A Badtime Story
Nurse Mariam’s voice rose like a bird of prey seeing a mouse after a week, no a month, of rib-dry hunger. “And all the bears and all the rabbits…” she preached. “And all the little boys and all the little girl…” Her cheek bones sharpened, her eyes widened, her pupils narrowed in the harsh lamplight. “…all the mummies and all the daddies…” The elderly lady slammed her fist down upon the side of the bedroom pulpit. “…lived happily ever after.”
Jacob shook, a dull clanking coming from beneath the bed sheet. His twin brother, Jacob, quickly held his hand and the clanking stopped. Neither boy could breathe.
“Goodnight, children,” said Nurse Mariam, closing the book. “And remember, no reading after dark.” She ran her dry lips across the children’s foreheads and turned out the light.
“No, Nurse Mariam,” said Jacob and Jacob before the bedroom door clicked shut and the key turned in the sepulchre of its lock.
They waited.
Outside the bedroom window, a cat wailed and still they waited.
As the final light through the curtain gasped upon the window sill, the twins raised their arms. Jacob began to clank again. “Shhh,” said his brother. Jacob handed one of the knives to the younger child. He had smuggled the cutlery from the supper table, in anticipation for this night.
Silently they crept out of bed and padded across to the window. The curtains slid apart easily, like skin from a long cooked chicken, and the boys raised the knives.
They worked in unison, each taking one end of the window to begin. The knives pierced the thin gap between the wood and they began to prise open the heavy sash frame. Minutes passed, each one as long as a life as they rationed their breathing for fear of being heard. They were not entirely silent, but nobody came pounding up the stairs.
The gap widened until the children were able to push their hands in and, together, lift the window upwards. A blast of cold air caressed the meat of their faces and they turned their heads towards one another and grinned.
As such, they did not notice the two hands clambering in from outside. But once those hands touched their own the boys leaped back. Jacob, always the quicker thinker, ran to the story pulpit and seized the book. In six, seven of his quickest strides he was back beside his brother and slammed the book down upon the intruder’s fingers. The book connected with an echoing thud but the fingers remained clutching the sill. Dropping the book, Jacob came to his brother’s aid who had grasped the window and was attempting to tug it back down. With their strength combined the wooden frame hit the fingers which receded with a rattle.
Jacob and Jacob drew the curtains once again but before they were fully closed they saw the book lying open upon the floor. The twins flung themselves at the pages and wrestled them shut.
Squeezing their eyes tight they lay upon the floor until morning.
Luckily the book had not fallen open on the last page.
That would have been too awful for… words.
Goodnight.
—
Illustration © 2017 Carl Pugh
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