Sinister

Greta sits hunched over the keyboard typing madly, squinting up at the backlit screen, the corner of the dining room grown dark around her. She is racing to finish her letter to the editor of the local paper –her third one this week- decrying the recent spate of bicycle robberies committed in the neighborhood. As disgraceful, she closes, is the spate of robberies as the state of this neighborhood.

Greta’s daughter Dolores is slouched in her bedroom sulking, clicking spitefully across her keypad, in and out of ten different chat rooms, using a different alias for each. Her black nails are beginning to chip from the friction. A piece of stray hair slips from behind her ear, blurs her vision, and is hastily, angrily replaced.

The quiet, tenebrous apartment is filling with the sound of microwave popcorn. Greta has been counting on this indulgence all afternoon. There is a glass of wine with her name on it, and this naughty little snack to reward her for yet another societal ill uncovered, disclosed, denounced. The town is going to hell in a handbasket, with only Greta to take notice.

She uncrosses her legs, pushes out her chair and stands to stretch before heading into the kitchen at the ding of the bell. She hears a soft creaking of the floorboards. Down the dark hall there is a glint of light under her daughter’s door. As she watches, the sliver of amber grows slowly larger, the creaking louder. She holds her breath and watches as the girl, who is reflected in the glass framed print on the wall, advances up the hall and slips stealthily into the kitchen.

Vile girl, she thinks. Always poised like a vulture waiting to strike. Like a starving orphan, a voracious snake, her unfathomable hunger drives her from her cave. Mother and daughter stand before the microwave. Between them arises a sinister aura of fire and brimstone that gathers in ribbons to entwine with the intoxicating smell of popped corn.

SINISTER      3: singularly evil or productive of evil