About the Old Lady Next Door
A microfiction tale about an old lady next door in imaginative ways to overcome adversity.
My neighbour is an old lady, a one of her kind species who spews as she sows. She sows seeds of division to confuse your bearings. She spits words of flames to spite, and weaves webs to spin you around, and around. Now, I love a good story if it is as good as I can tell. And, so I say,
If you were quick like me, you’d know, to get out of her way, before
she sets her dingoes loose on the town.
I found her in my bedroom one day sniffing about. Looking for tidbits of information — to further her plans for world annihilation. Her bottom was up in the air, her scraggy head bent under the desk. Her awkward spine displayed in a wicked twist.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
She stood up clumsily and fidgeted with her uneasy apron. She turned on her heels and clasped her hands together in prayer style. Gnarled fingers to fingers but nothing there to beguile.
“I’m merely tidying up after you, my child”, she said
with an unabashed frown.
From the corner of my eye, I’d catch her eyeballing me up and down. Sometimes, when she thought no one was looking, she’d fiddle with boxes of matchsticks to muck me about.
She sends shivers shimmering over the cold of my skin. And, when our eyes meet, small black obsidians stare right into my soul, searing her brand of life philosophy, threatening me with her ghoul.
Often frightened, what do I do but run and hide under layers and layers of rough blankets like a mouse who has just lost all the cheese.
Forty years later, I run into my neighbour at a next-door party. She glared at me at first before letting on a toothless snarky grin, snaking slowly across her sallow countenance.
“Where do you hail from, you mighty queen?” She gestures towards the doorway wanting to lure me into yet another of her sanctimonious tricks.
This time, I did not give her the opportunity to complete that round-the-world smirk. I grabbed the nearest broom to the door and swept her off her feet. She took a tumble and dropped a heartbeat.
Not wanting to wait until the end to see what might have happened, I lifted my pen and took a giant leap.
