Children of the Pen

My horror story about an evil little girl--like myself when I was a few years younger! (Ha ha!)

We were right to appoint Bruno H. Inquisitor's Assistant, because only 10 minutes into the rebellion we reached terms for negotiation.

 

"No! No!" wailed Miss Davenport, thrashing in an attempt to bury her ghost-white face in her hands. Tough to do with her hands tied to the arms of her chair—an ordinary, round-edged, non-swively plastic inmate chair. "Anything but that!"

 

Bruno hesitated, his pawlike hands wrapped in the hem of his PROPERTY OF THE PENNSYLVANIA PENITENTIARY FOR PSYCHOTIC MINORS T-shirt. I'd seen his tattooed stomach in the girls' room, and I couldn't blame Miss Davenport. Bruno's nice, though. Too nice for my job.

 

Tammy and Tracy S. were spinning in Miss Davenport and Miss Wilson's swivel chairs. Mikey G. was crayoning on the padded wall. Eric M. was setting fire to the dollhouse people with a lighter from Miss Wilson's purse. Bruno H. stood like a sumo wrestler, ready to gross the occupational therapists totally out. Miss Davenport's baby blues rolled back inside her head, so I gave Miss Wilson the evil eye. "Thanks a bunch for the purse. Eric's having his first fun in months, and that Bubble Yum should look lovely in Miss Davenport’s hair." (Miss Davenport moaned.) "Now WHERE ARE THE DOUGHNUTS?"

 

The gray-headed therapist threw back her double chins. "I'll never tell! Never!"

 

"Bruno?"

 

Bruno raised his arms slightly. A grinning blue Cyclops, its eye his belly button, poured over the elastic of his XXL orange sweatpants.

 

"All right. All right!" Her saggy bosom heaved against the jumpropes that bound her. "My desk...right side...third drawer."

 

Tammy and Tracy went running and brought me the box. I chomped on a chocolate eclair. Cream gushed down my chin. Heavenly.

 

"Here you go, Bruno." I extended the box. "I owe you."

 

Bruno seized two doughnuts in each paw. Cholesterol ballooned his cheeks. "I love you, Kiki," he said. Only it sounded like, "Awwwvuu, Kiiii."

 

That was only because he had his mouth full. Unlike some people here, Bruno can talk just fine.

 

The 10-inch-thick double-armored door crashed open. There, flanked by no-necked guards with blinding headlamps and AK-47s, stood Director Landmeyer. And guess who was holding the doughnut box.

 

"Catherine X! I suspected you all along!" Landmeyer's riding crop thwacked one English boot. He addressed the no-necks. "Get her."

 

They unslung their weapons and approached. With a bellow, Bruno charged between them and me. Exploding rounds shredded the ceiling as one guard flew through the air. He slammed into the opposite wall, unconcscious. The other grabbed me. I bit through his Kevlar glove. He dropped me to suck on his hand. Bruno brained him with the butt of his own rifle.

 

"Shoot him, Bruno!" I shrieked as Director Landmeyer dragged me off by my collar.

 

He held the no-neck's AK-47 like a baby doll. Tears streamed down his full-moon

face. "I don't wanna hurt you, Kiki! But don't be 'fraid. I'll marry you someday!"

 

Landmeyer sat me in his office and informed me that I was leaving the Pen. A nice lady named Mrs. Morgenstern was taking me into her home like her own daughter. I was to do everything Mrs. Morgenstern told me and be forever grateful unto her. Did I understand?

 

"Yes, sir." With Pennsylvania minors going psychotic every hour of every day, there just wasn't room for everyone. Determined not to cry, I bit my lip until the blood dribbled, mixing on my chin with the cream, turning it pink.

 

Landmeyer yanked a handful of Kleenex from the box on his desk. "That's one of the things you mustn't do! As of tomorrow you won't be an inmate anymore. You're going to be a real little girl. You have to act like a nice little girl."

 

I decided then and there it would be an act.  Or I might never see Bruno H. again.

 

* * *

 

The social worker's lavender manicure visegripped my shoulders. As if I wasn't uncomfortable enough in my red plaid jumper, itchy woolen stockings, and Mary Janes—not to mention this ridiculous red bow on a headband around my close-cropped brown hair.

 

"This is Catherine," the purple-clawed vulture said. "She's seven years old and should fit beautifully into your home."

 

"Mahhhvelous!" Mrs. Morgenstern bent in a swish of chiffon and pearls to squash my face between two cold, perfumy hands. I swear, if the vulture hadn't pinched a nerve or something right then, I'd have bitten her. "Such an attraaactive child. Such big brown eyes. Hwy, Catherine, you do remind me of myself at your age. I daresay you'll enjoy floral sketching, and museum teas, and ohhhh, the autoharp—"

 

"Kiki," I said.

 

She fanned my face with her fake eyelashes. "Hwaaaat?"

 

I pointed. "You Mrs. Morgenstern. Me Kiki."

 

The vulture twitched her pinky. Stars of pain shot through my head. "Like I said. She should fit in."

 

Mrs. Morgenstern’s house was big and white and the weirdest place I'd ever seen. Not that I remember much before they put me in the Pen when I was two for what I did to the baby-sitter. But you'd agree. There were shiny board floors with fussy rugs you had to tiptoe around to avoid messing up the fringe. There were fat slippery chairs that should've been glorious to bounce on, but they were hard as rocks, with idiotic little lace thingies over their arms and backs. There were delicate tables loaded down with smarmy porcelain puppies and babies. The upstairs hall was lined with grim portraits of Mrs. Morgenstern's deceased husbands—all eleven of them.

 

That first night she enthroned me at a table shining clean enough to blind you, under a crystal chandelier, on a rug so thick you'd better not drop a spoon full of mashed potatoes, because you'd never find it. Only she didn't serve me mashed potatoes on a plastic tray with a spork, like I was used to. She set a china plate before me with a slice of buttered toast, a dainty pyramid of peas, a sprig of celery, and a slender strip of meat so rare it was still oozing red.

 

"There." She wrung her hands, hovering behind me. "Dr. Kedidlhopper says children should have balanced meals, soooo..."

 

I jabbed the meat with my fork. "What the bleep is that?"

 

A flush as red as the meat smeared Mrs. Morgenstern's cheekbones. "Hwy, Caaaa—a Kiki, that is orgaaaahnic Westphalian pork. It comes from Germany, a country—"

 

"Liar! Liar! I won't eat it!"

 

"Hwyever not?" she snapped.

 

"'Cause you’re a liar. That ain't pork! That's Jessica D! She was my bestest friend at the Pen before Bruno came, and she went and got 'dopted and this is what happened to her!"

 

"Catherine, don't be preposterous."

 

"Did you butcher her yourself or hire somebody?"

 

Mrs. Morgenstern didn't answer me. She gathered her wispy skirts and trailed grandly upstairs to her bedroom, which she called her boudoir. She cried. I know because I spied. Then I went outside and buried my piece of Jessica. I dug her grave with my silver spoon.

 

* * *

 

To make a long story short, Mrs. Morgenstern had bought me a million fussy frilly frocks with sweet socks and silly shoes and precious purses, but the only way she could wrestle me into them was to give me these rectangular green pictures of a guy called George Washington. Old George, he wasn't as handsome as Bruno, but he was a lot of fun to mutilate. I kicked the heart-shaped pillows to the floor, sat on my canopied bed, and diced up George after George with Mrs. Morgenstern's nail scissors.

 

"Caaaaatherine!" she wailed from downstairs. "The school bus is coming!"

 

"KIKI!" I yelled.

 

Some days it only took ten seconds. Some days, it was two minutes. But before the big yellow cheese wagon heaved up to our stoop, a defeated voice would always quaver, "Kiki..."

 

When I tell you I liked school, you might think I'm crazy or something. But you've got to understand, that's compared to Mrs. Morgenstern's house. Right off they put me in the first grade. At lunchtime, though, they moved me to second. By the end of the day I was the only 7-year-old fifth-grader at Blueberry Hill Elementary. The teachers and principal were ecstatic with this arrangement. I, for my part, was content. Pre-Algebra was fun. Life Science was amusing, though I looked forward to moving on to Chemistry. Literature I endured. The only "works" I could really "relate" to were those of Emily Dickinson.

 

And the glowy-screens—those were neat! At the Pen, the glowy-screens were black and white and only mirrored your own face back at you, and a hundred times over in Surveillance. The ones at school were big and color and had games on them, and blank white places where you could write stories, and a wonderful thing called the Internet.

 

Compared to school, Mrs. Morgenstern's was heck. She had the freakish idea that girls should not have short hair. So she tried to make me grow mine out. I swear, all the George Washingtons in the world wouldn't reconcile me to hair flapping in my face on the swingset. So one day I stole the pink and white electric shaver Mrs. Morgenstern uses on her legs, and I clearcut the puke-brown forest.

 

Mrs. Morgenstern bought me a wig. It was yellow and curly—"Like my own hair when I was a little girl." I put the wig on her Persian cat Scarlett O'Hara. Scarlett scratched me so I cut out her liver with a butter knife.

 

After I done it, I was a little bitty teeny-weeny bit sorry. (This place was driving me soda crackers!) I offered to bury Scarlett under the rosebush, right next to Jessica D. Mrs. Morgenstern did not take this offer kindly. She grounded me, except for school. When I was done with my homework (which never took more than 15 minutes) I passed the time sitting on my bed beneath that canopy of lace, staring at the pattern of roses in the wallpaper and thinking that the roses were soft. sweet-smelling pink planets and I was flying between them in a starfighter armed with missiles that could frag a million planets, a quintillion Mrs. Morgenstern clones.

 

Usually Bruno was my wingman.

 

* * *

 

After 48 days, 7 hours, 31 minutes, and about 19 seconds, Mrs. Morgenstern still thought the weirdest thing about me was how eagerly I vaulted onto the cheese wagon each morning.

 

I didn't think it was weird at all. Mrs. Morgenstern was hopelessly behind the times. She didn't have a single gun in her house—I know because I turned her lingerie drawers inside-out in search of one. She had a glowy-screen, but all it had on it was men with muscles and ladies with babies crying, no Internet. So if I wanted to kill her, I had to use the Internet at school.

 

I finished my Pre-Algebra twenty minutes ahead of the class. I handed it to the teacher with a smile and requested permission to surf.

 

"Of course, Kiki. Just don't look at any dirty pictures."

 

Now, what kind of sick little kid did she think I was? I wasn't interested in dirty pictures. I was interested in poisons.

 

The Internet knew more about poison than I'd dreamed. Did you know if you grind diamond dust into a person’s food every day for a month or so, the carbon buildup will clog their intestines and cause sudden death? And that, unless the medical examiner suspects death by diamond, it's darn near untraceable? I printed that part out and took it "home."

 

Mrs. Morgenstern had a lot diamonds in the tall jewelry cabinet in her boudoir—including eleven huge wedding rings. One of these I stole. The stone was about an inch across, glittering with deadly white fire. This should be a start.

 

One day while Mrs. Morgenstern was playing bridge, I hitched a ride downtown to an old-fashioned apothecary shop. It was right next door to a butcher shop, which had a big ceramic bull's head with a golden nose ring projecting above its door. A bell tinkled when I pushed the door open. I had to wait for the man to come through the inside door from the butcher shop, because he ran them both. He looked like he'd been pickled in acid. His white beard wafted almost to his feet. He was no taller than me, and had to stand on a stool to look down at me over the counter.

 

I pushed Mrs. Morgenstern's first wedding ring across the counter. "I'd like this ground into a fine powder, please."

 

* * *

 

The apothecary/butcher clutched the diamond in one fist like—well, like a precious jewel. It was worth millions. It would be a sin to grind it up. He dropped it with a heavy thunk into a scarlet satin pouch, and ducked into the back street to grab a chunk of pale grey concrete from the broken sidewalk. Not even that sharp little girl would know the difference.

 

* * *

That little old one-inch diamond made about ten times the dust I expected.

 

Mrs. Morgenstern was teaching me to cook—"Because you know, Catherine, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach." That may or may not be how she trapped eleven husbands. But I knew for certain that the way back to the Pen…and Bruno…was through Mrs. Morgenstern's intestines.

 

I dropped a pinch of pale grey diamond dust into her liver and onion soup. And into her marmalade the next morning. And her salad dressing that night. And her oatmeal the next morning.

 

A month passed. Mrs. Morgenstern neither died nor displayed any symptoms of doing so in the near future. I got fed up. I stole another diamond ring and took it to the man with the long white beard. He seemed delighted to serve me.

 

Because I was desperate, my pinches were generous. The second diamond was gone in a week. So I stole Mrs. Morgenstern's third wedding ring. And her fourth. And her fifth. And her sixth. And her seventh. And her eighth. And her ninth. And her tenth.

 

Her eleventh diamond, Mr. Morgenstern's diamond, yielded two heaping handfuls of dust. I scooped it all in her beef stew and watched her across the blinding teakwood table. But she didn’t eat much. Something seemed to be bothering her.

 

"Did I put enough paprika in your stew, Mamma?" I asked. (It had been weeks since she'd quit nagging me to call her that.)

 

She blinked in surprise. "On the contrary, Catherine, I should say rather too much. It has a…a gritty texture."

 

I snuffled convincingly. "I'm so sorry! I'll go make you another bowl!" This time, I decided, it would be rat poison.

 

"That shan't be necessary, dahling. There is something else I feel I must speak to you about."

 

"Yes, Mamma?"

 

"My diamond rings are missing. All eleven of them."

 

"Maybe a burglar got in the house."

 

"No burglar would have missed the silver or the china. Catherine, answer me truthfully. Did you perhaps borrow my rings to play dress-up? And forget to put them back?"

 

The possibility of seeing Bruno again—soon—flooded my heart and overwhelmed my sensibilities. "No!" I shrieked, standing on my chair and hurling my stew into the pristine carpet. "I didn't borrow them! I stole them and I sold them and bought…cigarettes!"

 

Mrs. Morgenstern didn't swoon or even look shocked. Her long thin mouth turned down in distaste. "I'm afraid we shall have to pay a small visit to the bu—the apothecary shop."

 

I thought she was going to order a spell to—to make me sorry for stealing, or something. But no. Her lapis lazuli rings bit my wrist as she handed me over the counter to the man with the long white beard. "I'd like this ground into Grade A child steak, please."

 

"Certainly, Melinda. Would you like the ribs sliced like the last one?"

 

"You can't do this to me!" I screamed. "I'm a Pennsylvania state ward!"

 

Melinda smiled gorgeously. "And I'm a Pennsylvania state foster parent."

 

"I won't be steak! I won't! I won't! I won't!"

 

"Ahhh, my child. I am afraid that is not up to you." With a terrifying gold-toothed grin, the little man reached out with one dragon-brocaded sleeve and touched the back of my neck. The universe went black.

 

* * *

 

The apothecary/butcher laid the little girl in a corner, behind the barrels of brine and floating pigs' knuckles. A mind like hers was a terrible thing to waste. She would be much happier designing nuclear missiles for his homeland of Yakizakistan. He would phone Social Services for another child for Mrs. Morgenstern's steaks.

 

* * *

 

I woke up on a dank stone floor behind a row of wicked-smelling barrels. What was that noise? A van idling in the back street! It was blue and armor-plated and emblazoned with the most beautiful words in the world: PENNSYLVANIA PENITENTIARY FOR PSYCHOTIC MINORS. And straitjacketed in the back was Bruno!

 

The man with the long white beard was haggling price with the social worker. Price of what?

 

I scanned around the dim back room. Crystals glimmered on silk cords from a mysterious wooden rack. Ultraviolet spiders struggled within glass spheres. Bloody chunks of meat hung from huge hooks. Horror flooded back to me: Grade A child steaks!

 

One thing, though, caught my eye.  A fiery white twinkle in a scarlet satin pouch. I stood on a box of dinosaur eggs awaiting the grinder and peeked in. Mrs. Morgenstern's diamond rings—all eleven of them!

 

I seized the pouch and sneaked around to the back of the van. Jumping inside, I threw my arms around Bruno. He threw his around me, too, once I’d torn his straitjacket off with my teeth.

 

"I knew I'd see you 'gain, Kiki," he said. "Even when they put me in a foster home."

 

"Me, too."

 

"It was terrible! The man took me fishing. He tried to make me put a hook through a leech!"

 

"People are crazy, I know." Then I showed him my treasure. "You said you'd marry me, right?"

 

We were eight blocks away before the butcher, the social worker, or Mrs. Morgenstern knew it. We planned to set up housekeeping in a metal pipe beneath the street. It had running water and everything. A kindly old baker tossed us each a stale end slice of bread. We used it to lure pigeons close enough to grab. Bruno refused to strangle his. Well, I can share mine.

 

We sit beside a fire fueled by a lost tire and some dry weeds. Bruno strokes his pet pigeon and rhapsodizes about the iridescent colors the flames cast on its feathers. I roast mine on a stick. Maybe someone will see us and send us back to the Pen. If not, I can live like this.

Reviews

[UncleFossil]

SPECTRAL EXILE Was better than this. Next time don't pick apart a veteran writer's work.

[dilettante1890]

Terrific. For some reason it made me chuckle--like soylent green!

[Celtic Cat]

Grade A child steak! Excellent... so it really WAS your friend being served as your first meal... love it!
Also.... love the apothecary/butcher in on the scheme w/ Mrs. M.
Very cool that she ends up with Bruno in the end..... and yes, a pipe in the ground is better than a penitentiary ANY DAY!!!!!
Good story... kept my attention and had a nice happy ending! : D
Oh... and nice to leave me pondering what a 2 y/o would do to a babysitter to get put away!! ; )