By Trevor Mastergeorge
There is pepper in Putrid’s eggs. Clearly, there had been some sort of
miscommunication with nanny Horace, she thought.
“I don’t like pepper in my eggs,” she said, staring monotonously at her plate.
The breakfast sat there, cold and motionless, as it had done for the past fifteen minutes. She half expected the eggs to form into a face and laugh at her for thinking pepper is spicy. To her right was her father’s seat, occupied forevermore by the breakfast ruining nanny: “Nanny Horace,” or more formally “Misses Horace.”
Nanny Horace wasn’t tall and would probably be shorter than Putrid in a couple years, although one could hardly tell while she was sitting down. Every time Putrid had seen her, she wore a dress with either polka dots or tiny dog faces patterned across the soft fabric. The nanny’s own face was stout, much akin to an almond, and about the same tone. Its shape was hardly average, with an oddly pointed chin. Her eyes were always busy, looking about on her phone, to the windows, to the table. She always wore a bandana to hold her hair, but it seemed to be rather full and hardly wanting to contain itself in the cloth. Putrid glanced under the edges of her eyelids at the nanny, begging for a sour reaction.
“You saw me make them,” Misses Horace groaned into her phone screen. She had been rolling her thumb along the screen for the entirety of breakfast. It was quite possible she had hardly anything left to look at. In her right hand she held a fork but had forgotten to make herself a plate. All Putrid had to do was wait for her mother to get home, and this nightmare could end.
A defeated Putrid sighed and pulled her knees to her chest. She poked at the eggs for 62 seconds, poking once a second. When the scramble failed to entertain her she stood on the chair and jumped off, being sure to create the loudest stomp possible. The old hardwood floors creaked respectfully, assuring her they would not give way to the basement below. Putrid checked over her shoulder to make sure she had startled Nanny Horace and was mortified to find her carrying the plates to the sink, not paying any mind to Putrid’s ruckus. Pouting her way out of the kitchen, she found herself in the living room.
Of the three floors, the middle was her least favorite. The ground floor of the house was pepper on eggs. The living room, kitchen, and guest room offered no attractions, only dull social spaces. Being social was not very high on Putrid’s to-do list, so the ground floor was avoided at all cost. Today the living room was flooded with morning light from the floor-to-ceiling windows, much to her discontent. On the other side of the window was the front yard, and beyond that, the street where Nanny Horace’s yellow sedan was parked. Nanny Horace had likely opened the old curtains and released their daily dust cloud into the room, allowing the light’s exact angle to make itself known. Putrid noticed the dust in the light of the window looked peculiarly active today, dancing with a swiftness resembling her mother rushing to leave for work. And yet, the dust adventures past the beam of light were mysterious.
Putrid decided to spend some amount of time tracing the dust around the room: onto the mantle, under the chairs, into the empty cups on the coffee table, between the pieces on the chessboard, behind the cd case, to the basement door. When she arrived at the basement door, the specks of dust seemed to flow and filter themselves invisibly between the door gaps. Putrid flung the door open, hoping to catch someone red-handed, holding a vacuum up to the cracks of the door. The stairway to the basement was usually one of her favorite bits of the house. It was old: creaky, cobwebby, pull-string-light-switch old. The dust disappeared into the musty darkness, just as the light did. The dark of the basement seemed to suck up all of the light from the living room into it, hungry to be ensconced in light as the windowed rooms were. She closed the door, sending the dust back about the room to find new nooks and crannies to fill.
Satisfied, Putrid sat in the biggest chair in the living room. It was quite dirty from her shoes, the many times she had pulled her knees to her chest in it had been punishing for the poor, old seat. The armchair was red with gold trim and feet-shaped legs. It had toes and nails that would dig into the wood if she leaned forward too far. A year ago she would sit and hold on while the chair ran about the house, out the door to the backyard, and over the hills. It was considerably more active when her father used to sit with his legs wide, leaving space for her in the middle. The chair now laid dormant, waiting for a new rider to take up the helm. Putrid didn’t have the guts, so she pulled her knees to her chest, put her head into the gap between them, and cried.
A hand soon landed on her head, rubbing her scalp. The hand was muttering, “I know, I know.” but Putrid knew better, a hand couldn’t feel what she felt. No hand on earth could know what it was like. She lifted her head a tad, puffy-eyed and runny-nosed, to see Nanny Horace.
“I was going to, uhm, go sit outside and smoke. Do you want to come out, dear?” she smiled like she was holding a crying child in her arms. “Outside I mean, but you can’t sit with me until I finish my cigarette. Maybe we can play a game, after, I mean.”
The thought was so nice that Putrid forced a weak smile. “Okay,” she mumbled
past her knees. she closed her eyes for a moment as Nanny Horace left the room;
probably to get her cigarettes.
***
Outside is very much different than inside, but not exactly better. Inside has things Putrid likes: coloring books, stuffed animals, blankets, dad’s chair, the basement, and a bathroom. Outside has some nice things too, like the sky, bugs, the big tree in the backyard, birds, and mom’s garden. If her mom wasn’t always at work, the garden would probably look much better. The squash in the garden are great for finding bugs, as they have long caved in from rot, and attracted lots of critters hungry for a sweet treat. Putrid tumbles off the porch and makes her way to the garden, eager to see what kinds of crawlies had set up shop.
The market is bustling today, with lots of ants, flies, and worms coming to see what the garden has to offer. The bugs made their way between each little shop, different veggies at everyone. They barter and bustle, running along the dry vines and through the soil, wet with dew. Putrid found them disgusting but loved how they moved. They never sat still, just like her. If she had more legs, maybe she would hustle and bustle just as they did. Grabbing a stick, Putrid began to direct the ants past the squash and into conflict with the flies. The smell of cigarette smoke and a glass shattering distracted her, and the stick dropped into the garden, quickly overcome by bugs in a hurry to move away from the conflict Putrid had generated.
Turning towards the porch, Putrid saw what had made her drop the stick. Nanny Horace was at the sliding door, a broken cup at her feet, and a cigarette in her mouth. She was completely entranced by something on the other side of the sliding door.
“Misses Horace?” Putrid called out while moving towards the porch.
The nanny didn’t answer, and as if being puppeted, opened the sliding doors. She stood for a moment, as Putrid made her way up the steps to the landing. When Nanny Horace turned around to face Putrid, it made her hairs stand on end. The nanny was vacant and stared like two cameras into Putrid’s soul.
“Time to go inside,” Nanny Horace’s tone was one Putrid had only heard when being scolded by her mother: “Putrid.” She had never called Putrid by her name before.
***
Putrid sat in her room, as Nanny Horace had told her to. She hardly ever did what an adult said, but Nanny Horace creeped her out. The digital clock, crowded between toys on her nightstand was blinking, needing to be reset. The only way to know when her mother would be home was to wait for night time. Putrid grabbed her stuffed animals from her overflowing closet and piled them onto the bed. After the mountain was complete, she tunneled her way under it and began to pick at her nails. It was entrancing, and Putrid lost track of time.
When she had nearly fallen asleep, a door slammed downstairs. Putrid shot her head up through the top of the stuffed animal pile and stared scrutinously at her door, which was completely covered in motivational posters that her dad had gotten her, featuring tag lines such as: “You can do it,” and “Hang in there!” She fixed her eyes on the door handle, expecting something to burst through any moment, but the house was silent. Putrid grabbed the nearest animal’s paw, a lion, and slid out of bed, doing her best impression of a snake on the hunt. After crawling to the door, she put her ear against it and tried to breathe as quiet as possible. She heard Nanny Horace mumbling in the downstairs hallway, but couldn’t make out what she was saying.
Her door creaked open with the hesitation that came naturally with an old home. Putrid pushed the door from the lowest point and pressed her nose against the wood to see as far past the crack as she could. Putrid glanced down the hallway and to the stairs, which curved into the entrance of the house. There was no sight of the mumbling nanny and no more sound either. The door closed, and Putrid sat criss-cross behind it. She squeezed the stuffed paw of her toy and pulled it to her chest. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door enough to fit through and crouched down the hallway.
The house was empty, or at least appeared to be. Putrid had arrived at the bottom of the stairs and now faced the entrance of the house. Only one thing about the hallway was out of place, making no effort at subtlety. The door to the basement swung loosely back and forth on its bronze hinges, creaking as it reached the peak of its swing. Light from the living room windows had begun to wane, and the path of the morning dust was no longer visible, but the pull of the basement could still be felt. Putrid felt it in her toes, the urge to move toward the door. Putrid stepped into the hallway and made her way to the door.
The creak of the hallway’s cold wood announced her presence long before she arrived at the cusp of the basement, but Putrid still peaked around the corner of the doorframe. Her eyelids fluttered as she tried to understand the sight past the door. The basement was no more, in its place a stairwell leading to a clearing in a lush forest had appeared. Putrid grabbed the door, carefully closing it, turning the handle so as to not make even a click as it closed. She then quickly opened it, greeted again by the clearing to her surprise. She noticed something new, however, as she examined the clearing again. Deeper into the grass rested a regal, red armchair which was grazing as if it were an animal. Putrid stepped forward to get a better look, straining her eyes to gather any tiny detail of the chair. As soon as her foot landed on the step, the door bumped her and closed itself, sending Putrid tumbling down the stairway and landing her softly in the lanky grass.
Putrid rubbed her hair clean of grass and sat up, looking back up the stairway to see that the door was still there. And it was, only the door and staircase were suspended in the air. She stood and moved towards the stairs, just as the lock clicked shut. She instead turned towards the clearing to get a better look at the armchair and saw two legs dangling at its cusp. The armchair was the same as the one from her living room but was missing the stains from years of use. Putrid stood up shakily and made her way to the chair, the ankles waded through the grass like water, trying to pull her beneath the surface. As she neared the chair, the odd scene set before her came into view. In front of the chair was an unfamiliar table sporting an all too familiar chessboard atop it. Opposite the red chair was a small stool her mother used to fold the laundry that typically sat abandoned in the basement. As Putrid rounded the armchair, Nanny Horace’s empty eyes greeted her once again. She was sitting in the chair exactly how her father used to, with legs crossed and her hands on her knees, left on top of the right.
Putrid analyzed her for some time, but the nanny never acknowledged her. After a short time, Putrid felt her strength waning and was desperate to sit down. She glanced towards the small stool and couldn’t help herself. Once Putrid had taken a seat, Nanny Horace startled her.
“How about one last game, Putrid?” Nanny Horace smiled a smile that felt as empty as the clearing. In that smile was nothing, no Nanny Horace and certainly no Putrid.
The last time Putrid had played chess was against her father, who had always made up his own rules, so Putrid never learned how to play. Although he had created rules as the game went on, he hardly ever won. Putrid had never thought anything of it until she tried out for the chess club at school. They hadn’t taken too kindly to Putrid’s insistence that the horse needed time to graze between moves.
Putrid stared at the chessboard, afraid the nanny would still be smiling. “Okay Misses Horace,” she said carefully, as if saying something wrong would get her scolded.
At the mention of her name Nanny Horace gazed down at her hands, looking at them as if she had forgotten whose they were. After a moment she moved a pawn three spaces. Putrid’s father had almost always started with the same move. The game played out exactly as one from her childhood, going on for hours, with hardly anything truly happening on the board. Every couple moves Putrid would laugh, overcome with the silliness of how the characters on the board acted. The knights would trip on their armor, the horses would beg for apples, and the queen would fight with the king over undercooked turkey. By the end of the game, Putrid had grown incredibly tired and had to stop herself from falling back in the chair.
“Come here, Putrid,” Nanny Horace said deeply, her voice no longer her own, and beckoned Putrid towards the armchair.
Putrid stood groggily, rubbing her eyes, and made her way slowly to the old chair, although she was suspicious of the nanny. Putrid sat between Nanny Horace’s legs and pulled her knees up to her chest. She never told the nanny her name, but in the chair, finally being held, she didn’t care. She felt tears pool at the corners of her eyes and sat back as Nanny Horace cradled her to sleep.
***
When Putrid woke up the living room was dark, only the light from the kitchen kept the details of the room visible. Her back was sore, and something poked her in the spine. She grabbed around behind her and pulled out the stuffed lion she had brought from her room. As she looked into the lion’s eyes, the front door clicked, and her mother opened it. Putrid ran to her mother and hugged her like she had before her father died. Immediately she began to rant fanatically about her day and all of the crazy things that Nanny Horace had done.
When Putrid had finished her mother sighed, “We don’t have a nanny,” she gazed wearily at Putrid and tousled her hair. “One day you’ll have to stop playing pretend, Penelope,” her mother said as she stepped inside. Behind her, beyond the front yard, on the other side of the road, a yellow sedan drove away.
Trevor Mastergeorge is an English major who moved from Harrisburg to main campus in his junior year. He enjoys music, writing, and cooking in his free time. When he is not doing any of those things, Trevor can be found staring off into space or trying on clothes. He often uses poetry to express how it feels living with rather severe ADHD as a way to ground himself.