Cold Shoulder and a Gelid Grave

Billy, the cashier at Hal's Hardware Depot, was having a boring evening. The only thing he had sold was a bucket of screws, and he expected nothing else to sell, either.

Also, he had been studying like crazy for an upcoming exam. The textbook rested in front of him now, but the words were swimming before his eyes. His eyelids slowly drooped down, threatening to close on him completely.

BAM! Someone slammed their purchases onto the counter, waking Billy in an instant. A blonde-haired woman stood before him, face flushed red in fury. She looked like one of Odin's Valkyries who had just taken a big bite out of a jalapeno pepper.

"Everything all right, miss?" he asked her.

"FINE! Just great. Not a trouble in the world!" she snarled, not giving an exposition for her obvious wrath. Her expression told him that what she said was fiction.

Billy scanned her purchases, which consisted of two furniture blankets, duck tape, and a staple gun. "Goin' to kidnap someone?" he asked, laughing nervously.

The Valkyrie bared her teeth at him. "More like murder," she vowed ominously, swiping her credit card forcefully and shaking the scanner.

Billy swallowed, sorry he had asked. He printed her receipt and quickly put her items into the flimsy plastic bags. "Thank you for shopping at Hal's Hardware Depot!" he said, omitting the cheerful "Come again!" he was supposed to say at the end. He handed her purchases to her, wishing that she would get out of the store and never return. Thankfully, she stalked off.

Billy stared after her, glad that he wasn't the object of her wrath.

…

Astrid threw her car into park when she reached home. Toothless whined from behind the backyard's fence, but Astrid did not want to see how much grass he had killed in her absence. She opened all of the doors to her car and surveyed the carnage, which looked worse in the fading daylight.

She lugged all of the ruined stuffing to her trashcan and then attacked the carpet of her car with a vacuum and power sprayer. Her arms thoroughly ached by the time she got rid of the disgusting smell. She stretched her back for a second, then pulled out the furniture blankets and staple gun.

Carefully, she folded the blankets into thick rectangles and put them where her seat cushions should have been.

KA CHUNK! KA CHUNK! KA CHUNK! She plugged the staples into the seat, having fun wielding the staple gun. She wrapped the duck tape around the shredded seat belts, finishing the job. She stepped back to admire her work.

"Not too bad," Astrid said to herself, nodding her head. If it didn't work, she could always use Chihuahua pelts to reinforce it. She made sure to lock her car before she headed inside.

"I'm home!" she sang to thin air like a glorious sonnet, making her way over to her bin of fresh ground coffee beans. Peeking inside, she discovered a few brown specks. Camicazi had used up the rest of her precious stock.

Astrid disgustedly slammed the lid back on the bin and grabbed a water bottle from the fridge, a poor substitute for the coffee that she needed to boost her moral. Sighing, she took her laptop out, set it up at the table, and began to write a renter's contract.

When she was satisfied with what she had come up with, Astrid printed two copies of the contract out and left them on her coffee table for future viewing.

Astrid wasn't a superstitious person. In her opinion, any medium could be quickly disproved with a well-aimed bullet into his or her fancy machine. But Astrid felt eyes on her. The creepy, unwavering stare of someone...or something.

"Toothless! Quit staring at me!"

The Border Collie peeked into her house through a window, and his unwavering stare never left Astrid as she marched across the room to shut the curtains completely. Even with the window covered, she still knew that Toothless was stalking her. She wasn't going to give in to those pleading eyes. She refused to.

Astrid went to her room without giving the canine a second glance and collapsed on her bed, mentally exhausted. She soon drifted off to sleep, not even realizing that she had forgotten to change into her pajamas.

…

Astrid stared up at the sign for Dora's Dog Palace, where she was dropping Toothless off. The letters peeled off into an unpleasant shade of orange. She wasn't going to chance taking Toothless to work again after what those Chihuahuas had done to her car, no matter how much the orange of the sign disagreed with the purple.

"Come on boy." Toothless hopped out of the car, and they entered the building together.

"Why, hello there! You must be the young lady who called!" a lady with a beehive hairdo and a name tag that identified her as Dora squealed, barely audible over the din of barking dogs coming from the back door that led to a kennel.

Dora wore make up like a mud mask and her curly hair was just a tad off from the shade of lipstick she was in the middle of applying.

"And this must be Toothless!" Dora bent down and smacked a kiss on Toothless's nose, leaving a bright red lip mark. Toothless whimpered and tried to wipe it off with his paw.

"I have to get to work. How much are you charging for a day?" Astrid asked, pulling out her wallet.

Toothless whined in protest as he watched the narrative unfold.

Dora's eyes bugged out. "Oh, I wouldn't dream of charging more than seventy-five dollars!" she declared poetically, clasping a pudgy hand to her chest.

Astrid had no idea if that was cheap or not, so she paid without complaining. "I'll be back as soon as I can to get you out of here," she promised Toothless, whispering in his ear as she gave him one last pet. He howled as the door to the establishment closed behind Astrid.

When Astrid got to the office, Hiccup wasn't there. In fact, he didn't make it to work until three in the afternoon, and when he sat down, he immediately rested his head down on his arms and fell asleep. Astrid wasn't going to let him get away with it. She made a beeline for his desk.

"Hiccup! Wake up!" She clapped her hands near his ear.

"Huh?" He groggily grounded his fists into his eyes.

"I've got a bone to pick with you, Haddock! What's up with ditching Toothless on me?" she asked, crossing her arms.

"I wouldn't call it ditching..." he mumbled, running a hand through his hair and looking around the room in bewilderment, as if he didn't believe it existed. Large, dark bags hung under his eyes, indicating he hadn't slept much. His lack of sleep better have been because he had been writing an apology.

"Oh, yeah? Well, I had to leave him in my car all day, and he invited some Chihuahua friends of his to have a nice feast of my seat cushions."

"Sorry," Hiccup muttered. Of all the lame things to say!

"Sorry? All you have to say is sorry?" Astrid didn't care that her rising volume had attracted the attention of everyone in the room. "What kind of gentleman just dumps off an animal on someone and doesn't even call? YOUR DUMB ANIMAL WRECKED MY CAR." She jabbed him in the arm with every syllable. Was she not speaking English?

" Sounds like Toothless did you a favor. That car needed wrecking more than a condemned building!" Hiccup protested, pushing her hand away. "Don't you have work to do?"

"Hiccup Haddock," Astrid hissed, "how dare you! You didn't even show up to work until the day was ninety percent over! You are the most inconsiderate, lazy, rude, useless coward I have ever known!"

Eyes blazing, Hiccup got to his feet, upsetting his chair. Wordlessly, he marched from the room, crutches clicking in the deafening silence that transcended. Camicazi got up and hurried after him, sending a glare over her shoulder at Astrid.

Of course Camzi would go after him. Astrid didn't see what she had done when Hiccup was at fault! Let Camicazi glare, she thought, going back to work.

Camicazi returned after a period without Hiccup and gave Astrid the cold shoulder.

Eventually, Astrid packed up and headed home. After eating dinner without the presence of Camicazi, she decided to dig through the box of newspapers that she had left in the basement, which was an allegory for dark, creepy pit infested with venomous spiders and snakes underneath someone's house.

A wise proverb: One does not simply visit the basement.

Shivering, Astrid tiptoed down the dark stairs, stomping to kill any of those spiders that might lurk on the uneven wood. Casting suspicious glances at queen-sized spider webs hanging from the ceiling, she grabbed the box. Quick as a rabbit (or as near quick as she could be with a heavy box) she raced back to her living room. She let the box of heavy literature that felt like a set of bibliographies fall on the floor before kneeling down next to it.

"Six years ago, six years ago," Astrid muttered to herself, searching for any newspapers with the scrap paper's date. Hiccup had been scared of the article. Astrid was determined to find out why, no matter how mad she was at him. Finally, she found the matching date and gasped in shock at the headline.

NO SUSPECTS IN MURDER CASE OF VALKA HADDOCK

by J. March

The identity of the person who killed Valka Haddock yesterday, November 28th is still a mystery to the police. While they assure the city that they will catch him, the Chief of Police Stoick Haddock (also the husband of the deceased) advises that all citizens should not venture out after dark. If you do walk in the evening hours, stay in populated areas. Mrs. Haddock's funeral is being held at 5:00 P.M. on December 1st at Meyer's Funeral Home, with a memorial service beforehand at 3:30 for anyone wishing to pay last respects.

Astrid let the newspaper fall down to the floor. The article cleared up why Hiccup was so late to work, because the exact date was the twenty-eight of November. She had some serious apologizing to do if she could find Hiccup. Her eyes fell back on the word "funeral" in the article and an idea came to mind.

When Astrid got out of the car at the cemetery, she spotted Hiccup's lone silhouette underneath a graceful willow tree, the orange sky making his features unreadable.

Apologies weren't Astrid's strongest point. She cracked her knuckles nervously as she approached him, passing by gravestones with poor, wilting flowers for personification.

"Hiccup?" she asked, tentatively.

He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his gloved hand. "I was in the wrong."

"No, no, no! I shouldn't have left Toothless in my car in the first place. I'm sorry, Hiccup." Astrid stood next to him, looking down at the gravestone at the base of the tree.

VALKA HADDOCK

LOVING WIFE AND MOTHER

"I'm sorry, too," Hiccup eventually whispered. "I'll pay for the damage to your car."

They stood quietly for a few minutes, the only sounds being the crackle of dead leaves and the rush of wind.

"I was there," Hiccup finally said, "the night she died. I saw him pull the trigger."

Astrid was shocked. He hardly ever spoke of his mother. "Who?"

"Alvin Treacher. I saw him do it. I tried to tell the police officers, but they thought I was just a traumatized teenager. By the time they believed me, he was long gone and left no trace." His voice was unsteady.

Astrid knew that Hiccup had a habit of blaming himself when things went wrong. "It's not your fault."

Hiccup shook his head. "It is. I ran, Astrid. The gun was pointed at me, but my mom jumped in front of me and told me to run."

Astrid winced at his words. "You are not a coward. You faced the Red Death," Astrid reminded him, taking his arm.

Hiccup sighed, his breath frosting in the air. "Sometimes, on days like today, it feels like I'm a coward."

"You were only obeying your mother. She sounded like a courageous woman, Hiccup." Astrid had seen a picture in Stoick's office of Valka once. Valka had looked very much like Hiccup, with the same thirst for adventure in her eyes.

"She was. When I was growing up, she was always there for me when my dad wasn't, after getting picked on at school. She actually went and gave a bully what for once. The business trip my dad took?"

Astrid nodded, even though the question didn't really need an answer.

"It's typical of him. He doesn't know how to talk to me, even after everything that's happened. He doesn't want to talk about Mom. It hurts."

"More than ripping off a band-aid," Astrid remarked, regretting how stupid it sounded, even if it got the barest hint of a smile out of Hiccup.

The smile disappeared just as quickly as it had came. "I miss her, Astrid, so hard it aches. Even after six years, I feel like I let her down."

Astrid grabbed hold of his words. "Then don't! Continue to make her proud! Find Excellinor."

Hiccup remained silent for a moment, before swinging his crutches around.

"Hey! Where are you going?" Astrid called after him as he headed back to the cemetery's parking lot.

"To Gobber's! I'm going to make my own leg!"

Astrid caught up with him. "That's great, but not so fast. We have to get Toothless out of a madwoman's clutches first."

"What?" Hiccup asked, confused.

"Uh...I might have left Toothless at Dora's Dog Palace for the day," Astrid confessed.

"YOU WHAT?!"

A/N: Can anybody guess the "One does not simply..." quote?

Rider