And then it was ready, and so the woman went inside her house and waited for the children that would inevitably come because if they didn’t, what would people have to talk about years into the future? Nothing, that’s what.
She didn’t have to wait for long, as she heard the tell-tale sounds of a girl crying, no doubt for her brother. “Two of them,” she thought. “How exciting!” In the corner, Maxwell was curled up with his eyes closed but instinctively he somehow knew to lick his lips. The crying grew louder as the children approached, and she waited to see what would happen, looking out of her window through a small gap in the curtains that she was positive she couldn’t be seen from.
“I don’t like it here,” the girl said, still crying. Looking out from the window the old woman smiled as she pondered this, the girl was right not to like it here, after all. Very astute. She shall go quickly, her stupid brother however, and she laughed, and Maxwell lifted his head to see what the matter was. “I don’t like it here,” the girl said again, “and there’s a weird old woman at the window laughing at something.”
The weird old woman quickly dropped the curtain and took a step back from the window as if this would not only render her invisible now, but would remove her from the memory of the girl. And from her brother, who she’d just told about the woman at the window. “I can’t see her,” he said.
“She was definitely there, at that window, an ugly woman looking at us and laughing.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know! Let’s just go!”
“Okay, maybe you’re right,” he said, accepting that his sister would never be happy to hang around here and sick of her crying. “Let’s just go home.”
The ugly weird old woman knew that something had to be done. They hadn’t even activated the trap yet and if they were going to turn around and go home then they’d never activate it. Maxwell put his head back down and closed his eyes and resigned himself to another night of canned meat that tasted like no animal he’d ever eaten before.
The ugly weird old woman ran from the window and out of the room into the hallway and out of the front door. She stood on the front door mat and shouted “wait!” at the two children, whose backs were turned as they were walking away and they hadn’t noticed her come out. Instinctively at hearing an order from an elder they stopped and turned around and saw the ugly weird old woman hanging upside-down in front of her house.
“Can you give me a hand down?” she asked them, feeling like an idiot for having stood on her own pressure pad and activated the trap that was supposed to catch her dinner. Still, there was time, they were still there and if she could just get down she could catch them the old fashioned way. “Children? Please?”
The children turned and ran away.
