by Kate Sten
‘Maybe I should go see if Molly is awake now,’ I jumped off the edge of the hospital bed, creeping stealthily towards the door.
I was about to let myself out again, when I heard the sound of hurried footsteps heading my way. I wasn’t about to be caught loitering again, so I rushed back to my bed without bothering to shut the door behind me.
‘Here you go - A sketchpad and some crayons to color with!” Nurse Sanders beamed brightly from ear to ear, handing me the sketchpad and crayons.
I thanked her profusely and immediately started to scrawl some circles aloofly on the surface of the white paper in front of me.
ELEVEN
JOHN
Bandage wrapped under a plain white shirt and bottom half squeezed into a tight pair of faded jeans trousers, Molly flagged down a taxi in front of the Hospital. She had been discharged and sent on her way with not more than a couple of painkillers to dull the recurring pain from the bruising she had suffered from the accident.
The wind did her wonky frame no favors, as she was jerked sideways by the rushing gusts of air blasting her in the face. She must have been thankful that she had chosen not to wear a dress or a skirt on the day.
‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ Molly yelped, hopelessly waving both hands in the air, fighting off the rumbling winds that threatened to knock her over. ‘This wind is going to knock me for six. And I thought it was the car crash that was going to do me in.’
Her face seemed red with embarrassment and her hands pulled on the waist of the faded jeans trousers she had shoehorned herself into. She almost managed to choke back the ecstatic tears that ran down her blushing rose-red cheeks. Molly's face had morphed into a runny mess of blotched makeup and salty tears in a short space of time.
That certainly wasn’t the intended look she was going for when she left her hospital room this morning. An unreal amount of time had gone into putting every strand of hair right and concealing every patch of blemished skin on her face with the appropriate concealer - All of which had been undone by something as unpredictable as the weather forecast.
I was surprised at the amount of stuff the woman managed to cram into that handbag of hers - hair straighteners, makeup kits, deodorants, nail files, a few apples and raisins, as well as a battery charger, not to forget her big yellow hand mirror. She would not be caught dead in a box without that hand mirror. The damn thing looked more like an ancient heirloom than a fashion accessory.
The weather girl on the news had said we were in for a sunny day - That it was going to be a couple of degrees hotter without as much as a bluster in sight. Well, that soon panned out to be a story for the birds.
‘What the devil are you laughing at, you cheeky little urchin?’ Molly shook her fist at me, pretending to be extremely cross, then unexpectedly bursting into hysteric giggles. ‘You are mean to me, laughing at how tardy my makeup has gone.
‘I don’t mean to. I can't help it. You do look like a clown with all that black running down your face.’ I stretched a finger out, and pointed at Molly's messy face.
The taxi was already waiting on the kerb a few meters behind us. The driver must have noticed Molly's frantic waving.
‘Are you going someplace lady?’ The driver stuck his head out of the window, shouting a question at Molly.
‘Yes. 25 Cunningham Road, Eastwood. And please definitely no speeding. I have got a kid with me.’ Molly scowled at the driver, making sure he knew she meant every word.
With an affirmative nod, he let us in and drove off. It was a Sunday so the road wasn’t packed with too many cars. It wasn’t a very long drive because the hospital was located in a nearby town. After 30 minutes of an awkward somewhat reflective silence at the back of the taxi, we finally made it to familiar terrain.
We were back in Eastwood; back in front of our familiar black front door. Molly dragged herself out of the backseat and forced a couple of crumpled notes into the drivers outstretched hand, gleaming a bit with unprovoked smiles burnished unto her previously sullen face.
‘Come on, John. Let's get in. I could sure use something stiff to drink and not the usual orange juice they had been cramming into a paper cup for me to lap up like some sort of puppy,’ Molly carped unrelentingly about the hard time she had had to endure at the hands of the strict hospital staff.
‘I thought the orange juice was rather tasty. I wouldn't mind a few more cups of that.’ I skipped gleefully behind Molly who was tugging on the straps of her cumbersome brown leather bag.
Her lips pursed tightly and there was a brief pause before she shot me an admonishing stare, rolling her eyes dismissively at me. ‘You are just a kid, John. You'll eat anything as long as they sprinkle the sweet stuff all over it.’
With a soft hiss, Molly marched ahead of me, accelerating faster than she had done when we exited the taxi. She soon came to a halt in front of the front door, her hands freezing momentarily on the door knob.
She did not bother to fish the keys out. The door was partially open and wood chips lay on the floor. Her tone soon went from bitter to shocked and alert. ‘John, stay back. Stay out there. Do not come in until I say so.’
‘But why? Is it because there is someone in there?’ I shrugged my shoulders and attempted to stand my ground with some bold questioning.
Molly wasn’t having any indignation from me. She stooped down to my level and leaned in, with her lips close to my ears. ‘Seriously! I am not fucking around here! There could be something nasty in there. Just stand out here and keep an eye out. If you see anyone you don’t know come out of this house - Run.’
When she got zero response from me, her hands grabbed me by the arms and shook me repeatedly. ‘Do you get what I am trying to tell you? Do you get me?’
I nodded reluctantly to indicate that I understood her. With that out of the way, Molly shoved a phone into my hands and looked me straight in the eyes with earnestness in her shaky but firm voice. ‘If I am not out in five minutes, dial 999. And tell them your mommy needs help.’
‘Okay. I can do that.’ I gripped the phone tightly, as I raised my face to watch Molly disappear behind the black door.
My heart throbbed in anticipation. The world for me stood still in that moment. I looked to the skies above and saw nothing but a blanket of dark clouds masking the bright blue sky. I was hoping for at least a ray of sunlight on what seemed to be a bad week for us.
Whatever benevolent higher power that granted people gifts didn’t seem to be in the mood for dispensing such niceties on the day, granted that I thought we were more than deserving of a moment in the sun. I watched a centipede crawl over my pristine white sneakers. The murky brown on it was a sharp contrast to the immaculate ivory of my running shoes.
All of a sudden the creature had become more exciting than listening out for any signs of anything out of the ordinary. I dropped the phone and picked up the crawling bug, letting it crawl over the top of my left hand.
‘Interesting little thing aren't you? I bet you are missing the rest of your friends, or maybe you don’t have much of those - just like me,’ I sighed, with both eyes transfixed by the sheer dexterity of the centipede.
The damn thing could zig and zag. If one leg broke off, it had dozens of others just as useful to do the job of lifting its weight and getting the creature wherever it wanted to get to. And if it was in trouble it could easily fold in on itself to keep trouble out.
Trouble - That was the word that immediately made me shudder when I heard what sounded like something breakable shattering and random fading noises that sounded distressing.
What had Molly gotten herself into?
She was a woman and maybe was more frail and fragile than a fully grown man would have been. The cavalry needed to be called. So I attempted to do just that.
I dialed the number Molly had painstakingly instructed me to call. There was music in the background and then a casual male voice piped up on the other end. ‘Emergency services. How can we help?’
‘My name
is John. My mom, she went into our house and she hasn’t come out. I think she is in trouble,’ I spoke hastily into the phone.
‘Well slow down, there. You say your mother went into your house?’ The call handler responded.
‘Yes! Get somebody down here!’ I snapped impatiently at the call handler.
There was a small pause as if to gather his thoughts on the other end of the line. ‘Uh, shouldn't you go check on her first. Just to make sure this is an actual emergency.’
‘Fat load of good you are, mister. Our front door was open when we got back. There was bits of the door frame everywhere. Someone must have broken in and I think they are still there with mom,’ I rambled on in a fit of righteous rage.
‘Calm down. I will take a note of that and pass the case over to the local police in your area. Can I take an address?’ The call handler coughed, and toned down his patronizing tone realizing he was in the wrong.
‘Sure it's…’ I choked back the words into my belly when I realized that the tone had gone cold.
The phone bar was in the red and the screen was blinking blue and black and then the damn thing went dead on me. Molly was never any good at keeping her phone charged. I quickly recollected that she had earplugs in her ears. She must have drained most of the battery listening to her horrible selection of soul music.
Who listens to that mouth rinse in this day and age?
Molly sure was an old soul in some ways. She still used rollers some times and had a stamp collection which she defended feverishly whenever I attempted to abduct one of them for purely observational purposes, of course.
God forbid anyone put a smudge on her precious stamps. I didn’t get why adults kept things that they never touched or fiddled with. Where was the fun in observing things from a distance.
After several attempts to get the phone to come back on, I soon gave up on that endeavor. It had soon dawned on me that the police were not going to be arriving on the scene anytime soon. I had to intervene, or at least try to do whatever I could to help Molly be safe.
TWELVE
JOHN
I crept past the front door, finding muddy shoe tracks smeared on the rug. The tracks seemed to branch out in different directions. I was sure they weren't Molly's because we had just come from the hospital where everything was kept spotless. The intruder must have made the muddy tracks.
I was hoping for a bum and not some dangerous knife wielding psycho like the ones in the movies. I was afraid but I tried to put those feelings in a steel box. I looked all around me, listening out for the faintest sound. I couldn’t hear much. The fracas I had heard outside had disappeared. I could hear nothing but chilling silence that made the hairs on my hand elevate in deepening anticipation of something bad happening.
The dim shafts of light from outside crawled up the stairway. I wasn’t going that way. Not because I was absolutely crippled by abject terror which I obviously was, but because the muddy shoe tracks were noticeably absent from the stairs.
The muddy boot tracks were all over the place. Everywhere but the staircase. Most of the tracks seemed faded and barely visible.
‘Molly. Molly, are you okay? Where are you?’ I whispered softly, hoping for some sort of response from the woman I had come to see as some sort of mother.
There was no sound. Nothing at all. A shiver ran through me when I saw a can of beans roll straight out of the kitchen. The door on the fridge was left open at a weird angle. Neither I nor Molly ever left the fridge door open. It was something that Molly absolutely hated. She was fanatical about not letting germs into our usually neat and tidy fridge.
I looked straight ahead to where the can had rolled from and swallowed down a lump of warm saliva. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find in there. The lights were on in the kitchen but I couldn’t see anybody in there from where I was stood, reluctant to enter the kitchen space.
A fresh track of shoe prints stopped right in front of the fridge. I had observed that the moment I stepped into the kitchen space. I slowly attempted to close the fridge when I felt something slightly heavy crash into me, knocking me flat on my back. I soon felt a grip restrain both of my hands.
‘No! Get off me! Get of me!’ I screamed attempting to slap away my assailant.
‘Stop fighting. It is just me,’ A familiar soft reassuring voice whispered in my ear.
It was Molly. Her hair was in my face and her weight was crushing me underneath her. She had boxed me into a tight spot underneath her. It was only when I looked up that I saw the lanky frame of a scruffy-looking man with dopey brown eyes and a sock cap wrapped loosely over his receding hairline. The sweater that was on him was at least three times his size and the shoes on his feet were stained brown and in tatters.
‘Your food is crap. Now I want your money to makeup for what my taste buds have had to endure on account of you stocking up your fridge with a load of horseshit,’ The gaunt, scruffy man scowled, as he emerged from the dark corner beside the open fridge, pointing a small partially concealed weapon at Molly and me.
‘I don’t have much in my handbag. But you are welcome to keep the change.’ Molly offered, brazenly pointing a finger at the scruffy man. ‘And could you please point that thing somewhere else. You're scaring my boy.’
The scruffy man tossed the bag at Molly with repulsion on his face. ‘I don’t want your chump change. I want what is on your card. You are going to make a big withdrawal today.’
‘I am sure your mom must be so proud of you!’ Molly spat some sarcastic bile at the scruffy man knowing that was the best she could do.
He had the weapon. She did not. The ace was up his sleeves and she could only come along for the ride willingly or not. The menacing grin on the face of the man holding us hostage did a good job of conveying that message. Playing along with the script, Molly got up, pressed both hands on my shoulders and guided me out of the front door. The scruffy guy stood beside Molly pointing the bulging object beneath his tired coat which hung loosely over his faded sweater at her back. ‘No sudden moves and don’t even think of doing anything out of character to draw attention to yourself. Because that can only end badly for you and your little runt.’
‘Charmer, aren't you? I take it you don’t have any kids?’ Molly asked inquisitively, casting firm aspersions at him.
‘Why do you think I am doing this? For the pigging fun of it?’ The scruffy man swirled some spit around in his mouth and volleyed its contents into a nearby storm drain. ‘I have got three of those. My pigging wife is a breeder, that one. I freaking hate the little roaches. Good for nothing but whining and bleeding your pockets dry.’
The streets weren't empty. There were a handful of people crisscrossing the roads, heading for nearby shops before the 4 pm closure time. We just brushed past them like nothing had happened and we were just a regular family doing regular stuff and walking down the road like everybody else.
This guy seemed to know what he was doing. There wasn’t a slight hint of panic on his face. He was unnervingly calm about the whole stickup thing, granted that he wasn’t the one on the receiving end of that proverbial stick. I was kind of hoping his casual approach would blow back in his face. The arrogance of him - invading our home and wanting to take what was ours.
Who the hell was he? The temerity! The fucking balls on him!
Had I been any bigger I would have struck him in the face, right on his narrow chin and damned the consequences of my actions. We did not deserve to be herded around to the collection point like some sort of utterly hapless sheep. Meekness wasn’t something that sat well with me. It was taking all of my willpower not to do something that would totally have escalated the situation.
I was warm blooded and short fused in my defense of Molly. She knew this to be true which is why she had me at arm's reach, where I could easily be put straight.
Why was I such a guard dog when it came to Molly?
Maybe it was because most of the good memories I had were made with her, and she had s
omehow been inserted in the giant hole where a mother, or father should have been. Or maybe she was an acquired taste which had grown comfortably on me. My eyes burned with fury at the lanky man in the mucky sweater, as he frogmarched us to the ATM in front of Red Harry's convenience store.
‘Kid stays with me. Just in case you decide to get smart with me.’ The scruffy man tore me away from Molly's grip, giving her little opportunity for protest.
‘Okay. Okay. I will get you some damn money. Just don’t hurt him.’ Molly winced, blinking intermittently as she looked back to catch a full glimpse of me.
A couple walked by and paused to take a second glance at us. The old man with his head under a safari hat wanted to approach us. He seemed chipper and in a good mood. His hands were stuck in his pocket suggesting that he must have wanted some cash out of the ATM.
Fortunately or unfortunately for us the old geezer didn’t have his card on him and briskly turned his back to us and dragged his wife along. The old woman in his company didn’t seem keen on letting him take the lead.
‘Shut up and stick that card in already! Jesus Christ, woman! Did you hear me stutter about wanting some real cash?’ The cool persona evaporated from the scruffy man, and a more febrile interior started to creep up to the surface, as he pressed tighter on my arm.
He pressed so tight that I swear I felt him squeeze the bone beneath my skin. I wanted to scream in agony. I wanted to bring the roof down and hope to God that it all collapsed on him. But I looked at the grim constipated look on Molly's face and decided otherwise. I choked down the screams, held them back, and let warm tears rush down my face instead.
‘Looks like the kid has more common sense than you.’ The scruffy man slapped me over the head, grinning mischievously at Molly, almost goading her to do something about it if she could. ‘Certainly not a squealer, this one.’
