rissy stories

DISCLAIMER!!!!: The following is a completely fictionalized story based on this weird news article: “Elderly Woman Wakes To Find Exotic Animal On Her Chest” http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/27/living/exotic-animal-found-on-woman-kinkajou-miami-dade-irpt/

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The chilly night of January 25^th, 2016 was wild from strange start to crazy finish in Miami, Florida for poor, 99 year-old Cecilia Crawford. The fun began at 8:30 PM, when her daughter, Tara, and grandson, Benjamin, visited her for a few hours.

“How could this have possibly happened to me?” Cecilia asked while rocking herself in the squeaky, blue-cushioned rocking chair placed in the middle of her small living room. She leaned forward in her chair with a creeeeeak while she removed her abnormally large glasses from her face with a shaky, arthritis-stricken hand. She forcibly squinted down at the flat green and orange game board laid out in front of her with the white-bolded letters L-I-F-E placed on the opposite side of the white spinning wheel. Wrinkles sprouted across her pale skin and the muscles around her eyes went into spasm at the effort it took to concentrate. Her old, dark brown eyes scanned the board furiously, desperately trying to figure out where she went wrong in the Game of LIFE.

Her skinny, 14 year-old grandson sat on the other side of the small, round, wooden side-table in a sturdy kitchen chair. The aloof, achene-faced boy with short, greasy brown hair stared at his grandmother with dull, grey eyes as he pinched the front of his red t-shirt and fanned himself with it, the temperature 90 degrees within the one-floor house. “It feels like Hell in here,” Benjamin thought.

“It’s just a game,” he said with a sigh, “And I’ve beaten you before,” he thought.

“But I never lose, how did I lose?” She asked with disbelief, her eyes still glued to the game. Benjamin roughly slammed his back against the rungs on his kitchen chair. “God, I can’t wait until Grandma hits the bricks,” He thought as he folded his arms over his chest, slouched, and sighed. His tongue ran over his braces as he glanced over at his mother who was sitting on the uncomfortable stiff black leather couch, watching television behind Cecilia. His light arm hair stood up on end in response to his mother’s famous sharp, intense glare that made his skin crawl. “Right, she wants me to be nicer to Satan,” he thought as he cleared his throat and straightened himself in the chair.
“Grandma, I went to college,” Benjamin pointed out. Cecilia’s head snapped back up with furrowed, white eyebrows and her hollow cheekbones poked out from underneath her delicate, raisin-like skin as her mouth formed an “O.” He squinted at her, imagining how easy it would be to peel the wrinkled skin right off of her skull, almost like how the skin of a potato easily slides off when boiled. “I could really go for some mashed potatoes right now,” he thought but cringed when Cecilia shook her head at him, hearing her neck crack several times. He watched her curled, glowing white hair shake with her head, which made the smell of her cough-inducing hairspray more potent.

“No, I went to college,” She said, pointing to her light pink turtleneck with a crooked pointer finger, “I went to THE Ohio State University. I studied-”

“Vet medicine, I know grandma, I know,” He cut her off with a stomp of his foot and a wave of his hands. He jabbed a finger on the game board and clarified, “I meant that I went to college in the game,” Cecilia looked down at the game board again.

“But I still don’t know how I lost to you…” Cecilia babbled. Benjamin’s chair screeched backwards across the floor and tumbled over sideways as he abruptly stood up, provoking a scared shriek and hiss from the already-skittish white cat, Casper, just as he was about to tiptoe into the room. His mother jumped up and Cecilia gasped, slapping a hand right above her sagging breasts, “Benjamin, what is wrong with you?”

“You’re not smarter than me – your generation ruined the economy,” He yelled, pointing a finger at her. Cecilia almost spit out her dentures at the outrageous accusation.

“BEN!” Tara yelled as he spun around and stomped out of the floral-wallpapered room. She began to storm after him, but stopped short when she heard the front door squeak open and then slam shut, which sent a shudder throughout the whole house. Tara turned to a stunned Cecilia. “That kid has been smoking way too much weed with his friends to relieve stress, just like I…” she ended her train of thought, froze, and widened her eyes as soon as she remembered who she was talking to. Thankfully, her mother appeared to be too transfixed on her own thoughts to focus on anything else. Cecilia remained uncomfortably silent as Tara slowly exhaled, flattened out the square cat rug on the floor that Benjamin had messed up, and picked up his chair. She pushed the blonde bangs out of her face and fanned herself with her hand. “It’s hot as Hell in here,” she muttered right before Cecilia reached out and grasped Tara’s freckled arm.

“Tell me dear, did I really ruin the economy?” She asked.

“HEY, here’s an idea, why don’t we get you into bed, ma?” Tara replied quickly. Cecilia let Tara pull her up from the rocking chair with an umpf and a chorus of crackling joints. She groaned and inched along the floor in her worn and torn pink slippers with Tara holding her left arm. She huffed and puffed from the exertion, then stopped and looked around. “What is it?” Tara asked after flicking off the living room light switch.

“What happened to my cat?” Cecilia asked curiously. Tara threw her head back, looked up at the ceiling, and sighed with frustration. “I wish that damn cat would sleep with her at night so she stops asking where it is,” She thought, in a rush to get her mother into bed so that she could go home and deal with her juvenile son.

“I don’t know, ma, but it’ll turn up. It always does.”

xxx

Tara helped Cecilia change into a silver, silk night gown, then she turned on her bulky breathing machine and tucked her into her king-sized bed at 9:15 PM. Tara said goodnight and safely retreated to her house next-door, praying that her mother’s caretaker would recover from her sickness soon such that Tara didn’t have to do this every night.

Cecilia was lying on her back with her head propped up by two white pillows as she stared up at the ceiling fan in the darkness with tubes up her nose and wrapped around her face. She watched the fan spin around and around in a blur as she smacked her lips, rubbing her tongue along her toothless gums. She focused on the gentle hum of the machine and tried to fall asleep but she couldn’t stop worrying about Casper. That cat slept with her almost every night…didn’t it?

“Cathssp-er?” She slurred, but it was hard to call the cat without her teeth. She called the cat four times before singing, “Cathssp-er, the ffrien-ly ghothsst, the ffrien-liethss ghothsst you know,” deliriously. Her fragile body shivered under the bed sheet, heating pad, comforter, and extra blanket as she fell asleep at 10:00 PM.

However, at 2:00 AM, she felt something pressing down against her chest, making it difficult to breathe. She opened her eyes to see a black figure nuzzled into her chest. Her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, but she still couldn’t see a thing without her glasses. She tried not to get too scared in fear of having a heart attack.

“Cathssp-er?” She asked fearfully as she pulled her left arm out from underneath the sheets, struggling to grasp her glasses and turn on her small bedside lamp. Once the room was illuminated, she witnessed through her magnified spectacles a startled combination of a monkey, a raccoon, and a cat. It was the size of a monkey with coarse brown fur and big, sparkling black eyes. It had long, dull claws that dug into her gown as well as a long, ringtail, a yellow belly, and short round ears sticking out on either side of its small head. It was a cute, innocent little animal…but clearly not Florida-native.

They both stared in awe at each other for two whole seconds before Cecilia screamed loud enough for the glass cup that held her dentures in water to shatter on the nightstand, water spilling all over the carpet. The startled animal shrieked in response, jumped off of Cecilia’s chest, and ran out of the room on four legs. Cecilia screamed again, ripping out her breathing tubes and grabbing her wet dentures. She crept to the other side of the bed, where she could reach the phone resting on the other nightstand. She struggled to remember her daughter’s phone number and slowly pressed the buttons down. She held the wrong end of the phone up to her ear.

“Hello?” A male voice on the other end asked in a tired tone.

“Tara?” She replied, turning the phone around and holding it the right way.

“Um, no, it’s Jeff…Cecilia – is that you?”

“Who are you?”

“…Jeff. Your son-in-law.”

“Oh. Hi.” Cecilia replied and then received a frustrated sigh in response.

“Is there something that you particularly need at this late hour?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, there is a strange animal in my house. It climbed onto my chest while I was sleeping.” There was a long pause on the other end of the line.

“Are you sure it wasn’t your cat?” Jeff asked skeptically.

“Well no, it looks like a monkey and a raccoon, you see, but it acts like a cat.”

“I do see…aaand, what would you like me to do about it?”

“Get rid of it for me.” Cecilia demanded. Jeff asked one last time if she was positive that the animal was real, and then begrudgingly agreed to come over. Cecilia then slowly got out of bed in search of the strange creature. She walked out of her small room and inched down the carpeted hallway, turning on the lights in the bathroom right next door, the extra bedroom across the hall, and even the coat closet further down the hallway, as she walked along and anxiously sang “Casper, the friendly ghost…though the grown-ups might look at him with fright, the children love him so…”

Cecilia was about to pass a storage room that she liked to call “the attic,” on her left when she heard various hissing sounds behind the ajar, white-painted, door. She ceased singing, laid a hand on the gold doorknob, and cracked the door open even more so she could reach in and tug on the light bulb string. As it lit up, a white, growling blob whipped past her legs and ran out of the room. Her eyes then fell upon the monkey-cat that sniffed a soiled, cardboard box on top of a urine-stained carpet. Cecilia stood paralyzed as the animal stared at her again. She was so engrossed that she didn’t even hear the front door unlock, open, and close on the other side of the house.

“Cecilia? Where are you?” She heard a concerned male voice ask. She didn’t respond, but heard footsteps rapidly approaching her location. Her son-in-law sighed with relief at the end of the hallway and moseyed his way over to her in his blue and green, plaid pajama pants and brown bathrobe, “What is it?” He asked unperturbed while biting into an apple. His moccasin slippers drug against the carpet as he came to a stop and pulled the door wide open, following Cecilia’s gaze as the monkey-cat jumped onto a sturdier box and climbed onto a shelf. The apple piece fell out of his mouth as he laid his eyes upon the animal “Jesus Christ!” He exclaimed loudly, entering “the attic” maze of boxes, cat excrements, and small pieces of asbestos that were littered across the floor.

“Now Jeff, I don’t think its name is Jesus.” Cecilia corrected him with a kind smile. Jeff glanced at her over his shoulder and rolled his eyes.

“How the hell did a kinkajou get in the house?” He asked, getting closer to the shelf on which the animal was crouching. It had it’s back all the way up against the wall and it was slouching away from Jeff as he approached it. Cecilia shrugged.

“Someone’s pet ran away?” She guessed. Jeff was just tall enough to reach the terrified kinkajou, and he held up his apple to it. It trembled, sniffed the apple, and stuck out a little pink tongue to taste it. Jeff smiled, knowing that kinkajou’s loved fruit.

“You were a vet, Cecilia. This is an exotic animal…but then again, it did curl up with you, so maybe it is domesticated,” He pondered, slowly lowering the apple and trying to lure it down from the shelf. Cecilia took a step away from the door as the kinkajou finally jumped to the floor. Jeff dropped his apple for it and then pulled out his cell phone as it feasted, “Let’s call Tara over and my friend Cathy – animal control.”

xxx

“See, I told you its name isn’t Jesus,” Cecilia said proudly, standing next to Jeff, Tara, and Cathy on her front porch at 3:00 AM as the kinkajou was placed inside of the truck after Cathy and two other men had helped to lure it into cage. Cathy laughed at Cecilia’s comment, her straightened blonde hair accumulating static from her fleece coat.

“No, Banana’s owners called us about an hour ago and we’ve been searching for her all night,” Cathy explained. Tara folded her arms in front of her blue robe.

“Aren’t they wild animals?” She asked, her teeth chattering. Jeff threw an arm around his wife’s shoulders and held her close to give her some warmth as Cathy nodded.

“We suggest to not keep kinkajous as pets because they’re nocturnal and dangerous, but it’s not illegal,” Cathy answered and then turned to Cecilia, “Anyways, I’m so sorry that this happened, but I’m glad you’re okay,” she added with a smile. Cecilia smiled back, took Cathy’s cold hand in hers, and squeezed it happily.

“She probably won’t even remember what happened,” Tara whispered while smirking at her husband. Jeff stifled a laugh as Cecilia looked at them.

“Like I don’t remember you saying that you and Benjamin smoke marijuana?” Cecilia asked. Tara gasped with widened eyes and a dropped jaw. Jeff released his arm and accusingly stared at his wife whose face had turned completely red. Cecilia laughed, “Good night!” She sang cheerfully, stepped back into her house, and went to bed.