Copyright © 2009 Daniel Pyle
All rights reserved, Wild Child Publishing.
Her nose was a finely shaped wedge, pert with a pair of inconspicuous nostrils, like something out of a fairy tale, elfish. There had been fairy tales when he was very young. They were one of the things he remembered. One of the things he'd been allowed to remember.
If she had kept her mouth shut, Dave would have gone to her for a closer look at the perfect little nose, might even have given it a friendly kiss.
Instead, she screamed.
Her mouth might have been the entrance to a strange miniature cave, her teeth pale, blunt stalactites and stalagmites, her scream the shrill squeal of a million flitting bats. Startled, Dave almost took a step back, but a more basic instinct took quick control, and he stepped forward instead and punched her softly in the eye.
He'd meant only to shock her into silence, maybe knock her off balance a little so he could sweep in and steady her, soothe her, but his fist seemed to have the effect of something fired from a cannon, and she crumpled to the floor. Her head bounced twice on the cracked linoleum and then lolled. Dave heard footsteps and heavy breathing behind him and turned far enough around to see the boy, standing frozen in the doorway leading into the living room.
"Hello, Georgie." Dave smiled at the boy and knelt on the floor beside the temporarily silent woman. "Don't you worry about me and Mommy--we're just having a little talk."
The boy opened his mouth in an almost exact imitation of his mother, but the sound from his little cave was very different: a single short squeak like the hinge on a rusty gate. On the floor, the woman had come to and gotten herself up on her elbows.
"Run." She didn't scream it, just said it flatly, the way she might have told him to finish his broccoli.
"Hey now," Dave said, "let's not--"
The boy made a single clumsy move to the right, but Dave flew across the room in two giant steps and caught the kid by his slender bicep before the boy could do much more than shift his footing.
"Zach!" The woman scrambled on the floor, trying to get to her feet, but Dave had definitely done more damage than he'd intended--she got halfway up twice and fell back onto her rear end both times.
"I'm not going to hurt you," Dave said to the boy, talking quickly, wanting to get the words out before the woman could stand, wanting him to understand. "I'm here to help you. I promise I'll save you. I swear."
The look the boy gave him might easily have been confused for fear, but Dave recognized it for what it must really have been: awe.
He led the kid into the kitchen, to the spot on the floor where his mother still lay squirming like a flipped turtle. "We're all going to be all right now."
On the floor, the woman said something Dave couldn't quite hear.
"What's that?"
"My husband." She spit the word at him. "Husband...in the other room. We've got a gun. He'll--"
Dave smiled and shook his head. "Oh, Mommy. We all three of us know that's an outright lie." He waggled his finger at her, still smiling. "If there was a husband," he continued, "you wouldn't need me here at all."
The woman stared at him blankly for several long seconds and then turned to her son and repeated, "Run," this time with a little more conviction.
Dave tightened his grip on the kid before he could think about obeying and frowned down at the woman. "I don't think you understand what's happening here," he said.
From the way she looked back up at him, Dave wondered if maybe she really didn't.