At Home With the Horrors: 14 Chilling Tales by Sammy Scott

Author:Sammy Scott [Scott, Sammy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-06-15T22:00:00+00:00

people you may know

Lunchtime. I had gotten up from my desk long enough to shut the door to my office, making a brief stop at the mini-fridge under the window to retrieve a bottle of water and my lunch, a humble brown bag that bulged under the weight of its cargo: half a hero sandwich, a Granny Smith apple, and a granola bar. I plop the sack down on my desk where it bumps against a framed photo of Lynn and Danny, causing the picture to collapse backwards with a clatter. I drop into my chair and right the photo, my wife and son beaming back at me as if grateful to be upright again. I dump the contents of my lunch onto the desk and uncap the water bottle, taking a swig.

The morning was stressful and, thanks to three consecutive meetings that predictably overran their allotted schedules, almost completely fruitless. I need the lunch hour to decompress, take a deep breath, and eat. Maybe then I can better handle whatever the afternoon is winding up to throw at me.

I unwrap the sandwich and take a large bite. The bread is unappealingly cold and wet; I grimace but continue to chew. A click of my mouse fills my computer monitor with the home page of Facebook, and I begin to scroll. There is a picture of Lynn, a selfie she took just this morning on our couch at home, Danny sound asleep on her shoulder, a spot of his drool leaving an oddly-shaped dark stain on Lynn’s shirt.

The caption reads, “Is it just me, or does Danny’s spit stain look strangely like the Mona Lisa? #futureartist.” I chuckle through a mouthful of sandwich, then find myself distracted by my wife’s familiar face — her skin free of blemish, her teeth perfectly white, her hair carelessly perfect, her motherly eyes tired but shining. All this without the use of any filters. She never uses them; she doesn’t need to.

And then of course there is my little boy, already a bruiser at five months old, toe-headed and chubby cheeked, his closed lids concealing deep blue eyes like his mother’s. A future heartbreaker, sleeping like an angel.

I sit back and swallow, pulling in a deep breath. The stress of the morning begins to evaporate as I absorb the photo of my family. After a moment I sit forward again to type a comment underneath the picture, something witty to make Lynn smile and let her know that I had both seen and appreciated it, when my eyes shift to the heading just below:

PEOPLE YOU MAY KNOW

And there, among a row of photos of people Facebook (correctly) thinks I might be acquainted with, is a face I haven’t seen in at least ten years: Pepper Lauren. My heart clenches in an explicable way, a mixture of nostalgia and excitement that I would never have anticipated.

Pepper Lauren. She of raven-black hair and porcelain skin. A girl who didn’t smile easily, but when she did, time stopped.

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