Electric Dreams Short Story Contest #15 – A Good Man is Hard to Find Part 02 - @tygertyger

Contest Specifications:

Your mission, if you choose to take it, is to write a short story of 1000+ words (no longer than 5000 words). Write it including the following 3 prompts: #1 your protagonist finds out by accident that they are immortal? how does he/she/they find out? How does this affect their life afterwards? What is he/she/they immortal #2 floccinaucinihilipilification #3 the story must include the sentence - “ Where do I find a cat at three AM in the morning ? ”. Take it from here and let's see where it goes : )

From @tygertyger’s writing contest. For more information please see the link:
https://steemit.com/electricdreams/@tygertyger/tyger-s-electric-dreams-short-story-contest-15-and-winners-of-14-win-sbd

My Entry:

Bailey discovered his immortality the day The Misfit shot him in the woods outside Toomsboro, Georgia.

The Misfit shot his entire family too.

Pitty Sing, the family cat, absconded with The Misfit to his hideout. That cat, the devil incarnate, for Pitty Sing remained the sole creature responsible for Bailey losing control of the wheel that sent the car into the ditch.

That’s why Grandmother flagged down the car filled with escaped convicts, and notoriously, The Misfit.

Bailey felt anger as the red blood flowed from the bullet wound in his bald head. It hurt like a righteous hell of a hangover on Sunday morning at Church.

Only Father’s aren’t supposed to bury their children and that’s why there’s no word for a parent that’s lost a child. Yet lay at rest they did in that wood near the ditch where the family automobile wrecked. John Wesley, June Star, and the Baby all killed in the noon sun. God knew no mercy that day and took the children’s mother as well.

Only Bailey felt an intense anger for Grandmother, and the antics she’d pulled that brought them out here all this way, pounding his fist in the dirt he rose to walk to the road. Then he collapsed, when he witnessed Grandmother’s corpse with three gun shots to her chest. She’d always been worthless.

333

Bailey went to Hades. For four days, he saw tortured souls and demons, yet in that time he never saw The Misfit.

He wanted revenge from this insignificant person.

On the fourth day of Bailey’s death, he found resurrection inside his coffin where weeks passed confined in the darkness.

Then as if ordained from above he heard the scrapping of a shovel upon his final resting place. The grave robber expecting to find some loot found Bailey alive and well instead.

“For the love of God! What in damnation!” Yelled the grave robber into the moonless night with only a torch light.

“Yes for the love of God . . . I might add!” Bailey howled befitting a rising ghost, he grabbed the sides of the coffin and rose, then marched forward taking the shovel from the soulless grave robber.

Bailey used the shovel like a baseball bat hitting the grave robber’s head like a tee-ball before hastily reburying him. Bailey now had money, a weapon, and a car. Even better, no one wanted to find him.

Only Bailey wanted to find The Misfit, and Pitty Sing, just a couple of nobodies.

333

Bailey found refuge at the grave robber’s crypt. Just an old Georgia farm most likely where he’d grown up, and no family to be found. The address he’d discovered on the grave robber’s ID that Bailey had taken along with all his worldly possessions that didn’t amount to much.

With a little time to himself he tried to process the sequence of events that found him here in a stranger’s poor farm house.

It began with Grandmother, and she’d brought the cat in the basket, she should have known better.

The entire vacation now a shambles with the children and their mother dead.

He rubbed the bullet hole in his bald head, now a bloodstained indentation.

He had to find The Misfit. A cuckoo clock heralded the hour at six o’clock and Bailey began to pound his fist into the kitchen wall looking toward the sunset across overgrown wheat fields, too late to harvest.

333

Days passed, and Bailey didn’t feel himself. He paced inside the halls of the grave robber’s farm house unable to eat or sleep while the worn out wood cuckoo clock chimed on the hours.

He just walked from room to room looking out the windows, waiting for The Misfit to arrive like a fly on the wind buzzing from home to home for a score to stay on the run, and Bailey a spider minion of a fruitless web.

Still, deep in his soul he had a belief that The Misfit would come here to the grave robber’s house, and so Bailey continued to pace around looking out the windows for a sign of something other than the wind.

And Bailey waited . . .

333

Finally a black hearse rolled down the dirt road with headlights piercing the darkness like dull daggers.

The wooden cuckoo clock chimed three o’clock in the morning. Bailey walked out the front door standing like a scarecrow as the long black sedan stopped in the driveway with a dust cloud seen in the full moon light.

Hiram got out of the driver’s door with a pistol drawn, while Bobby Lee got out of the passenger door with a shotgun, both looked in disapproval at Bailey.

The Misfit got out of the backseat holding Pitty Sing in one hand, while petting the cat with the other hand.

“You look like dog puke,” The Misfit said, shaking his head in displeasure.

Bailey felt poorly from days of no food or sleep. He looked with loathing at the gang responsible for the massacre of his family. Even Grandmother dying now upset him for these lowlifes hadn’t the right to strike her life from her.

“Wait, that ain’t Alshon,” said Bobby Lee.

“You mean the grave robber?” Asked Bailey rough with an air of mystery.

“Yeah,” said Hiram. “What he tell you about us?”

“Just that you’re all a bunch of slippery snakes that need to be thrown on the rocks.” Again Bailey, like a gunslinger at the O.K. Corral.

“Well you don’t say. Fill’em with lead boys.” The Misfit commanded for the 10th time since their escape from prison.

The pair opened fire, and the bullets from their guns climbed the stairs like the headlights, only they leaped forward into the darkness to hit Bailey in the chest sending him back through the front door.

Bobby Lee and Hiram carried their guns to inspect the inside of the house while The Misfit stayed outside with the cat.

The Misfit heard a thud, and another gun shot, then unexpected cries from his men.

Pitty Sing jumped from The Misfit’s arms and ran under the hearse. A calm before the miserable storm set in.

“Witness the resurrection of Lazarus!” Bellowed Bailey, as he moved with determination out the front door of the old farm house.

“The resurrection of Lazarus? You must be touched boy. Where you hear tales like that? On the wind?” And The Misfit drew his pistol.

“Grandmother,” said Bailey, staggering down the dilapidated stairs.

“Grandmother? You mean that hag I killed from the motor accident? Sorry for not sending you to your maker the first time around,” The Misfit said, firing three times into Bailey’s chest as he closed in on him.

Bailey grabbed The Misfit by the arms. The Misfit now paralyzed with fear stared into Bailey’s gaunt horror ridden face that began to bite him.

The gory struggle continued as blood mixed with the dirt of the driveway. The hearse sat in idle with the headlights on, surrounded by empty wheat fields.

Bailey stopped with the body now lifeless. He looked at the gnarled face of The Misfit and said, “It’s no real pleasure in life. Where do I find a cat at three AM in the morning?”

Thank you,
Cyrus Emerson

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