The Girls

By Arcadia

There were three of them. Key word: "Were." The Girls, all having died young, one at age 5, one at 13, and one at 24. Dead is dead, as they soon discover. There is no possible way out, save unless The Soul Man appears and escorts them from their prison, this standard IOOF graveyard.
The theme of the day is "should we stay or should we go?" Should the three make a break for it and return to where their lives served a semi-purpose or should they just bide their time here where death seems to hold no
purpose other than just to pass the time by wandering around reading grave markers and bitching about such things as being dead and still having to sh** and pee, being dead and having to digest scrounged berries and lizards, and being dead and having to drink from puddles, and dead, still, while feeling horribly sorry for themselves?
Just send them to where there is a purpose, whether here, or back home, please! Choose your year, 1898, 1905, or 1984.
Come with Bethel, Lyn, and Lenora as they plot their escape while waiting for the one they refer to as The Semi-Handsome man. (less)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcadia
• Release date: Jan 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483539607

Book preview

THE GIRLS  

by

ARCADIA

Table of Contents

Title Page

The Girls

Our Present

Our Past

Time to move on.

Our Future

...let the little children come to me...

Dance little sister.

The frontier needs pioneers, as a pioneer needs the frontier.

"IN A HEARTBEAT I’D

SWITCH LIVES WITH THEM.

WE’VE LIVED OUR LIVES

WHY THEN NOT ALL?

TO WE

WHO’VE OUTLIVED

THE YOUNG, A CHILD,

SO FEW HOPES ON

THOSE MORNINGS

THEY ARE NOT HERE

BUT YON’...

MOURNING,

TIL ONE CAN BRIBE YET

ONE MORE HEARTBEAT

FROM THE SOULS THEY

ONCE POSSESSED.

NOW THE CLERICS

AVOID US DUE

TO THE FACT THE

DEATH OF A CHILD

HAS NO RHYME

NO REASON

NO PSALM"

1 

Our Present

There were two of them behind the curtain, awestruck, from head

to toe, sharing a copy of the script, their make or break moment.

Drama class. No more pretending, time has come today, with first

impressions critical, the hall packed to overflowing. Jr. College.

Thank God for the curtain. They waited, then waited, then

the exhale, eyeing the scenery, hearing the bustle from out front.

The first young lady, a freshman in her initial college stage

production asks the second young lady, also a freshman, "Where do

you think she is?"

Impossible to know, she answers. "She’s just so regular at

being irregular."

THE GIRLS

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Suddenly, out of nowhere, or so it may seem, the third and final

player appears, from right over there to the right, to the freshmen’s

left. Finally, freshman number one damn near screams, "where the

hell have you been?"

Around, the third young lady tells the both of them. "Relax, I’m

not late. I can tell time," she scolds.

Curtain goes up in three minutes, lady number two tells her.

The third girl, an upperclassman, looks at herself then at her cohorts,

contemplating their costumes. You two look ridiculous.

And I suppose you don’t? number one bites back.

Never, the junior tells her. "I look good in this. Fact: I look

good in anything."

"I, myself, love my costume. I sometimes wish I had lived

during that era," announces freshman number one.

I don’t doubt it for one minute, states the junior-come-

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lately.

Time for freshman number two to have her say. "I feel the same

way. I’d have loved living on a farm or a big ranch, roughing it,

the whole smear."

You’d have starved, the junior tells her. Like her, she

grins, pointing at girl number one. "She woulda drank herself to death...

roaring 20s, my ass. Now," she asserts as she idles over to her mark,

let me concentrate. And remember, don’t screw this up.

One of the young ladies tosses the script behind a stage

prop: a cemetery gravestone adorned with a watchful angel perched

on high, smiling, with red hair, a broken left wing, and ebony eyes that

seem to follow even the slightest of gestures.

The curtain goes up and the junior declares: "In a heartbeat,

I’d switch lives with them. We’ve lived our lives, why then not all?"

Under her breath, she asks herself, Waiting, waiting, waiting, isn’t

there more to life than just waiting? If this play is as lame as it reads,

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THE GIRLS

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I’m going out now and buying myself my own cemetery plot and

jumping in it. Waiting and waiting on those two imbeciles over there... 

The spotlight now belongs to freshman number one. "To we

who’ve outlived the young, a child, so few hopes on those mornings

they are not here, but yon’..." She sums up her dissatisfaction: Come

on, come on. Maybe she’s right, maybe I do look ridiculous, and why would

I want to live in the 20s? Nothing wrong with the era I live in now. O.k. for

grandma, but not me. This hat and wig itch so bad. Look at her over

there, so smug, so above it all. Waiting and waiting, come on, you

freak, stop staring at me...

Freshman number two now recites her first lines of the

evening. "Mourning, til one can bribe yet one more heartbeat from the

souls they once possessed." She smiles, then the spotlight leaves her in the

dark. She asks herself: Darkness, why am I always in the dark? I’m the star of

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this lame production...and damn, why didn’t I pee before I put this stupid

costume on? How’d they stand it back then, so itchy...jeez...hell, this bonnet

and dress are so dumb...my God, I ain’t gonna be able to hold it...and why did we

have to do this particular play...oh, right, the director’s pathetic little troll of a wife

wrote it... look at those two over there, so smug, so, so S-D-S.I hate the

dark, like what death is gonna be like...and why is this crap supposed to

be taking place in a cemetery? Morbid...jeez, look at all those lame-o people

out there...must not be charging admission to get in...

THE GIRLS

Our Past

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They were here, said their farewells, now and perhaps forever.

The faith it took to continue on. We’ll be with them again, some-

day—when hope takes over, step by step, heartbeat after heartbeat,

eyes dry as the wind, for long ago all have shed what tears they once

possessed.

Their motto: One foot in front of the other.

LYN & LENORA & BETHEL

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They were someone’s child. Generations separate them & blood

binds them. Blood separates them...then generations bind once more.

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7

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Newton and Viola said goodbye to her when she was 13.

Ivy and Anna said goodbye to her when she was 5.

John and Bess said goodbye to her when she was 24. Her   

children are, then, 1, 3, and 7. She left them with John and Bess,

a reconciliation, a reunion just around the corner. A payback,

take one, give three back. A situational Job, multiplying a 

horrific loss with a great gain.

THE GIRLS

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3

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In a cemetery. Dusk.

They woke to a setting sun, the three of them, Lenora first,  

then Lyn, then Bethel. Lenora asked, Where are we?

"Where do you think? Looks like a cemetery. Quacks like a

duck, walks like a duck. Gotta be the old boneyard." Lyn was in   

fine form this evening.

Almost always the peacemaker, Bethel replied, We get it, Lyn.

Lately, Lenora said, they seem to be dropping like flies.  

Bethel cleared the sleep from her tongue by wiping it

on her sleeve. "I’ve never been to an evening funeral. Spooky,

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always morning or early afternoon, never dusk."

Where is everybody? Lenora wondered.

Huh, Lyn snickered, "you don’t think we’ve outlived them

all, do ya?"

Now that’s a thought, Lenora stated, smoothing the front

of her best funeral-going dress.

"If we are the last then who will pay their respects at our

funerals?" Bethel was a mess at dusk. She was a morning person.

If anything she’d rather gag than face the onslaught of the night.

"I didn’t know you’d ever earned anyone’s respect, Bethel,"

Lyn sniped.

Bethel started to cry, sans the tears. Not nice, Lyn.

Brother, get a grip, Lyn spewed.

"It was a joke, Bethel. You never have had a sense of humor,"

Lenora taunted. "It’s like humor just bounces off you and lands out

in the road somewhere. Like roadkill."

THE GIRLS

Hey, Bethel said, desperate to fit into any conversation, "did I ever tell you

about the garden my great-grandma had? Well, she planted some tomatoes and

when they were ripe she and my grandma harvested them. When they went to can

‘em, they discovered that nary a tomato had any meat in ‘em. They were all full

of sap. Catsup! No one believes me, but that was the year my grandmas actually

invented the catsup plant. They’re my favorite veggie. She didn’t know about

catsup at the time and promptly tossed them all out. She didn’t can even one

tomato that year. Funny, every time they’d stick a knife in one, it’d be like the

tomatoes’d squirt like a slit wrist, a steady stream, then once it was all flushed

the skin’d look like a flat tire, or a stick of chewed gum. My great grandma

really did invent catsup. Grew the first catsup plant, and that’s a fact. So I

heard."

Lyn and Lenora shook their heads in disbelief. "First of all, Bethel,

what does that have to do with what we was talkin’ about? Secondly, it’s  

called ketchup, not catsup, ‘less your grandma used cat shit for fertil-

izer. Third: tomatoes are a fruit. And lastly, have you lost your frigging

mind?" Lyn yelled.

Last time I checked I hadn’t, she replied, serious as a heart attack.

Lenora deadpanned, Actually the tomato is a berry.

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4

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They slept standing up