Chapter 7: If You Don't Mind

By Allen Frost


Frances woke up without moving. Crows were squawking outside her window behind the blue flowered curtains, but her eyes wandered down her bare leg thrown out of the covers. She noticed the long thin red scrape and began to wonder. She slowly wriggled her toes. The nails were dark with dirt underneath, the skin of her feet stained green yellow and stuck with leaves of grass. The crows all at once flapped in a clatter. A wing bumped the glass as they left cawing away.
Her arm was heavy to move, to bend to her face so she could look at her curved fingers. They too were scratched and soiled, as if she’d been running on all fours in the middle of the night. She sighed, tried to breath in the new day without too much pain in her ribs. “Ohhh…” she moaned as she noticed the state of her room.
The door was bucked off its hinges. A force stronger than the metal latch had snapped it free. Everything in her bedroom had been friction bent by that whirlwind. What remained of yesterday’s purple blouse was a rip of cloth looped around her left wrist. She shook it off. It was the moon at fault, it was the full white face of it howling from space that had done this to her again…another werewolf night…
It was like the first breath of being returned to life. She pushed herself to move off her bed with that same slide out of darkness she knew from time and again. Where had she been, what had happened? She slipped a bathrobe on. Her memory painted fierce images. Was she on someone’s lawn, was it the park? She tried to fight the fog to figure out where she had been. Lots of trees. Not much ground cover, it had been gnawed away to the dirt. She padded across it. When she got to a tall chain link fence, she easily climbed over it to the other side. That was all for memories.
A gray violet morning light flooded the hallway behind the splintered door. It was quiet. She stepped around the door and onto the panels of daylight falling in from the kitchen windows. She looked down the hall. The front door was closed. It was quiet but she couldn’t help feeling like she was being rolled along tighter in a spider’s web.
The kitchen clock tick-tocked above the stove. Spring leaves swayed on the branches beyond the window. The screen was open, she could hear a mourning dove breezing on a wire across the street. Something scratched the linoleum floor under the table. Frances shot a look at it, suddenly saw the claws curl up, the panting big teeth, glinting eyes and dark fur.
She was so relieved by the friendly sight she cried out his name, “Agnew!”
The dog whined and scratched and licked at her hand.
“Oh Agnew. Good old Agnew.” The gangster’s dog had been with her ever since their escape from the candy shop. He had kept her safe from police and crime all this time. She patted him gratefully. “I’ll get you some breakfast Agnew. I could use some tea, I don’t know about you.” She opened the cupboard door and jumped at the face looking back.
It was herself reflecting from the shiny tin surface of a can on the shelf. For a second though, she had seen a fanged beast. “I’m a little scared still,” she tried to laugh, explaining to him, “Last night was another full moon.”
She took down the can, placed it on the counter and opened it for him. Agnew remained under the table, the same place he would crawl when there was thunder or fireworks on the 4th of July. She tipped half the food onto a blue and white china plate set gently down by the chrome leg of a chair. “There you go.”
Some music would be nice, that might go a long way towards making her feel better. First some water in the pan to get the tea going. After the pan was filled and put on the gas burner, Frances reached and switched on the wooden radio. It took a moment to warm and turn gold.
Instead of music the station chattered with news of the attack downtown. The radio panicked and shrieked voices who had seen it happen, it was war, it had to be! In one quick spin like a safecracker she wheeled the dial out of there and it hit on the sound she had been looking for. Cornelius Barter played ‘It Never Entered My Mind.’ The trumpet poured it out sad like some dented flower.
When the song was over, Frances was staring into the iris of a boiling silver pan of water. The announcer rattled to the microphone. “And Cornelius Barter will be playing tonight at the Lucky Note. That’s set for an eight o’clock show. As far as I know that’s still going to happen. Cornelius Barter in town tonight. So…Let’s…Uh, let’s play another cut. If you don’t mind.”