Wormwood Tales #2: Rachel’s Decision (The Day Before)

Wormwood Tales are stories written by the Wormwood creative team, designed to tell stories before, after and around our central tale. These stories may contain clues to the mysteries of Wormwood. Or they may not. We’ll never tell.

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Wormwood Tales: Rachel’s Decision (The Day Before)
by Rob Allspaw“Hello?” Her voice called out. “Hello? Is anyone home? Mom? Mom, are you at home?”

“Damn it!” A loud thud accompanied the angry utterance as Rachel tramped her way through a well-appointed kitchen. She slammed the back door and dropped her backpack on the kitchen floor, adding, “That’s what I get for believing the bitch! Especially after this morning.”

Rachel was a pretty girl. Pretty enough to get noticed by the boys in her school but awkward enough to be dismissed by them too. The girls in her class didn’t like her much either as they saw the potential for beauty and weirdness in the slight girl.

She walked through the kitchen searching for the note her mother probably would have left behind. Where she would have put the note was the mystery. Rachel’s mother wasn’t a bad person or a terrible mother: she was just having a hard time trying to raise a strong and willful teenage girl who wanted to be anywhere but Wormwood. Anytime someone told her that raising girls are easier than boys, she would look that person dead and the eye and say, “Go fuck yourself, ” a phrase that caused a bit of a commotion at the last church social, although it was funny to see the Sister George’s face turn bright red in embarrassment.

“Where the heck did she put the note?” said Rachel, scanning the cluttered corners of the kitchen. “Oh, well look at that. She must have been distracted. It’s on the refrigerator,” she added as she tore the note from the metal door.

The note read: “Dear Rachel. Sorry, baby girl, but I forgot we had scheduled a book club meeting tonight or I would have not said yes to dinner tonight. I’m sorry, but it was very important that I go to this one tonight. You can have leftovers in the fridge and we’ll do something tomorrow night. Don’t forget, Dexter is spending the night at Matty Mullins. So he won’t be home to bug you. Mom.”

Continue reading “Rachel’s Decision”…


About The Author

Wormwood: A Serialized Mystery is a full-cast audio mystery that brings the spirit of the radio drama into the 21st century world of podcasting, mp3 technology and RSS feeds. We tell stories to rival the best of television -- using only the theater of the mind.

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