Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Two: Little Fingers

He smiled a little back at her, but not so much that it invited her to come over and talk to him.

Josie saw a man get out of the driver's side, her dad, he thought. And they went into the little house on the corner of Farrelly and Tamarama.

Josie had a new neighbor.

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Josie sat on the stone steps, that led up to the little porch of his house, for what was, he figured, the better part of the late afternoon and now early into the evening.

He didn't want to be in his room, or inside his house alone, in case he saw some new ghost baby or something.

He was eating a vegemite sandwich, listening to Vance Joy, waiting for his parents to come home. But they rarely came home before 8pm.

His parents, Phyllis and Portland Brown were CFO's (chief financial officers). They handled the money for a laxative company (Portland) and a company that makes an ointment for hemorrhoids (Phyllis). They worked endless hours, often at their offices in the city proper, and just as often at home, locked up in their dens, typing away on their laptops, sometimes arguing and speaking some weird financial language, pouring over spreadsheets and numbers, at the kitchen table.

He loved them because, as a child, he had to love them, and he assumed that they loved him, because, as parents they had to, but he didn't know them in any real way or understand them, and he was quite sure they didn't know or understand him.

Josie ate the last crumbs of his sandwich and watched kids racing by on their bikes, and kicking footballs in the street, playing hard while the evening's light still lasted.

Manhattan Khoudura ran behind her little brother, Marty, as she taught him tricks on the skateboard. Her dog, Bacon, a thick-headed, stubby-legged French bulldog ran behind them, occasionally veering off to pounce on a blowing leaf, or to sniff around a tree, and then pee on it.

"That dog is the stupidest looking thing," he thought.

It was one big black head, on legs like chicken drumsticks. The idea of a dog running around on drumsticks made him smile, even though he knew the joke was dumb and he was telling it only to himself.

Josie watched them until they disappeared at the end of the street. Manhattan did not turn to look at him, or wave hello. She had no idea he even existed. He was scenery. His blandness, he imagined, bleached into the background, so that he couldn't even be seen by someone like her.

A part of him burned with a little anger over the unfairness of his invisibility. Another part simply accepted it as fact, and moved any more thought of it out of his brain.

Josie turned away from the beautiful girl, and looked to the house across the street.

There was a little girl standing in the middle of the street, in front of her house. Her name was Trinket Parsnips and whenever Josie saw her, he thought her hair, which was flame red, and a heap of curls, looked like a halo of fire around her head.

Usually she played on the front lawn, while one of her mom's, either Gerty or Frida, kept a close eye on her. Trinket was a runner. A hopper. A jumper. A skipper. She was a constantly moving, tumbling, twirling little kid. But now, Trinket was in the middle of the street, and Josie noticed, she was still.

Completely still.

Her body had gone slack, off-center a bit, like she was a mangled doll. And that's when Josie saw her eyes. He got up off the steps and walked down the path to the sidewalk.