The Babysitter

Another entry to the competition on the theme 'Circus Tricks' - comments welcome!

 

 

The Babysitter

After an embarrassing five minutes spent thanking Alice for giving up her Halloween, and an instruction to ‘treat the house as if it’s your own’, the neighbours eventually left for the theatre and at last, she had the place to herself, or so she thought.

She took a peek at the baby in the cot upstairs, rummaged around a few drawers just in case anything interesting turned up, then returned to the lounge and, as promised, phoned her foster mother.

Alice was not a particularly obedient teenager but she reckoned failing to check in with the oldies would be unwise after their last disagreement. After a week as a virtual house prisoner, denied access to mobile phones and the Internet, she thought she had better play it safe, for now.

“Yes, they left about an hour ago.”

“Yes, the baby looks fine – well it’s still breathing and that’s about all I can check for because if it wakes up and starts squawking I’ll have no idea what it wants, unless it suddenly starts talking, will I?”

“That was a joke, yes.”

“Yes, I’ve taken my tablets and I feel fine, really.”

“I’m about to watch TV and catch up with some mates now I’ve got my phone back.”

“I know – I apologise – again – and thank you for inviting me back into the 21^st century!”

Alice ended the call before she could hear a reply to that last frisson of frustration. She thought she might have put that better but it was done now. If the phone rang she just wouldn’t answer it.

She took a packet of pills from her pocket, popped two into her hand then went to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet.

“Hi Amber  . . . I know, it’s been a while . . . I’m babysitting for the weird neighbours . . . Weird because they’re weird! . . . For a start they’re too old to have a baby this small. . . . And then there’s this statue in the hallway . . . It’s really creepy . . . I have to go now . . . I really have to pee so I’ll call you later.”

Alice used the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs and examined the statue more closely. As she stroked the face and wiped a finger around the bright red lips her initial apprehension gave way to morbid fascination. It looked warm, like painted wood, but it felt cold, like stainless steel, and it was so lifelike she was sort-of surprised that it didn’t complain as she fondled, pinched and patted it.

Like all clown faces, the staring eyes and the fixed, immobile smile stirred some very unwelcome feelings deep inside her gut. She remembered that her therapist had encouraged her to face her fears and anxieties and not run away from them, so she sat on the bottom step and made friends with the statue.

Feeling much better, she noticed it was already 10 o’clock so she went upstairs to check on the baby again, but it wasn’t in the cot. She looked around the room and saw it, propped up in the corner of the room with the lions, monkeys and giraffes. As she picked it up the baby retched, vomited down her t-shirt and then started crying. She screamed and dropped it on the floor, immediately grabbing it and holding it safe. This couldn’t be happening! There was something seriously wrong with this baby and she would get the blame for it. It was so unfair!

Alice put the baby back in the cot and stroked its face, which did not feel like skin, it felt like plastic, it felt like a doll. Looking at it again, it was a doll but how could that be - it had been crying and puking? The head was hanging back and there was a thin red streak where its throat had been cut.

She ran downstairs and swallowed two of her pills thinking that a couple of measly tablets couldn’t help her now. She would be in the papers tomorrow, right enough. An orphan from a home. A mental case. A baby killer. Maybe she should make a run for it.

She heard a noise from the bedroom and rushed in to see the baby, now as right as rain, kicking its little legs up in the air, looking at the mobile above the cot, and gurgling. She gently pushed the tummy with her finger and it was definitely a real baby.

Alice sat on the stairs looking at the front door wondering where she could go, when she caught the statue’s eye and heard, no, felt, it speaking - “hush now Alice, there’s nowhere to go, there’s no hiding from this, just stay here with me”.

She clicked Last Number Redial on her phone then wondered what she could say to Amy that wouldn’t reveal her tortured state of mind and lose her another friend. She hit the Back Key then had an idea. Yes, that would help, that might get her through the next hour or so until the neighbours returned home and they could tell her whether she really was losing her mind.

They had given her a telephone number for use in an emergency so she dialled it, quickly, before she could change her mind.

“Hello? Hi. It’s Alice here. Yes, Alice the babysitter. No, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just that, I know it sounds odd, but do you mind if I cover up the life-size clown statue in the hall? It's not that I don't like it, it just kind of freaks me out with nobody else here. It’s the face. I’m really spooked. Sorry? What did you say?”

She dropped the phone and fell to the floor, covering her ears, but she could still hear the neighbour’s reply.

"WHAT clown statue?" they asked, frantically.

"Dial 999! Call the police! DO IT NOW!"

 

1000 words

 

Dear Diary

The End of Term Competition for the writers' group was to write something on the theme of 'circus tricks' - comments welcome!

Dear Diary

Dear Diary,

It’s time to apologise for all the times I have used your pages to spew out my rantings and ravings about the imperfections of my fellow man, because today I learned a lesson. I left the house this morning with my head held high and my arrogance intact but returned this afternoon a more humble woman, after an experience I could only describe as chastening. But it did make me laugh!

I went to lunch with Amy today. She’s a nice enough old lady but the deafness, the endless sniping at the waitresses, and her need to constantly remind everyone how well her grandchildren are doing, was making me irritable although I was far too polite to let it show.

Whilst she was sipping her milky coffee I excused myself to go to the Ladies, and just as I walked in a young woman came out of the single cubicle. We smiled at each other, and as I passed her, she began to sing and wash her hands. I listened for a few moments – she had a lovely voice – and heard her leave before noticing that the toilet seat was dripping wet.

'How could anyone be so rude?' I thought.

'And how did she manage to pee all over the seat? Was she standing on it?'

As I cleaned the seat with some toilet paper I tried to recreate the scene. I imagined she must have stepped out of her shoes because she would have needed bare feet to keep from slipping. And she wasn’t especially small so how could she have bent her knees wide enough to spray across the whole seat?  Surely there wasn’t enough space?

I decided she was probably an acrobat. You will remember, Dear Diary, when I wrote about that trip to the circus last month which I glossed over because I was too busy complaining about the price of the tickets and how ungrateful Rupert and Henry were. They never thanked me once despite the wonderful entertainment.

I apologise for the omission because I did want to write something about the acrobat. She was amazing. At one point, high up into the roof of the tent, she stood on a tiny piece of wood at one end of the high wire, like a little wooden lily pad it was, and she got up on her toes like a ballet dancer. The next second she was doing a handstand, gripping the sides of the pad with her legs bent right back so she was doing the splits upside down. With a trick like that the toilet seat would have been no problem.

After that she produced three coloured silks – she was probably a magician too – and twirled them from her wrists and ankles before she shimmied down a rope, twirling round and round till she arrived at the ground head first and somersaulted into a low bow to make her exit.

Maybe the toilet was some sort of training exercise. Or perhaps it was what they called performance art.

‘Mucking about cos they’re too lazy to get a proper job’ – that’s what my Mum would have said, and she was probably right.

As I wiped the seat I visualised running after this trainee contortionist and giving her a piece of my mind. Whatever her reasons, she could have stopped to think about the women using the toilet after her. Or better yet, she could have cleaned it up.

And why the singing? Was that part of the act? Was she practicing to be the first singing acrobat? Or was she just taking the mickey? Was she washing her hands with a tra-la-la thinking about me lowering my bottom onto a wet toilet seat and sitting there too embarrassed to complain out loud? Well, she might have had a lovely voice but her mother should have taught her some manners, then she might have had a reason to run away and join the circus!

I rolled the final piece of toilet paper into a tight soggy ball and dropped it into the bowl. By now I was really quite desperate for a pee but I thought I should flush before I used it so I pulled the handle and went back to the sink to wash my hands.

Returning to the cubicle with my skirt already halfway up my thighs I was just in time to watch the water shooting up out of the bowl and flooding the seat.

Sometimes you just have to see the funny side so I just stood there, quietly laughing at myself, pulling my skirt up, until the door opened and a woman came in. I turned to the wash basins, sang a little song,  then left, hoping that one more person would learn something useful about themselves today.

800 words