Steve’s Newsletter 1 (9)

Steve’s Newsletter 1 (9)

In time for Halloween, I wanted to showcase two stories from my next short fiction collection. This will be my fourth short fiction collection and out sometime in 2026.

The Velveteen Mommy

The Velveteen Mommy

It’s usually nice to have a name for a protagonist, but not here. It would take away from the story. If you absolutely need a name, you can call her mama. Her five kids didn’t even know her name, and her thoughts were broken constantly by the three older ones incessantly calling for her.

“Mama, can I have some toast!”
“Mama, Jeffrey’s touching me!”
“Mama, can you wipe my butt!”

On and on through that record summer heatwave that never seemed to let up.

You could also call her honey, her name according to her husband. She had given up on asking him to call her by her name and after nine years together, she wasn’t sure if he even remembered it.

His work at the mill had slipped to only three days a week and he joined that chorus of constant demands.

“Honey what’s for dinner?”
“Honey, can you rub my feet?”
“Honey, have you seen my keys?”

The younger two kids didn’t call for her but they were just as demanding. Her two-year-old still pawed at her breasts, bruising them as he demanded the meal to which he was accustomed and to which his infant brother was now entitled.

“No, Jeffrey, I caint.”

Jeffrey squealed in defiance and threw the remote across the room before pawing at her breasts again.  

“Charlie, honey, can you get your brother some Goldfish!”
“What?”
“Please, I caint get up. Get Jeffrey some Goldfish!”

“I’m playing, mama!”
“Wayne!”
“Yeah?”
“I’m nursing, can you get Jeffrey some Goldfish?”
“Well where the hell are they?”
“In the left cabinet on the second shelf!”
“I don’t see ‘em.”

She stomped into the kitchen filled with exasperation.

“For god sake Wayne, we’ve lived here for three years, how do you not know where the kid’s food is?”
“How the hell do you expect me to help if you can’t show me?”
“Never mind, I’ll do it!”

She grabbed the large carton of Goldfish from the cabinet on the second shelf, pulled the spout open with her teeth, poured far too many into a chipped Corelle bowl, put the Goldfish back in the cabinet, and slammed the door before heading back to the couch.

The whole time, she held her nursing infant with one arm and never lost her grip. She looked down at him, resenting him and wondering how long it would be before he started to call for mama.

Wayne, meanwhile reacted as one might expect to his wife’s anger and contempt, a noisy and passive aggressive mantrum in the kitchen.

First the left cabinet door.

And then a skillet dropped into the sink

It was the sliding of the wooden chair across the linoleum that caused the baby to jerk away from the nipple, tearing off the tip. Blood trickled from her nipple as she screamed, first from the pain and second from the now crying baby. She quickly switched nipples to quiet him.

“Shh. Shh. Shh. Shh. Shh. It’s okay, Mama’s got you.”

She would have to wait 30 more minutes before the infant would fall asleep and she could tend to herself with a store brand bandage and antibiotic.

Through all of this, Wayne never checked on her or spoke to her except to poke his head in the bathroom door to ask where she kept the Tabasco.

That night she checked her nipple to see how it was healing. She was shocked to see that instead of a blood clot her entire nipple had been replaced with a blue button. She touched it hesitantly, feeling no sensation and then flicked it with her index finger. It was as real as a button she’d sewn onto Wayne’s only dress shirt last Sunday morning.

Tired from her day, she thought nothing more of it and crawled into bed beside Wayne who had fallen asleep after drinking one too many cans of Busch Lite. She slept soundly until 2 am when Wayne shook her awake.

“Honey, baby’s crying.”
“Can you? There is a bottle in the fridge.”
“Nah honey, I got work today. I need to sleep.”

She got up and warmed a bottle of breast milk, hoping to replace her breasts with formula once and for all. She swore silently to herself.

“This will be the last baby.”

The infant fell asleep with the bottle between his hands and she looked at her breasts again, still in disbelief at the button where her nipple should be. In the low light of the refrigerator she noticed the other nipple now too had been replaced by a button, slightly larger and brown in color.

She went to the bathroom to see herself in better light and laughed. Her limp breasts now resembled a pair of one-eyed sock puppets she had once made at vacation bible school as a girl. She went back to bed, thankful that her infant would now definitely be switching to formula.

“No more milk from these breasts,” she muttered as she walked back to the bedroom. Wayne was snoring and had rolled over, taking the blanket with him. She tried to pull it back on her side and could not get it to budge. She gave up and fell asleep on the couch.

She fell asleep only to be woken up again at 6.

“Honey, bout a quickie before work?”
“Oh, I’m so tired.”
“Come on honey, it’ll just be a minute.”
“Alright fine.”

She knew better than to argue. He would eventually get what he wanted and if she got it over with, she might get 10 more minutes of sleep before the older kids woke up. She started to get up to walk to the bedroom.

“Nah, just do it here.”
“Nah, just do it here.”
“Nah, just do it here.”
“Wayne the kids might see.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
‘Oh fine.”

Wayne crawled on top of her, “doing his business” as she called it when she tried to talk to other women at church. Wayne pressed down on the couch, catching her hair between his arm and the cushion as he came closer to climax.

“Wayne, my hair—you’re hurting me.”

Wayne let out a grunt and fell into her, making it hard to breathe before he got up and zipped his pants.

“Have a good day at work Romeo.”
“Thanks honey.”

She waited for him to react to her obvious sarcasm and he didn’t. She rolled back over to close her eyes and prayed for just a few more minutes of sleep before the kids woke up.

“Honey!”
“Yes Wayne.”
“You’re feeling a little dry down there. Don’t I turn you on no more?”
“I’m just tired Wayne.”

Wayne looked dejected and hurt and hugged her, just a little too firmly to be loving.

“I love you honey.”

She said nothing as she sat down and closed her eyes, trying to shut out the noise from the kitchen as he packed his lunchbox.

“Honey, where’s the mayo?”
“Use the packets in the junk drawer!”
“I don’t see any!”

She gave up on returning to sleep and walked to the kitchen shaking her nightgown down from where it had bunched up under her buttocks.

“Right there Wayne,” she pointed to a cardboard box in the junk drawer filled with assorted condiments from the takeout he often brought home, even when she had already prepared dinner.

“Thanks honey. I’d be lost without you.”

She said nothing as he closed the door and then walked to the bathroom to look at herself once more in the mirror. Yes, the buttons were still there. She had not imagined it. One little blue button and one big brown button and two little sad, one-eyed sock puppets where her breasts had once been.

She might have screamed at this sight but it was then she noticed that the left side of her head. The side that had been pulled during her husband’s frantic minute of thrusting. It was the same color as her strawberry hair but the texture was notably different. She reached up to touch it and realized it had turned to a cheap polyester yarn.

Her horror shifted to curiosity as she began running her hands up and down her body, looking for what else was amiss. The yarn that was replacing her hair strand by strand. The sad one-eyed sock puppets for breasts with little button nipples, and… an explanation for the dryness her husband had complained about. Her vagina had turned to corduroy, and frayed tufts of cashmere had replaced her mound of pubic hair.

She was suddenly sad at this—not the loss of her body, bit-by-bit but the cashmere itself. She had hinted to Wayne how much she wanted a cashmere sweater for years. Before every holiday and anniversary and birthday, she mentioned it in passing. He never picked up on the hints and always bought something at the last minute on the way home from the mill. An unfilled CVS card, the last bouquet of flowers at Walmart, discounted chocolate the day after Valentine’s Day because “it don’t matter if it’s the day after, the point is how much I love you.”

She felt like crying but there was a bang at the door of their homes only bathroom.

“Mama, I gotta pee!”
“Alright Tommy, hang on.”

She fixed her hair frantically, worried it would scare the children but Tommy shoved past her and did not give her a second glance. The baby was crying now and she begged her second child, Veronica to warm up a bottle.

“I can’t mama, I gotta pee!”

She warmed the bottle in the microwave as she poured cereal for Jeffrey and hoped that he would eat it and leave her poor sock puppet breasts alone. As she walked through the living room with the warmed bottle, she asked the children to turn down the TV. They were watching a nonsensical show of two worms who fart and scream without any actual words. Tommy smirked and turned up the volume “accidentally” to the point it hurt her ears.

She covered her ears as she got to the crying baby’s room and then frantically back to the kitchen, holding a pawing Jeffrey whose hand snaked up underneath her shirt. “No!” she shouted as she put him in a high chair and gave him the cereal which he promptly dumped on the floor. Jeffrey began screaming, but suddenly it didn’t bother her. The noise of the television also faded and she realized she was enjoying complete silence for the first time she could remember. She left the screaming Jeffrey with a second bowl of flipped cereal and returned to the bathroom to see that her ears had turned to little pom-poms you might find on a clown costume. They were flesh colored and hidden behind her strawberry hair, barely noticeable. She noted that the yarn had spread across most of her scalp, spreading out evenly from the area where Wayne had pulled it.

The bathroom was available again and she went back to inspect herself once more. The only new change she could find was the hair in her crack had turned to a coarse fiber like her friend at the craft fair used. Was it called sisal? Jute? If she had ever known the difference, she couldn’t remember it. She’d gone round and round with Wayne for years about whether or not it was normal for women to have hair back there. She mused that it wouldn’t matter anymore.

Resigned to her metamorphosis, she changed into a pair of boy shorts and a t-shirt and sat in the easy chair in front of the TV, her children all playing on tablets and ignoring her in between occasional demands for food. Her life was so routine that even without hearing them, she could meet their needs before sitting back down on the chair to watch her daytime television in silence.

It was a very hot day of a very hot summer and the air conditioner had been going in and out all week. She fanned herself and gave the kids ice water to keep them cool. As she stood to make one more trip to the kitchen on behalf of her children, she felt a ripping sensation and locked down to see that the cheap velveteen fabric of the easy chair had mixed with the sweat and dimples of cellulite above her knees and become stuck. She tried to pick it loose and realized that it was now part of her.

She poured one more bowl of cereal, baked some chicken nuggets and other lunch items for her demanding children, serene with a sensation that her labors would soon be over for good.

Once more in the easy chair, she sat, the velveteen slowly spreading from her dimpled thighs and down to her ankles. She coughed twice, to clear some small polystyrene pellets that had lodged in her throat. Then she fell asleep in the ever warming house on that hot summer day.

“Honey, what’s for dinner?”
“Honey, you there?”

Hearing none of this in her pom-pom ears, mama doll smiled inwardly as her last vestiges of consciousness faded.

As the velveteen mommy, she could finally get the rest she craved.

A Grim Account

A Grim Account

Cate looked up from her computer screen as an 18-wheeler roared past, engine-breaking into the construction zone outside. It was hard to concentrate with the noise.

She shrugged her shoulders. Everyone was excited about the new I-62 interstate corridor between Springfield, Missouri and Memphis. As for the noise, if it weren’t for the construction, she wouldn’t have a job. The highway expansion was taking up a swathe of the property in front of her employer, Ozark Tractor Supply. They would get paid handsomely to move their main building just 100 yards south of its current location. In six months, they would have one of those great big spiraling off-ramps right where she was sitting.

Cate had been brought on to do an end-of-the-year audit in anticipation of the move. The company owner, Mr. Mansfield was trying to get everything in order because he was also going to be leasing some of his land for a new Walmart and some advertising billboards. She was an expert in complicated accounting questions and was enjoying a break from the East Coast after the death of her mother.

While Mr. Mansfield and Ozark Tractor Supply was not the strangest situation she’d ever witnessed, it would make the top 5. First off was the lack of employees. It was odd to have a business that grossed over $40 million annually to only have five employees. Granted, she’d once worked for a tech startup grossing twice that with only three employees, but this was sales. For sales, you need salespeople, right? The tractors wouldn’t sell themselves would they?

In addition to the lack of employees was Mr. Mansfield himself. She knew for a fact from his company records that he was nearing 100. Yet if she were to have guessed his age, she would have figured late mid-30s, maybe early 40s. His music and fashion tastes seemed to be frozen in the 1970s—his prized possession a signed concert poster from Queen when they’d been to St. Louis in 1976.

“It’s mint condition,” he remarked at least once a day.

Though everything was odd about Mr. Mansfield, Cate’s reputation was one of discretion when it came to odd businesses. Granted, it’s not like there is a Chamber of Odd Commerce, but people talk and her name got around.

“How’s it coming?”

Cate jumped like a startled cat and knocked a stack of papers off the desk.

“Um! I—”
“I’m sorry, I startled you. Let me help you with that.”
“Oh good, I was just finishing up this and had a question about one of the files. I was coming to see you, but we can talk about it now if you like?”
“Now’s fine. What’s on your mind?”
“Well, this one file for a Mr. G.R. It doesn’t have much in—”
“Never mind that one Cate!”
“Well it looks like he—”
“Nope, I’ll take care of that one!”
“Oh, I beg your pardon, I—”

A line of dump trucks carrying gravel rumbled past, interrupting them.

“Oh hell Cate, you are just doing your job. Please excuse me for my outburst.”
“I’m sorry, I won’t mention it again. It’s just that—”
“No, no, I’ll tell you about it. I suppose I have to.”
“Well, if you insist.”
“And I remind you of the non-disclosure agreement you signed with the company.”
“Yes sir.”
“That you signed right in front of me?”
“Yes sir.”
“Good. Good. Good.”

Cate started to open her mouth as if to speak and then just leaned back in the chair, waiting to see what would happen next.

“Well I don’t know where to begin.”
“Well, I guess you could tell me who Mr. G.R. is.”
“No, that wouldn’t do.”
“Okay.”
“You see Cate, you are looking at a man who seems to have bargained his way to immortality.”
“Come again?”
“I am 96 years old and I haven’t aged a day since 1979.
“What, like you’ve cheated death?”
“No! Not at all. I am a fair man and I gave death a lucrative deal that benefits both of us.
“What?”
“It was a bargain, not a cheat. Never cheated anyone. Honest and fair dealing is what I advocate here.”
“Of course.”
“You don’t seem convinced?”
“No, I just don’t know what the hell you are talking about.”
“Given your line of work, helping businesses who are not always above board, you must have a dim view of some people who hire you. I assure you Cate, that this story will not make you think less of me.”
“Okay.”
“Good. I am glad to get that out of the way.”
“Yes sir.”
“And stop calling me sir. Herb is fine.”
“Yes s–. I mean Yes Herb.”

Herb leaned on the desk and gave a long fatalistic sigh of someone who is ready to confess for the first time. He walked over to the Queen poster and stared into the eyes of Freddie Mercury as if seeking counsel. Then he turned around.

“Well, let’s see. I remember it like it was yesterday—February 14th, 1979. I had forgotten to pick up a gift for Valentine’s Day and my fiancé broke it off with me.”
“What happened?”
“She said she wasn’t going to spend her entire life waiting for a man who couldn’t get his head out of his ass long enough to think about other people. She said those exact words.”
“That seems cruel.”
“Well, she was right. I was an absent-minded fool. She was a lovely woman who deserved better. She married a banker and I attended her funeral about three years ago. We kept in touch over the years.”
“That’s sweet in its own way.”
“Perhaps. Well, the first thing I did when she broke it off was get good and drunk. I thought I was about to go bankrupt because I’d just signed a big loan to be a licensed distributor for John Deere. Thing is, I used the house we bought together while engaged as the collateral. Here I was, dumped, up to my eyes in debt, and no idea on how to fix things. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I kept a bottle of Jim Beam in the office and finished most of it. Then I went out driving which was a fool thing to do. I don’t remember much else, but apparently  I flipped my car into a ditch and woke up on the side of the road with the Grim Reaper standing over me.”
“You’re pulling my leg.”
“Honest to John, Mr. Death himself.”

Cate leaned back with a quizzical look on her face but gestured for him to continue.

“I stood up and he came right at me. I shouted, ‘hey now Mr. Reaper, don’t I get a last request or
 something like that? What about unfinished business?’ The poor fellow seemed to fall apart at that request.”
“How so?
“Have you ever been around a smoker who missed their morning smoke?”
“Not really.”
“Well, they get real jittery like. You can just see it in their mannerisms. This here death fellow was off. I could see it. I called out, ‘Mr. Reaper, hey, Herb Mansfield here, what seems to be the trouble?’”
“What did he say?”
“Well, like I said, he was irritable and he replied, in a raspy voice that he was behind schedule and didn’t have any time to fool with me. Then he moved toward me, ready to take me.”
“Hang on a minute. Are you telling me that Death has a schedule to keep?”
“It would seem so.”

Cate pulled out her phone, thought better of it, and set it back down.

“Well, go on.”
“So I asked him. ‘Mr. Reaper, what do you mean behind schedule. Do you have a quota or something? So many souls before noon?’”
“And?”
“Well, he just kind of laughed kind of bitterly at that. It was this exhausted sounding rasp.”
“Okay, but what did he say?”
“He looked at me and said, ‘quota by noon?” Are you kidding me Mr. Mansfield? Do you realize that on any given day, 119,000 people drop dead? There are 4.3 billion people on the planet and a global death rate of about 10 per 1,000 people each year. You are a businessman, do the math on that. It comes to just over 119,000 people per day. That means that I need harvest 60,000 people by noon just to get a lunch break.
“Death takes a lunch break?”
“I think it was a euphemism.”
“Right.”
“Well anyway, he went on for a minute or two, complaining—”
“Hang on Herb.”

Cate had pulled out her phone again, quickly typed something in the search bar.

“Google says there are 8 billion people on the planet.”
“This was 1979.”
“Oh. Right.”
“May I continue?”
“Yeah, sorry.”
“Anyway, he was complaining about swinging his scythe back and forth all day and how is back hurt I don’t get weekends off. Real sad story.”
“So Death was tired?”
“Dead tired.”
“Ha!”
“Now don’t laugh Cate. Do you know the secret of a good salesman?”
“Not a clue.”
“Empathy. You listen, let the customer talk themselves into a decision. See most people don’t want to be told what to do, they want to feel like they came up with the solution themselves.”
“Kind of manipulative isn’t it.”
“In a way. I guess it’s like that old saying you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink except in this case the horse was…. Well, maybe that one doesn’t work.”
“No, I get it. If you tell someone to take a drink they won’t do it but if you see they are thirsty and set down a glass of water, they’ll drink it.
“Exactly!”
“Anyway, he went on about population. Did you know we didn’t even hit a billion people until the 1800s?”
“I did not.”
“Go on, Google it. I know you want to.”

Cate blushed visibly but pulled out her phone.

“It says 1804.”
“Yeah, more or less.”
“Well, people are still dying, so apparently Death is still at it.”
“Well hang on, I’m not to that part of the story yet.”
“Ok.”
“Thing is, in the same time as the population growth, people had gotten really good at killing each other and even an ethereal being like Death has his limits.”
“I see.”
“Death wasn’t just tired, he was also frustrated financially.”
“What?”
“See, Death works for tips, not a salary.”
“Who tips Death?”
“Well, when he shuffles loose the mortal coil, he gets to keep any loose change that rattles out of the pockets.
“Ha!”
“Except governments had taken us off fixed currency and suddenly Mr. Death found himself on the wrong end of inflation”
“Oh no!”
“Hey now, don’t get sarcastic with me.”
“Sorry.”
“Anyway, Death told me all the worst death rates were in countries with the highest inflation.
“I can see that.”
“Well yeah, for example, Death had been in Chile just prior to meeting up with me and they were having 300-percent inflation. So even when that Pinochet character was killing off entire villages, suddenly Death is only taking home about 10 bucks.
“Well, 10 bucks was worth a lot more in 1975.”
“But even then it wasn’t something you could live on.”

Cate had become increasingly flabbergasted at the absurdity of the story and scoffed.

“You don’t seem to believe me.”
“Well I don’t, but for the sake of the story, go on. Death was poor and tired. I get it.”
“Well… not anymore. Like I said I’m a salesman. I said, ‘hey now Mr. Reaper. Can I call you Mr. Reaper?”
“And what did he say. HE said he preferred Mr. G. Anyway, I asked him if he knew that he was using a technology that had been around for 5,000 years.
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t seem to know what I was talking about.”
“To be frank, I don’t know what you are talking about either.”
“Sorry Cate, imagine all the images you have seen of the Grim Reaper. He’s carrying a tool that he uses to harvest a soul.”
“Yeah, a sickle.”
“That is a common misconception. A sickle is a small, curved blade that you use with one hand. A scythe like you see with the Grim Reaper is two handed.”
“I did not know that.”
“Most don’t. Anyway, a normal healthy man can clear about an acre of grass a day with a scythe. Two if he’s really good at it.”
“Oh.”
“Like I said, the scythe has been around for 5,000 years and I said to the Grim Reaper, ‘Mr. Death, modern problems require modern solutions and well, you need yourself a combine harvester.”
“You sold death a tractor?”
“No… I leased Death a tractor.”
“Just like that?”
“Well no, it took a little convincing. Death was clearly a math person given the discussion of inflation, so I brought him the numbers. ‘Look here, Mr. G. Your typical scythe operated by a man in his prime can mow about 2 acres per day, but a John Deere Combine Harvester can do 200 acres in the same time. How would you feel if I cut your workload down by 99-percent?
“So you leased Death a combine?”
“He signed up right there on the spot for a lease in perpetuity.”
“Brilliant.”
“Oh no Cate, I’m just getting started. The lease agreement said that my company would be responsible for annual maintenance. Here’s the thing. I’m a sole proprietorship!”
“Oh, I wondered about that. You realize that as a sole proprietorship rather than an LLC, an accident on the premises could—”
“If I were an LLC,  Death could take me anytime and just move on to the next director. “True, I guess.”
“Because I am the company or the company is me, it keeps me around indefinitely.”
“Right.”
“Oh, and there’s one more thing, Death was short on cash for the lease, so the agreement holds that I get 10 percent of whatever yields he is getting on any given day which gives me the numbers to keep the business going. All that stock out there in the yard? That’s just for show. Sure, I sell tractors every now and then, but Mr. G is the only client who matters!”

Cate giggled sarcastically and threw up her hands.

“So that’s the story?”
“Well, he wanted a hat and some overalls. The long flowing hood and robe is a real safety hazard with heavy machinery.”
“Of course.”
“And he said he might as well upgrade his look. Then he drove right off the lot, yelling about wrapping up in Cambodia so he could save up some energy for that thing that was about to happen in Mesopotamia”
“Pardon me if I tell you that I don’t believe you.”
“Well, you are going to have to. The accounting is your problem.
“Well… this is a unique situation. I’ll have to think about that.”
“Well, whenever you get to it. I have some time.”

Before Cate could reply, Mr. Mansfield turned around on his right heel and walked out of the office whistling Another One Bites the Dust.