Creepy Pasta

'Till the Boys Come Home

Margaret Owen stared out into the distance from her quiet Vermont ranch, taking a break from attending to the oddly large quantity of dishes left in the sink. She never quite considered how the sink managed to be full by every evening, considering her husband works most nights out in town, and her two grown sons are carrying rifles in some strange country in Europe whose name she never bothered to memorize. Of course, she never quite realized how much weight she gained since her sons were shipped off, or how often the contents of the icebox seemed to disappear overnight. Considering her brain often found the need to have bipolar panic attacks at a moment’s whim, it was just as well she did not notice with no one around to tell her otherwise. For the first time in weeks, her mind returned to some fractured aura of reality upon looking from the windowsill out towards the desolate ranch, decayed by months of neglect since the heirs to the land were either dead of phosgene or boredom. God help this war come to an end.

What brought poor Margaret back from a traumatic stupor were the distant headlights signaling her husband’s return from yet another stint in what she sometimes imagined was a glamorized Boston underworld. She placed her dish into the drying rack, going outside to meet her beau without taking off her gloves or apron beforehand. However, immediately upon going outside, she felt an extremely apprehensive force weighing down on her as the car winced to a halt and her husband stepped out. Usually a pathetically hunched man with a seemingly permanent streak of filth across his face, this version of Franklin sported a near-perfect upright posture and a noticeably pale (yet smear-free) gaunt face. Margaret decided this congestive feeling was better dealt with by the hearth, and cleaned up inside before her husband entered. What was before a bright and hearty abode became instantly as desolate-feeling as the decaying ranch outside, and Margaret felt intense chills rolling up her back despite the warmth of the wood stove nearby.

“Franklin?” she weakly asked as she heard her front door open, her heart heavy in the anticipation of seeing her husband for the first time in weeks.

She was answered by slow deliberate steps approaching the living area, and her husband’s sudden appearance in the archway.

He answered with a similar “Franklin,” but in a terrifyingly powerful voice contrasting the normal Franklin’s genteel Northeast drawl. “That is me, correct?”

Margaret suddenly dropped her fearful apprehensiveness to embrace her husband. “How are you my lo-“ but she was immediately dropped back to her chair by The Man Who Looks Like Franklin’s glare. “H-honey?”

“Wilfred Owen is dead,” The Man Who Looks Like Franklin immediately replied, his powerful stare weighing down Margaret like an iron casket. Wilfred Owen, of course, would happen to be the name of Margaret’s younger son, last she heard stationed with a rifleman division somewhere near a large river in France. Then again, it’s also the name of a famous British poet, so either is fair game.

“Franklin, honey?” Margaret again weakly replied, not quite able to register this strange turn of events.

“I’m fairly certain I am not mistaken. Margaret Owen is it? Your eldest son is Chauncey Owen, youngest is Wilfred?” His asking was, of course, rhetorical. There was a deafening silence as Margaret remained speechless in the wake of The Man Who Looks Like Franklin’s gaze, where he realized the dilemma with an nervous smile.

“My apologies, I was never one for tact.” This did little to appease Margaret’s confusion, and she actively considered the possibility that reality had yet to kick in, and this was another elaborate fantasy spurred by many months of endless tormenting loneliness. However, this possibility was gashed by the fact that the fantasy she was experiencing before The Man Who Looks Like Franklin’s arrival had actually little to do with her own husband – rather the children he helped create. This lack of tact on The Man Who Looks Like Franklin’s behalf continued to show, as he was hapless to Margaret’s mental dilemma. Instead, in a noticeable nervous tick of a gaff, he clumsily muttered an apology in the only way he could.