I got my car back ;A; and to celebrate its sorry return to me, have a chapter.
Also, I totally appreciate reviews n all that. ;v; Y'all are sweethearts! I'm a bashful shy baby, and I don't know the code of conduct here, so if replying is the norm here well…I'm sorry I'm a nervous quiet newb. OTL
Enjoy the chapter!
~Ny
3. Bruising
As promised, Tip dug out a can of raviolis from the kitchen pantry, which was this sort of walk-in broom closet, and heated a bowl of the slop for her miniature guest. She shuffled quickly around the kitchen, keeping a close eye on the kid seated at the table.
After Sasha had climbed the stairs and complained she was hungry, she'd tried get past Tip to snoop around. It was a good thing raviolis were so tempting, though, because she'd nearly peeped through the open door that let into Oh's room when Tip reminded her.
That room was practically a workshop. Oh's niche in the house was full of disassembled alien wares of questionable safety and leafy succulent plants in bizarre shapes and colors. Just one glance inside would be all it took to know something weird was up here, surely even for someone as young as Sasha. And everyone knows, kids say the darndest things.
Paranoid now, Tip was sure to shut Oh's door as soon as she'd gotten Sasha to go back downstairs.
Sasha took her lunch back to the living room and requested a new movie. She sat harmlessly on the floor with her little legs stretched out under the coffee table, tiny sneakered feet tapping together as she was sucked into 101 Dalmatians.
That didn't last long, though.
The kid was sort of a slow eater, and halfway through her bowl of saucy pasta, she'd zoned out, spoon in hand – and Tip wasn't sure exactly when or how it happened, but Sasha spilled it on herself. She hardly noticed the pillow ravioli lumps sliding down her shirt. Tip was back on her phone, starting to space out too, when she realized it. It took a moment to register before she leapt up with a hissed swear and muttered, "Pardonmylanguage – don't repeat that."
"That's a cuss?" wondered Sasha. "Daddy says worse, like—"
Tip cut her off, "Well, it is in my house." And she grimaced slightly as she plopped spilled raviolis back into the bowl. "I, uh…think you're done with that," she mumbled.
She picked Sasha up by the armpits to bring her to her feet, and shooed her to the bathroom to clean her up. A minute later, Sasha had one of the Tuccis' soft new white towels wrapped around her, and she was watching Tip hurriedly rinse her glittery pink kitten shirt in the sink.
"Stay right here," Tip ordered, and dashed out of the bathroom.
She threw a handful of miscellaneous laundry into the washer plus Sasha's soiled shirt, and thumped up the steps to her mother's room. Maybe it was a little selfish of her, but Tip didn't even think of offering one of her own shirts. No – she went straight to her mother's dresser to dig through her drawer of plain dime-a-dozen blouses. Things had been moved around since the big move, and it took Tip a minute longer than she would have liked to find the stash.
She thumped back down the living room stairs and swung herself into the hall, taking the usual but wrong path to the bathroom. She was shaking out the button-up, saying, "Alright, I found you something clean to w—where are you?"
There was no Sasha to be seen. The sink was running, however, and Colgate was smeared across the counter, a toothpaste trail practically leading out the door, where Sasha must have tried wiping the minty goo off her hand.
Blouse balled up in her fist, Tip bolted for the back door.
One of Sasha's sneakers lay just this side of the cat flap. She must have decided she didn't want mismatched feet, because the other was left on the steps.
Tip knew where the rascal must have scampered off to. She stormed around the side of the house, coming around the nearest corner, and stopped dead in her tracks. Where the little girl should have been, she was not.
A wave of panic swept through her. The spring rains were off and on all day, almost like God was up there watering random spots of the valley as if it were a garden, and Tip could make out a hazy veil of a downpour making its way swiftly along the mountainside, heading right for her soggy patch of acreage.
Tip circled the house like before, shouting for Sasha and looking this way and that, and stopped below Oh's window. His light was on.
"Hey!" she hollered, and waited. "HEY!" Still no response. She ripped up some grass and a clod of dirt with it and chucked it at Oh's window. It missed by about a foot, but she never said she had perfect aim. She was ready to throw another when Oh appeared. He didn't seem to want to open up until she tossed down the clod.
"Whatfor do you want?" he asked flatly, resting his oversized cheek on his undersized palm.
"Have you seen where Sasha went?"
"No," he said, now picking at something of interest on the windowsill. Probably chipping paint. Judging by the way he sucked it off his finger, Tip guessed she was right. "Maybe if you would let me to join you in the watching, she would not be missing. Again."
Tip shook her head and huffed. "You're no help," she grumbled, and turned to leave.
"Try the woods," Oh suggested, pulling the round multi-function gadget from his belly pouch. "From up here, I can see something pale out there." As Tip skulked away for the dark evergreen wall, he used a viewing enhancement feature for a spyglass, and nodded to himself. "She is half clothed and shoeless. Gratuity is doing a swell job of this sitting of infant on her own."
Tip's face was hot. She wanted to snap at Oh for rubbing it in, but broke into a run instead across the saturated field.
An acre away and up the slope, she reached the wall of the forest. She could definitely hear twigs snapping as someone or something clambered around in there with zero stealth. Through the steady patter of dripping leaves, she could also hear faint calls of, "Heeere, kitty, kitty."
"SASHA!" Tip shouted, and it was impossible not to let some of her frustration give a sharp edge to her voice. "Sasha, get over here!" She really felt like she was scolding a bad puppy now. She had a feeling this wasn't how babysitting kids was supposed to feel, and felt a little guilty about it. That feeling would be long gone in the next couple moments.
The rustling stopped. Then it started again, getting louder as the tiny person made her way back through the pine litter and leaves and shrubs and sticks towards Tip. She stretched up enough for Tip to see her over a huge distant mossy log, and then she scrambled over it and scampered along the border of the woods to Tip.
Eyes wide with horror, Tip ran her fingers through her own hair as she took in the mess of a girl before her. Sasha had pine needles in her hair – but that was the least of it – because her hair was also only half golden now, as the rest was brown with mud, which was also smeared over her cheek and chin. It was obvious she'd tripped somewhere in the sloppy field between the house and woods. And her white corduroys? Tip didn't want to think about it.
"I'm dead," she whispered to herself, and shook it off as Sasha reached her. Tip tried to wipe off the grimace when she noticed somewhere along the line, the little girl had ditched her socks too.
Tip laughed weakly. "Bubble bath!" she said. "Do you like bubble baths? Of course you like bubble baths. All kids like bubble baths." And she shooed Sasha along towards the house, and then had to catch her so she wouldn't chase a frog, and then had to carry her the rest of the way to the house.
By the time she'd the back steps, Tip swore she looked like she had fallen in the mud too. She ran the kid a bath, a little too shocked for words, and added the dirty trousers to the wash.
She remembered about Sasha's dad mentioning he left his number on a note in her coat pocket, and regretted giving him a call to update…so she didn't. Or at least, she chickened out of the whole truth when she did give him a ring, only mentioning the pasta incident, which he only chuckled about. When he asked to speak with her mom, she lied and said she was busy with Sasha and they had a corded home phone. He had to get back to "being there" for his wife anyhow.
Tip wasn't sure if the phone call had made her feel better or worse.
She dared to leave the bathroom unguarded, dared to leave that sneaky blonde weasel alone, for a moment while she fetched a can of Shooga from the fridge. She took a slurp as she went back to watching from the kitchen door. It was another sip or two before she decided she wasn't really in the mood for soda, and could afford to leave the twerp alone for a moment.
Tip tip-toed back upstairs, stepping over the fourth-from-the-top step, and paced as quietly as she could down the hallway.
Before she invited herself in, she knocked lightly on Oh's door, only loud enough for him to hear and hopefully nowhere near loud enough for Sasha. "Hey, Oh," she greeted as she leaned in, before realizing she was speaking to an empty room. The lamp was on over his drawing desk, which was cluttered with comic strips, but he wasn't there, so she looked to the other corner, to a sort of beanbag chair shaped something like a urinal that served as a Boovish bed, but he wasn't tucked away there either.
She grimaced, suspicious he was up to something daring that could blow his cover.
++x++
Little did she know, Oh was downstairs in the pantry. He'd been rummaging through the recycle bin, idly sipping from a quart of motor oil, when he heard Tip return from her search. He chose to hide, reluctant to bear the sting of anymore words she might have to say if she caught him downstairs.
Through the crack in the pantry door, he could just barely see her leaning against the living room doorframe, across the hall from the kitchen. She was busy speaking on the telephone with a stranger for a while, unwittingly blocking his escape.
By the time Oh had heard her crack open a can of pop in the kitchen, he'd retreated to the back wall, hidden in a niche between the water heater and shelving just in case she came in for something.
Once Oh heard Tip's faint footsteps leave, he sighed and slouched in the corner, trying to ignore what he desperately hoped was not a spider crawling over his brow. Finishing off the remaining drops of motor oil, he chomped off a bite of the bottle as if it were merely a strip of beef jerky and munched pensively.
There were few things he disliked – being labeled a fugitive and being chased by the authorities to name a couple – and to add to that list, he had hiding from visitors. He especially disliked it when he believed it would be harmless. This one was such small kid, and if the information Tip dished out at him during her pubescent rants were true, then no one really believed little kids, much less the very young ones. So really. How much harm could come from socializing with that little pink ape?
The spiders scuttling around were starting to make Oh's skin crawl about now, leaving him marbled with unnerved yellow streaks. Ignoring them was proving impossible, so he wiped a hand across his face, hoping he wouldn't feel a thousand tiny arachnid legs between his fingers.
But there were no spiders squashed under his palm – and yet the feeling persisted. He wiped both hands over his entire head like squirrel grooming itself and scanned them in the dim light leaking in through the edges of the pantry door. There wasn't so much as a cobweb.
It took him another moment to feel the phantom herd of spiders shuffle again, and this time he realized they definitely weren't spiders at all. He felt it all over his clammy amphibious skin, everywhere his blue vest didn't cover: a breeze. It was chilly and musty, not like the fresh air that might blow through the house from the cat-flapper or window. His trunks unfurled and probed the air, half sniffing, half feeling, as he used them like dowsing rods to locate the source.
He felt it seeping from a crack in the wooden floor. Midway along one board, at the foot of the built-in shelving, was a groove, just enough for him to hook his blunt fingers into.
The board gave way slightly, and with a firm tug, it popped open an entire door – a door set into in the floor, of all places. The secret door flung back before Oh could catch it, snapping back against its own hinges and bouncing there, trembling vertically in its own dust cloud.
He crossed his fingers, hoping that the noise hadn't alerted Tip that he was downstairs – or worse, caught tiny Sasha's attention. Tip would be even angrier with him if that were the case. He feared either one of them opening up the pantry for a look-see, and almost cowered in the back corner again.
Oh didn't know what he hoped to find by snooping, because there was nothing terribly fascinating about the discovery. It was just a folded wooden ladder in an odd cabinet in the floor that stretched across the pantry walkway from one shelf to the other, blocking his way out. Aside from the ladder, there were signs of rodent traffic in the cabinet, but that was almost to be expected.
What Oh did next, he would promptly regret.
With intent to inspect the ladder, he stepped onto the platform it was mounted to. Putting weight on just a couple front feet was all it took for the platform to give way like a trapdoor. Oh flailed out his arms and tried to throw himself backwards – but it was too late. He tumbled through the dark chasm with a garbled holler, and smacked face-first onto the cement cellar floor.
"Owpain," he mumbled as he picked himself up. He touched his scuffed face gingerly and winced at a minor abrasion.
Sitting miserably with his legs splayed around him, Oh peered up through the rectangular gap. It was easily ten feet above him, but the hinged platform the folded ladder rested on was a taunting two feet out of reach.
His eyes adjusted to the dark quickly, pupils dilating. Boov didn't have big eyes for nothing – they were sea creatures not long ago, built for deep diving.
Natural grey light glowed from a smashed window placed high on one wall, spreading its gloom across a hunter's decaying trophy collection and dozens of cardboard boxes that had fallen apart at the seams and looked to be dissolving now. Flickers of motion along the walls hinted at a rat infestation as Oh crept up to the off-center pyramid of boxes, behind which hid a jukebox, a rustic and outdated stereo system, and a collection of retired record players.
When Oh found records in the first box he opened, he was tempted to take a nibble, but controlled himself.
To give himself a little more light, he held his multi-purpose ring in his mouth like a door knocker to illuminate the record players as he set about tinkering. If Tip was so adamant against him meeting the tot, and that ladder twenty-something terrible inches out of reach, he rationalized he might as well save his cries for help until Mimom returned and prepared dinner. Though they weren't on the best of terms, he was sure she would rescue him from this stuffy forgotten pit.
Deep blue bloomed over Oh's skin like a bruise while he worked and dwelled.
Tip had sure been acting like he belonged down here lately. Putting off their plans in favor of mingling with her own kind, or sleeping in late on the weekend days when he thought they might finally have a chance to explore the lake. Mimom had warned him to expect the unexpected with her because "she's a growing girl," but he had honestly hoped for more than a couple adventures and play-dates before their friendship petered out. Tip was his first love, in a platonic sort of way, and he didn't want to let that go and just move on.
And yet here he was feeling like a blueberry because she didn't seem to feel the same.
A thud behind him was quickly followed up by the reverberating purr of Pig cat rubbing a furry flank against Oh. "At the least you still enjoy accompanying me," Oh said around the glowing ring between his lips as he gave Pig a stroke.
The obese feline soon settled atop Oh's head to watch him patch together a Frankenstein of a record player.
aha did I say 3 chapters? I meant 4. I totally meant 4. ahahaha *fishflops past the finish line*
I'll get that up sometime this week for sure.
~Ny
