Misser Back
by Brett J Cole
‘Mister who..?’ he asked.
Her words were always drawled when she was tired. Especially when it was that stubborn fatigue where he just knew it would take her ages to finally go to sleep.
‘Misser Back,’ she told him again.
‘Mister... Black?’
‘No! Misser Back!’
‘Misser Back,’ he repeated, careful not to adopt her vocal mannerisms.
At six years old now, she was smart enough to know she had Rhotacism and was unable to sound the letter "R" or "L" properly. She was even witty enough to bemoan the word beginning with the letter that eluded her. But if anyone repeated what she’d said with that same tone, she’d punch them - other students, teachers, and certainly her father.
She stared at him before nodding again. ‘Misser... Back,’ she said very clearly. ‘It’s not... wike the other words, wike bwack. His name is Misser, wike missing someone, Back, wike not the fwont.’
‘Ohhhh-kay,’ he said tiredly. This was her fourth tangent so far to avoid going to sleep. ‘So, who is he?’
‘He’s vewy tall. Wike BIG!’ she shouted, lifting her head from her pillow then dropping it back down with a thud. ‘And he wears all bwack, that part is bwack, not wike his name. Even his head is bwack, but it’s a horse head.’
‘A horse head?’ he frowned, knowing he shouldn’t be as enthused as it wouldn’t help getting her to sleep at all.
‘Wike... wooden. Wike the chess pieces you have.’
‘Like the knight, you mean?’
‘Uh huh,’ she nodded. ‘And he’s weally fast!’ Her eyes widened. ‘Wike, always two steps behind you fast. Always two steps and he can gwab you because his arms are weally wong, so you have to keep wunning, always! Because he’s always the two steps behind. Boom! Boom!’ she ended in a baritone voice, as she would when talking about dinosaurs.
‘Always two steps, huh?’
‘Yup. But onwy if you wun. As soon as you wun he’s behind you, twying to get you with the wong arms. It’s the horse head that’s weally scawy, though. It’s all wood, so his eyes aren’t weally weal. But they... can... see you.’ she ended in a hush.
‘Well, I’ll just have to run faster, won’t I?’ he grinned.
‘No,’ she sighed, ending the word in a yawn. ‘Always two steps, no matter how fast you wun, so you’d just have to keep wunning fowever. That’s why you have to walk, Dad. He’ll onwy chase you if you wun. If you’re bwave and can just keep walking, you’ll be fine.’
And like she often would, with that, Pippa fell asleep after giving another yawn.
Cameron stared at her, brushed the hair from her forehead and smiled. He got up from the chair by the bed, the wood giving a gentle creak, and as he stood there smiling down at her there came another creak behind him - the familiar creak of that one floorboard that he always told Pippa he’d fix.
The hair rose up at the back of his neck and he told himself that the heaviness that suddenly fell on his heart – the one that seemed like the world itself would double in weight and made the air seem thick like honey – that was just parental melancholy. That was simply realising how precious your child was, and how much bigger than them life itself was.
He told himself this as he stood there a moment longer, waiting to hear and not hear that creak of the floorboards, because he wouldn’t tell himself that a man with a wooden horse head, dressed all in black, was standing two steps behind him.
Nonetheless, as he left Pippa’s room, he fought the primal urge to run that tickled the base of his spine, and his limbs ached from walking intently…
All the while as Misser Back watched him, hoping dearly that Cameron would wun.
“Misser Back” features in Brett’s anthology, “Once... A Collection of Short Stories. Several of Which Feature Dogs.” The PDF version is available through his Ko-Fi store for just $3 - https://ko-fi.com/brettjcole/shop
