Our car went off the road

It was my fault. I should never have opened that coin purse.

We were driving home from Great Aunt May’s when our car went off the road. It was my fault. I should never have opened that coin purse.

Dad was driving, even though his cheeks were rosy from spiked ciders. He flicked his brights on and off to keep from blinding oncoming cars. Every so often, he’d point at a passing snowplow and say something like, “I hope he’s gettin’ paid overtime,” or “I’d like to plow something tonight too.” He grabbed at Mom’s face and leaned across to kiss her. I groaned.

They knew I was mad. If it wasn’t obvious from my groaning, it was obvious from the faces on my fogged up window, with their angry brows and long, dripping frowns. Mom hated talking about feelings, so she flicked on the radio instead.

“Ooooh baby! It’s your song.” She grinned at Dad and turned the volume up so high the car doors rattled.

DING DONG DING DONG
DING DONG DING DONG

It was Carol of the Bells: the song he’d heard once in a horror movie and apparently never forgotten.

“Turn it off!” he shouted over the bells. “This song has haunted me since since 1974!” Dad cranked down the volume in a feigned panic.

He eyed me in the rear view mirror to see if I’d cracked a smile. I hadn’t. The car was silent except for Parker kicking his snow boots against his booster seat, and the sound of the wipers brushing away falling flakes. Mom shot her hand across the dash and turned the song to full blast again.

OH HOW THEY POUND
RAISING THE SOUND
O’ER HILL AND DALE
TELLING THEIR TALE

“Make it stop!” Dad shouted, swerving back and forth across the tree-lined road as if he’d lost control of the car.

I rolled my eyes and stared out the window until Mom reached back and pinched my thighs. Her gold stack of rings snagged and pulled little runs in my tights. The corners of my lips lifted into a smile, but I willed my face to go slack again.

I knew what they were doing: trying to make up for a miserable Christmas dinner with Aunt May. I wouldn’t give Mom the satisfaction of a smile, not when it was her idea to go to the real-life haunted house instead of the Bangor Tree Lighting and the live animal nativity and homemade toasted marshmallows from the co-op. Now we’d have to wait a whole year to pet the donkeys.

“Come on Jules!” she called over the deafening bells, “It wasn’t that bad. You got that old purse from Auntie.”

“It smells like cigarette smoke,” I said.

“What?” She turned back to face me.

“It smells like cigarette smoke!” I shouted over the music.

Dad turned the radio off.

“That makes sense. Your uncle used to smoke,” he said.

I fiddled with the zipper on the little pouch. The outside of it was made of interlocking silver pieces, tarnished with splotches of gold and black, and drooping down like stretched out skin. My fingers tingled. I played over Auntie’s words as she hugged me goodbye. Don’t open that, Julia. Not even a crack.

“Auntie is weiwd,” Parker said.

“That’s right, buddy.” Dad laughed.

Mom gave him a look.

“She is weird. And wonderful,” Dad added. “Just because she kisses on the lips and disappeared her husband, it doesn’t make her—”

“She’s lonely, John. We made her whole year by showing up,” Mom said.

I pulled the zipper, just two clicks. I wanted to see if there was anything tucked inside.

“Yeah well, has she considered the papier-mâché effigy of Rasputin on her porch could be a barrier to friendship?” Dad said.

I tried wriggling my pinky in between the splayed teeth of the zipper. Parker covered his ears.

“Ow!” he shouted. “Turn it off!”

But the car was silent. The radio was off.

“I told you already, it’s not Rasputin. It’s Abe Lincoln.” Mom was getting upset.

“Did you see his eyes? It’s Rasputin,” Dad said.

I managed to wedge the tip of my pinky into the coin purse, careful not to open the zipper any further. Though we were miles away from Aunt May’s cabin now, I had the strange feeling she’d know if I disobeyed her. I felt around inside the purse. The sides were lined with something soft like silk. It was frigid inside, so cold it felt like my fingernail was peeling off. I tried yanking my pinky out from the frigid metal teeth, but it was stuck, and a strange sucking sensation was wrenching it down deeper, threatening to swallow up my whole hand. I grasped the purse and pulled with all my strength until my finger flung free and a high-pitched, terrible hissing sound burst from the opening and filled the car.

“Ow!” Parker shouted again, wailing.

“What’s going on back there?” Mom whipped around. “Jules, don’t bother him.”

The car turned cold. Salt and dirt from the floor mats whipped up into the air and rocketed through the opening in the purse where it lay hissing on my lap. My ears rang. Parker screeched. Mom and Dad didn’t seem to hear anything at all.

“Woah, it’s cold.” Dad fiddled with the heat, but it was only getting colder.

I reached for the purse again to yank the zipper shut, but the opening inhaled my fingers like a vacuum, sucking with such wild power that I watched in horror as the purse shot upwards and hung suspended in the air. It gaped open and swallowed up my fingers, then my arm, then up to my elbow. The zipper teeth chomped at my sweater. Receipts and wrappers and napkins and loose change whipped around the car in a freezing vortex.

“Julia, what are you doing?” Dad cried out over the screech of the purse.

It gaped wider like a monstrous yawn. Smoke plumed out of it in thick grey billows. The terrible sucking ripped at my cheeks and hair. My arm disappeared entirely into the black hole of silk. Parker’s pacifier flung into the dark of it. Then Mom’s glasses. Feathers burst out of Dad’s coat and spiraled in the smokey whirl, and the tan fabric of the car’s roof began peeling away in chunks and spiraling like confetti into the purse’s screaming center.

And then it was too smokey to see, and too loud to hear the car tires rumble off the road and over rocks and fallen trees and launch over a drift of snow and dive nose first through the black of an icy lake.

I did not open my eyes until it was quiet again. My ears rang. I felt no weight and no pull, no ground or seat beneath me. No seatbelt across my chest or chomping purse at my elbow. All around me were curtains of silken black. The air smelled of stale cigarettes.

“What’s happening?” Dad called out. His voice was muted by the billowing curtains.

“Dad, where are you?” I cried.

An orange glow like a tiny ember hissed and bobbed beside me. And then a voice like gravel rose out of the darkness.

“John? Abby? Is that you?” Two eyes glistened in the light of the ember. A cigarette, attached to a hand, attached to a silhouette, and a face with sunken cheeks and wild eyes.

Silence.

My Mom spoke then, her voice high and trembling. She was somewhere far off, floating beyond the orange glow.

“Uncle David,” she stuttered, “Is that you?”

“Oh Christ,” the man growled. “She got you too, then?”

A freewrite inspired by Fantasy Prompt #13
Time: 200 minutes
Song of the day: Carol of the Bells

What better way to start the year than to write together?

• Find a comfortable space

• Set your timer for 20 minutes

• Sink into your imagination

• Remember: It is safe to write from the depths of your soul

• Share your creations in the comments or DMs, if it pleases you

Optional: light a candle or put a little totem beside you.

Fantasy Prompt #14

A band of children live together in a secret hideout. To protect themselves from ambush or discovery, they’ve laid a series of traps and snares around the home. What happens when a creature or nemesis turns up?

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Hello beautiful Campers,

Happy New Year. As always, I’m glad you’re here. If you’re new here, I’m Madeleine. I write biweekly stories and prompts (among other things) in the speculative fiction genre. They’re meant to be scrappy, without much revision or thought at all, really. Though I will say… this one nearly killed me for some reason. An enchanted coin purse? What does it even do? How does the uncle still have cigarettes after all this time? An effigy of Rasputin???? I have no answers for you.

My favorite part about Fantasy Camp™ is that Campers (you) often share your own freewrites in the comments or in my DMs. While Fantasy Camp™ is not exclusive, it seems that by some cosmic coincidence, everyone here is exceptionally creative, strange, and talented. I love reading your words! Especially the unedited, unfiltered ones.

Over the holiday, I took a few weeks away from writing to take a 1000 mile road trip from the southern tip of Baja all the way up to Tijuana. My biggest takeaway: nothing is quite as fantastical as real life.

I found a pile of shells taller than me, all with big swirling cones and peachy insides. I saw six shooting stars in one night, a fire rainbow, and a chunky scorpion the size of a lobster. I got six bloody noses (which if you really think about, is a wild phenomenon). I stepped on a jumping cholla cactus and swam in a thermal hot spring right on the ocean shore. I woke up to rays leaping out of the bay—it sounded like applause. And I sank into such thick and swampish mud that it added about 15 pounds to each of my shoes.

Now I’m back to writing my book and it feels like pulling teeth and fingernails and eyeballs all at once. But repeat after me: your feelings are irrelevant. I think of you often and I hope you fall into quicksand, just for the story.

Love, laugh, live by the Sword,
Madeleine