forms. For in the last fifteen years, I have gone through many changes…