Dinner is cancelled

It was either a pill or a piece of candy. Or it was Donny’s missing eye.

I was hoping for the pill or candy.

If it was the eye … Well, Mitzi the cat had it and was swatting it around the room as if it were a pinball and her paws were flippers.

She scrambled after it through the living room and out and down the hall.

“What the hell’s that sound?” Donny moaned. “I can’t see damn anything.”

“You’ve still got your other eye,” I said.

“So what? I’m distracted. You try having a hole in your face.”

“I do. It’s called a mouth.” I thought I was pretty funny. Donny didn’t.

“Piss off,” he muttered.

Our banal conversation was then interrupted by the most blood-chilling scream I’ve ever heard, better than Janet Leigh in Psycho. It was followed by a string of short shrieks, like telegraph talk, all from the kitchen.

It was Helen. The cat had made it to where she was cooking and, judging by her reaction, I figured it wasn’t candy or a pill that the cat had.

“I think we found your eye,” I said.

Her face contorted with panic, Helen entered the room and began to sputter.

“The cat! The cat! Do you know what …?”

She glanced at Donny and released another of her screams. Briefly, I wondered if there was any Hollywood money to made from those screams. They were awfully darned good.

“My God! What happened to your face?”

Pointing at me, Donny answered, “Numb nuts here came up behind me and gave me one of those ‘hey buddy!’ slaps on the back. Except he confused my back with a brick wall. He hit me so hard my damn eye popped out!”

“It couldn’t have been in there very firmly …” I spoke a bit sheepishly. I did hit him a little harder than I’d intended.

“Well the bloody cat’s got it!” Helen said. “What are you going to do about it?”

She looked straight at me. She was not smiling.

The awkward moment was disturbed by an odd noise – almost like a rattling combined with a strange swishing sound. We all turned as Mitzi suddenly shot through the room, batting the eye back and forth. She moved like a manic cue ball, her direction constantly changing as she veered at new and sharp angles.

“Well!?” Helen glared at me.

Trying to catch a wound-up cat is like trying to nail down a politician’s commitment. It can be done, but not easily and it usually requires aggressive tactics.

“Where’s the gun?” I asked.

Almost like a chorus, Donny and Helen both said, “Gun?” They looked appalled.

“I’m not going to shoot the damn cat! But a shot, a little above it, into the wall … well, that’ll freak it out and it will forget the eye. She’ll probably scoot out of the room like greased lightning. Then we just get the eye.”

“And the wall?” Helen wondered.

“Small stuff. Bit of plaster, bit of paint. It’ll be good as new. Now where’s that gun?”

Normally, I don’t think there is any way Helen would have agreed to this. But the cat was now behind the sofa and we could all hear the rattling of the eye on the hardwood as she played with it and that was a little unnerving. Just the thought gave you a kind of unsettled feeling.

So Helen went and got the gun.

Looking back, I suppose Donny probably should have been the one to use it since I’d never fired one in my life. (You know, those things have a heck of a kick back on them. A person doesn’t always consider things like that, but they probably should.)

Donny, of course, was missing an eye. Still, he was use to firing the gun as a one-eyed man. But the fact that one socket was empty just made it seem wrong for him to be handling a gun. So it naturally fell to me.

Naturally, but not necessarily wisely.

Helen came back with it and handed it to Donny, who did something to it (I’m not sure what – I don’t know much about these things). Then he held it out for me.

“Okay,” he said. “Just there, over the couch where Helen’s taking that picture down.”

“Hang on!” Helen said and quickly took down a framed family picture then quickly ran back beside Donny, who said, “Right about where the picture was. Then we can cover up whatever mess you make with the picture again. It’s high enough you won’t hurt the cat but it should scare the crap out of her.”

“Brilliant,” I said, taking the gun.

I held it up. I put some pressure on the trigger and immediately saw it would require more than I’d anticipated. I planted my feet, aimed again, then squeezed.

The gun went off. I didn’t hit the wall. I wasn’t sure what I’d hit. The kick back had spun and flattened me. Had my right arm not been firmly attached to me shoulder, it probably would have been flung into the next block. There was a scream (Helen, I assumed) and a bestial howl (the cat?). Something shot out from behind the sofa and fled the room.

“Holy shit!” Donny shouted. “You ever fire one of those?”

A little groggily, from the floor I said, “Nope.”

“What did you hit? I can’t see where the bullet went.”

I sat up. “I’m not sure.”

Helen went over to the sofa and looked behind it. “Oh shit,” she breathed.

“What is it?”

“You hit the eye!”

“The eye?”

“Yes! It’s a mess back here. And there’s a hole in the molding along the wall. And blood. You must have hit the cat too … Oh my God!”

“What? What?”

“There’s a piece of Mitzi’s paw here! Or maybe that’s her tail …”

It hadn’t gone the way I had planned, yet I felt there was an upside. I rose to my feet and said, “Let’s look at the positives. We wanted to get the cat away from the eyeball and we did. We wanted the shot to be somewhere easily hidden – what could be better than behind the sofa where no one can see it?”

Angrily, Donny said, “And my eye’s gone! And my damn cat’s dead!”

“Oh, she’s not dead,” I said. “I’m sure that was her tearing out of the room.”

“Look at my sofa,” Helen said.

“What about the sofa?” I asked.

“How do you think the bullet got behind it? It went through it!”

I nodded. “Yes, that would make sense.”

“Get out,” she said – calmly, but there’s always something worrisome about Helen’s calm voice.

“Yes, get out,” Donny agreed. “Dinner, for you, is off. Just get the hell out of our house.”

I didn’t think it was the most hospitable treatment but I made allowances. I could see where they might be a bit upset by the day’s events. Besides, my nose was telling me something was burning in the kitchen so I guessed I wouldn’t be missing much.

“Alrighty, then. I’ll be off.” I made my way to the front door and gave them both a wave. “Maybe next week then. By the way, Donny? You’ll want to do something about that.” I pointed to his face. “You don’t want to be going into the office looking like that. You know how people are – staring and so on. And really, you look like one of those zombie guys from the movies. It gives me the creeps …”

“Get out! Get out of our house!”

Despite the hostility, I gave them a smile as I shut the door and left.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #34.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories

The porcelain urns

The sound it made when it broke proclaimed the sudden turn my life would take. Though not sounding anything like a starter’s pistol it managed to convey the same sense – begin. Now!

Through the window I could see the sky graying with clouds. The air surrounding me was becoming thicker, heavy with increasing humidity and the assurance of rain.

The streets grew quiet.

The world stilled with a sense of premonition.

The silence of anticipation was broken only by the soft tread of Beth’s footsteps coming down the hall.

I thought I heard a faint roll of thunder but could not be sure if it was really there or just my anxious imagination.

When the door opened I turned and watched as she stepped into the room.

Her shriek was like a quickly jabbed dagger into my skull. Or perhaps it was more like the sharp thrust of knitting needles into my ears. Yes, it was like that.

“What have you done?” she then whispered, staring with horrified fascination at the ruined antique porcelain urn, one of a pair. The other contained the ashes of her father. It rested above the fireplace on the mantle. The one I had broken was intended for her mother who lay peacefully at the funeral home.

There was little I could say so I answered simply. “I broke it.”

“How …?”

“I was just holding it. Looking at the detail and it … it fell.”

Thick angry drops of water began slamming into the window, slowly at first as the rain began, then the downpour came and with it the claps of furious thunder.

She looked at me and I was surprised by her expression. It wasn’t the anger I had expected. It was fear. She was terrified of something.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done.”

I nodded and said, “Yes. I think I do. These are very expensive urns and I’ve broken one. And making it worse, they were a pair and were meant to hold your father and mother’s ashes. So I do realize …”

An enormous crash of thunder interrupted me and as it faded a sharp crack came from the mantle.

Both of us turned to the fireplace. It was as if time had been stilled. The other urn had a crack running almost right down its centre. It remained that way a moment then a large piece dropped from it, shattering on the floor, and the ashes of her father spilled out.

“Oh God!” she cried. “It’s him!”

“What him?” I asked stupidly.

“Him!” she shouted as the window suddenly exploded with a monstrous gust of wind. Glass showered me and I fell to the ground bleeding.

The wind died almost immediately and the skies quieted into a steady rain. As I rose to my feet I saw her, akimbo and face up on the floor, five shards of glass lodged in her, including one in her neck from where the majority of the blood was spilling.

The look of fear and horror remained on her face.

Then there was another, different crash. The larger portion of her father’s urn had tumbled off the mantle and shattered. Somehow it had broken amid the pieces of the urn I had broken earlier. The two, in breaking, had mingled and it would be impossible to separate them, or put them back together.

Just as it would be impossible to ever breathe life back into Beth, who had no urn of her own.

(This was for Flash Fiction Friday #32.)

Tag: Fiction, Flash fiction, Sunday stories