Could there possibly be anything more beautiful than the veritable natural symphony that was an early Sunday morning?
If there was, the sleepy young woman could not think of it, nor did she exactly want to as she contently lay half-awake and curled up under the warmth of her covers. Wearing a dozy grin, she idly listened to the trilling of the song sparrow, the melodious chirping of the robin, the rustle of the leaves in the light breeze, the gentle pitter-patter of bare feet upon the hallway floor…
"Huh?" she grunted groggily in confusion. However, just when her mind finally registered this last particular noise, instantly, all traces of her drowsiness were obliterated as she was suddenly beset by a wave of panic. Before she could even do so much as more one muscle, though-
"GOOD MORNING!"
WHUMP!
"OOF!" Frances "Frankie" Foster grunted in extreme discomfort after a veritable blur of a squealing nine-year-old child burst kicked open the door, dashed into the room, and without pausing for so much as an instant, leaped upon the bed and catapulted himself atop her, nearly forcing her eyes to pop clear from their sockets under the force of the landing. Unfortunately, her abrupt wake-up call was still quite far from over, and no sooner had he made his rough landing, the brown-haired little boy hopped off and started to shake her playfully.
"Wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-up!" Mac chanted happily between fits of laughter as he roused her vigorously. "Wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-"
"Okay, okay, I'm up! I'm up! I'm up! I said I'm up, all right?" Frankie whined crankily as she groggily managed to sit up, upon which she seized hold of her human alarm clock and gingerly deposited him aside.
"Cripes, pal," she groaned as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. "Yesterday I told you to wake me at seven-thirty, not break me!"
"Oh come on, you're fine." the child only chuckled as he sat Indian-style upon her mattress.
"Easy for you to say," his guardian grumpily shot back, pausing in mid-sentence to let loose with a gaping yawn. "You weren't just used as a human landing pad by one very, very rude little boy. Jeez, pal, why in the world did you-"
"Hey, you only asked me to get you up before eight...you didn't say how." Mac countered with a cheeky grin. However, only a moment later he realized his victory was far from absolute when after a short pause, Frankie suddenly broke out smiling fiendishly from ear to ear.
"Ohhhh…. so that's they way we're starting off our mornings now, huh?"
"No, wait, I just-WAUGH!" Mac yelled as she scrambled to her knees, effortlessly reached over and nabbed him by his sides. Despite the little one's youth, the caretaker still held the advantage when it came to speed, agility, and worst of all, weight. Moving like a flash, Frankie almost lazily flipped him onto his stomach before she limply fell forwards, effectively pinning him beneath her lanky figure.
"Ha! Not as funny from the other end, is it?" she giggled as her captive kicked his little legs and scrabbled furiously upon the bed sheets in a vain attempt to escape. "Huh? Is it?"
"Lemmego! Lemmego! Before you squish me!" Mac yelped before involuntarily bursting into laughter as his tormentor started to mercilessly tickle the back of his neck.
"It's not squishing you, it's waking you!" she tittered mischievously. "After all, what works for one Foster works for all Fosters, right? I see the bags under your eyes, mister, don't deny it! Someone's still a widdle sweepy!"
"Get off! Get off! Hahaha! Stoppit!" he squeaked as he vainly tried to fight her off.
"Eh? Is that the sound of yawning I hear?" she cackled deviously as she started behind his ears. "Ooooh, someone's still not completely awake yet? We'll take care of that!"
"Hahaha! Okay, okay, I give up! I give up!" the squirming little one yelped as he hastily surrendered. "I give-"
Suddenly, their early morning roughhousing was brought to sudden halt by a long, almost eerie, drawn-out moan suddenly echoed from next door, as if someone had carelessly deposited a wounded soldier there the night before. Instantaneously, Mac ceased his wriggling and shot his adoptive "big sister" a puzzled glance.
"…What's that?" he asked curiously. Frankie looked back and merely answered calmly with a fat smile,
"It's looks like Sleeping Beauty has finally awoken."
As she hoisted herself off the child and clambered out of her bed, the little boy's eyes widened a little as comprehension quickly struck. Wordlessly he hopped to the floor and scampered along at the nightgown-clad caretaker's heels as they traveled to the room next door, which according to Mr. Herriman's records, was supposed to be currently vacant.
The lump in the bed of the "spare room" however clearly said otherwise, or more specifically, grunted otherwise as it tossed the sheets over its head to try and block out the brilliant golden rays seeping through the windows. Giggling like a giddy schoolchild, in one clean movement Frankie deftly pulled the bed sheets back, revealing a most curious spectacle.
Another young woman, about the resident caretaker's age, lay in a messy sprawl atop the bed, with limbs askew. Instead of being garbed in traditional sleep ware of any sort, she instead wore a crumpled dark brown denim skirt and matching vest tossed over a wrinkled white T-shirt. As she slowly began to awake with a piteous whine, Frankie just leaned in and cooed sweetly like a mother waking up a drowsy child,
"Good morning, sunshine."
The muzzy woman finally managed to raise a hand and brush away a few curly black strands of hair, reveling a pair of half-opened, and shockingly bloodshot eyeballs. As Frankie just grinned sweetly, her fellow twenty-three-year-old wordlessly attempted to take stock of her surroundings for a few seconds before finally grunting unhappily as realization his her like a sack of bricks,
"…Oh, for the love of...not again."
As Frankie tossed back her head and burst out snorting uncontrollably with laughter, Mac politely greeted the familiar face with a respectful nod and a warm grin as he peered from behind his guardian.
"Hi, Kathy."
"Huh?" Kathy grunted as she glanced his way. "What the he-oh, jeez!"
Immediately the mortified girl grabbed a pillow and tossed it over her face just in time to conceal the brilliant blush that had set her cheeks aglow.
"Frankie!" she let loose with a muffled wail. "In the name of everything holy, why do you always have to let him see me like this? Why? I look like total garbage!"
"Because," the redhead only giggled fiendishly and passed the child a wink as she affectionately ruffled his hair. "It's funny."
As her best friend continued tittering uncontrollably like a fool, Kathy elicited a drawn-out groan as her intense embarrassment skyrocketed.
"Christ, I can't believe I did it…again…for God's sake, every other Saturday night we go out…" she lamented morosely. "Why do I always wake-up here?"
"Hey, don't blame me." Frankie replied calmly as she teasingly flicked a curly lock. " You're the one who kept forgetting how many drinks you already had last night, and then tried to go ask out a guy with like, three piercings in his nose alone, and-"
"Stop! Stoppit!" Kathy whined in utter dismay as she tried to clamp the pillow tighter over her head. "You mean I tried to come on to…"
"Well, that's what it looked like." Frankie quickly tried to assuage her friend's humiliation, but to little avail. "I dunno, maybe you just-"
"Maybe I lost track of how much I already drank yet again and tried to make a pass at…" she began to reply sarcastically before she elicited another sour groan. "Oh Lord Almighty , Mac's still here listening to me, isn't he? Jeez...why couldn't you just drop me off at my apartment last night?"
"Because someone pretty much passed out halfway to the car." Frankie explained, patting the mortified woman's back a little. "And again, I had enough trouble finding your car keys as it was on my own, let alone trying to find where you keep your keys for home."
At this point, Kathy peeked out from behind her makeshift cover and admitted ruefully,
"...Good point."
Finally realizing that whiningly bemoaning her predicament wasn't going to get her anywhere, the hung-over young woman slowly started to clamber upright into a clumsy sitting position, while struggling to ignore her pounding headache.
"Yikes, it's like fifty jackhammers going off in there…" she mumbled as she tenderly rubbed her throbbing skull before frowning apologetically and swallowing her pride. "Me and my stupid weekend routine…Frankie...I'm sorry...why my memory's the first thing that goes the second I take one sip, I have no idea, I-"
"At least I got a nice work out lugging you up the stairs." Frankie only joked. "So last night didn't go so well; so what? Don't worry about it, Kath, everyone makes mistakes-"
"And some of us are stupid enough to make them over and over…and over..." Kathy cut in somberly. "Cripes, if you had a dollar for every time I had to spend the night here in a wasted stupor-"
"Trust me, I still wouldn't be quitting my day job anytime soon." she laughed. "Kathy, it's okay, honest."
"I…I guess…" Kathy reluctantly agreed, then added softly a wan smile, "Thanks again for-"
"It was nothing." Frankie answered kindly. "Let's just try and be more careful next time, okay?"
"Yeah…yeah, all right." Her friend groaned and winced involuntarily as her head continued to ache. "Oh God, this is ridiculous…I mean, for Pete's sake, I work for the depar-"
"Kathy, we all know where your work, and I'm not going to sit here while you beat yourself up for the next half-hour." Frankie gently persisted, rolling her eyes a little in exasperation. "So you lost track and drank a little too much one night, okay? I've done it too; for the last time, it's all right."
"Yeah, yeah…I know..." came the murmured reply as she finally put a halt to the merciless self-berating. "So...same drill?"
"Same drill." The redhead said as she gave her charge a gentle nudge. "Mac, go and fetch a pair of sandglasses, some jeans, and clean shirt from my room, 'kay? Oh, and go get Bloo to go find out where the bunny is right now, all right?"
"Yup, I know!" The child replied as he obediently darted off, leaving his guardian to tend to her disheveled friend.
"If Herriman asks, you stopped by extra early to join us for breakfast, got it?" Frankie prepped. The other young woman nodded with a grin.
"Yeah, I remember, I remember…same as always...I sure as hell do love 'visiting' here Sunday mornings, don't I?"
Frankie chortled at the wisecrack and patted her gently on the shoulder, and the two wordlessly smiled at one another for a few moments before something rather unsettling crossed one of their minds.
"Wait…" Kathy whimpered as her expression grew almost outlandishly distorted with revulsion. "That guy you said I was trying to put the moves on…really…he honestly had three nose piercings?"
"One of them was like a great big door knocker on his face…that, and he had some of the funkiest tattoos I've ever seen, too."
"Oh, for crying out loud…"
"…Seriously guys," Kathy lamented as she sauntered out onto Foster's front porch, garbed in her borrowed attire with her own wrinkled clothes from the night before tucked in a neat bundle under her arm. "I don't know how you can keep going through this over and-"
Her best friend merely grinned and flashed a sly wink to the nine-year-old strolling by her side. "What do you mean? There's absolutely nothing wrong with having a dear friend stop by on a beautiful Sunday morning to see some dear friends. Isn't that right, pal?"
"Nope, absolutely nothing wrong at all." Mac laughed as he nodded furiously. Kathy lowered the sunglasses and glowered.
"Newsflash, I doubt either of you are in the running for an Academy Award this year. C'mon, the rabbit's not around, you can drop that stupid act now."
"Now what fun wouldthat be?" Frankie just chuckled mischievously as she made a face.
Kathy, as the equally mature young woman she was, promptly fought fire with fire as she stuck out her tongue, forcing the battling duo to helplessly dissolve into a fit of the giggles in a matter of moments.
"Haha! Okay, okay, you win." Frankie conceded with a chortle as she removed a set of car keys from her pocket and handed them over. "Think you have it in you to make it back home?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure." Her companion replied with a weak grin. "I'll give you a call when I get back, okay? Honestly, thank you so much for-"
"Kathy, read my lips; it's no problem at all." The caretaker chortled as the two embraced quickly. "Get home safely, all right?"
"All right, Mommy, and I promise not to talk to any strangers on the way either." Kathy replied teasingly. "I'll call you later. Bye Mac, thanks for all your help too, kiddo!"
"Bye!" Mac bade his farewell with a smile as she gave him a quick affectionate pat on the head. With this, Kathy turned about and trotted back to the small, green sedan that had definitely seen better days sitting parked by the front gate. In just a matter of moments, she was in the car and was driving off down the street, though not without taking care to blast a few farewell honks on the horn first.
"Another Sunday morning as usual, huh?" Frankie cracked as she watched their guest vanish from sight. Once Kathy was gone from view, Frankie spun about and casually sauntered back inside. "C'mon, we better get started on cleaning up what's left of breakfast before Fuzz-butt throws a hissy-fit about-"
THUD.
The instant she heard the unmistakable sound of something tumbling to the ground behind her, she immediately froze dead in place as she was simultaneously struck completely mute with panic. For a few excruciatingly long moments, she was unable to move a single muscle as a surge of horror temporarily overwhelmed her.
The instant her initial shock wore off though, Frankie hastily spun about and wrenched the front door back open, as she sent prayer after to prayer heavenwards that her original horrific assumptions were dead wrong. Alas, her pleas to the divine came much too late, and for a few moments she could've sworn her heart skipped a few beats the second she glanced outside only to see a little boy lying in a motionless heap.
"Mac!"