Short stody-Idle Hands

Granny Hurlock sat upstairs on the bus. She was going into town. It was such a pleasure and a change to do something normal like shopping. Boring and normal, that’s what she wanted to do today.

Her life currently was extremely busy, seeing too people and looking after her animals not to mention all that air travel. And at her age.

She placed her leather shoulder bag down on the seat besides her and stared at the window watching the rain drops race each other down the pane. Then she looked out of the window watching people rush from doorway to doorway taking cover from the sharp shower that just broke.

The bus arrived at the next stop where a group of three boys got on and immediately ran up the stairs laughing and being over boisterous. The first boy, a tall lad, looked at Granny and sniggered with his mates. Granny Hurlock took no notice, nothing was going to spoil her day out.

The boys who Granny thought were in their teenage years, sat at the back continuing their raucous behaviour. One of them got out his phone and began to play the obscenest sounding songs he could download. There was nobody else upstairs so this tyrant of abuse was intended for her pleasure only.

Again, Granny Hurlock was not going to be fazed by this immature outburst so decided to fetch out of her bag the cassette Walkman she still had after all these years and upon placing the headphones on over her ears, she slowly drifted off to sleep.

Granny Hurlock apparent lack of being intimidated annoyed the three boys immensely. They wanted some sport with their quarry. One of them found a discarded newspaper and all three tore off strips to roll into balls and see how many they could get to land on her head.

When this had no reaction, they ventured closer to the sleeping Granny Hurlock, pulling faces behind her back and taking selfies, which if Granny Hurlock had been awake, would have told them they were wasting their time.

It was soon time for the boys to get off, but before their departure, they wanted one last attempt at intimidation. The taller of the boys and the one who considered himself the leader of this pathetic pack, stood beside Granny Hurlock looking at her leather shoulder bag.

He had been convicted of shoplifting in the past and considered himself a bit of an expert. He gently placed his hands on the bags brass fasteners and separated them apart, all the while looking in Granny Hurlock’s direction.

He didn’t care what he stole, the point was he was stamping his leadership on the other two who were too scared to go near Granny Hurlock. He opened the bag wide and without looking inside, sent his hand into the bag to grab the first thing he came too.

The boy didn’t grab the first thing he came too but felt something strange happen to him instead. It felt like his hand had slipped off the end of his arm.

He didn’t like that feeling and straight away pulled his arm back out of the bag and stared at a blooded stump. The amputation of the boy’s right hand had been a clean removal just above the wrist.

The boy became transfixed with what he was seeing, he felt numb unable to believe what was going on. Opened mouthed he turned to the other two shaking his stump, they seemed to be vastly impressed with the illusion their leader was creating with shouts of ‘Cool’ and ‘How did you do that?’

The boy thief unable to speak waved his left hand over the space where his right one should have been. He then started to shake, feeling faint and sick at the same time.

The commotion from the now screaming thief boy woke Granny Hurlock. She looked around to see what was causing the disturbance. She then looked at the boy still standing beside her now frozen in fear. Seeing what had happen, she gave a little sigh and pushed her own hand deep inside the bag. She rummaged around until she felt something cold and clammy.

Granny Hurlock triumphantly pulled out the severed hand and held it aloft like she had just won it in a competition. Still looking at the boy asked, “Does this belong to you?”

The boy made no reply, his face was now as blue as his ex-hand. On seeing what Granny was holding, the other two boys now realising that this was not an illusion and maybe the old woman had something to do with their friends chopped off hand, became hysterical.

All this unwanted attention now started to attract those passengers and the driver downstairs. Granny Hurlock ignoring the screams from the two boys, glanced up at the ceiling of the bus and thought, ‘Why can’t I just have one day off and go shopping like everyone else.’

She shook her head and snapped shut her bag. It meant now she’ll have to come and do some late-night shopping on the broomstick.

The driver had stopped the bus and was coming up to see for himself what was going on. Granny Hurlock clicked her fingers before then and was gone. The only trace of her presence was the wisp of purple smoke.