AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Her legs cramped as she stirred. Her son’s weight had cut off her circulation. She suppressed a groan of pain, the awful feeling that her veins were constricting from heel to hip, and forced herself still so she wouldn’t disturb her little boy.
Through the ache of it she heard something, and realized at once it was the same sound that had awakened her, but that had then gone quiet.
Singing.
The tune was cheerful. Not far away. The kitchen? The livingroom? Certainly on this floor. He was humming, a vibration that came low and heavy through the wall.
He was close now. The living room?
Then the threshold to the office crackled. There was a hollowbonk—the sound of the guitar being picked up. Then the sound of it being strummed. A pause. Another noise. He was tuning it.
She listened wide eyed in the dark. Her daughter woke and stiffened next to her, little hands gripping, constricting around her arm, her wrist.
Through the wood came the sound of a note going up and down, settling, the familiar slide of the guitar finding a clear point on the scale. She could picture her husband’s fingertips on the silver tuning pegs, the way the guitar sat gently in his lap, how small it looked against his wide chest. It was always so surprising to see someone with his wrestler’s build be so gentle, coax out such beauty. When he held the guitar, it reminded her of the way he’d cradled their children in his arms as babies.
“Are you here, little one?” the Corner rasped. “Got a song for you.”
He played, the sound bright on the freshly tuned instrument.
She couldn’t place the song, but she knew it was a child’s tune, some nursery rhyme with lyrics impossible to recall, her mind blank at the irreconcilability of her fear and the soothing sound of the guitar.
The strumming stopped.
Then, the voice of the Corner, timbre tuneless and filled with rattling nails.
“Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in.”
Her son shifted. She moved slightly to give her legs some relief. Sucked her lip with the torture of pins and needles.
Don’t wake up.Sleep through it, please.
The boy settled, quiet.
Her daughter’s hand tightened so hard around her wrist she grimaced.
“I’m tired of waiting. You hear that? I’m not going to dress in granny’s pajamas and wait around anymore. This wasn’t supposed to be dull.” The Corner’s cockroach voice scraped and burrowed, dripping with disdain.
Her daughter’s fingernails dug deeper.
“No sheep’s clothing. Just me, little piggies.” He paused, listening, then added, “You know, that Big Bad Wolf got lit on fire. Climbed down the chimney. Scrabbling in the bricks, how did he ever fit? Shimmied down into a pot. Boiled and eaten.”
He strummed the guitar again.
“But that’s not how life is, little one. Pigs are the ones meant for eating. And I’m smarter than that old wolf,” the Corner said. “I’m gonnaburnthe house in.”
She felt the walls cave in around her. Imagined what it would be, to be in this place, smoke filling it. To be forced out for air and find him waiting. Her daughter started to cry into her robe, whimpering, “Mama, Mama!”
“Shhhhh, shhh!”
“Buuuuurn,” he hummed. “That’ll flush you out, you three little piggies. Hear that? Smoke you out,easy-pleasy.”
She startled, her spine straightening, fingers spreading out as if she were falling, about to catch the weight of her whole body.
Easy-pleasy. How? How does he know that?
That was her son’s phrase. He’d heard it in some cartoon, and ever since he was about three years old, “easy-pleasy” was the only way he said “please,” embellishing it with different rhymes.
Easy-pleasy-lemon-squeezy, easy-pleasy-cracker-cheesy, easy-pleasy-carrot-peasy, easy-pleasy-booger-sneezy.
