This is a little short story I pecked out a couple of years ago. I was taking a shortcut through the wealthy part of Dallas to skip some traffic. I got to thinking about how many small town girls I knew who claimed to have paranormal abilities. Then I imagined what the spirits tell them at those uncomfortable Christmas gatherings when they marry “up”.

This story originally appeared in a a magazine or an anthology or something lol. I’ve lost count of all that stuff.

Not my cup of tea.

Enjoy, and Happy Holidays!

A Highland Park Christmas

Found space to park the sparkling F350.

Three block hike in high heels.

Arms loaded with gifts I didn’t even see prior to wrapping.

Two snotty toddlers who both look like him.

The rustle of his creased pants against the whish/wash of his trench coat’s lining.

I imagine it’s a piano wire to his throat like that crazy bitch in that witchcraft movie I saw at Jeni’s house.

She should trim her nails again.

The two of them are starting to get careless.

One little skin-tear on his neck.

I’ve known for a month.

My heels keep slipping across this ancient, slimy sidewalk.

Why do people care about living in this Stepford Wives – or whatever – community full of dying oil barons and their slut secretary-turned-trophy-mom fuck toy from day’s gone by?

Just move to Grapevine and join a wine club, Phyllis!

I can smell the dog food roasting to crude-esqe bubbles of ack along the corners of the warming trays.

The country club obviously catered again, and that’s why we had to walk 3 goddamn blocks to get here!

I just want to sit next to the fireplace, pour a glass of wine, and disappear into this phone.

I’m not even sure why he’s pushing that doorbell. It hasn’t worked in over a decade, and that mean old bitch ain’t about to pay someone to fix it. They’ll have to rip fifty years of wiring out the walls and find her dead ex-husband in the process.

He talks to me, you know.

Ten long years of coming here and being the only person in the room who could hear him contradict everything being said by those who’ve swindled their way beyond Death’s inevitable grasp.

I was but a helpless bar maid on the college campus in Oklahoma and knew damn well he’d fall in love with the first chick who knocked his ding dong around the right way.

That was me.

I was that ding dong knocker.

If I play my cards right, I’ll be out of here in about three more years with the kids and a laundry list of blackmail leads provided by the ghost of his dead grandfather.

I’m sure I can find a couple of Todd’s golfer friends to fuck for fun between now and then.

Sometimes, small-town bar maids cosplay as dumb and innocent, so you won’t see the web we’re spinning behind our backs.

Payback is always fun, but generational revenge with paranormal undertones to alter my bloodline’s pathway toward financial stability? It’s what every southern girl dreams of when they’re brushing their baby doll’s hair

A festive yule, Highland Park. May Goddess bless our cauldrons through the coming season.

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I know this is the part where I’m supposed to talk about the book, but I feel as though the synopsis needs its own preface to truly understand. 2023 was quite an eye-opening year! I began it by living my dream as a vintage steam locomotive fireman, but that dream was soon squashed thanks to my writing career. It won’t matter that you wrote your extreme horror offerings years ago and under a pen name. Also, it won’t matter that your publisher and author friends from days gone by express pleasantries and kind, nurturing words to your face, because they’ll clique-up and talk trash the minute you turn your back. F**k the biz, create. Create for art, not clicks. Click for love, not hate. Those are words true artists should have no issues living by, yet most seem to hide behind their keyboard shields, flinging ill-thought words of destruction toward once-trusted ears. Don’t pour something into everything; pour everything into something. Do it all by yourself if necessary. With any luck, 2024 will be the year of The Reverend. I’m not exactly sure what that means yet, but we’ll find out together. Anyway, here are a few short stories and poems I wrote as C. Derick Miller in 2023. I stole them from myself. Fair and square. Enjoy.

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