Twisted Tales Read Online Free Page A

for five, Anthony had managed to conceal his embarrassing phobia. Letting Karen discover how deeply he feared wasps would be as bad as getting stung.
    Well, not quite as bad. As a child, he had been stung several times by wasps, yellow jackets, hornets, bumblebees—all of them had gotten him at least once. Nothing else matched the agony. He believed that his admittedly paranoid fear of the insects intensified the pain of being stung. The last time a hornet had attacked him, he had nearly passed out.
    In the parking lot below, a door thunked shut. Karen was on her way.
    Wings fluttering, the insect had attached itself to the door. Anthony could not believe the sheer size of the wasp. Maybe insects were bigger in Mississippi, because the thing was huge. Its stinger—he thought he could actually see it—seemed to glimmer in the twilight, like the tip of a deadly needle.
    From his readings about wasps, he knew that once they plunged their stinger into you, they would still survive. Unlike bumblebees, which left their stingers in your skin and soon died, a wasp retained its weapon, and could return to punish you again. And again, and again.
    He shivered.
    Okay, be a man about this, he told himself. I’m thirty years old, a successful lawyer, admired, respected, envied. It’s only a stupid bug. Kill it.
    Keeping his eye on the quivering wasp, he slipped off one of his Nikes. In a furious burst of energy, he hammered the shoe against the door.
    Got it! The wasp crunched underneath the shoe sole and drifted harmlessly to the pavement.
    And the verdict is: life in bug hell.
    “See ya, sucker,” he said, and chuckled. He kicked aside the insect’s carcass.
    As he put on his other shoe, his wife climbed the last step of the landing. With what he hoped was a nonchalant motion, he slid his room key into the narrow slot, unlocking the door.
    “It’s hot as hell in here,” he blurted. “And I turned on the air conditioner before we left for the picnic. What a shitty room. I told you we should’ve stayed at the Hyatt.”
    Karen trudged toward him, her normally cheerful face lined with fatigue, and browned from a full day in the sun. Her oversized purple T-shirt, which read MORRIS FAMILY REUNION 2006 in white letters, was rumpled and probably damp with perspiration. She had pulled back her hair into a bun; several strands stood up like unruly weeds.
    Anthony hated to see his wife looking worn-out like this. All she’d want to do is take a shower and flop across the bed. No loving for him tonight.
    “One more night in here won’t kill us,” Karen said as she walked inside. “I only need a shower. When I hit the mattress, I’m going to pass out. Put an ice bag on your head if you need to.”
    “Very funny,” he said. “I’m going to suffer heat exhaustion in here.”
    “Serves you right. After what you pulled at the picnic today, you aren’t getting any sympathy from me.”
    At the picnic, Anthony had been appointed gatekeeper, responsible for checking in relatives and family friends and giving them name tags. It was a humiliating, tiresome task. He was an attorney, for God’s sake, not some shiftless high school dropout—like some of his cousins. He hadn’t driven seven hours from Atlanta so he could sweat in the heat and be a receptionist. He had agreed to do it only because Ma Dear had asked him herself, and with her being ninety-two years old and this possibly being her last reunion, well, he felt obligated to comply with her wishes.
    Of course, Ma Dear had asked him to do it only because she wanted to give him a lesson in humility. When folks reached Ma Dear’s age, all they thought about was trying to dispense their so-called wisdom. He was sure she was thinking, I’m gonna make Tony pass out name tags, that boy’s too proud and needs to be humbled.
    He was humbled, all right. He did the job so well he was certain they’d never ask him to do it again. Everyone whom he didn’t recognize—and there were many