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. A Great Hand Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

A GREAT HAND

Looking at the right bower, king, and ten trump-suit, and then two off-suit aces would usually put Breanne Lockstadt into a jittery fit trying to conceal her giddiness. On top of it all, she didn’t pick the suit. Hell, her partner didn’t even pick it. She was looking at a euchre and only three tricks away from victory; no doubt now, she and her partner, Lizzy, had another game in the bag.

But Breanne looked grim, didn’t feel good. The cards played out. Breanne and Lizzy took the game with authority, and at least Lizzy was happy.

“What in the hell did you make it on?” Jerome asked his partner, Freddy.

Freddy shrugged. He had a thing for Breanne, which was the point of the four of them getting together. You put four divorcees with adult offspring in a room eight straight weeks with an expectation, something would happen eventually. Winning was so far from the point here.

Jerome and Lizzy had tried their luck, went to bed twice, found it incompatible without a goodly dose of cognac, which meant the door was open should the group take to quicken the drinking during the shuffle.

“What’s wrong with you?” Jerome said to Breanne.

They’d known one another since they were kids; he used to watch her sometimes when her parents went out on Saturday nights. It was Breanne’s idea to get card games going, maybe find some matches along the way.

Now, though, she was off in her own world, had been most of the night. Even in victory she hardly paid mind to the scene before her.

Jerome snapped his fingers. “Hey, wake up.”

Breanne looked at Jerome with a sad and icy eyes. “I’m going to ask you something and I want you to be as honest, as honest as you could possibly be.”

He smiled. “Shoot. I could never lie to you.” He tossed a wink at Lizzy.

“When you hit that kid with your car—”

“Whoa now,” Jerome said; suddenly things weren’t so funny.

“Just, please, answer this.”

He lowered his head, Lizzy and Freddy watched Breanne, enthralled.

“You’d been drinking, that’s no secret, though the cops didn’t say anything…it was a different time.” She spoke vacantly, her gaze distant. “But you were masturbating while you drove. You’d just left Rosy Kisses, you’d had a lap dance, tried to pay the girl to blow you. She wouldn’t. You offered her three hundred for a handjob, but she just laughed. You got three more lap dances and left the building with a hard on and only one option.” Her eyes settled on a bald patch the size of a hockey puck budding on Jerome’s scalp.

He blinked. “I never said—”

“But I’m right, right?”

He dropped his head back down, staring at his wrinkled fingers.

“I am right, aren’t I?”

“How could you know?” His sadness was palpable.

The accident had been more than a decade ago and he’d moved on. The kid he’d hit didn’t get to, but accidents happened and it did no good to ruin his life, so he’d called his brother who worked with the mayor and gave a statement to his cousin in the police department.

“I saw it. I saw it back when you used to babysit me. I didn’t recognize you, not until later, then it all came back. I saw it, I never told anyone. I see things and I saw you. Now, tell me, did it happen exactly like that? It’s important.” Breanne was emphatic.

Jerome seemed to consider his options; it was out there now. He nodded, a weak smile playing on his lips. “I guess you’re the only one who hasn’t seen my dick, Freddy. Want a peek?”

“Huh, well, that just about ends my night,” Lizzy said, her expression a mixture of revulsion and anger. She’d known Jerome only months.

“Wait, we’re not through,” Breanne said, she reached out a firm hand and sat Lizzy back into her chair. “Lizzy, promise you’ll answer honestly.”

“I have nothing to hide,” Lizzy said, smug.

“Fifteen years ago,” Breanne started, and Lizzy’s eyes grew wide, “you met a man named Earl, after college. We hadn’t seen each other for a couple years. You met Earl and he knocked you up, it was all happy. Earl had a good job and you stayed home getting bigger and bigger. You dated Earl out east, you knew he was married at first, but you thought it was done. At eight months pregnant, Earl explained that he had to get back to his real family, that he loved his wife, it had been just a trial separation. That’s what he called it a trial separation, I’m right, aren’t I?”

Lizzy’s jaw dangled, she snapped it shut; her eyes burned fire, but she didn’t answer, didn’t need to say a word.

“You got depressed, started drinking like crazy. You wanted to kill the baby in your belly, but the baby came. You and Earl had that whole meatless, hemp clothing, hippie thing going, and you had an unlicensed midwife rather than a doctor. She helped you, she was Spanish, an immigrant; you and Earl thought you were helping the poor by hiring her—before he left you. She came and you delivered a boy and you saw Earl. You saw Earl in his jaw and ears, in his nose and fingers, you saw him in those eyebrows threatening to bush right up even fresh out of the oven.”

“Stop,” Lizzy said, venom dripping from that monosyllable.

“Wait, I’m right so far, I’m right. You lived in Melvin, out east; nobody had seen you in years. Out there with Earl and then with the baby. You fed the baby cough syrup until it didn’t move and then you took your compost bin, filled a bag. Put the baby in the bag with the lettuce ends and apple cores. You put four more bags over it and then you drove all night, north first, then east. You put the bag into a Burger King dumpster, put it inside a bag of garbage to be sure and then you drove home. Here home. You came back. I’m right, right?” Breanne seemed sadder the more she spoke.

“I don’t have to listen to this. It never happened, you’re a liar and I don’t care for it,” Lizzy said, her show unconvincing.

“You got a tattoo on your hip, it’s tiny, but it has the initials H.C. inside.”

Jerome pointed. “She does, too, I’ve seen it!”

“So what? It means Hobart Carol, my great grandfather,” Lizzy said.

“Why would you get your great grandfather’s initials on your hip?” Freddy asked, his face pulled askew.

“She and Earl were going to name the baby Shine if it was a girl and Haven if it was a—”

“Heaven!” Lizzy shouted and then covered her mouth a moment before she fled from the room.

The trio listened in silence as Lizzy’s engine roared into life beyond the carport’s screen door and peeled away down the street. Breanne had created an impasse, she looked at Freddy, and he waited. She’d only recently met him.

“Well?” he asked, visibly shaken.

“Yeah, what about Freddy?” Jerome said.

Breanne shook her head slowly.

“Goddammit,” Jerome said and stood, pushed his chair under the table. “If you two don’t mind, I’m going to drink myself into a stupor and try to remember how to live with myself, and I’d rather do it alone, so...” he said, trailing with purpose.

Freddy shot to his feet. Breanne was reluctant but followed.

“I’m sorry, Jerome,” she said and then took her leave.

Freddy had played the gentlemen up until that moment, holding doors and taking arms. They got into his car without ceremony. They sat a moment, unmoving, before Breanne took his hand. He quickly snatched it away.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I probably would’ve seen it by now, if there was anything to see, I’d have seen it.”

“Just as well,” he started the car and backed out onto the street.

Breanne lived on the north side, fifteen minutes from Jerome’s bungalow. Tears flowed down her face, and she rubbed her hands on her legs continually. Freddy finally looked at her and quickly pulled over.

“Easy now, easy now,” he said, rubbing her back.

“I have to do something, and I need you to drive me. I’ll lose the will if I have to drive myself. Please, it’s important,” she said after she’d finally managed to slow her gasps.

“What is it?”

“I can’t tell. I just need you to drive me. You need to drive me to Twenty-four Elgin Ave.”

“Why though?”

“I promise, I’ll tell you everything, but after.”

“Who lives there?”

“I’ll tell you after, this is important, please.” She took his hand again. “Please, Freddy, I need to go to that address.”

Freddy let go of Breanne’s hand, looked over his shoulder, and U-turned across the four-lane street. It was barren; traffic usually was after dark at that end of town. The closer they got to Elgin, the thicker the traffic grew. It was a moderate-income area, moderate leaning to lower.

“This one,” Breanne said. She pointed at a home with chipping yellow paint on plastic siding, a roof with patches of moss growing over many shingles.

“This one?” Freddy stared in confusion at the slummiest building on the block.

“I’ll be back in five minutes,” Breanne said, her voice quavered. She leaned over to kiss Freddy.

Freddy watched through the passenger’s side window. Breanne walked up to the door, fished through her purse a moment, and then opened the door. Then she was gone. Freddy sat up straight, a helpless manikin in his own automobile.

“What are we doing here?” he said under his breath.

A few minutes after she’d gone inside, the answer came in two loud bangs. Lights ignited in many of the neighbors’ homes and Breanne jogged out the front door.

She hadn’t even got her legs inside the car before she shouted, “Drive! Drive, damn you, drive!”

“What did you do?” Freddy said.

It was all over her face, the message in the blasts, the tool of her crime still in her hand, black and shining under the streetlights. She said nothing. Silently, Freddy drove five minutes before he pulled into a dark parking lot running along the pier. The place was busy with vehicles, their lights playing by like it was any old night, like Breanne hadn’t just committed murder.

“What did you do?” he said.

“I had to. I’ve known for years, but I couldn’t do it until I knew what I knew was true. But I saw and once I saw, I knew. I saw the face and it all clicked. I’ve known for thirty-five years he would do it, but I just couldn’t, not until I was sure. Part of me weighed the values and no matter what, it couldn’t match, I mean…” Breanne cried into her hands.

“What? Who?” Freddy rubbed her warm back.

“He was small when I first saw it, and I didn’t recognize. I thought maybe I was just imagining things. But, but then that man, the man with all the changes in mind. I can’t remember his name, I’m all fuzzy, he’s a senator or something.” Breanne shook, her entire body head-to-toe vibrated.

“Albert Milton?” Freddy said.

Albert Milton was the next big thing. Prime Minister someday, maybe, likely. A man leaning well left of center. A man who would change how the country treated wealth and poverty, ownership and retribution.

“Yeah, he was going to kill him, I saw it. I saw it when he was just a baby.”

“Who?”

“My son, my Eric, my son. I thought if I did things differently over the years, gave him extra love, put him in better schools, put him first, put him before everything… Walter left me because Eric needed me, but it didn’t work and I tried to say he wouldn’t, couldn’t. But he told me he was planning a trip and the memory, the vision, it clicked again. I saw the sign with the name, date, and time. Eric was taking a vacation, staying at the same hotel and I knew, oh god I knew.”

“Knew what, you’re not making—”

“Knew he was going to kill Milton. My son, my little Eric, was going to kill Albert Milton.” Breanne lifted her head, tears streaming her face, cutting lines down the grooves of her wrinkles.

“So, you…?” Freddy fished.

“I had to; I had to, for the good of everybody. I killed him. He was bad. No matter what I did, he was bad. I tried, oh god I tried,” Breanne said, her words falling into wet sobs.

Freddy pulled the car back out onto the street. Breanne continued to wail while Freddy drove. Now and then, she glanced through a window, sizing up their locale.

“I can’t believe it. You’re insane,” Freddy said, matter-of-factly.

Breanne lifted her face, eyes hard out the shotgun window. “I lied to you earlier. I saw something the day we met.”

He turned in his seat, agog. “What?”

“It was like the others, and I want you to know I don’t hold it against you. It’s as much my fault as it is yours. Just move on after it happens, it’s for the best for me anyway,” she said as she rolled down her window and dropped the pistol onto the street.

“What are you talking about?” he stared at her, his foot to the mat, only a block from the police station.

“Just move on, it’s for the best. I really liked you, you know?”

Freddy was too consumed to notice the red light he was burning through. In the middle of the intersection, a police cruiser crushed the passenger’s side of Freddy’s car.

The knock was jarring, his ears rang and his body thrummed. In the seat next to him was Breanne. Glass pebbles sparkled on her shoulders and in her hair. Her brain glistened in the emergency lights through the huge crack in her skull. Her eyes were dead, dead, dead.

Freddy swallowed, very much alive, with a fantastic explanation to give the cops whenever they asked for a statement. But, god, would they believe any of it?

XX