Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Emotional Baggage Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE

Evan Pitlor opened the musty copy of The Dunwich Horror he’d purchased at a secondhand store, meaning to force himself past the pretentiousness, the melodrama, and the racism to finally see one of these stories through. A two-hour flight on a sixty-seater plane seemed like the kind of scenario where he might corner this slippery task.

“Howdy,” a man said, his voice deep and friendly.

Evan looked at the man settling in tight next to him. He wore big brown shades with gold frames; had puffy jet-black hair, thick sideburns, and a cold sore above his lip. It glistened wetly beneath the overhead lights. He could’ve smuggled a dime in its opening.

“Hi,” Evan said.

“Cheetos?” The man held out a bag with his left hand, began sucking orange dust off the fingers of his right.

“No, thanks, I just ate,” Evan said, lying. Evan was starving, hadn’t eaten before he left his childhood home in a great big hurry. He was onto the second leg of the thousand-mile journey. The first piece took place further up north, in farm country, where he’d taken a plane that the locals had called a pond hopper to the closest city and its small airport.

“You fly lots?” the man said.

Evan shook his head.

“Me either. Once a year I spend three weeks flying and driving to different Elvis festivals. I’m a professional impersonator,” the man said.

To Evan’s surprise, the man hadn’t added any imitation to the explanation. Spoke simply.

“Even had my name legally changed to Elvis Presley.”

“Really? Wow. Dedication,” Evan said and stashed the Lovecraft in the mesh pocket of the seatback before him. “You’re headed to a show of some kind then?”

Elvis shook his head and pulled a somber expression. He reached into his Cheetos bag and left the hand inside, as if for comfort. “My mom died, and I went back to clean out her house. Dad died four years ago.”

“Sorry to hear that. My parents are dead too. Feels like yesterday.”

Elvis pulled off his sunglasses. “No shit?”

“No shit.”

“My mother was only sixty-two. The big C. Her lungs.”

Evan made the appropriate face. “That’s sad. Was it a long…battle?”

“No. By the time she found out, it was too late. It sure was strange going through all that stuff she’d kept. I’d gone back plenty before but all the crap she and Dad had saved…man, it was a lot.”

“Thank you for your patience, we’ve gotten word the runway will be ours in about three minutes,” a flight attendant said over the intercom.

“Stressed me out, all the funeral stuff and then cleaning up,” Elvis said.

Evan decided to do this man a favor.

“How’d your parents die?” Elvis said.

Evan bent forward and withdrew his duffle bag from between his ankles. “Gunshots.”

“Gunshots?” Elvis said, nearly shouted it.

“Yeah…so, don’t take this the wrong way, but my ex-wife, recently exed-wife, got cold sores all the time and had an open prescription for huge sums of Valtrex.” Evan unzipped and dug around until he found the big pill bottle he’d filled with a little bit of everything. “When we split, I stole the bottle she just had refilled because I get a cold sore about once a year, but I don’t feel like going to a doctor.”

Elvis fingered the sore. “Shit, it opened. Nothing but a bump an hour ago.”

“Take four now and two more tonight. Should dry it out. Though that guy there’s a doozy.”

“Well, thank you kindly. I get them when I’m stressed. I had to write Mom’s eulogy last week and I got a little one then. Just got over it two days ago. Under my lip that one was.”

Evan handed over the six big blue pills. Elvis accepted them with his cheese dusted hand and reached between his legs into the grocery bag he’d brought as his carry-on and pulled out a bottle of Mountain Dew.

“I again ask that everyone have their seats and trays up, and seatbelts fastened, and that you turn your cellphones off until we’re inflight. Thank you for your patience,” the flight attendant said. The plane was moving and starting to get loud.

Out the window were about ten yards of cut lawn past the smooth grey tarmac. Beyond was a black chain-link fence and yellowed grass that grew in tufts. It reminded Evan of the mailbox back at the farm and how it was too much effort to weed-whack around the post, and that the grass sometimes grew so high it hid most of the mailbox.

Once, when he was eight, he’d loaded his backpack with Pop Tarts and clean underwear and was hitting the road. Running away. For hours he’d walked great meandering circles on the property, not ready to commit to a direction. Eventually certain his parents would wonder where he’d gone, and that his mother would cry, he stepped across the walking bridge over the creek and swung around into the bush behind the barn. The stinking and filthy animals minded him none. He'd had to hop the cedar rail fence into the pasture because he’d heard too much bee-like buzzing directly ahead of where he’d been walking. He climbed out over the far side of the pasture and continued through rows of young trees that had been planted after the last owner cashed in on standing lumber. He came back to the creek at a different spot and stopped to drink from the cold, clean-tasting water, cupping it with his hands. He crossed a different bridge and took the trail up to the old logging access lane to the county road. By then, Evan had decided he’d taught his parents enough of a lesson and hooked a left, walked a mile on the gravel, and hooked another left up the main laneway, passing that mailbox. It was hot, had been for weeks. His nose was already crunchy with blisters and peeling skin from haying. He lifted his arm to block out the sun as he rounded the final turn up the lane. A breeze played gently on the air, carrying his father’s voice from the big shed to his ears.

“Jesus cocksucking Christ allfuckingmighty, hold still!”

Evan reached an angle where he no longer had to block the sun to see. Just inside one of the roll-up doors was his brother—ten—holding a garbage bag while his father dumped in shovelfuls of dirty Oil-Dri sand.

A ping rang out and the seatbelt sign went off about thirty seconds after the plane leveled, post takeoff. Elvis unbuckled and resumed eating puffy Cheetos. After a handful, he stopped abruptly and wiped his hand down the front of his dirty jeans before planking himself to reach into a pants pocket.

“Check it. I found this last night.” Elvis held out a scuffed and chipped plastic figurine. “It’s an Admiral Ackbar. My parents got me three Star Wars figurines and an AT-AT—you know, one of those big white machines that walk through the snow. Got it all for my ninth birthday.”

“Cool, bet some of those are worth something,” Evan said, being polite. His going home for the first time in fifteen years was now starting to send his mind on painful reconnaissance missions into his memory banks and he didn’t fully appreciate the toy as he might another day.

“Maybe, not this one. Only reason this one exists is because he was minor. We didn’t play with him as much. Me and my brother. He’s passed too.” Elvis stared at the toy a moment and then sighed. “Did you say your parents died of gunshots?”

“Yep,” Evan said and turned his attention to the clouds out his window.

“Maybe it’s touchy…but how’d that happen?”

The stewardess with the drink cart walked up the aisle and stopped next to Elvis before he could ask another question or Evan could answer. She leaned in and offered Elvis ice for his lip, though didn’t say lip. Instead of using the word lip, she pointed to her upper lip with two fingers with finely painted baby blue nails.

“Thanks, but I’m good. Will take some of those cookies though.”

“And you, sir?” she said.

Evan gave her a cordial though meaningless grin and said, “Cookies and coffee with cream and sugar, please.”

She filled a paper cup, inserted a plastic stir stick, and handed it over after both men had their cookies in hands. She fished and passed off a packet of Coffee Mate whitener and a packet of Equal sugar. She continued on her way.

“So, gunshots?”

Evan wasn’t listening. He eyed the clumpy dusting of white powder after he’d torn the package and thought of the mailbox at the farm again. This time he was older and his backpack heavier. He was sixteen and running away, really running away. It was well below freezing, but the sun was up and made the world sparkle with a little bit of something like hope.

Only twelve hours prior, his father had chased him around the living room table shouting, “Think you’re tough?” Evan had been suspended from school for fighting and his father was teaching him a lesson. Evan had made it as far as to the hallway leading to the bathroom—only locking door in the house—when his mother blocked his path. He spun and took a fist square to the eye and a second one to his chin. He crumpled and his father kicked him once while his mother simply continued on her way to wherever she’d been headed before she had to roadblock a getaway.

Running had been the only answer; in the middle of the night preceding, Evan snuck out to the big shed, retrieved the keys to the gun cabinet, and returned to the house with a loaded .22 Remington rifle. Cold and greasy to the touch. He put a round into his father’s head. The .22 wasn’t a loud rifle and his mother only rolled to her side, her snapping snores resumed after less than five seconds. Evan plugged her beneath the chin, saying as he did so, “How come you got to piss him off?” in a whiny mimic of her.

“Look, sorry, I shouldn’t pry,” Elvis said.

“No, it’s okay. I just got lost a second. I was a teenaged runaway and going back there now, to the farm I mean, it’s kind of sucked,” Evan said, steadily stirring the coffee.

“Looks like you did some farming,” Elvis said—one of those obvious attempts at easing the situation statements—while he pointed at the dozens of red marks and long scratches up Evan’s forearms.

“Yeah.” He smiled. “I swore when I was sixteen to never load another hay wagon again, but it was almost like fun, when I could shut off my brain.”

“Hard work, haying. I did it some in my twenties.”

“Good workout, though.”

“So, your brother or someone run the farm now?”

Evan shook his head. “He’s in prison. I have a sister, but she’s a med-vegetable in a psych ward.”

“Sheesh. That’s some family luck. Did your brother shoot them?”

“What?” Evan was taken aback by this. “Oh, no.”

“Hey, man, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“I shot them. Both of them, right in the head,” Evan said and paused a moment while Elvis held his breath. “I never told anybody that.”

“Oh, hey, secret’s safe with me,” Elvis said, almost panting, his mouth hanging low and his tongue absently prodding at the cold sore’s opening.

“Not exactly a secret. Just, never came up.”

“The cops never…” Elvis said, trailing, body tense, visibly bothered.

“Nope.”

Back when, Evan had continued down the road until he reached the slim highway. He stuck out his thumb and the second car going his way stopped and gave him a ride. He had pretty good luck all the way to the first city. Things got harder after that and he found himself walking long, long ways beneath the moonlight. On the fourth night of no sleep, he got to where he’d spend the next six months. Luck had had him following a lazy parade of homeless people down a residential street to a church with an Out of the Cold program on the go inside. They set him up with a section of floor, a vinyl bed pad, and a thin blanket. In the morning, he ate two buttered bagels. At 8:30 AM, as he and the other bums departed, a woman in a furry parka and high Sorel boots stopped him and offered him a room. Offered him liquor. Offered him methamphetamines. After two weeks, he started making payments on what he owed her, mostly servicing fat older men who were so ashamed about fucking him and sucking him off that they berated him and sometimes beat him.

The cops shut down the operation and put Evan in rehab. He became a bit of a celebrity; unbeknownst to him until it was too late. Newspapers ran with his story and one accidentally printed his name, despite his being a minor. He waited and waited, but the murder shoe never dropped, nobody questioned him about his parents, and finally, a little more than a year after their executions, he had to know why. He returned to the farm, this time via bus.

“You’re screwing with me, right?”

Evan took a sip from his coffee cup and grimaced. Awful stuff. “No. See my mom had sold Mary Kay Cosmetics for decades. She was pretty good at it. Dealing with people and doing makeovers—so long as the people didn’t mind that her idea of a makeover was about ten years out of date.”

Elvis offered a single, nervous, “Ha.”

“I guess the morning or the week, or however long after they woke up dead, she started doing their makeup, and my father had always wore his hat low.”

“What?”

Evan looked out the window, the city was finally in view. “Makeup doesn’t do much good now. My mother stopped selling cosmetics and my father sells the hay by the telephone to guys with huge operations who send men with tractor trailers. They don’t eat, but they go through the money the hay brings in pretty quickly—Home Shopping Network and eBay and Amazon.”

Elvis screwed up his face, eyes squinting hard and then released it all and relaxed. “Man, you had me for a minute.”

“Their skin is all tough and rotten, like old, old shoe leather. Their eyes are dry, but they see pretty well, better at night.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Elvis said.

“I’d gone back a couple times after running away, mostly because I couldn’t believe it. Last time, before this time, my mother was so proud about how she used clay they’d dug up and makeup to make it so her and my father could go out and vote for the Christian Heritage Party. Only thing the CHP had on the platform was the illegalization of gay marriage. She was more proud about the vote than about doing the makeup.”

“Man, sure, sure,” Elvis said, looking around the cramped little plane.

“I told her I’d sucked at least a hundred cocks and I’d suck a hundred more. Out of nowhere my father punched me, but he was so decayed his hand broke off and my mother started shouting, ‘how come you got to piss him off!’ and I just laughed. It’s why I stayed away so long.”

Elvis turned at this and frowned. “Man, I’m sorry your parents don’t accept you.”

“That’s okay, they’re dead,” Evan said a moment before the captain got on the intercom, warning of their immediate descent and thanking the passengers for choosing West Jet. Evan watched the world rush at them and jerked as the other passengers did through the little turbulence pockets. A few morons applauded the landing. Seatbelt buckles began clicking and a few eager beavers stood up, despite that the plane was still moving.

“Well, I got to say, you were one interesting seatmate. Had me hook, line, and sinker for a while,” Elvis said and held out his orange-stained hand.

“I brought them back, you know. Together they only weighed forty-nine pounds, didn’t have to pay anything extra beyond the bag fee.”

“Right, well, it’s been interesting,” Elvis said and dropped his hand to his pocket; he slipped the two remaining Valtrex—if that’s truly what they were—to the floor. He pushed to stand the moment the plane ceased moving.

Evan plucked the Lovecraft book from the seatback and then thought better of it. He left it there for someone lacking good taste. He shouldered his carryon and followed the procession. Elvis made a bit of distance from him, which was fine. Evan left Elvis behind at the car rental counters and continued to the luggage carousel. People were busy, busy around him and he watched them as they raced to the mouth of the carousel the moment they saw something matching what they’d boarded with.

Evan’s suitcase was an old leather Samsonite, brown, with clips rather than straps. When it came out, he watched it pass him by, wondering why he’d brought them at all. He sighed and started around the big U to the end where a modern bag, black and nondescript, had pushed against his bag, springing the clips. He stopped, waiting for the lid to pop and for his parents to climb out.

“That one yours?” a woman asked, she had three small children in-tow, tethered by long stretchy handcuffs.

“The brown one,” Evan said, almost choking on the words.

“Thank god, thought they’d lost my bag,” the woman said and checked the name on the luggage tag of the black bag. She hefted it up and started away.

“Look mommy, look!” one of the children said, pointing to the brown suitcase with the flopped open lid.

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