Devils in the Details
- This is a fictional short story that was first written for a prompt for LiveJournal and I received a lot of comments for. I wrote this many years ago.
By: Gia Volterra de Saulnier
March 7, 2014
She sat quietly in her rocking chair knitting away. Each time her needles clicked, the rocking chair moved back and forth. Her cat was curled up on the other chair which was covered with his black hair; he looked up at her and yawned to show his white shiny sharp teeth.
“Yep, cat, this is the life, ain’t it?” she sighed back at him, and he just stared back at her, and went back to sleep again.
Needles clicking softly, the rocking chair moving back and forth, back and forth.
Ring, Ring — — — -Ring, Ring — — — -Ring, Ring — -went the telephone in the other room. The old woman with the dark eyes and white haired bun that was on the top of her small head, looked at the cat, and sighed knowing full well the cat couldn’t answer it, and she didn’t exactly have that thing called voice mail. “I’m a comin’, I’m a comin’”, she said loudly as she put her needles down into her knitting bag along with the gray yarn she was working with and went to answer the phone.
“Yes, hello?” she said as loudly as she could. “What? Hold on honey, I gotta get my hearing aid in.” She put the receiver down, and put her hearing aids into her hairy ears. “Hello, oh hello honey, sorry ‘bout that, I can’t hear nothin’ without my hearing aids.”
“That’s okay, ma’am, nothing to be sorry about,” said a nice young male voice from the other line. He sounded young anyway you never did know how old they were. “I’m from the Boom Broom Bust the Dust Company, and we were wondering if you needed to have someone come to your house to clean it up for you, the cost is so low, it’s too good to pass up.”
She looked around at her much disheveled house; there was dust everywhere, cat hair everywhere and a lot of dirty dishes piled up. She knew that this kind offer was too good to pass up.
“Yep, I could use a good cleanin’” she paused slightly and then said, “But I don’t have much money.”
“Well, how much do you have?” The young man answered greedily, hungry for a sale, a chance to show what his new company could do for this nice old lady.
The old woman smiled, she knew that she had him on the hook now. They fall for it every time, she thought, paused again, took a deep breath and said “Oh I got enough to live on, if that’s what you mean.” she said in a hushed tone.
“Uh, I didn’t mean anything by it, really, I didn’t…” he sounded apologetic now, “I could give you a good discount of cleaning your entire house for just $100.00.”
The old woman looked at her cat, her open smile showed she was missing numerous teeth but the kindness was still there, and answered the young man “Well, I don’t have even that much, how about you come over here, and we’ll talk about it when you get here. My address is 666 Church Lane. Do you know where that is?” She put on her sweetest voice when she got this far.
“Um Yes, ma’am, I think I do, isn’t that down the street from Saint Anthony’s Church?” he said trying not to sound too greedy, too snarly, and too cunning.
“Why yes, that’s right, the church is on the corner, and I’m the little gray house on the left.” She smiled again. She knew that she had him on his toes, his grandma or momma must have taught him some manners. She smiled knowing that she was going to have more company, more than just the old cat.
“Sure, I know it well, I can be there with my crew in about an hour or so.” he said as gently as he could. He knew that he would have to call all the guys to tell them that they had their first sale! He was so proud of getting this lead all by himself, even though they had told him to be careful.
“A crew?” she was curious now, “How many folks are in your crew? You never mentioned nothin’ about a crew.”
The young man hesitated for a minute to count “Oh, there’s just 6 of us all together, all of us went in on this business, and here we are now.” He was so proud of his friends that he knew since High School, they had been buddies from the get go. He also knew that they would be ecstatic to hear that they had just landed this potential lead, the potential to really show the world what they could do for the community.
6 young men, wow that is good she thought to herself. “That ain’t a problem with me, do you all like cookies? I can bake up a quick batch right now.”
“That’s too nice of you really, sure, I guess we could use some cookies, I’ll tell the guys.” he said.
“Alright” she said, “I just need to know your names when you come to the door, so I can let you in.”
“Sure, I’m Joe, and I’ll have Frank, Pete, Mike, Tim, and Arthur.” he said, “We’ll be there in an hour or so.”
“Okay, I’ll be here.” she said and hung up the phone and went to the kitchen to start making her cookies.
The old woman smiled at the cat, and sat back in her chair. The cat looked up at her with his curious look to him.
She smiled back at her furry friend and said…”Don’t worry cat, I’ll come up with better names than just Cat to keep you company. We just have to wait an hour for them to get here.”
She then went back to her knitting, rocking on her chair back and forth, back and forth. He curled up and went back to sleep, knowing full well he had made the same mistake last year.
-Fin-
