Pint-Sized Stories

April 29, 2017
The Brew Cafe & Bar
Collective Arts Local Press Cider

Ah, there’s an excellent candidate. I think I’ll choose them. There are so many more of them now; the famine I was raised in has become no more than a painful memory. I nearly starved when I was young. These families didn’t even exist in my day.

Yes, I think it will be them.

The little girl whose game bleeps and bloops far too loudly will be exquisite. Her yelling, “I wanna smoooothie! I wanna smoooothie!”, at the waiter, promises to be the most delectable icing on that meaty little cake.

Her snot-nosed brother repeatedly kicking the banquette with his light-up shoes, his blatant lack of manners; he will be a lip-smackingly, bone-crunchingly tasty, amuse-bouche.

Their Lulu capri wearing, size three yoga-latte mother will, no doubt, get caught in my fangs or my throat, but her overly-indulgent lack of parenting skills will make the choking worth-while.

Fat dad, asking pointless questions, just to hear his own voice, will be greasy and awful. His basketball shorts and chicken legs will wreak aboslute havoc on my acid reflux, but it will be a risk worth taking.

There are simply too many of them, now, for one lowly Corrector to ever consume, but consume I must.

In a moment I shall rise from my seat. I’ll take up my cane and stretch out my bad knee a little. They never see me; I’m not actually invisible, but they never see me. If they ever do, they never remember me. Oh, they see me and my puff of blue-grey hair, my powdered nose and rouged, wrinkled cheeks. They see my bi-focals and my hand bag, my hat-box hat. They see me smile sweetly as I make my off-kiltered way past their table, heading toward the ladies room at the pace of a tortoise.

They see me go by, but they don’t see the dust I blow over them as I go. They never do.

They won’t see me as they leave; a third world feast left on the seats and under the table; a sticky, gravy-covered wreck in their wake. They won’t see me as they take up the breadth of the sidewalk on their way home, but I see them.

I will follow the dust. My dust. I will be there just when they close their eyes. I will be in the closet. I will be under the bed. I will be behind the shower curtain and in the toy box and I will teach them all a lesson.

There will be some return of decorum. I will chew up their bad manners and their thoughtless questions. I will bring back the Golden Age of seen-and-not-heard, until my dying day.

Ah, but for now, I will just get up and onto my sensible shoes. I will hunch over my cane and smile the grandmotherly smile as I shuffle past my next meal, on my way to powder my ancient nose and to check my teeth in the mirror. I think there may be a little bit of this morning’s corrections caught in there somewhere.