Stowaway

Adelina walked forward, ascending the stairs as Madison retreated back up. Lucie remained in the foyer, shaking her head.

Trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible, Michael remained pressed against the spindle, not daring to watch his sister and Adelina vanish upstairs.

Based on the tenor of the conversation between Adelina and Lucie, he figured his greatest hope resided with the girl. The great grandmother was orchestrating some type of lesson and he already knew Madison still harbored unresolved issues toward him. It had to be Lucie. Once Madison and Adelina were safely upstairs, he stepped out, hoping maybe to catch Lucie’s attention, but she was turned, her back to him, walking deeper into the interior of the house. He called out, but she was too far away to hear and her enormous strides carried her quickly away.

He had absolutely no idea how long Madison and Adelina would be upstairs, but he knew he could not remain secreted on the stairs for too much longer, figuring it would only be a matter of time before he was spotted, so he hurried to the edge of the stair, hanging down over the riser and dropping to the step below. Hustling, he repeated the process until he finally dropped onto the hardwood main floor.

Better be careful, don’t want to accidently get stepped on. Keeping close to the base of the staircase, he circled around to the side, sticking to the baseboard along the wall. Still suffering the after effects of being handled by the girls and Mirielle, his legs muscles burned and his chest was heaving.

“Lucie,” he heard Adelina’s voice call overhead, presumably from the top of the stairs. Half under the key table against the wall, he froze.

Suddenly the gigantic girl appeared, sweeping around the corner leading into the kitchen. Waving his little arms, he hollered and tried to get her attention but she passed by and was gone in just two steps.

She didn’t see me. Leaning forward he put his hands down just above shaky knees and tried to catch his breath. He could hear the sound of Lucie’s feet as the girl climbed the stairs.

So close. He shook his head, dragging his left forearm across his sweaty brow before straightening. How was he supposed to get her attention?

Shaking his head, he moved back toward the foyer, cautiously trying to see if he could see if he might catch a glimpse of the upstairs.

Darting across the open space of the floor, he found cover between some shoes near the bench by the front hall.

He couldn’t see any sign of movement from the hall at the top of the stairs, nor could he hear them talking. Something out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was a handbag, sitting on the floor near the other end of the bench. Was it the same handbag the fake Lucie had brought? He honestly couldn’t remember, but he didn’t think so. Was it Lucie’s? Or Adelina’s? Or Madison’s? He didn’t know. He could not recall ever seeing the bag before, so he felt confident he could rule out Madison as the owner. If it belonged to Lucie, it might be his ticket out of the house and possibly a step closer to being returned to normal. If. She seemed to strongly advocate his situation and push to have the curse removed. Adelina in Lucie’s guise said the curse was beyond the girl, but was it? Or just another deception? She had said it was in Madison’s hands now, did that mean trying to gain Lucie’s aid was futile?

He chuckled softly, “Nothing ventured,” he murmured, navigating between the shoes to get over to the handbag. The bag itself was normally fairly large, though positively massive to him. Made of soft supple leather, a shoulder strap affixed by two gold colored hoops hung down.

Do I climb in? He stood there a moment contemplating, figuring he could climb the strap to get up to the top of the bag.

Grinning to himself, he moved over and took hold of the strap, wrapping his legs around it, he pulled himself up hand over hand until he was able to get onto the top. He had just presumed the bag would be open, but it wasn’t. There was a long dark colored zipper there fastening the two side closed. Walking along the zipper, there was enough of a space at the end he thought he could wriggle through, though it looked like another fairly big drop into darkness within the purse.

Voices came from the top of the stairs, Madison and Lucie. Feeling very exposed, he panicked and lunged for the opening in the purse, squeezing through and toppling inside before bouncing off some of the contents within and coming to rest flat on his back on the floor of the bag. He lay there a moment catching the breath that had been knocked out of him. Sitting up, he squinted in the gloom, able to discern some of the things in shadowy interior of the bag through the opening overhead. There was a cell phone, a tube of lip gloss with a picture of a strawberry on the side, wallet, a package Kleenex tissues, a single serve packet containing a breath mint, car keys, small makeup compact, eyeliner pencil, a package of Trident chewing gum, and a number of loose coins. It didn’t seem to be the stuff maybe an old lady would necessarily keep in her purse and Lucie had said she drove out. The keys had to be hers, at least he certainly hoped so, because he doubted he would be able to scale back up and escape the bag.

With nothing to do but wait, his eyes drifted over to the mint, his stomach rumbled. He was hungry. Walking over, he picked up the package, the mint within larger than his head. Sitting down, he put the mint on his lap and pulled at the wrapper, freeing the prize within.