Ole Andreson was just sitting on his bed and never leave his place. Nick and George went to his place and tried to meet and persuade him to get out of the town, but Ole refuse to meet them. Few weeks later, Nick and George moved out from the town. They did not hear about Ole Andreson. As time goes on, they forgot about two killers and Ole.

After Nick and George visited Ole’s house, Mrs. Bell went back from the market. Her face was pale and her body was shaking as reeds. She met Al and Max on the way back home.

“Hello, Mrs. Bell”  Al waved at her.

“Do you know Ole Andreson?”

“I do not know who he is.” Mrs. Bell knew by intuition that these men are dangerous people.

“By the way, who are you?”

“You don’t need to know who we are. You just need to answer our question honestly. And you do not ask any kind of questions. I’m asking you again. Do you know Ole Andreson?” Max said.

“I…. do not know him.”

” YOU ARE LYING!” Max aimed at Mrs. Bell with a gun.

Mrs. Bell got scared. She was so scared, she could not make any sound or move. She just stood there.

“I’m going to ask you again. Do you know Ole Andreson?” At this time Mrs. Bell heard the sound of preparing to squeeze the trigger.

“I…I know him! He lives at Hirsch’s rooming-house! He does not go outside, he just stay at home!” With quivering lips, Mrs. Bell told everything that she knows.

“Ha ha ha. Tell him that just waiting in the house to be killed. Do not go anywhere or leave the house. Just stay there and waiting us to come.” Al and Max walked up the dark street and disappeared. Mrs. Bell ploped down on the ground and fainted from fear.

After she got home, she just sat on the chair in the kitchen and tried to calm herself down.

“Are you okay Mrs. Bell?” Ole came down from his room and asked Mrs. Bell.

“Huh? Hello… No, no I’m okay. Nothing happened. Aren’t you hungry? I’ll make you support. Just wait a second.” She quickly stood up and went to the sink and prepared for dinner.

“Okay. You don’t need to hurry. I’m not that hungry.” Ole went out from the kitchen and went back to his room. While Mrs. Bell is making food, she could not stop shaking. She wanted to leave the room and never come back. ‘ Yes. This would be last day of coming to this house. I would be die when I meet those man again. The man was aiming the gun at me and tried to kill me if I keep telling him lie. I cannot come to this house and stay with Ole. The men saw my face, they know me.” The foods were ready. She got a rustle on, and leave the house and never came back. Few minute later, Ole went down and went to kitchen. He saw the memo that Mrs. Bell leaved.

‘Dear Mr. Andreson.

Hello, this would be first and last memo that I’m writing to you. I will not able to come back to this house. But before I leave, I think I need to tell you one thing. On the way back home. I met two men who are try to kill you. I mistakenly told where you live. I’m so sorry. They said that they will come to this house and kill you. You need to get out of that place and move to other town! Please be safe.

From Bell.’

Ole Andreson ripped the memo and sat on the chair and eat the foods that Mrs. Bell made.

As time goes on, he became gaunt, and waitng for Al and Max to come. But they never came. His anxiety led him to suffer from an illness of the mind. His illness dragged on and on till he finally passed away.

There’s a guy in No. 7 that murdered his brother, and says he didn’t really do it, his subconscious did it. I asked him what that meant, and he says you got two selves, one that you know about and the other that you don’t know about, because it’s subconscious. It shook me up. Did I really do it, and not know it? God Almighty, I can’t believe that! I didn’t do it! I loved her so, then, I tell you, that I would have died for her! To hell with the subconscious. I don’t believe it. It’s just a lot of hooey, that this guy thought up so he could fool the judge. You know what you’re doing, and you do it. I didn’t do it, I know that. That’s what I’m going to tell her, if I ever see her again.

Anyways, here I sit, holed up in the chambers awaitin’ that new fangled way they get rid of fellas like me.Then all of a sudden, my last wishes are granted.

There she stands with those two big lips, just like the first time. The dim light from the hall paints the angles of her cheekbones in charcoal gray, echoing the buzz that radiates from the curvature of her body

“You got a cloth? That I can hold on to this thing with?”

Something heavy, and heavily familiar, dangles from the tips of her wine-stained fingers. She emerges from the shadows and the rounded edge glints with her movement towards me.

“I’m not a hell cat, Frank … I’m just as white as you are.”

With a flash of fire, every light in the house went off. The sound of rain on a tin roof slowly patters to a halt.

Wherever it is, we’ve made it together.

…”admit it, Frank, you were lying there thinking of how to kill me.”

“And you weren’t thinking the same?”
“Yeah. I was.”
“See, we’re even.”
“Not even close.”
“Have a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink… we drink every night. I want to know what happened. I thought we were in love.” Cora rolled over and looked me in the eye. “I thought you loved me.”

The woman is maddening. Hadn’t I already told her I loved her? Hadn’t I already killed a man to prove it to her? I wanted to go she wanted to stay so we stayed. How much more love does this woman want? But by God, I was prepared to give it.

“We are in love. So what if we drink.” Booze put the woman to sleep. It was the only time we didn’t fight. Cora looked at me. Looked like she was searching through my soul. Like she was damn well weighing it with her own.

“Pass me the bottle.” I passed her the bottle. She turned behind her to pick up our glasses off the floor. She passed me a glass. She drowned her drink in one gulp.

“How would you kill me, Cora?” I asked, taking a swig.
“Poison.” She looked at me again. My head started to thump.
“They say that’s the woman’s murder weapon.”
“Well.” She smiled wryly, “I am a woman.”

And it all went black.

One of our assignments this week was to write an alternate ending to one of the stories we read. Since I was so fascinated by The Postman Always Rings Twice I felt as though writing another ending would suit me well, since I am part of the #frankandcora4ever team. I wanted them to at least make it to the hospital, but what happened afterwards was all up to fate.

As Frank drove as fast as the truck in front of him would allow, Cora screamed in pain. Frank knew he had to get to the hospital as soon as possible. He pulled to the left of the truck ahead, hit the gas full throttle, and sped past it, missing oncoming traffic by inches. By now Cora was not only in pain, but she was also scared for her life. Frank continued driving full speed in order to get to the hospital which was still miles away.

“We’ll make it. It will be okay. You’ll be okay, and so will our baby,” Frank reassured Cora.

When she looked at him, he could see in her eyes how scared she was. He knew she didn’t want to lose this baby, and he didn’t either.

“We’re almost there. Hang in there!” Frank reached for Cora’s hand, but she pulled it away to grab her stomach.

“HURRY!” She screamed.

Frank pushed the gas as hard as he could, and after another 5 minutes, they arrived at the emergency room entrance.

Frank slammed the car in Park and ran around to pick Cora up out of the passenger seat. She felt light as a feather, but Frank could not get her inside fast enough.

She was immediately admitted, and doctors hovered over her poking her with IVs and placing her and the baby on heart monitors for what seemed like years.

“Cora, you know you are about 6 months pregnant, correct?” The doctor asked her.

She looked at him in shock.

“6 months? That cannot be…”

“But it is. We need to run more tests to see what is going on. If we need to take the baby out, there is a good chance that the baby and you will not survive.”

Cora looked at the doctors while tears filled her eyes.

“Where is Frank. I need Frank!” Cora yelled.

Frank heard her yelling and immediately ran to her side and grabbed her hand.

“They’re taking me for tests. I don’t want to die. I don’t want this baby to die.”

“It’ll be okay,” Frank said, but he wasn’t sure if it would be. He had to be strong for her, especially after all the shit they had already been through. He didn’t know what he would do without her.

They decided to take Cora back for more tests, and Frank sat in the waiting room and waited…

2 MONTHS LATER

After two long months of Cora being stabilized in the hospital, Frank felt something wasn’t right. He drove from the small apartment he was renting to the hospital in record time. When he arrived, the unthinkable was happening.

“We need to get this baby out NOW,” one doctor screamed to a nurse

“Her heart rate is dropping, and her blood pressure is through the roof!”

“TELL THE OR WE ARE COMING NOW!”

Frank ran to follow them, but a nurse pulled him back.

“You can’t go with them.”

“I have to. That is my baby!” Frank said, panting from the run.

“It will be okay,” she reassured.

But it wasn’t okay. After 3 hours in the operating room trying to birth the baby via C-Section, Cora died from blood loss.

A doctor came out, with a saddened look on his face.

“I’m sorry, but we couldn’t save her.”

Frank looked at him, while anger filled his body and tears welled up in his eyes. He clenched his fists, and then released them

“What about the baby?” He said with a shaky voice.

The doctor looked at him with a small smile.

“We were able to deliver your baby boy, even at 4 weeks early. However, survival chances are low. You can come see him now if you like.”

Frank was crying now. He lost his girl, and there was a chance he’d lose his son too?

He followed the Doctor to the NICU, which was the fancy name for the baby intensive care space.

There he was. There was the baby he and Cora and created. He was beautiful, and so small. The baby was attached to so many wires and monitors, that it made Frank cry even more. “My baby,” he whispered.

A nurse came over to him, and asked if he had thought of a name with his wife. While they hadn’t discussed names, he thought he knew exactly what he was going to name him.

He thought for a while, and then remembered something Cora had told him.

“All that time I was out there, waiting for the funeral to be over, I thought about it. What it would mean to us. Because we took a life, didn’t we? And now we’re going to give one back.”

And with that Frank knew exactly what to name his child.

“Nicholas. His name is Nicholas”

As you can see, I definitely had a lot of fun writing this alternate ending. I didn’t really have a process on writing it, I just kind of kept typing, and it all came to me. I initially didn’t want to kill off Cora, but I felt as though killing her kept the story feeling Noir. I also considered killing off Frank as well, but that would have left this baby alone, and I could have created a whole book on that baby’s life. I wanted to keep it simple, but still make it interesting. Also, using the quote from earlier in the book was a last minute decision. I was thinking about what to name this baby, and it came to me. I had remembered the conversation Cora and Frank had had when she returned from the  funeral, and they were talking about the baby. I think  that tying that in and naming the baby Nicholas (after the Greek) felt appropriate. 

I think writing alternate endings to stories allows you to make the story end in a way that you want, but it also allows you to build off of what you already know. You can also create more stories after you write an alternate ending. You could build fan fiction, which is growing in popularity. I think that being able to change things is something we as humans wish we could do more often. We can’t change the endings to situations in our lives, but doing it to the lives of characters gives us control and power to make a difference. I think it is important that we have an outlet like that.

Burr’s lifeless vessel on the floor,

Queenie saw blue, red lights reflecting on the window.

“They’re here! We need to leave now,” she cried

to Black, standing over the body.

They made their way towards the window,

seeing the roof below.

With only seconds to go,

Black pushed up the window and

had Queenie exit first with him close behind.

It was only a matter of time until the men in

blue burst through the door and noticed the body on the

floor.

Queenie and her beloved Black hid themselves behind a chimney-top,

the cool wind brisking their bare bodies.

He held her close, his heart coming to a warm roast.

But the roof was slicked with remnants of precipitation.

The distance from the roof to the ground,

oh, the anticipation!

Queenie moved her foot and inch and gravity began to

pull her down.

Black called her name as she rolled down the steep

hill of shingles.

The butterflies in her stomach began to tingle

as she saw Black becoming smaller with each roll

and she saw the ground coming closer below.

She screamed in fright and fell deep into the night

into her bed, into her warm, cushioned bed

with Burrs by her side,

no gapping hole in his chest

when she opened her eyes.

The night had not come.

It had not even begun.

A wild night awaited Queenie

and all she wanted was to

escape the future she could not outrun.

Dubrille and Martan are dead, only the Shadow and Dr. Evans are in the house. Evans expresses how he still fears for his life with Corvet still roaming around. From a dark corner of the room a manly figure appears. It’s Corvet! He was the Shadow this entire time. Corvet tricked Evans to coming out here just so he could kill him, the other two deaths were merely coincidence. Corvet goes on to tell Evans that he is just as helpless as he made Corvet fell on the raft fleeing prison. As Corvet luges to attack Evans, Evans remembers Dubrille’s gun is still on the floor. He doges Corvet and picks up the gun. He shoots to what is again a shadowy figure. Corvet is dead and Dr. Evans is safe.

For my first assignment I have chosen to make a poem out of Twilight Zone Titles. Here it is!

Night Call,

Little Girl Lost,

Come Wander With Me,

What You Need,

is The Hunt,

for The Midnight Sun,

Sounds And Silences,

You Drive,

Nothing In The Dark,

The Encounter:

The Hitch-Hiker in,

Black Leather Jackets and,

Dead Man’s Shoes,

The Fear,

In His Image,

He’s Alive

Cavender Is Coming.

The assignment can be found here: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/poem-made-with-twilight-zone-episode-titles/

For my second writing assignment I have chosen to make a short monologue of a household tool. Can you guess what it is?

Mystery Tool:

Did he HAVE to handle me so aggressively?  I’m practically an antique. There’s no respect anymore, I tell you. Day by day they fondle me with their cold, clammy, sweaty, greasy hands like it’s just no big deal. “I don’t have feelings,” they say, “I’m an ‘inanimate object’,” they say. Well, they have another thing coming. Without me there would be no daily activity, the humans would be confined to the inside like the rest of us tools. Never once have they stopped to admire my shiny, brassy quality or my ornately carved floral details that are slowly being covered in their hand grime.

I’m so unappreciated and abused. Ever day I am exposed not only to the elements but to the filthy humans, and the little humans, who are the worst just by the way, and the furry humans too. I’d leave if I could, don’t think for a second I wouldn’t do it. I often fantasize about packing up all my screws and heading off to bigger and better places. Like the pictures in those thin, shiny books the one human is always looking at. I can just picture myself there, no humans, no dirty, no under appreciated abuse. But I couldn’t just go on my own. I can’t even stand on my own! And that moving rectangle I’m forcibly attached to is the biggest push-over you’ll ever meet. He doesn’t even see anything wrong with being used so violently each day! I think he’s missing a few screws, if you know what I mean. He has to be after being slammed into the stationary rectangles multiple times a day!

I’m telling you if I could just…Oh! They’re coming! And they’re covered in filth…here we go again…

Did you guess what the mystery tool is? Here is a link to the original assignment: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/monologue-of-a-household-tool/

For my last writing assignment of the week I am creating an alternate ending to one of this week’s readings. The reading I have chosen is “A Matter of Procedure”. A link to this story can be found below.

http://shenandoahliterary.org/641/2014/08/15/a-matter-of-procedure/

It sickened me how beautiful she was. It especially sickened me when I compared her to my own plainness. There was nothing special about me. I found myself consumed with the thought of her. Her perfect blond, silk hair, her little tennis skirts, the way her laughed sounded like a melody, it consumed me.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I laid awake for most of the night, haunted by the sound of her voice, her laugh, her sent, her blood curdling screams. And then…silence. I slept, but not well. When I woke the next morning the sheets were in knots on the floor. I’d slept horribly. I stumbled into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. I went back to the bedroom while the kettle boiled to clean up a little. As I knelt down to pick the sheets off of the floor, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror by my easel. I didn’t look like me, something has changed. I shook of the usual feelings of self-doubt and continued on my way down to pick up the covers. As I did so, I noticed a bag under the bed that I didn’t recognize. Before I had time to think about it, the kettle started screaming. I rushed to the kitchen to silence the offensive sound. There it was again: the screaming.

There was a loud banging on the front door. It silenced the screams. I got my tea together and walked to the door. It was the chief and a couple of county sheriffs. The chief was just standing there, like a stone statue, cold and unwavering. He was holding a long piece of paper and the sheriffs had their handcuffs out. “What’s happening?” Nobody responded. “You’re under arrest…”

The rest was a blur. I am writing you this from my prison cell in the women’s correctional facility. Annabel was always mocking me with her perfect hair, her perfect body, her perfect life. Everything I knew I would never have. I just wanted to be her. I still hear the blood-curdling screams at night but the silence comes eventually. Just as it did that night. In the silence always comes.

Here is a link to the original assignment: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/write-an-alternative-ending/

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/write-an-alternative-ending/

Ole Anderson ended up not showing up, so we couldn’t show bright one what we wanted to do to him. After we overheard the conversation among George and Nick,  we new we had to take matters into our own hands before they warned, or even saved him from what was coming to him. We decided to hire detective Longs to go and handle the dirty business for us. With his tough, yet caring looking demeanor, we knew that this was the best bet to get to Anderson before they did. We sent Longs to his house, where he learned from Mrs. Bell, that Anderson had been feeling under the weather today and taking into account his age and that we knew this was our time. We were known as the killers and we were going to live up to our name wether we did the killing or not. Longs went into the room, trying to play the innocent hard, like he was there to help him and figure out what he had done wrong and what he could do to help. After Ole Anderson just stated that if they wanted him dead, then they could do it, it would happen sooner or later and within that moment and those words, one shot and he was dead. Longs had been hiding the gun in his sleeve all along, when leaving he wished Mrs. Bell a goodnight and said that Anderson had fallen asleep while he was in there, just to give him time to break away and leave before finding poor Ole Anderson dead, on his bed. Maybe next time he will learn to not double cross somebody..