Ring Tossed by Kris P. Kreme
Facing tight budgets, a young married couple is struggling to make rent When Grace is told by her husband Norman that she could cut and sell her beautiful hair, she refuses to consider it.
Faced with either sweet talking the creepy old lech of a building manager or going to the local shelter to see about cutting costs with donations, Grace knows the easy answer.
But can she really pawn the fancy man’s ring she finds mistakenly in one of the bins… or will this ring forever change her life due to a curse that makes her do and become what she most fears?
Cutting her hair would have been decent, but decent isn’t an option after getting Ring Tossed.
Every marriage comes with difficult choices, but Grace never imagined that in her early years of marriage she would seriously be facing the choice of selling her hair to make ends meet.
At the age of 22, she knows she was probably fast to jump into marriage, yet Grace has always been determined and she is determined to make ends meet after the plant cuts back on her husband Norman’s hours, leaving them dangerously close to not making this month’s rent.
Faced with such a dire situation, Norman gives Grace the idea of selling her luscious silky long blonde hair for human wigs, a company willing to pay $300 for hair like hers. Yet it’s far too important to her to even consider, but equally as unattractive is the alternative Norman mentions, sweet talking their creepy perv of a building manager, Mr. Jelleti, to get an extension on rent until the end of the month.
Faced with either flirting and trying to get any help from Jelleti or cutting her beautiful hair and selling it, Grace isn’t at all seeing an easy solution, until she has one last possible thought, that maybe they can cut all their other expenses by getting some freebies from the shelter down the street.
As an admittedly poor young couple with little to nothing in savings, Norman and Grace qualify for free clothes, canned goods, and more occasionally, and Grace has always liked Miss Pauline, the sweet older woman who frequently volunteers there. Maybe, just maybe she can cut their expenses somehow enough to get through this month… even if that leaves next month and the month after still questionable.
And so while Norman heads off to work what little hours the plant will give him, Grace heads off to the shelter, hoping that having to even let Mr. Jelleti ogle her as she leaves and returns will be worth it since she ultimately won’t have to flirt her way into asking him for a favor with rent.
Sifting through the bins, Grace finds possible work shirts for Norman, maybe even some rather snug but workable clothes for her, and when the dim lighting shimmers on something in the side of one of the bins, Grace discovers… the ring.
It’s an unusual ring, only in that it’s definitely not costume jewelry like most rings she has ever seen, and it’s definitely out of place in the women’s bin. A man’s ring, silver on each side of a black section, a wide band, too large for her fingers.
Holding it up, Grace wonders… not if Norman would like it, certainly not about wearing it herself, but she wonders… would a pawn shop possibly pay decent money for something like this?
It’s hard to consider doing such a thing since she knows she probably should find Miss Pauline and turn it in. Maybe it was accidentally dropped, maybe it isn’t even a donation. And yet there in her fingers is the possible solution to their situation, the answered prayer so to speak, an expensive looking ring that can maybe even get them enough to be good until Norman gets his hours increased or she finds a decent job herself.
After dropping off her donations, Grace is out the door, doing her best to ignore and push past Mr. Jelleti, the creepy middle-aged Italian that runs the building and mostly leers at tenants like her. She’s at the nearest pawn shop, having never even put the ring down… and that is when everything begins to go wrong.
First her hand seems to have a mind of its own, refusing to let the pawn broker get a decent look at it, and then after he walks off to let her decide if she is serious about selling a voice speaks… a voice only Grace can hear.
This is more than a very special ring; it’s cursed, and upon pressing bare flesh to it, merely her fingertips, Grace has taken upon herself that curse.
Thinking herself crazy, Grace finds she can’t let go of the ring, can’t consider so much as even dropping it. All she can do is hold the ring and fulfill what the curse requires of her, which according to the voice of the ring is to become what she fears most, to do what she least wants to do.
And so there she stands, scissors in hand, her body not hers to control, but just what is it that Grace fears most, what is it that she can never imagine doing? Is it really cutting her gorgeous long hair… or is it something much more seductively sinister?
A brand new series emerges from deep within the mind of The Kreme, a series that will from time to time follow the journey of a cursed ring, cursed to forever make its wearer or possessor become something they never imagined, someone they never fathomed being, doing things they would never consider doing just to release the ring onto whoever should find it next.
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