Kindle Edition
George Andrews Books
Amazon
Category:
Fantasy
Type: Fiction
Pages: 171
Copyright: Feb 15, 2018
Price: $0.99 (eBook)
What did the old ladies next door do before they got old? Can witchcraft cure depression or only cause it? Sometimes it's better never to find out.
A confused boy who doesn't know if he's coming or going!
An alien witch next door who thinks he may have the talent for magic!
Attacks by fearsome creatures from another world!
A slobbering bulldog who won't give up!
Laundry! Construction paper! More coffee than you can handle!
Join me now for the debut novella from author George Andrews about life in a small town that gets turned upside-down. A dash of nostalgia, a bit of humor, some action and adventure, and the realization that our neighbors aren't always who we think they are.
Excerpt
My parents, my two older brothers, and I lived in an average two-story house. To our left was a married couple who worked all the time. I can’t even remember their names. I rarely ever saw them.
But to our right, Dorothy and her dog, Sammy, lived in a plain green house with a small front porch and a back yard that adjoined ours. It was rare to see a fence around anyone’s yard. Dorothy was a middle-aged woman with imperfectly dyed hair and dangly earrings. She always seemed to have gray streaks showing through the dark and light red patches. When I was younger, Dorothy was my babysitter from time to time, but she never treated me like a burden or an inconvenience. It was like staying over at a friend’s or relative’s house. I would go to visit her most days, anyway.
Dorothy always seemed to have a cigarette in her hand. She had a strange, slow way of drawing out whatever she had to say. I couldn’t place her accent, but she always seemed to take a long time to begin any sentence.
“Wullllll, wulllllll, wulllllll,” she would begin. Or, “Whaaaat, whaaaat, whaaat I’m sayin’ is…”
It wasn’t infuriating or a stutter. It just made me lean in and wait for her to get to the meat of her sentence because she sounded like she had thought about it for a while, whether she had or not.
Sometimes she would begin a sentence, “Wulllllll, ya’ see…,” and then pause while she reached inside her bra strap to get her cigarette case. She would take a cigarette out, inspect it to make sure she had a hold of the butt-end, tap it down on the metal cigarette case to pack the tobacco, put it up to her lips, and light it. She would take a deep draw, hold it in, and then blow out a cloud of smoke out between us, fogging up the air. After making sure she had a satisfactory draw on her cigarette and had properly formulated the next thought, she might bother to continue. All the while, I was leaning forward, waiting for her to go on.
Dorothy educated me in the useful things which babysitters instructed their charges, like playing gin rummy, counting cribbage, and rolling cigarettes. She didn’t teach me to smoke them or anything—it was just something we did. Like drinking coffee while we played gin rummy or kings-on-the-corner or go-fish at her old aluminum table in the kitchen.
Her house seemed to be filled with all the necessary things, but they were also somehow out of date. Old yellow and green linoleum defended her kitchen floor. Worn green carpeting covered the living room, which contained a threadbare, blue couch and a couple of tattered leather recliners. Faux-wood paneling was everywhere. Framed prints of animals or landscapes hung here and there. I think one of the pictures was a velvet painting of a dog that strangely resembled her dog, Sammy. All of it was almost practical, but also seemed as though she decorated her home from a thrift store.
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