Weekends With GG
A Flash Fiction Story by Mickey Fisher
On Friday nights, after she finished her studies, Iona and her grandma would make Rice Krispie treats and watch movies that were a little scary but not too scary. Before they went to sleep they poured food out for the neighborhood cats in a used aluminum pie pan near the shed in the backyard and Grandma Glennis would tell her stories about them like they were her friends. One time she told Iona that she came out to the shed at night to find a huge possum waiting there and when the possum saw her coming with the bag of cat food it tried to make itself smaller and said, “Meow.”
Iona was a serious kid and GG made her laugh like nobody else could.
Saturday mornings were spent eating pancakes and reading the funny papers GG collected for her over the week. At some point GG would fix her a plate of cheese and crackers, put some cartoons on the television and go off to run errands, picking up her ‘scriptions and going to the bank. She was never alone for more than an hour but it made Iona feel grown up to have the whole house to herself at eight years old. Nobody else but GG trusted her to do that.
One Saturday while GG was out doing her errands, Iona was watching her shows in front of the TV, eating her snack, when she saw the silhouette of a man on the front porch, looking through the blinds. He couldn’t see her, at least she didn’t think he could. It wasn’t anybody she recognized, which is why it was so scary when he tried the door knob.
GG locked it before she left but then Iona saw the man walking around toward the back of the house, toward the screen door that only had a little hook latch. Quiet as she could, Iona tiptoed toward the kitchen to listen and heard him sawing through the screen with something sharp, trying to open up a hole where’s he could stick his hand through and flip up the hook.
She slipped through the basement door opposite the pantry and sneaked downstairs. She went all the way to the back wall and scrunched herself up tight, trying to make herself small enough to fit in the space between the wall and the rack of shelving where GG stored all the vegetables she’d been canning. She didn’t like it down here. The floor was unfinished, just dirt and old stone and there were too many bugs.
The man’s footsteps were heavy overhead, moving through the kitchen and the living room, stopping every now and then before they moved on again. Iona felt sick to her stomach thinking about what might happen if GG came home while he was in the house. She listened hard for the car door slam, hoping she could scream to warn GG in time.
She heard his footsteps on the stairs to the basement and realized her mistake. There was only one way out of here. If he saw her there would be no way to escape. She felt a knot growing in her throat and worried she wouldn’t be able to scream if she needed. With every step a little more of him came into view. Muddy work boots. Dirty jeans. Black gloves. He hadn’t bothered to cover his face.
He was down there with her now, rifling through the toolbox her Grandpa Jordie left behind when he died. Iona had made herself as small as possible, just like the possum, and every muscle was straining to hold her position. She couldn’t help but shift a tiny bit and her elbow accidentally nudged a jar of green beans off the shelf, sending it crashing to the floor.
The man’s head snapped around, his eyes locked onto her tiny figure, cowering in the shadows. He didn’t say anything for a moment, he just stared at her, his mind racing, trying to figure out what to do next. Then, he looked up for a moment, like he was listening for the sound of anyone who might be coming to her rescue after that crash. But there was nothing.
His eyes were bloodshot and when he finally smiled at her, his teeth were stained brown from tobacco, like Uncle Ronny. He said, “It’s all right, I’m not gonna hurt you. Come on out.”
Iona didn’t move. She couldn’t. Her body was frozen to the wall.
He said, “Come on. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
Iona swallowed the knot down. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “But you should be”
The man chuckled a wet tobacco juice chuckle, brown teeth flashing in the dark.
Then he lunged toward her to try and drag her from the hiding spot but a hand burst up from the dirt to grab the man’s leg, startling him enough that he stumbled backwards against the wall of mason jars. An arm followed the hand, then another arm, then the torso of a figure that pulled itself up through the floor, dirt and stone and bugs assembling into humanoid form. Appearing on her command, under her control. She wasn’t supposed to do this, not without GG here to guide her, but she didn’t have any other choice.
The intruder scrambled toward the stairs on all fours but her creation was too fast for him. It climbed onto the intruder’s back, wrapped one arm around the intruder’s head, the other around his neck and jerked hard in opposite directions, killing him instantly.
Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the figure disintegrated, crumbling over into little mounds of dirt that covered the man’s body and the bottom few stairs, a few potato bugs scurrying away, heading back into the corners.
GG would be home soon.
She would know what to do with his body.
They’d been through this before.
After all, this is what the studies were for.
