Good Night, Harry | Sheree Shatsky
Harry’s girls rise from their common grave on nights the mist gathers high in the tall firs. They hug and visit, comb each other's hair, wash faces with spongy wet ferns and fly off to the cabin.
The stench of death is fresh, recent. “This place is a wreck, like the wreck of the Hesperus,” Pamela says. She’s new to the group, a college girl from Tennessee with an ugly gash across her throat. Everyone nods and agrees, though no one knows who or what this Hesperus is she’s drawling about.
Gloria, Lucille and Priscilla search for the cleaning supplies and get busy. They’d worked housekeeping nights at the Orange U Special motel off I-84 until they got themselves fired. Not so much for short-sheeting the beds of the visiting Kiwanis; more for spiking the cinnamon whiskey miniatures with horse tranquilizers stolen from Gloria’s veterinarian dad. Fired at one in the morning with no ride home. They stuck out their thumbs and got into the car with the first guy to pull over. Harry. He had red wine and quaaludes and three sets of handcuffs.
Harry is asleep in the back room. Susie hovers him, she was his first. She unties the bow at the neck of her ripped blouse and wraps it tight around his scrawny throat. Susie pulls hard, as hard as her weak phantom hands allow. He snorts and rolls over. Donna digs her pocket for the lovely green chrysocolla gathered her last beachcomb of the Wind River gravel beds. She throws the stone hard at the back of Harry’s head and misses, unlike Harry that early spring day the two crossed paths.
Laura wisps deep inside Harry’s ear and chases him through his dream forest with a chunk of felled timber. She swings and misses, swings and misses. Harry looks back terrified, as terrified as she had been. He slams into Missy, tiny petite Missy transformed into a giant red cedar. She sweeps him up into her bough and hangs him by the pearls her mother insisted Missy wear the night neither would ever see the other again. He kicks and flails and grabs his throat and Missy lets up, lets him go, lets him drop back to sleep.
Gloria smoothes the disheveled sheets while Lucille and Priscilla delicately slip complimentary mini peppermint patties up Harry’s nose. The dead girls pass around the silvery foil wrappers, lick the insides clean and watch the chocolate melt in dark streaks down Harry’s face. He will wake in the morning and think he is bleeding to death. Harry will bolt out of bed, his feet fabulously tangled in his short-sheeted sheet and break both arms. Back in their grave, the girls will giggle and laugh and blow kisses and wish each other more good nights.
Sheree Shatsky writes wild words. Her work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Revolution John, Cowboy Jamboree, Wraparound South, Fictive Dream, BLACKCACKLE at Entropy with found poetry at Heron Tree and Harpy Hybrid Review. Her micro “Hot Rot” was nominated by Splonk Flash for Best Microfiction 2022. Sheree calls Florida home and is a Tom Petty fan. Read more of her writing at shereeshatsky.com . Find her on Twitter @talktomememe.