Daikaijuzine

“Sara! Have you seen Buddy?”

Seven-year-old Sara perched on the top step of a footstool, knees drawn up under her chin. She was listening to the clock on the wall above her mother’s head, to the tick-tick-tick counting off the minutes until the cookies could be taken out of the oven. Sara chewed her lip in excitement, and inside her sneakers, her toes curled up tight. She liked cookies best when they were gooey and warm, and she was going to eat one as soon as she could peel it off the pan.

“Sara!”

Mommy was louder now, so loud Sara couldn’t hear the clock. She looked up. “Yes ma’am?”

“Have you seen Buddy?” Mommy always looked so sad. Sara didn’t know why. Maybe she had nightmares too, the awful, sweaty kind that didn’t even go away when you woke up. “Honey,” Mommy said, bending down so that her face was level with Sara’s. “Have you seen your brother’s dog?”

Sara started to push her hair back-she hated the way it felt on her face, crawly and ticklish, but then she remembered that she had cookie dough under her fingernails. If it got into her hair, her mother would be angry. “No, Mommy, not in a long time.” The dough under her thumbnail was the color of sand. She popped her thumb into her mouth, though she didn’t like plain sugar cookie dough very much, not like chocolate chip.

“You haven’t seen him at all?”

“Earlier I did.”

“When, Sara? When did you see Buddy?” Mommy’s voice was going higher and higher, faster, too, and behind her the tick-tick-tick. Sara could almost smell the cookies.

“He wanted to go into the garden.” Peter’s nasty little dog stood at the door all morning and barked and barked and when Sara tried to get close, Buddy growled and showed his teeth. Sara looked at her hands. Her skin was pebbly with dough, some patches lighter, some darker where she’d put in the coloring. She hated the dog. “Peter wasn’t even here. He was over with Cody.”

“So you put him out?”

“I put him in the garden.”

“Sara…” Mommy stood up. The sound her knees made was like the clock but not regular. “Did something happen with Buddy?”

Sara poked at a rusty spot on the footstool. She liked the color: not red, not brown, but something between. “What do you mean, Mommy?”

“I mean like what happened with Jimbo.”

“Jimbo was mean, Mommy, he bit me!” Sara curled up tightly on the footstool. She didn’t even know why they had to have dogs. She hated dogs.

“Answer me.”

“I did not put the pillow on Buddy’s face, Mommy.” She tried, once, but Buddy was fat and round and she couldn’t hold it down tight enough to keep the dog from getting away.

Mommy bent down again and put her hands on Sara’s shoulders. Her fingernails were very sharp and they stabbed through Sara’s shirt. “Promise me.”

“I promise, Mommy. I did not suffercate Buddy.”

It took Mommy a long time to let go of Sara’s shoulders. “Okay. Okay, but you tell me if you see Buddy.” Her face moved; Sara thought she was going to smile, but then it went away. “And don’t talk like a baby.”

She really could smell the cookies now, but they didn’t smell like cookies at all. It was a good smell, though, a rumbly-tummy smell, and Sara slid down from the stool. “Don’t go, Mommy. You have to take the cookies out. They’re almost done.” She wasn’t allowed to touch the oven anymore.

Mommy seemed to notice the smell, too, but her nose wrinkled up. “That’s awful,” she said. “Back up, baby, let me check. Maybe something went bad.” She pulled the oven door down and Sara saw the cookies, bubbling and crispy on top, not like cookies at all. Mommy grabbed a towel and pulled the cookies out of the oven. She must have burned herself because she yelled when she dropped them onto the stove.

Sara had colored some of the cookies green and others red. Some were plain. She liked them all mixed up. The red, though, it wasn’t red at all, but the same dark in-between color of the rust on the stepstool. The crust bubbled up like blackened soap.

“Sara? Sara? What did you do?” Mommy was crying, loud and wet like a baby. Sara tried to answer, but Mommy wouldn’t listen. The bottle of red food coloring had been empty and she was so proud, because it was a problem and she solved it all by herself. She was supposed to do that. And it was hard; she had to chase Buddy all around the garden to hit him with Daddy’s big knife, the one like a stretched-out triangle, but after the first time, it was easy, and the knife sounded just like the hands on the clock.

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Alisha Karabinus is currently pursuing a BA in English from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where she also serves as editor of the student literary magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in Flashquake, Pindeldyboz, Staccato Fiction, and the wastebasket beside her desk.