wulfcade
She wouldn't look at me and she kept humming that damn lullaby, her greasy hair sticking to her cheek. She jerked her head and her hair covered her face like a shiny curtain. She picked at her toenail, jabbed her thumb into the corner of her big toe, made it bleed. I sat in the corner, the phone in my hand, the doctor's number dialed. The green send button blinked up at me. I remained frozen and watched her rock back and forth.
He taught me to always know my exit before conning someone, but don't let them see your eye on the door. He taught me a lot... so why was I the one in the cell, while he drove south with my money? Oh, this wasn't over. Far from it.
It was almost too much, entering that house again, the ceiling lined with bones like a ribcage. She must polish them to make them shine so. The young man stepped closer to the light of her fire, a musty low pit in the center of the dirt floor. She gazed at him from behind her damp fringe of hair. "Whaaat is it you require?" A hiss from the dark gape of her toothless mouth. He swallowed, and held out his payment, a fine crystal dagger, his only family heirloom, and prayed it was enough to barter for his beloved's life.
But it wouldn't be enough. It never is in these kinds of tales...
His eyes were tearing up from the hours spent staring at the buzzing screen. He rubbed at them, and then scowled when the console fritzed. Slapping a hand on the side of the screen, he prayed that he'd get the signal back. He heard the screeching start up outside his bunker. He didn't let his imagination linger on what was out there; the door was still strong enough to keep his fears at bay. Instead, he hunkered down back into his blanket, popped the tab on another beer, and continued his waiting for a response from any soul still living out there.
The mother didn't trust her eyes as she watched the florescent wisp of light lure her daughter to the edge of the garden. There was a hole in the fence the mother had never noticed before. The daughter's blond hair disappeared into the hole, after the flitting light. The mother dropped her dish towel, hands dripping, and rushed for the door. But it was far too late for her shouting to be of much use.
"Why do you bother washing this damn thing?" My neighbor from two lots down stared with his cigarette shot eyes at me as I blasted the side of my home with a hose. "Why not?" I retorted, not wanting an answer. He flicked a butt into my garden, a meager but beautiful strip of dirt that wrapped around the back of my trailer. It landed between my rose bush and the marigolds. Without hesitation, I turned the hose on him.
Strumming away, he heard the curious tones of an answering hum. Blue eyes met brown across the empty cafe, the one his uncle owned and that he liked to hide in after hours. The other boy smiled, sweetly, mischievously. He put his guitar down and went to greet this stranger, whose smile was so inviting, and whose laughter he was waiting to fall in love with.
He had two friends: Mr. Probation Officer and Lt. Whiskey. Mr. PO ordered him around far more than the Lt. And yet he always felt it was his duty to listen when the Lt. made his meager demands of him. 12 bucks at the gas station and 30 minutes in the bathroom were fair trade for the rewards Lt. Whiskey bestowed on his chest. A sharp pinch and that shiny badge the Lt. wanted him to display was worth more to him than any plastic coin in his pocket could ever be.
I can't do anything but watch as my mother dissolves into the bedsheets, hair tangled up in liquor bottles, shiny bottle caps dangling from her ears, ripped up doctor appointment cards serving as ash trays. My mother isn't loud or screaming or hysterical or frantic or condemning or present at all really. She's simply fading away into her hazy dream, not seeing me with her glassy midnight eyes.
The mutt’s leg is caught in a trap, twisted, bloody. He snarls and snaps. The hunter doesn’t know how to help, especially with his kid off aways behind a tree. He sighs. Contemplates. A blow to knock him out? Too risky, getting close to those teeth. A shot to put him out of his misery? Too severe, and he doesn’t want his son to look at him the way he did when he flushed that goldfish. Finally, he rashly jabs his foot down on the hinge of the trap; it springs, releasing the mangled leg. Before he can react, the dog is off, painting a bloody trail behind it.
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