There was, of course, no response.
Maddy felt a great deal more at her ease than she had earlier, and because of this felt more given to reasoning with the house rather than beating it with her bare fists. Though both methods proved effective, she preferred the one that kept her hands in working order. And so her easier mood was doubly useful.
Maddy sighed, theatrically.
“Well, if you don’t mind a corpse sitting around - crumbling away, smelling you up like barnyard - then I suppose we can manage just fine, too.”
She closed the door again. And waited a moment or two. And then twisted the knob and nudged it open and tried not to smile when she found herself in Theresa’s room.
Keeping a straight face was not too tall an order once Maddy remembered the body, however. Her lips twitched in anger, and in disgust, but also simple exasperation. It was such an ugly thing. And so unneededly big. The manticore made an exceptionally tragic centerpiece for her daughter's room. She had to confess that she preferred its current look to its livelier one, however, if by only a slim margin.
Maddy came forward, confidently, sharp-footed to avoid the broken mirror, and crouched down on her heels just short of the hulking body. To gloat.
“Crawl into my daughter’s head... hm?”
It really was quite ugly. Very clearly powerful, and keen, and perhaps appealing in the way that giddiness from deadly heights can be, but hideous. Maddy had seen a gnarled rainbow spectrum of ugliness. And though the manticore was far from settling on the rottenest end, it was no treat to see or think about, either.
“See where it’s gotten you, now. And what for? Hm?”
And however much Maddy enjoyed indulging in the idle rhetoric of the victor, her line of questions was a solid one. A sharp and thin and hardy one. One that stung, like pianowire. She had been half-asking and then half-ignoring herself in between moments, since that night, since seeing the frittered cuffs of her daughter’s pajamas.
Nothing specific - just blunt and uneasy questions. They hung heavy and dead in a cold, meatlocker part of her. The exact how of this all would be difficult to find, certainly. But the why was nothing short of troubling. There were easier meals, she thought. There had to have been. Why such effort? There had to have been easier meals. Much easier, much quicker meals.
Less tasty meals? Maddy sat quiet at that. It was a terrible thought, but mercifully unlikely. Her little girl was very Talented but so were children, right here in-town even, and there was no wyrm or Wendigo or Sirens dragging them from their beds.
What if it had been Theresa, herself? Stumbling across something, and bringing it along for the ride by mistake?
After long minutes of this Maddy grit her teeth decided to get to work. Sitting and stewing in herself this way, sulking - it did no good. One thing at a time, and that one thing at the moment was cleaning.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t like that you came here to die, either.” Maddy propped an elbow on her knee and cupped her palm against her cheek. “My daughter needs her sleep. And the mirror and the dresser will take fixing.”
Still drifting in thought, she scraped a distracted thumbnail along the butt of the Ax. There was not a trace of gore nor drop of blood along the entirety of the blade, despite Maddy’s negligence in cleaning it.
“I suppose I could toss you in the garden.” Her face was pensive as she weighed the option aloud. “Rain’s been lean. And those heirloom tomatoes are very particular, I can’t have them taking to wilt.”
There was the curious state of the manticore’s innards to consider - namely, that they were identical to those of a pawn shop - but Maddy could find a way around that. Surely most of the body would prove suitable. The flesh was still flesh, and would break down like any such. She began to shift her weight to stand.
Then remembered the tail. Maddy groaned, and sat back again.
“Oh, you big lunk. Venom did you no favor when you were living, now, did it?” She gave an impatient puff through her nose. “It’s not doing me any with you dead.”
It was fitting, Maddy had to admit. But she was still allowed to be a little sullen for the moment.
I’d likely have to clean up the blood by hand, then, anyway. Even in lopping off the tail and using the rest, there was no guarantee that it was clean of venom. Too much risk seeing as I could just use compost.
Decided, Maddy rose, making a face at the bottlecap popping of her knees.
It was always a good idea to make absolutely certain that a mess was absolutely dead before it was Cleaned, but that typically involved the sticky picnic of decapitation, and Maddy had only just gotten out of the bath. Besides, the body had long stopped bleeding. Somewhere between the chess piece and the mangled blender she must have pulled out the thing’s heart, or whatever had been filling the role.
“Well, then.”
The woman cleared her throat and hefted the handle, pausing to savor the sudden arc of anticipation that jangled her nerves like weddingbells and the thrum of tension that coiled like a spoiled cat inside the heartshaped bowl of her hips, only to let the Ax fall with a very unsatisfying thuk into the thing’s spine. Maddy did her best to not look disappointed. Instead, she arched to stretch her back, chidingly reminding herself that she was no longer young enough to hunker down like a leapfrog. “Go on, get to it.”
There was nothing for a long moment. Then slowly, almost shyly, little dollops and smears of blood began to pull away from the room. From the walls, from the bed, from the ceiling, from the chewedup butchersmock drapes. The dried crusts melted back into warm liquid that they were familiar with being and pulled and slid and dripped down and away like rain on a window, and puddled together on the hardwood floor, and then trickled along the grooves of the boards towards the corpse.
Maddy nodded, satisfied, and turned to leave the room.
“It’d benefit you to put the Ax back somewhere, when It’s done, that’s easy at-hand.” Had the floorboards changed? They had been cedar, as Maddy recalled, squinting down at her feet. They now appeared to be redwood. It was a rather pleasant change. “Think if another such nasty thing scurried in here and I couldn’t find It - you’d be smashed to firewood, and with no more charming mistress to tidy you up. Hm?”
She paused with her hand on the doorknob, as if waiting patiently for a response, but there was none other than the drag and slither of dead blood and skin. Which was precisely what Maddy had hoped to hear.
The door clicked behind her and she sighed, back in the hallway. It was much brighter out. How long had she spent woolgathering over the corpse?
It’s probably about six, by now. She frowned. Time seemed to be sneaking up on her lately. She decided to start on breakfast, and eased past the guest bedroom where her daughter was still asleep.
And it was precisely at that moment that a riot and pots and pans fell from the kitchen cupboard, and Theresa hissed “Jeeez!” as quietly as she could. Maddy was surprised for a split moment, but then laughed silently and stole towards the kitchen.
The fondness that Theresa held for cinnamon toast was a bewildering one. There were days that she begged Maddy to prepare it for lunch and dinner, even, and after a few weeks of mostly porridge, she now seemed intent upon trying her own hand. There were only about half of the correct ingredients on the counter and none of the correct utensils.
Maddy crossed her arms and propped herself against the doorway.
“Goodness. They warned me about gremlin-proofing the kitchen, but I paid not a bit of mind.”
At the sound of her mother’s voice Theresa twisted around, innocently, and cut loose the most winning smile in her rather limited arsenal: a full-bodied one, that involved pushing upwards on her toes and sticking out her chin as if those few additional inches of height were all that made her visible. “I’m too cute to be a gremlin.”
Maddy had to agree. Somber as she may have seemed to strangers, Theresa was quite a chipper girl. And it was good to see her acting that way again, acting like Theresa, rather than the scared little thing that had crawled into Maddy’s lap the night before.
“A very clumsy mouse, then. Who’s usually still asleep around this time. Exactly what do you think you’re doing?
“I woke up in the guestroom, and I was gonna go back to bed, but I couldn’t find my room.” Theresa frowned, looking briefly troubled before shrugging a shoulder. “It was weird. Usually it’s pretty easy.” The note of confusion yanked hard at Maddy, despite the rush of gratitude that she then felt towards her home. “So I decided to make breakfast.”
“Make breakfast?”
“Yes! I wanted cinnamon toast.”
“I see that. And you know how to make it?”
“Um... well, I watched you make it a lot of times. So maybe I would... like... remember piece by piece, as I was going along?”
Maddy said nothing. She simply smiled and raised her eyebrows.
The girl tolerated it for only a moment before scowling. It seemed a much more natural fit than the smile. “Hey dooon’t, you’re giving me the look!”
“What look?” Maddy was grinning now.
“The look where, you know, you’re all ho hum, is that right? even though I, I’ve, you know, I’ve got all the ingredients, all ready and laid out --”
“Except for the bread.”
“-- most of the ingredients, and stuff, and the pan’s all ready to go --”
“That’s a skillet, sunshine.”
Theresa was down but not out. She bit her mouth in desperate thought, looking from the unlit gas stove to Maddy to the too-heavy bag of sugar to Maddy to the pans just beyond her reach, to Maddy. Her lips became a thin line of resignation. The girl then gathered herself and, with all the dignity and sobriety of an overworked undertaker, offered: “Okay. You can help.”
Maddy lost it, then, spluttering a laugh that did nothing to rattle her daughter’s stony expression.
“Sounds swell, baby. You just let me get the pan, turn on the stove, lay out and butter the bread, spread the sugar and the cinnamon, put it in the oven, and take it out when it’s done, and you can do the rest.”
“... but that... isn’t that everything?”
“You get to eat it.” She tousled Theresa's hair on her way to the stove, smiling at the squawk of protest. “Now scram.”
( “Heartshaped bones of her hips” is stolen straight from Tom Waits and I am NOT GIVING IT BACK SO TOM YOU CAN GO SCREW YOUR MAGNIFICENT SELF.)
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