by T J Price
Porchester was asleep.
And now Carla was afraid.
She had been disappointed that he wasn’t awake!
But having the kid unconscious should have been ideal. It meant she didn’t have to go through the motions of paying it any attention.
What the fuck’s going on?
She went up to the cot and looked down at the child. Her heart shot into her mouth.
It had happened again – that unaccountable shift in reality, when for a second or two the little fellow didn’t look like a bag of cash.
She shrank away and stood for a while, uncertain about what to do next. Glancing at the clock on her bedside table she saw that soon Porchester would need feeding. That was something to grab onto. When the kid started screaming to be fed she would soon get back to wanting to sell it.
She went downstairs to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Still troubled, she returned to the shop, so as to finish the pruning.
She came to an abrupt halt in front of the trestle.
The secateurs were gone!
Carla stifled a scream, whirled round and backed against the trestle, making it scrape over the tiled floor.
The shop was profoundly quiet. The thick, glossy foliage of the Green drooped before her in slumbering menace. One sinister shape laid over another to create a dark, feral core. Juliet was in there, she knew – watching.
Sweat stung Carla’s skin like needles. She threw the shop door a glance and judged she could reach it in a couple of bounds. The cluster of palms at the window were too thick to allow an easy ambush. She could just make it. With any luck.
Carla, snorting ragged breaths through her nostrils, forced herself to move. She began to shuffle, one foot after the other, edging bit by bit towards . . . the counter!
She almost wept at her stupidity. Some nightmarish and perverse instinct was driving her to protect Porchester. The rational part of her mind was begging her to forget the money and save her life instead. To no avail. She kept going, back and back and back – into the jaws of death. At every step she expected the steel blades to flash out of the green and sink themselves into her exposed and helpless flesh. As she neared the last of the larger palms, where concealment was still possible, the attack seemed inevitable. By then, Carla could only just about stand up, let alone walk.
A palm frond shook. She screeched. All at once she could move again. She broke for the counter.
Where Juliet was waiting for her.
The madwoman leapt from behind the cash register, one arm scything through the air with the secateurs. Carla felt a deep, electric shock of pain pierce her left shoulder and she screamed. Juliet raised the secateurs again. Carla pushed herself away from the counter and staggered backwards, coming to a stop as terror and shock drained the last of her will power.
Juliet contemplated her from behind the counter, the secateurs frozen above her head. For a single moment her livid face flickered with horror . . . then it was gone, leaving nothing but an insane rage.
She charged.
Paralysed, Carla watched Juliet bound through the gap in the opened counter. In the same instant there was a hollow thump as her foot caught the tub of fertiliser that Carla kept forgetting to move from the entrance to the counter and, in a comical succession of slow, clumsy movements, Juliet sank down and hit the floor with a loud slap.
The secateurs clattered from her hand.
Carla looked down at Juliet, prone and face-down at her feet and without having to think about it she plucked up one of the largest potted roses from the trestle and positioned it above the back of Juliet’s skull. A sob of utter despair rose up from below and Juliet began to stir. Carla let the pot go.
There was a dull explosion. Shards of ceramic flickered in all directions and a cloud of fine compost enveloped Juliet’s head and shoulders.
Her body jerked, shuddered and was still.
Carla kicked the tub of fertilizer out of the way and pulled Juliet along the floor till she had got her out of sight, behind the counter. Next she secured Juliet’s arms and legs with gaffer tape – she kept a roll on a shelf under the till – and added a strip across her mouth, being careful to avoid blocking the thin nostrils of Juliet’s aristocratic nose. She didn’t want a death on her hands. And anyway, there was no way Juliet’s family would hire Romance to provide the flowers for her funeral. Even so, the notion tickled her and Carla couldn’t help chuckling to herself as she dragged Juliet out into the hallway of the house. From there, at least, the customers wouldn’t be able hear Juliet’s muffled groans when she woke up.
Only now did she call the police. She explained there had been at incident at Romance, the florist’s shop and hung up. She saw no reason to answer any questions straight away when she would only have to answer them all over again down at the cop station.
Besides, she could hear Porchester crying.
She hastened upstairs into her room and picked him up. ‘There, there,’ she murmured, ‘don’t cry.’
She smiled down at him, cradled in her arms, and, in that unguarded moment of relief, the last of her resistance melted away.
‘Alright,’ she laughed. It was perhaps her first spontaneous laugh in years. ‘You can stick around . . . ’ A cloud darkened her heavyset features. ‘But only if we change your name – I’m not having somebody called Porchester staying under my roof!’
End
Thanks for reading.
Juliet and Philip have their own version of events -- it's called, The Other Side of Nomance and hopefully it'll appear this winter.
Also on Smaswords, A Date in Winter, a short collection of short verse.
Something I've already published (with Untreed Reads) is called Postmodern Medicine. This is a review, if you're curious: http://www.nightowlscifi.com/nor/Reviews/Josie-reviews-Postmodern-Medicine-by-Trevor-Price.aspx
If you'd like to say hello -- treforjohnprice AT gmail DOT com