Breakfast

Breakfast 

Breakfast - YeahWrite #496 Weekly Fiction Challenge
Prompts:  1^st line, “She knew he was terrified of small spaces.”
Image by Přemysl Čech on Unsplash

She knew he was terrified of small spaces.   She wanted to believe that was why her dog Charley kept his distance.  She beckoned him even as she slowly lost her grip on the crumbling moist earth and slid further downwards into the damp hole. His glowing eyes did not speak terror, but a primal hunger that he echoed with a wet lick of his drooling chops.  His body flickered as an image from an old film projector, and as her stomach locked in a wave of nausea her only thought was wryly that she wasn’t a breakfast person.

 The night prior, Becca had pulled her car into the driveway of the bed and breakfast just as the sun was setting.  Kane, Pennsylvania, was a sleepy town of only 3,000 people, and it was well deserved stopping point on the way back to SUNY Buffalo State College.  She pulled her suitcase from the trunk and tried to ignore the pang in her chest as she moved Charley’s blanket aside.  He ran away two weeks prior, and she still caught her breath every time her phone toned.  Her grief became writer’s block, and she was behind on her journalism assignments, another reason to stop.  An internet search found an old newspaper article about a string of disappearances. 

The rumble in her stomach and the racing of her brain would prevent sleep tonight.  Mabel trudged down the country road for a bite to eat, her hostess had directed her to the Sun and Moon Café.  She trudged past the mouth of a dirt road that disappeared into thick black trees, roped off with a chain with mismatched links of numerous repairs.  She pulled her cardigan tightly around her as a sudden gale set the chain rocking then settled as quickly it came.

Shrugging off the chill, Mabel banged through the door and onto a bar stool.  Grizzled old men on either side of her clutched beers. This town was so small that the café was the morning brunch and the twilight watering hole in one.

The bartender who stood drying a pint glass didn’t look up. “Black coffee, please. Leaded. It’s going to be a long night!”  She held up her notebook which he ignored in favor of his dishes. “I’m still working on my first chapter.  It’s about supernatural phenomenon.  Any ideas for some local color?” 

“Young lady, you best be moving on in the morning.  No need nosing around that forest.”

 “The forest?  Which one?  Why?” 

 “Now, now,” nudged her ruddy-faced neighbor, whose pungent beer breath made her wrinkle her nose.  “You done passed it, if you is stayin’ at Miss Taylor’s!  But make sure you do come back tomorrow morning, Sun ‘n Moon’s breakfast is to die for.  But for now, bartender!  A brew for the lady!”

Early the next morning, Mabel groaned as she opened her eyes to the hazy gray light.  Though she enjoyed fraternizing with the locals she was no closer to a story.  She shoved her feet into her hiking boots and followed the misty line of the road back towards the café for a much needed brew, this time from coffee beans.  

As she passed the entrance to the forest, she found the chain had been broken.  She stopped to examine the thick green vine that had roped itself around it.  Surely she would have noticed it last night?  She knelt to better examine a strange flower sprouting from the vine, blood red petals with stamen covered in sticky bright green pollen.  As she lowered her head to sniff, the flower shivered and sprayed her with pollen.  “Eww, gross!” She jumped to her feet and vigorously brushed her jacket.  The scent however did not stink.  It smelled of her grandmother’s gingerbread, play-doh from preschool, freshly sharpened pencils and crisp paper, and of wet dog. 

She felt a snuffling at her knee, and looked down to see.  It couldn’t be! “Charley?”  Her eyes bugged with disbelief, she stepped towards him and he turned to run.  “Charley!  Come back!”  Mabel sprinted after him down the path and then deep into the trees slipping and sliding on the wet mud.  She didn’t see the hole until one foot sank, and she flipped onto her stomach and raked her arms across the earth.  Green tendrils wound around her wrists.  She stared at the glimmering image of her pup until the plant’s teeth began to close around her shoulders, and then she shut her eyes.