Dust on the Bookshelf

distracted by the move

With my apologies for the hiatus, I give you a little fiction. (nerves nerves nerves) A bit from something I’m working on:

 

Millie Franklin

Now she was walking in circles. First clockwise and then counter-clockwise. Then clockwise again. Why did she drag her feet so? They were as brown as the dusty clay from all that dragging.

Millie Franklin would later be proud to have been the first to spot the little phantom as she came walking into Secher. Millie knew from one look at her yellow face, her long dark, somehow dripping wet hair, that this girl in the neon green raincoat was either from the past or some other world. Millie watched her a little longer before slinking back from the window to say a few Hail Mary’s, just in case.

It was the long blaring of a car horn that caused Millie to jump back to the window. The idiot child had nearly gotten herself hit by a car. The driver, Mr. Mixon, was now getting out to check on the girl who sat on the ground blinking. Millie ran out to warn Cameron Mixon not to touch her. This girl was cursed and Millie could smell it from the sidewalk. Indeed it was quite the physical feat, for Millie managed to leap, slow motion-horizontal like a wide receiver, in between Mr. Mixon and the girl.

With her hips back and her shoulders thrust forward, Minnie made a cross with two fingers and yelled, “Get back demon!” along with some fierce words in that Frenchish language she spoke when she healed people.

The girl looked up at Millie with no expression, as if completely unstartled. And if there was one thing to startle someone it was Millie Franklin hurling all her god-given flesh in their direction.

But the girl barely moved. Cameron Mixon shoved Millie aside with disgust, “Get away you old fool,” as he knelt down to offer his hands to the child. Millie watched horrified as he did so and quickly turned away muttering, “I warned you, don’t say I didn’t.”

—-

Millie had found herself somewhat of an outcast after a wave of conservatism swept through the town in the 1980s.

She told anyone who would listen, “people act like they suddenly perfect, don’t make mistakes anymore. Like they don’t need Millie to fix them.” Her business of healing and other operations, marketed as ‘Millie’s Mendin’ and Meds,’ had many customers. Then.

Now it had nearly collapsed—while the town population boomed. Millie still retained a few visitors, that’s what she called her customers, namely: Cecile Williams who owned her own store, Darla Miller née Larkin a certain regular, and then of course the Vets who had the terrors. But that was about it. Millie had had to adjust to leaner and meaner times. This ghost child was the first excitement the town had seen since the ticker-tape parade (the last rainy day she could remember) that left the main street looking like a patriotic pastel painting, or like Lady Liberty had vomited up crepe paper in the only three colors she knew. Anyway, there was good excitement and bad excitement. This was the latter, but both meant business for Millie. She grinned in her collar as she drew the curtain. A crowd had begun to gather.

2 Comments so far
Leave a comment