Short Story Challenge - Day 2 - petey’s giblets
Creaking chair legs. A thump. petey leans over the back of the chair and leans on the kitchen counter, resting his face on his upturned hands, eyes glazed over, transfixed. Shrieking cartoons. Cookery books. A thump, thumping behind him.
“petey pass the flour, will you love?”
petey reaches out to his left and feels around on the counter, not letting his eyes leave the TV screen. He pats around unsuccessfully, looking round just as his arm brushes the edge of the paper packet. He almost knocks the flour to the floor but catches it just in time.
“petey!” Mam is scolding. “Watch what you’re doing, will you?”
Mam’s chest huffs around the kitchen. Thick wooden rolling pin. Squidgy pastry on the side. Petey’s eyes flick over to where she thumps a fist into it. He looks back to the cartoons.
From the other room, Dad’s paper rustles. The TV is on really loud because Grangran is watching it. You can hear the rustling in the quiet between the adverts. The only thing louder than the TV is Lauren, on the phone in the hallway. petey reaches for the volume control, but Mam is quick and smacks his hand away.
“Don’t turn that thing up any louder, Lord we’ll all be deaf! And move away from the telly. Remember what Grangran said. Your eyes will turn square.” Mam is stern. petey is scared by things that Grangran says. She’s shouty. She’s shouty a lot, usually at him, while they eat dinner. His favourite meal is breakfast, because Grangran never gets up til late. She is shouty because he doesn’t like potatoes. She is shouty about his spirit. She is shouty because he doesn’t like to eat when she’s around.
“You have to finish everything on the plate!” Her speaky voice was even worse - like chairs scraping across tiled floors. petey hates it. “He’ll have no character when he’s older, he has to do as he’s told, whether he like it or not!” Grangran complained once to Mam. Mam cooed soothingly from her chair, but she was unable to chill the burns in petey’s ears.
“Do you hear me boy?” Grangran lashed at him. “Character! It comes from the IN-side!”
petey gets up, still watching the cartoons, and moves around the table to the chair at the other side, furthest from the TV. It scrapes across the tiles as he drags it out. Mam frowns at him, then turns back towards the wall and pulls a knife from the magnetic holder above the range. It zings away from the wall. It is as big as her hand - maybe even bigger. She pulls apart the legs of the enormous chicken and takes her knife to its underneath, pulling and ripping the skin. She sticks her hand into the cavity between its legs, all the way up to her elbow, and pulls out a small plastic bag.
petey jumps up and runs over before she has the chance to call him. Mam is surprised. “Oh - thank you petey. You know what to do with this, right?”
petey nods. “I take this out back and feed Molly.”
Mam smiles, leans down and kisses petey on the head. “That’s my good little soldier.”
petey runs to the back door. The handle is heavy and cold, and petey sometimes has to put all his weight on it to open it, lifting his legs up off the ground. It opens a little more easily than usual. Molly - having heard the back door opening from her bed in front of the fire - runs through the house to the back door and bounds out, nearly knocking petey over.
petey shuts the door behind him and skips out into the cold fall air. It’s almost November, and their back garden is littered with leaves, all read and leathery. This is how petey likes them best, before they turn to sludge, or go skeletal and make dust between his fingers. He rests his back againts the wall of the house and stands silently for a few moments, clutching the bag to his chest. Standing on tiptoes, he peeks in through the kitchen window. Mam is rolling out the pastry now. A twist of hair has come loose from the pin on top of her head, and she stops for a second, holding the rolling pin under an armpit while she fixes the strays.
Satisfied that Mam is too busy to call him for at least a few minutes, petey creeps round the side of the house and pulls the door of the shed. It creaks terrible loud, and petey’s heart is in his mouth - expecting to be discovered any second.
He peers back round the corner. Nothing. He eases the door open and shuts it behind him, careful to leave Molly outside. She whimpers and scratches and the door for a few seconds, before petey hears her drop to her belly, waiting for him to come out.
In the corner of the shed, petey lifts the wrinkled black tarp that is covering his and Lauren’s bikes. He fingers a large dusty jar, and pulls it out from behind the bikes. He rips the plastic bag open with his teeth and holds it between them, then screws up his nose and forces the lid of the jar open. He tries not to breath through his nose, but it’s hard with the bag in his mouth. He can tell it stinks. He knows it’s nearly ready. He puts the jar down, takes the bag and spills out the bloody insides into the jar, accidentally spilling some drops on the floor of the shed. Carefully, he puts the plastic wrapper in the bag that was hidden with the jar, the bag that holds all the other plastic wrappers. He pulls a stick out of the bag, and pushes it into the gloop, stirring the mess around, poking it, watching it drip like bloody fat. petey almost gags, but remembers Grangran’s shouty, and strengthens himself. Tonight is the night, he decides.
petey has been stirring his magic potion for what seems like hours. Finally, it’s time to add the secret ingredient to the potion.
The shelves in the shed are piled with rusted pots and bottles, things that Dad uses to fix things or clean things or make things. petey wants Dad’s spirit. He knows he needs some extra, and Dad keeps a plastic see through bottle in here. He has to lean against the window frame and stand on Lauren’s bike to reach - it’s higher than he thinks - but petey brags hold of the bottle. It’s greasy on the outside, and it stinks. But it can’t smell any worse than the insides in the jar.
The bottle is old, and petey cracks open the top using his stick to lever it off. He holds the bottle above the jar and thinks about how much he needs. Three pours? Three is a magic number, but Grangran says magic is witchcraft.
Which means …
Um, which means …
Which means two pours would be better.
petey’s brow furrows. he’s concentrating really hard. One pour - then two - and a final mix with his stick. He wonders whether to drink it now, but then thinks he should probably leave it til after dinner. Wait til Grangran sees him after this. Character - from the insides. And spirit too. petey looks forward to the day she stops shouting at him.
“petey!”
petey gasps with the sound of his mother outside and nearly knocks the jar over - but catches it before the red swill has a chance to bleed all over the floor of the shed. He rams on the lid of the jar and quickly hides it under the tarpaulin, then runs out of the shed, nearly treading on Molly while he does. He runs back into the house, where the table is laid and the family are sitting down to eat. He wipes his hands on the back of his trousers and sits down in his chair, with his palms under his thighs.
Grangran narrows her eyes and stares at petey, then sits back, still staring. petey looks down at his lap, smirking, and allows himself to think things he’d normally never think while Grangran was around. Like he thinks she’s a stupid head. And she smells like belly button fluff. By the time the night is out, he’ll have more character than she’s ever had in her whole long life.
He lifts up his knife and fork and smiles at Mam.
2 years ago • Notes