Off to Grandmother's house!

A Story by Roland Corvus

teen driven into madness..

The sky above Kent court was the color of television, turned to a dead channel. Prudence woke from another one of the dreams she had been having of late, glanced out the window and found solace in the sky which seemed as if it were just one giant cloud enveloping all the eye could see. It was interesting to her, that she could never recall the exact events that transpired in her dreams, yet she was always left with the same sort of uneasy feeling upon opening her eyes. It was as if she had just experienced something profoundly sinister, the precise context constantly escaping her, the residual feelings of angst following her like a shadow wherever she went. Yet this was oddly comforting for reasons she did not know.

A week ago Prudence had come across something on the web about dreaming, specifically lucid dreaming. She had since been performing daily little reality checks to see if she could catch herself in a dream and maintain consciousness; fruitlessly thus far. "Up and at em Prudence!," she heard Ellen shout through a locked door; she made her way downstairs with less reluctance than usual; after all, she knew what today meant to her mother. She pinched herself on the arm as she made her way downstairs.

She didn't make it half way down the stairs before she stubbed her toe; again. It was the same piece of wood that had been plaguing her for what felt like her entire life; or at least as long as she could remember. One, two, three, four steps down the flight that took her into the kitchen existed a troublesome wedge of wood small enough to go unnoticed to the eye, yet just present enough to puncture a decent sized wound into Prudence's right big toe. She let out a grunt in immediate reaction to the extreme annoyance caused by this protruding slab of wood. Just then she sat down on the steps and watched as a fraction of her clean white sock slowly became a brilliant deep shade of red; this was Prudence's favorite color. The color that a white piece of cloth becomes when immersed in blood, but just before it inevitably becomes the distasteful shade of brown. Just now sitting in a sort of state of amusement induced by her pain and the glorious shade of dark red inhabiting her lower foot, Prudence realized that she treasured this rich shade of maroon in part due to its temporary existence. It was in this very moment that this beautiful crimson would be alive and true, and not too long afterward it would be just another unsightly brown stain. Prudence felt an intense and profound connection with her sock just now; being so fiercely beautiful for just a glimpse of time, only to return to sub-normality so quick as to be utterly incapable of holding onto that brief feeling glory. She was just another unsightly brown stain on this Earth.

But the rest of the words spewing out of Ellen's mouth were white noise to Prudence's ears. All that was on her mind now was her grandmother; oh how she loathed Agatha Caulfield. The very thought that she shared a surname with this absolutely repugnant woman made her cringe. "Oh come on P, I have had to tolerate her antics my whole life, I think you can handle an afternoon," her mother would say. However, Prudence was not so sure; because in fact it was not, never just one afternoon. Prudence felt as if every waking moment spent in the presence of her vile grandmother was part of a never ending prison sentence. The list of things that irked her about Agatha was virtually endless. What was it about the trips to her grandmother's house that drove Prudence to the brink of insanity? It was the generic "old people smell" that lingered about her; a hint of soap with the overwhelming presence of rotting flesh, combined with her most dismal breath which perpetually filled Prudence's nostrils with a nauseating sense of discomfort. It was her longstanding uphill struggle with the ability to breathe due to a few too many cigarettes back in the day, resulting in an utterly dreadful clacking noise that she produced after she dosed off on her recliner while watching antiques roadshow. It was her complete helplessness that resulted in her nagging Prudence for the entirety of each visit to perform innumerable inconsequential duties; which when coupled with her distasteful passive aggressive nature made Prudence want to slit her awful wrinkled throat which resembled old elephant skin. It was her offensively abominable and tacky taste in home decoration that seemed to hurt Prudence's eyes with each passing moment. All of these ingredients, and more still, combined to create this seemingly never ending prison sentence that Prudence served on every other Sunday for the rest of eternity.

Prudence just stood there watching in gratifying amazement. The dark red blood pouring from her grandmother's throat, blue gray eyes staring up at her in a horrified state of agony. She was reaching out her hand almost as if she was trying to ask Prudence to help her in her final minutes, or at least console her. Prudence chuckled at the irony of the fact that she had always knew that her wretched grandmother would literally be soliciting her hand until the moment she left this Earth. As the blood continued to spew from the elephant skin it spread gloriously across the hideous white carpet. Prudence looked from her fading grandmother to Tabby cat, who was sitting on the windowsill and seemed almost as if to be enjoying this as much as Prudence. It was in this moment that Prudence realized the gruesome perfectness of the universe at this point in time. By the time they found her body, the white rug would be nothing but a large brown stain. For now though, it was a brilliant shade of dark red that held Prudence mesmerized, perhaps not entirely realizing the consequences of what she had just done. As Agatha Caulfield let out a few more futile attempts to suck in air, as was the body's natural inclination, the light vanished from her eyes and she was suddenly lifeless. Prudence scooped up Tabby in her arms and waited on the front stoop for her mother to pick her up.