Sometime in the dead of night, the sound of tires spinning rocks into the cabin woke Rosemarie from a dream.
“What the hell?” she said before her brain could register there was a nine year old in the room.
“Stay here, baby.” Georgi said before unzipping her tent.
Grabbing her flashlight, Rosemarie climbed out of her tent. “What’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Georgi moved to a long plastic case with her keys in hand and grabbed the lock. “Give me some light.”
“Hold the light. I’ll shoot if I have to.” she said, creeping to the door.
Peeking out into the moonlight, they could see that Rosemarie’s car was gone.
“Son of a…”
“Come on, let's get Randy.” Georgi said.
We moved to the bottom of the treehouse.
“Randy,” She called up. “RANDY!”
Nothing. Not even a peep.
“That stupid mother-” Rosemarie growled as she stormed up the steps. She almost tripped on the empty beer bottles that littered the floor. “He’s drunk,” she called down.
“Come on,” Georgi said. “There’s nothing we can do tonight.”
“I can’t believe that asshole stole my car,” Rosemarie said, making it to the ground. “No, I take that back. I can’t believe I was dumb enough to give him the keys to my car.”
“We’ll worry about it tomorrow.” Georgi said, bolting the door shut and locked the gun back in place. “He’s got some explainin’ to do when he gets back.”
“If he comes back.” Rosemarie mumbled as she zipped up her tent. Fingers crossed, she thought.
She could hear Georgi telling Alex that it was nothing to worry about. Rosemarie fell asleep to Georgi humming an old lullaby.
*
“Morning.” Rosemarie stretched as she stepped out of the tent.
“How’d you sleep?” Georgi asked, passing Rosemarie a cup of coffee.
“Despite having my car stolen? Really well,” Rosemarie answered.
“I always did sleep better when he went out of town,” Georgi commented before sipping her coffee.
“What do you think happened?” Rosemarie asked.
“I think he got piss drunk and stole your car to go shoot zombies.” she answered flatly.
“You say it like...like you’re talking about the weather. How do you do it?”
She shrugged. “I keep tellin’ myself that it’s not the worse thing that could have happened and I enjoy the peace.”
“Yeah, but my car. I just had the oil changed,” Rosemarie whined.
“On the bright side, he did leave the food and water.” Georgi smiled.
Rosemarie slapped her hand to her forehead. “My books...they’re in the trunk!”
“Oh,” Georgi’s eyes widened. “That’s not good.”
Alex rubbed her eyes as she climbed out of the tent. “Momma.”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Are we gonna build my garden today?” she asked.
“We’re going to need a few more things before we can do that,” her mother answered. “Want some granola?”
“Mmhmm,” the girl nodded.
Georgi passed her some and passed some to Rosemarie too. “Come on, we’ve got a lot to do today. There’s no use in moping.”
“I’m not moping. I’m wondering how hard it would be to castrate a crazy person in their sleep.”
“Momma, what’s castrate mean?” Alex asked.
No comments:
Post a Comment