Originally, the title submitted for the short short story was "That's Fairy, Not Dessert." Let's just say my house needs one desperately. Also, I greatly enjoy imagining the chaos with two dogs...
“I’m going mad,” he
said to the empty office. The office chose not to respond.
Could you go mad if
you could still consider going mad? Or was convincing yourself of sanity the
first sign of madness? He wasn’t sure, but those…things he’d seen lurking in the shadowy corners of his apartment
weren’t his imagination. Absolutely, certainly not.
And now all his
clothes were unpacked and his dirty laundry piled up in a basket by the bed. The
bathroom and kitchen sparkled in the bright morning sun, even if he’d left
dishes in the sink after dinner.
He didn’t remember
doing any of it. He’d carefully talked himself into believing he’d learned to
sleepclean, some weird holdover from his parents’ housekeeper traumatizing his
childhood with clean dishes. Or something.
This morning the
mousetraps he’d set all over the house were stacked carefully in the middle of
his kitchen floor, neat and scrupulously free of any peanut butter bait. He
heard papers shuffling in his office and ran into the room only to find them
settling themselves on his desk, as though someone had just been flipping
through them and left in a hurry.
Ben considered
himself a rational, scientific man with a solid base in reality. Sure, he
watched the Ghost Hunter shows and liked a good exorcist movie now and again,
but that was just for show. He didn’t believe in hauntings or the paranormal, so
he just needed to find a rational explanation for all of this, right? What
could possibly be wrong with sleepcleaning?
He sat at his desk,
prepared for some serious Googling. He was tapping his finger on the desk along
to AC/DC’s “Back in Black” and thinking thank God there was ONE rock station in
this town, when someone in the room cleared her throat.
No one was there.
He flicked off the radio.
The “ahem” noise,
definitely female, came again from the corner of the room by the window.
No one was there.
“Dammit,” he
slammed his laptop closed. “Now I’m hearing things? What the hell is WRONG with
me?” Disgusted, he stood and dug his cell from the front pocket of his jeans.
“Aw laddie, there’s
nothing at all wrong with ye.” The thickly-lilted voice chuckled merrily. Her motion
finally caught his eye, and a tiny female creature waved at him from the top of
the stack of boxes marked BOOKS. She was only a foot tall and brown from crown
to heel; walnut hair smoothed back from her face in a thick braid, sable eyes
clearly laughed at him from a nest of wrinkles. Her clothes were shades of a
forest floor, bark and loam. Her body seemed younger and stronger than her lined
face, which grinned at him as she waved one tanned hand, the other holding a
dust cloth. He didn’t smile back.
“Are ye dull then?”
she asked with a long-suffering sigh, and shook her head with regret.
He snatched the bat
he’d laid behind the desk for “just in case” problems, and held it out between
himself and the creature.
“What the hell!” he
shouted. “Stay away! What the hell are you?”
“Humph. Dull AND
rude.” Her smile vanished, sparks of anger flashing in those clear dark eyes.
She jumped off the box and stomped toward the door, muttering something about
brownies under her breath. He cautiously moved closer, making a shooing motion.
“Don’t shoo a
Brownie, sir, if you know what’s good for you,” she hollered, waving her finger
at his knees. “I’m a damn fool, thinking you could see so you would
see.” She shook her head, disgusted. “Well, that’s that then.”
“What?” Ben carefully
lowered the bat. “What are you talking about? Who are you? What the hell do brownies have to do with anything?”
“I AM
a Brownie, you grand jackass! Fairy, not dessert!” She threw her hands in the
air, flinging her dust cloth across the room. “Bah. Maybe I shouldn’ta
surprised you so, but damn if I’ll keep talking to an armed idiot.” And with
that, she stalked through the doorway and disappeared in a little poof of dust.
The bat thunked on
the hardwood floor and Ben ran after the tiny brown woman. She was gone. Toast
crumbs still covered the kitchen counter; clothes still lay on his bedroom
floor. He sat at the table, pushed a moving box out of the way, and cradled his
head in his hands.
“Oh God, I really am
going crazy,” he said to the table, and sighed. Deep in his gut, he felt an
apology coming on.
