Undiscovered Country

Out of Julie’s room, Julian made haste, darting across the hall, covering the sixty or so feet pretty quickly. Filed with both a sense of anticipation mixed with apprehension he dropped to the floor on his stomach and crawled under the door. Given the polaric disparity between Faith and Julie’s housekeeping habits, Julian wasn’t sure what to expect from momma May, though once clear of the door, it was obvious her tendency was more aligned with the former than the latter.

Neat and tidy, even the carpet in the room emanated a clean fresh scent. Julian chuckled to himself thinking about Josh trudging through the dump of Julie’s room.

The furniture seemed nice, though nothing spectacularly ostentatious. The one thing that caught his attention was a fine wired gilt birdcage suspended from the ceiling by a fine chain in a corner near the door leading to the bathroom. It reminded him of the cage from those Tweety Bird cartoons he watched as a kid. He usually rooted for the cat. Staring up at the suspended cage, sixty, seventy feet overhead, he wondered if there was a person in it. Unless he sprouted wings, he knew there was absolutely no way he could get up there to check it out. And unlike Josh, he was unwilling to announce his presence. If there was a dude up there and he yelled out, what’s to say the guy in the cage would squeal? Though he was pretty sure the cage was empty, on account of he hadn’t seen anything, there was no sense taking any chances. Keeping close to the wall, he kept his eyes on the cage, moving stealthily toward the nightstand adjacent to the bed.

“I bet you’ve got a few little pleasers in there,” Julian sniggered, envisioning the top drawer filled with some interesting intimate toys. Circling the nightstand, he surmised he could probably get onto it, but not into it. Disappointed, he moved on under the bed and out the other side toward a dresser and what he figured was probably a large walk-in closet on that wall. The door to the closet was closed and the gap at the bottom was covered by a sweep making it much too narrow to permit passage even for his slender frame. Standing at the door, hands on hips, he frowned. What the hell was on the other side? Realizing there was nothing he could accomplish by speculating, he circumnavigated the room toward the open door of the bathroom. Like the rest of the room, the bathroom was all bright and gleaming, dirty laundry tucked away in the hamper.

Faith’s mother’s fastidious neatness made the whole excursion rather anticlimactic all things considered, with the exception of the cage and the mysteriously closet door. Did she have a favorite she kept? Or was she a gulper like her daughters? As for trying to uncover a means of restoration, he was at a loss. Whether the chicks shrunk them using some type of shrink ray, like that animated thing with the little yellow minions, a talisman, or some innate power, he had no idea, consequently he also had no idea what to be looking for to undo it.

After his inspection of the bathroom, he figured it must be getting close to the twenty minute time limit Josh suggested so he crossed under the vanity dresser along the wall and started back toward the door, sour expression on his face.

“So much potential,” he muttered half under his breath.

He was just about to emerge from beneath the desk when the bedroom door swung inward, freezing him cold in his tracks. It was momma, strolling into the room. Wearing a light colored summer dressed, she hesitated a moment, checking her phone before she closed the door.

A crooked smile touched his lips as he observed her from the security of his hiding spot. He watched her tuck her phone into a hip pocket before crossing the floor and walking toward the bathroom.

“Well hello Miss Moneypenny,” he said aloud, impersonating Sean Connery before hustling across to the other side of the vanity dresser near the bathroom door. “To peek, or not to peek, that is the question,” he verbalized, holding his hands palm up in front of him as if actually weighing the choices. Lifting his right hand high and dropping his left hand, “To peek it is,” he chose.

Scurrying along the baseboard, he drew close to the hinge side of the open bathroom door, craning his head around to look inside. He was on the counter side, looking up her front as Mrs. May stood before the sink, studying her reflection in the mirror.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who the most gorgeous bitch of all?” he chuckled. She was gorgeous. His viewing angle and the length of her skirt didn’t afford the glimpse he might have hoped. He wasn’t lying to Josh when he shared the philosophy of his appreciation for a more mature woman and he savvy enough to know it was rooted in his psyche when he was still just a boy and his mother abandoned him to his abusive alcoholic father and the endless string of women he paraded through his life.

Stepping back a pace from the counter, she looked down the front of her dress, pulling up the hem to reveal her underwear. Drawing it forward, she plucked something out. Someone out. He watched as she deposited the tiny figure out of sight on the counter top.

Snapping her fingers, she pointed an index finger, “Stay!” she commanded. Moving to the toilet, she turned, hiking up her dress and sliding down her panties before sitting down on it.

Julian sniggered quietly to himself.

She dried, flushed and washed her hands before returning her little passenger to her panties and walked toward the door.

Snapping his head around, Julian pressed his back firmly against the shaped and painted molding, holding his breath as she swept passed and out into the room.

He was out in in the open and felt very exposed. If she glanced in his direction for any reason, he was pinched cold. Bolting for cover, he ran along the baseboard, arriving under the dresser just as she sat down on the bed, facing his direction.

Heart pounding, he wiped sweat from his brow. He wasn’t sure if she had detected him, though figured she would probably be much more animated if she had. Growing more and more conscious of the time, he glanced in the direction of the door, knowing unless she lay back or left, there was no possible way to cross the open stretch without being seen, plain and simple. What was she doing? Probably relishing the struggles of her tiny passenger he mused.