Nikki-pookered

by Lynne McVicar

I huddled up in the cramped, dark space of the wardrobe, knees hugged close to chest. Its sliding door was closed, but small chinks of daylight filtered through its frame.

I heard the jangle of a dog’s lead – closely followed by the sound of a dog scampering up the stairs.

“Are you skiving off school again Stephen?” a voice yelled accusingly from below, followed by determined into-battle-sounding footsteps stomping up the stairs.

The bedroom door crashed open and I held my breath as I heard the small dog scurry in. The darn thing was sniffing ferociously and pawing along the bottom of the wardrobe door, inches from where I hid. I followed the sound of its wet, snuffling nose and the movement of its shadow. I bit my lip, willing myself not to make the tiniest of sounds, heart pounding.

The voice joined the dog in the room. I sensed it was very near. The floorboards creaked and made movements underneath me as its owner walked about the room.

The dog reluctantly abandoned the wardrobe and turned its attention to the voice instead. I could hear the animal yapping and leaping up and down excitedly, trying to tell the voice about the scoundrel it had discovered.

Fortunately, the voice was not good at understanding these doggy dramatics.

“OK, let’s go,” the voice said, resignedly.

The bedroom door closed. Footsteps faded away down the stairs and the dog’s panting grew distant. Another jangle of the lead, front door opening and closing. Silence.

It was several minutes before I dared move, slowly easing myself up out of my tight spot, causing more floorboards to creak. I winced as the sliding door opened noisily, despite the care I took.

I opened the bedroom door, slowly growing more confident that I was alone.

I crossed the landing to my bedroom at the front of the house. Its small window gave a clear view of the cul-de-sac opposite, where Nan lived with her poodle, Nikki-poo. I watched them walking home, Nan turning back every now and then to glance at our house with a look of calculating suspicion worthy of Miss Marple.

I was safe, the octogenarian super sleuth had made her daily check to make sure my older brother had gone to school. They clashed a lot, both were stubborn with strong personalities. Nan would have liked nothing better than to have caught him red-handed, skiving at home. As for me, I could never do any wrong in her eyes.

Donny Osmond looked on disapprovingly from the poster on my teen-girl bedroom wall, while David Essex gave a crafty wink.

I made my way downstairs to the front room and flopped onto the settee. The rest of the day was mine.

Suddenly a key turned in the front door and the sound of a dog panting filled the hallway. Nan had returned.

She looked surprised.

So did I.

“I’ve just got home. I felt sick at school,” I said, as I put on my best performance of a traumatised teen about to succumb to the ravages of some horrible plague.

“I don’t think you should be alone here. This place gives me the creeps,” said Nan. “It felt like someone was here when I came by a short while ago – and Nikki-poo was acting weird upstairs. I thought your brother was bunking off again. I came back to double check.”

“Mum sometimes thinks the house is haunted, maybe she is right…” I said, by way of hopeful explanation.

This seemed to be an acceptable possibility for Nan – and one which she was quick to cling to like a lifebuoy. She would rather give credence to the possibility that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse had taken up residence in the back bedroom than entertain the more unpalatable notion that her granddaughter might be up to no good.

“Come home with me, it might not be safe here,” she said, looking around as if half expecting that we would be sucked into some deep void, never to be seen again. “I’ll look after you and make you something nice to eat. Then you can help Nikki-poo eat his food,” she said.

I groaned inwardly.

How I hated that darn dog and his neurotic food fetish ways which had seen a regular routine created for me down the years whereby I would have to get down on the floor, face nearly into his dog bowl, making chomping noises as I pretended to eat his supposedly delicious food.

This in turn would send him into an indignant frenzy of yapping and jumping up and down, trying to bash my head out the way with his front paws until finally, I surrendered the food up to him. More often than not his paw pouncing head bashing ways would push my face into the smelly dog food before I had a chance to surrender.

Apparently, without such interaction on my part, he would have been incapable of eating and would most likely have died of starvation several years before.

Suddenly, the double maths lesson I had been trying to avoid seemed like the better deal. Even the prospect of being hauled off by some malevolent force intent on dragging treacherous teenage truants into an unthinkable hell of eternal schooling seemed preferable.

It was too late though, I had been snookered – or more precisely, I had been Nikki-pookered.

Bio:
Lynne lives in south-east London, UK. Down the years she has been a regional newspaper journalist in London and Kent, as well as working in PR. She is currently a support worker, raising awareness around dementia. Throughout her working life, Lynne has been a sporadically published writer of short stories.