Haunted Organic (2014 Watty Award Winner)

Eleven: Blind

Bacon looked up at her and whined a little. She knelt down, cuddled his ears. She kissed him right on the mouth. She was never afraid to kiss Bacon right straight on the mouth because she loved him too, and always wanted him to know it.

He licked her cheek. She wished she had an answer for him, for herself, but she didn't.

She didn't know what to do next.

That's when she laid down, her face in the cool grass, and Bacon came in and stuck his fat face into her neck and nuzzled her. And they stayed there, just like that, the girl and her dog, a lump on their front lawn, crying, nuzzling, crying, nuzzling, for Marty, for the invisible thread that had been cut, for their own sorry selves, and their wounded family.

There was nothing to do, but cry and nuzzle.

&&&&

Josie was not at all sure why he was standing in the middle of Manhattan's living room. But he was.

He and Emerald had thought the closet was a good idea, but once he heard The Barrel coming at them down the hall, he knew he couldn't stay there.

He slipped out the closet door, while Emerald was stuffing research under the bed and wetting down her hair, and assessed that none of the cops were searching for him on the other side of the house. He slipped out Emerald's side window and fell into her bushes.

She hadn't even seen him leave. And he didn't have time to tell her.

From there, he ran from one bush to another, over neighbors fences, leaping over a bird bath, slipping through a briar patch and under a wooden fence, and it was there he found himself standing in the backyard of a little grey clapboard house.

The house was plain. It was Manhattan's house.

It was weird that Manhattan lived here. She was so flamboyant, everything about her was loud, and colorful and intimidating. But the house was meek. It blended in. He had lived nearly his whole life on the street, thought he knew every lot and mailbox by heart.

But not this one.

It didn't want to be seen.

He slumped through a thick bramble of unkempt vines and a lime tree that was hung over with fruit that no one ever touched. The grass was high and thick, and the yard was full of untamed Lantanas and Frangipane and a crooked, sloping banana tree that seemed to reign as Queen over the whole yard.

He had planned to sneak through the bushes and houses at this far end of Tamamara, coming out onto Birrell Street, and then making a run for Cross Street. From there, he planned to take the long steep stairs that led down to Tamarama Beach and lose himself in the surfers, and tourists and sun worshippers.

He would have time to gather his thoughts and plan his next move.

But the house stopped him.

Just like the Haunted Organic Food Store pulled and tugged at him, so too did The Plain House, just in a different way.

It whispered in his ear to come in. It wanted to take care of him.

And so, his feet moved up the chipped and worn back stairs, and onto a small but tidy screened-in porch. It was filled with plants and vines, and clay pots brimming with bright colored flowers and long wooden boxes over-flowing with deep green vines.

There was a rocking chair with a hand-made afghan throw over it, a basket of yarns and needles, a stack of old books on a little table next to a half drunk china tea cup.

The windows were filled with crystal sun catchers and pots of plants hung from the ceiling in macramé plant hangers. It was the opposite of the outside of the house, as if on the outside the occupants wanted to blend in to the background, but inside there was this joyous, loving, thriving home.