The Die

By d.o. allen

From Author d.o. allen...

The image is familiar and terrifying. I have reached the pinnacle; the Freak is looming larger, magnified tenfold and mushrooming to insure its invincibility. Dysty does not offer me a secure hand but rather retracts as Lydia had. He hangs above me like a full moon, evil and

• Language: English
• Publisher: DMO Enterprises LLC
• Release date: Nov 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781734194135

d.o. allen

The author, d. o. allen is a short story fiction writer, song crafter and background actor. A United States Army veteran, Dave completed a successful career as a human resources executive with two Fortune 500 companies. Born in California, Dave now resides in Kentucky and is in the graduate program in creative writing at Northern Kentucky University.

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The Die

Copyright © 2019 by d. o. allen

All rights reserved.

The Die first appeared on May 2014 in Clare Literary Journal. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

This collection of short stories is a work of fiction. Names, descriptions, entities and incidents included in the story are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, events and entities is entirely coincidental.

DMO Enterprises, LLC 8253 Woodcreek Drive Florence, Kentucky 41042

email: [e-mail]

www.doafiction.com

Published by DMO Enterprises, LLC

The publisher and the author are committed to the support of independent authors and to the highest quality creation of fictional stories in the suspense and mystery genres.

Ordering Information:Quantity sales. The publisher offers several discounts for multiple purchases. Most works of d. o. allen are available in electronic, print and limited edition audio formats. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

Print Edition ISBN 978-1-7341941-2-8 Ebook Edition ISBN 978-1-7341941-3-5

Published in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface

Mall Train

The Die

Last Ride

Prodigy

Shadowbox

Angel De Oro

Cavalier Redux

In Memory

About the author

About the creations of d. o. allen

Also from the author

Preface

To each reader and listener: thank you!

With The Die, and as with my book, Pardon Me, you’ll find another collection of realistic-but totally fictional stories. You’ll immerse yourself in tales that can happen to anyone while hoping they don’t happen to you.

In this collection, I keep asking, what if? In the title story, The Die, for example, what if Karl, a lonely widower doesn’t cast his fate to the odds? And what if Clayton hangs on in spite of his enduring struggle with mental illness following his childhood accident? In Mall Train, you’ll find the shocking truth behind the disappearance of a young girl from a shopping mall—just in time for Christmas.

For those of you who are audiophiles, selected stories are available through my AudioRx™ collection. Each comes professionally narrated. Vocal actors are matched with hand-selected theme songs from outstanding singer-songwriters across the country.

Thanks again. I appreciate your support and interest.

Mall Train

Froo-froo. Froo-froo-ah . It’s an anemic impression of a train whistle. Anyone hearing it can catch the intention, but it isn’t even a realistic-enough sound to garner an exclamation point if you tried to describe it in writing. A technological chip-driven emittance, it has just enough volume to let you know that the mall train is coming. Along with the froo-ah comes the rubber scrunching of tires, as the train is designed to wheel around the Forever Toyz store, past the Mainly Stainless kitchen utensil retail outlet and, once every few minutes, to stop ever so carefully in front of the dinosaur-themed kiddie playland inside of southeastern Cleveland’s largest indoor shopping mall.

The train is a colorful model with a battery-driven lead car that looks so happy that one can barely keep from smiling. It rolls on three sets of rubber wheels that lean a bit soft, begging for an additional pound or two of pressure to ease the car of its obvious tire pain. Perhaps some additional air will dilute the squeezing sound that irritates anyone who sits near the kiddie playland loading zone and who might happen to hear it.

As a colorful child pleaser, the train looks like it should have a name. The four passenger cars are identical in design, with cheerful colors giving each car a name-longing image. The cars are crisply spray-painted, trimmed in an authentic golden oak wooden trim. The trim is surprisingly real, with each strip accurately reflecting an old-growth tree grain. Each handcrafted piece squares around a car’s border and dips at the point of entry. The open-air doors are highlighted with bright brass rivets, shining like stars on the panels leading up to the roof. I have to admit the train is classy. It’s nice enough to draw parents and the grands to take a ride with their energetic young ones, but it also displays a common-sense design function that makes each car durable.

The train continues its seven-and-a-half-minute run around the indoor complex, past the east wing and the anchor clothing store that welcomes you with a terraced row of holiday poinsettia plants, their deep satin red leaves offset by royal green foil paper on the pots. The holiday ride then takes its passengers past the twenty-two-foot Christmas tree with the annual mix of round, gold-colored plastic bulbs, blinking white lights, and dozens of newly donated knit gloves and mittens reserved for the needy youth of the suburbs.

Each car carries its full complement of riders in a two-to-one ratio, two youngsters for each adult. I can see some of the faces from the closest side: the perky, nonstop-talking blonde four-year-old with braided pigtails, wearing a pink hoodie with an embroidered kitten on it; the runny-nosed three-and-a-half-year-old boy with reddish hair who twists and turns on his seat with a tired smile. Then there are the chaperones—grandmothers too plump to sit comfortably in the snug train car and a gung-ho ex-military dad adding to his bucket list with a daughter after just retiring his fatigues last week. I didn’t know that for sure, but it looked so from his haircut. Home at last, home forever; his face glows with patriotic pride to others around who meet his eye contact. Eight passengers, nine if you count the newborn on the lap of a warm-looking twenty-something new mother who sits in snug-fitting dark blue jeans and a beige coat trimmed in fake animal fur, her ears adorned with modest, holly-shaped seasonal earrings.

I mentally ride the train. Always the blue car, as we liked to wave to the others as we rounded the Christmas tree and headed back to the land of the plastic dinosaurs. I’d always stretch my six-foot frame into the car and ride with her, six years old but still playfully thrilled to ride the train with me, her dad. The first one to run to the trailing car, she’d hop on the last slippery seat and grab hold of the inch-wide brass pole that was smudged with the finger oil of dozens of previous kids and perhaps generations of riders. We had ridden together each season since she was a baby. Madison, like the town, was a name that fit her just right. Her mother and I agreed almost at birth that it was the ideal choice. Madison sometimes missed her mom, now many states away and in another life of her own.

I call my girl—called my girl—Merry Maddy in holiday moments such as this. But not this year. She would have been nine years old this month.

With a final snoot of the techno-whistle and a three-clap ring of the brass bell, the operator pulls back on the imitation brake lever and brings the train to a stop. The mock train whistle makes one last mini-toot, and the eyes on the train face move once more to the left before plastic eyelids blink them closed. The train pauses at the four-foot-tall fiberglass, prehistoric something whose tail curves around and has little pegs on it, so the rugrats of two or three years can carefully, and somewhat awkwardly, climb up to its back. The majority of the kids pay little attention to grown-up observers as they rumble, tumble, and lurch from one imaginary creature to the next.

I watch the operator step from the lead car. Once again, a cramp of emotional sickness grips my gut as he stands up to take a stretch. About five feet eight and thin, he wears the same greasy-haired look as always, as if he never washes his hair but brushes it back each morning with unwashed hands, following a cheap pancake-and-coffee breakfast. I can also sense the smell from here, like an unpleasant reminder that if the pain is mean enough, it will follow me everywhere and display itself in smells, images, sounds, and reflections, never leaving for a vacation, except during a medically induced sleep.

He is covered in baggy blue jeans, faded not from purchase but from years of over-wearing and rare washings. Above that is a gray-and-red flannel shirt, untucked, that layers over a grayish white undershirt (sleeveless was my guess). Flaggart, Bob Flaggart, is now fifty-six years old, with a face craggy from too many cigarettes and hard living. Flaggart takes money from my pocket each month as a federal welfare recipient, collecting hundreds of dollars in unearned revenue through some claimed disease and then takes customer money six nights a week driving the mall train.

I reluctantly watch the conductor with an obsession that is now part of my personality. I can close my eyes and see him make each and every move with the train. The same stretches, the same dour look, the same fingers pulling the bell string or grasping the brake lever. The picture is always in my mind: his curled lips missing a cigarette; the blurred twenty-dollar-or-so tattoo on his left forearm; the rough, stained, size-nine brown leather shoes covering pale socks that never stay up but fall below his white ankles that are both bony and nearly transparent.

It sickens me to see him there, riding those kids around and around and around.

It’s been three years since Maddy’s disappearance. She and I had just finished a mall-go-round on the holiday train. Stepping off, she begged me to go again when I heard the chirping of my phone. Answering my mother, I responded to her what Maddy’s jean size was and also reminded her that Maddy was more interested in the princess castle set that could be bought on sale, 20 percent off until Christmas Eve. I waved to Maddy as the bell rang and the froo-froo sound came out, competing for my hearing with Mother on the phone. Maddy smiled back at me—unzipped hoodie, jeans, and mismatched socks inside of multiple-colored canvas sneakers. Those socks. I always smiled that she wore mismatched socks. That night it was one tannish-brown anklet and one purple sock. It wasn’t like she intentionally mismatched them. She always grabbed two socks, whatever the color, and on they went. It was like peanut butter and jelly—grape and peanut-brown socks.

The eight o’clock time frame dwindled the ridership as parents, steps, and some domestic others left for the evening. I edged close as the train took off with just a trickle of passengers. Maddy waved to me with the same precocious smile as always, holding down the royal blue car and clinging to the brass rod as if she were enjoying an amusement park ride with her name on it. Her soft blonde hair seemed in perpetual motion as she looked from side to side, her eyes sparkling with the joy of just six years of innocent living.

The mall train slowly moved away from the dinosaurs and kiddie playland, eyes moving left to right, and it disappeared with Maddy and maybe one or two others around the wing as I wrapped up the call and clicked the end button. Dropping the phone into my coat pocket, I sat down to wait, passing over the hard parent benches in the play area to instead settle onto the oak bench near the sunglass kiosk. Maddy would be back in five minutes, so I quickly dismissed the thought of following the train around its circle as foolish and unnecessary. It was a family mall with hundreds of people. Nothing could happen.

My thoughts peel back again to that evening. Was the train’s circling five minutes, twenty, or just too long? My mild concern was washed over by an immediate panic as the train slowly approached the stopping point just a few yards from my bench. The last car was empty. Maddy—Madison Lynn—was nowhere to be found.

Consciousness slaps me back to reality, as once again I am back to now, the three-year horror story still real, still vivid, still past, yet active in my mind and heart. The playback of pain and disbelief happens each night that I come to the mall, as if by letting the replay into my mind, the ending will somehow change. I literally shake myself to regain composure and focus on Flaggart. I continue to trail him, to observe him, though nothing new has come of it. His explanation of the events in the courtroom, coupled with the fuzzy and uncertain clarity of the mall security tapes, made the jury’s decision not acceptable, but confusing.

The train is swift in coming, but not so is justice. It’s clear that Madison Lynn is never coming back. Flaggart was arrested almost immediately, though his public defender claimed there was nothing tangible at all to link him to the disappearance of my precious daughter. Flaggart proclaimed his innocence throughout the trial, swearing that he had not even noticed if Madison had ever been on the train, let alone in the trailing royal blue car. The odd time lag of three minutes, forty or so seconds was explained by his stopping for a pee. Security tapes confirmed the stop, but the