It’s not that the old battleaxe is evil. Not biblically evil in the sense of sinning and all that nonsense. Not wolf-eat-grandma evil. No. She never forgets her shopping bags and wouldn’t dream of exceeding the speed limit. She recycles, volunteers at the food bank, and owns not one but two Goldendoodles piously rescued from the pound. She is Missus Smith, our neighbour. Oh, and she also prays for us sinners.

 

“You naughty, naughty boys,” she cackles when the damn dogs dig up carrots or chomp down on a zucchini. She rolls her eyes heavenwards as if the angels personally supervise the fermenting of her compost heap, a dung heap the dogs like to desecrate. She gardens like a dervish, mixing sheep manure into the beds to stink up the neighbourhood. Potatoes, tulips, daffodils. Dig, plant, clip. Gleefully unearthing spuds and cutting blooms with gospel music playing in the background. A real treasure, our Missus Smith.

 

Now, I didn’t want to steal, and it wasn’t stealing, really. Like when the police commandeer your car during a high-speed chase. Civic duty. Not that I have anything against stealing, just to be clear. I’m not the judgy type.

 

It is my wife, you see. Her birthday. The second of April. I never remember whether that’s Good Friday or Easter Monday. I only know it is sometime during Easter when Missus Smith hovers zealously, plucking bugs and pests from her precious plants like an inquisitor.

 

My wife, however, is very interesting. She tightens the belt and flicks the whip so neatly that I once gave her my winning lottery ticket. My wife is Madam. I am Pet.

 

And when Madam wants tulips for her birthday—and you’ve forgotten them on your milk-and-bread run—you’d better come up with a plan.

 

“What are you doing?” Missus Smith shrieks from her deck, clad in her nightgown and slippers, curlers shining in the dawn while the doodles raise the dead.

 

What the hell?

 

Who is supposed to be awake at five in the morning?

 

Only tulip thieves and Pet.

 

The fusspot appears like an apparition. I drop my scissors. When I bend down, scrambling in the stinking dirt, she sics the doodles on me.

 

I flee for my life, sans tulips.

 

That night, my wife makes me sleep without handcuffs or shackles. I have nightmares of being dropped off at the side of the highway, free to fend for myself.

 

When, a week later, she asks for a piece of fur, I am delighted to oblige.

 

I wait until the shrivelled hag leaves for chair yoga or wherever witches go during the day. Then I grab a bag of wieners, one cup of gopher poison, and call on the doodles. I only need their fur, after all. They come running, and snarling turns into gobbling.

 

It is so easy, the skinning too.

 

Oh, the joy on my wife’s face when I crawl over, head bent, the bloody pelts balanced on my outstretched arms.

 

“Well done, Pet,” Madam says.

 

She has barely tightened the belt around my neck and is tickling my backside with the whip, when the doorbell riiiiiiinnngggsss.

 

“For fuck’s sake,” she says, her rhythm disturbed. She leaves me tied up on the bed.

 

“Oh, Missus Smith. It’s you.”

 

I hear the green-fingered harpy crying about her dogs. Both gone, and they would never, ever leave her. Never.

 

Shame.

 

A year later, it is the second of April again. My wife wants tulips. Again.

 

I dash out before sunrise. I sleep poorly unrestrained, and I recently started a job plucking chickens. Hard work, chasing a squawking bird trying to outrun its reaper. I need my sleep; ergo, I need to please my Madam.

 

The tulips are particularly glossy this year. Blood red. Dark-eyed. Well-fed. Missus Smith clearly has a good eye for fertilizer.

 

I have about six giant blooms cut when the soil hiccups. Ah, a mole. Dastardly creatures.

 

I reach for a lush daffodil, fat as butter, big as a teacup.

 

Half the flower bed erupts in slow motion. A dog claws up through the dirt and shakes himself, clods flying. His skinless muscles stretch tight, his sinews shine white. A worm peers out between his ribs; an eyeball dangles on a cheek. Behind me, I hear growling. Low, rumbling and very, very furious. I stab at Ol’ One Eye in front of me. Its mate lunges from behind and grabs my arm, clamping its jaws. One Eye takes my throat. Lockjaw takes my limb.

 

The harridan buries me in the manure heap. I stink to high heaven.

 

###

 

“Missus Smith!” My wife leans on the doorbell, then screams through the door.

 

“Yes, dear? Why so frantic?”

 

“Have you seen my Pet? He’s been gone since Good Friday. And he won’t ever, ever leave me.” She sobs, twirling the riding crop like a baton.

 

“Oh dear,” says Missus Smith. “Let’s pray. You believe in the Resurrection, don’t you?"

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” my wife says.

 

“Oh, my darling dear, now you’ll never get him back."

 

That year, evil Missus Smith finally won the prize for Best in Bloom.

 

Bloody hell.

​

Antoinette is an emerging writer from Canada. She has an MFA in Fiction from Dalhousie University. Her work has appeared in print and online. Find her at www.antoinettebekker.com