Annie CLVII: No Time For Regrets

(Chronological index: Raymond as High School Senior)

Annie held the bars of her cage, listening to Raymond get chewed out for the fourth time that week. He and his father were down the hall in the up-up-stairs bathroom going over the proportionate use of dental floss.

"Here," Dad said, "I even marked it out on the counter. You need THIS MUCH each time. Stretch it from here to here and use that much."

"I do!" Raymond insisted. He sounded wounded by the lack of trust his father was showing. Maybe even betrayed. Annie started to feel a tiny bit of regret.

"Then why have you gone through six boxes this month?"

"Maybe Annie's using-" Raymond started to throw his pet under the bus. Annie's eyes raged. How DARE he accuse her! He was right, but STILL!

"DON'T blame your sylph!" Dad interrupted. "Annie can't use dental floss."

"Not for my teeth," Annie said softly.

"Not for her teeth," Raymond muttered.

Dad sighed. "Okay, if you think your pet is stealing your dental hygiene equipment for nefarious ends, then hide it, or put it where she can't reach it."

"I’m not sure there's any place she can't reach," Raymond said.

Dad accepted this with a 'hmmm.' There was some creaking. "What about here?"

"Maybe," Raymond said. Annie tried to identify the creaking. Was that the sink? Or the counter? Or the doorway? Was Dad leaning on something…?

Well, wherever they put that box, it didn't matter. She was already fully stocked. She heard footsteps in the hall and threw herself onto her gel mattress.

Raymond came into the room, Dad stopped at the doorway. "You guys all set for the night?" he asked.

"Waiting for Santa!" Annie shouted. Raymond rolled his eyes.

"And you're going to wait up here," Dad said/asked.

Raymond reached over to push the door of Annie's cage shut until the latch clicked. At this point, Christmas Eve was the only time they locked her in. But lock her in they did.

She rolled HER eyes at the affectation. Apparently there was just no telling what trouble a six-inch tall sylph might wreak three floor above the Christmas Tree.

"Right, Master, I'm going to run around the house naked when Santa's here."

"Maybe he'd finally give you the clothes you keep begging for," Raymond said.

"Well, no one finds out until tomorrow," Dad said. He closed the door firmly.

Annie watched her owner undress for bed, then blow her a kiss. She ducked for cover behind her water bottle. Then it was dark.

She watched and waited as his breathing slowed, deepened and simulated sleep. And as usual, once he was pretending to sleep, he actually fell asleep.

After another half hour or so, Annie eased the toothpick out from under her bed. About a foot of dental floss was tied to it and wrapped around it. She pulled it loose and pushed one end through the door of her cage.

It took a minute to wrap the floss around both buttons of the latch. The cage didn't actually 'lock' per se, it was just assumed that she could never get sufficient leverage to pop both sides of the catch at once. And usually that was true.

When the latch was cocooned, she tied off the end and started to twist the toothpick. It quickly took up the slack and then put pressure on the catches. The springs opened slowly and silently and she pushed the door half-open.

She left the toothpick in place. There was no point in not letting Master know how she'd defeated the 'lock,' and it was kinda bragging.

Another length of floss was coiled up under the edge of the cage. It had been perfectly safe there, it would never be noticed unless her teenaged owner lifted the cage to dust his room.

She tied one end to the corner of her cage and threw the rest over the side of the desk. Evenly spaced knots allowed her to climb quickly down to the floor.

Her feet slapped gently on the wood floor as she ran to the door. She left the floss in place. If she knew Raymond, the first thing he'd do would be to search ABOVE the desk, muttering, "That's too obvious."

The door sill had enough room for her to wiggle through, then she was running for the stairwell. But not the stairs.

She could make it down the stairs, jumping from one step to the next, but it took time and was hard on the knees.

There was another length of knotted floss hidden under the radiator across from the stairs, already tied to one baluster. The length of it fell down a floor and ran alongside the grandfather clock in the 2nd floor hallway.

Mom and Dad's voices carried up from the living room as she descended. They were arranging gifts and discussing they'd stop even pretending that Santa was real.

As Annie considered herself living proof that there was a certain amount of magic in the world, she wasn't sure if she was ready to completely discount The Claus. But she also wasn't going to interrupt the argument tonight.

On the 2nd floor, Annie ran down the carpet to the end of the bannister and crouched down out of sight. Soon after she was hidden, the parents climbed up the stairs and went to bed.

Now the coast was clear… And pretty dark. Lucky for the sylph, tiny eyes didn't need all that much light. She kept telling herself that as she threw yet another knotted floss rope into the dark abyss of the stairwell.

The descent was just a little spooky. The house made odd sounds as the winter cold contracted the house, and the heating system expanded it again.

And there were various noises she could identify, like the fridge, and some she couldn’t.

So a little spooky. And oddly familiar. "Why is this familiar?" she wondered aloud.

She paused to rest when she reached the carpeting, then started the hike to the living room. Once around the doorway she could identify a couple of the sounds. The fireplace pinged at it cooled.

Annie was unfamiliar with that noise as she was seldom on the floor this late at night. That would require Master being on this floor, she thought sourly.

Raymond kept his sylph either close by, as a talisman, or locked up in the room like a treasure.

The flagstones of the fireplace were rough enough, with big enough gaps between them, it was like a highway for a determined sylph. As she gazed up on her planned path, though, she realized there were odd shadows.

The blinking lights of the Tree were not going to make this any easier. Still, she'd gone too far to turn back now.

She found the loops of floss under the magazine rack by the door and tied them to her waist, then started to climb.

Halfway up the stone wall, she glanced behind her to look across the room. From here, it kind of looked like the gym at her old school. Years ago, when she'd attended as a student rather than a student's accessory.

That's when she figured out why this dark, odd-sounding place was so familiar. She and Mi- A Friend. She and a friend had broken into the school one night. Without lights, without the noise of students and faculty, it was like an alien world.

She smiled at the carefully edited memory (no names were allowed to be recalled) and continued up to the mantel.

As she climbed past the level of the stockings, she estimated the haul. Dad and Mom made sure that each of their 'kids' had the same number of gifts, including the stocking stuffers.

The sylph's gifts tended more towards candy than Raymond's. And there lies the rub… Annie always got all the candy given to her, but her master controlled the rate of consumption.

He was pretty generous, all things considered, especially as they got older. He'd stopped making her earn candy by performing, behaving or entertaining in accordance with his guidelines, and now just gauged how long it was until the next meal.

It still rankled that she had to ask for something that technically belonged to her.

So here she was, cat-burglar extraordinaire. She sidestepped onto the mantel and went to check the heft of the Christmas Sculpture. Four figures of penguins were exchanging gifts, each one labeled with the name of a Foster.

She pulled and pulled on the head of the Annie fowl, but nothing moved. She tied a loop of floss around the throat.

------

Raymond sat up, certain something was wrong. His first act, as always, was to look over at the desk and see how Annie was doing.

Something looked wrong in the gloom and he reached for his bedlamp.

He noted the open cage door and the escape string dangling over the edge. The last four inches was draped artfully across the floor, pointing directly at the door to the room. It seemed to indicate that it had been pulled in his sylph's wake as she left.

"Uh huh," he muttered, looking around the bookshelves. "Where are you really?"

------

The plan formed when Annie realized that while Dad and Mom counted stuffers on Christmas Eve, and Raymond certain counted them on Christmas Morning, no one compared the two results.

So if she stole equal amounts of candy from her and Raymond's stockings, and hid them somewhere as a cache Raymond did NOT control, no one would be the wiser.

Her stocking was first, because it was technically hers, anyway. And the density of candy was greater.

With one hand on the knotted line, she lifted candy wrappers with the other and tossed them out the top of the stocking.

Ten was her target number. More than enough to last her quite a ways through the winter, and there were likely ten pieces of candy among the toys and puzzles and gadgets in Raymond's pile.

When she had reached the goal, she climbed back up and moved to Raymond's stocking.

She had just reached the mouth when there was a scraping noise over her head. She stilled, trying not to swing. Had the penguin statue shifted?

"It was STABLE!" she complained. But then part of her mind pointed out that she hadn't tried to shift the thing from the current angle.

She tried to lower herself to the stocking, to put her weight on that, when there was a sudden drop.

The floss didn't fall, but it did swing away from the mouth of the stocking. She grabbed as it went past, yanking herself to a stop.

She climbed up the white fur cuff, not daring to pull on the floss at all. She still had the length she was going to use to escape to the floor.

Maybe loop that around the nail holding the stocking itself? She'd have to throw it up like a lariat, standing in the middle of this fake fur that was tickling her naked body.

Damn Raymond, she blamed. Then she was inside the stocking. She lifted a chocolate reindeer and tossed it down to the rest.

The wrappers she was standing on shifted, rolling under her feet. She gave a squeak of surprise as she sank into the gifts.

Trying to climb back on top proved difficult. The stuff kept shifting and rolling and she kept dropping deeper.

She thought to climb the side of the bag, but couldn't work her way through the wrappers and… Was that a dog whistle? Who the fuck thought a sylph owner needed a dog whistle? She slapped it in annoyance… and dropped another three inches.

Annie started to worry that she'd be in the toe of the stocking come morning. Which meant that 10 pieces of HER candy would be up for grabs when the family came down stairs.

Of course, they wouldn't start down the stairs until they found everyone, including the sylph who needed rescuing.

It was almost enough to make her cry. Instead she started stroking one of the chocolate truffles. Maybe a bite to get the energy to climb out…

But there was just enough light to see that it was white chocolate. Let Master suffer through that oxymoron, she thought, struggling to get up above the thing.

"Annie?" Raymond called softly. She froze. It was an automatic reaction, she WAS in the middle of something. Then she rethought it and started kicking, trying to swing the stocking, to get his attention.

There was a stomach-wrenching lurch as the stocking was unhooked, then lowered, probably to the coffee table.

It was laid on one side. She was better able to get traction there, and slithered out through the boxes and wrappers and stuff.

Then she stood on the table, looking up at Raymond in robe and pajamas.

"Well," he asked. "What do you think about some of your most recent choices?"

"I'd have gotten away with it if it weren't for those malicious kids!" she replied.

"Meddling," he correct.

"I know what I said," she said. She crossed her arms and glared. He looked over at the hearth, then back down to her. She looked up accusingly.

"Did you ask Santa for a dog whistle?"

"Dog? Or bosun's whistle?" he asked.

"What's the difference?" she replied.

"We'll find out tomorrow," he said. He bent to scoop her candy up into her stocking, then picked her up in one hand, his stocking in the other.

"What was the plan?" he asked. He hung the stocking and plucked the floss clear.

"Hide a share of candy someplace you'd never find it, so I didn't have to ask you for permission to eat my own candy," she said.

"Under the couch," he nodded.

"No!" she lied.

"It's the only thing in this room that doesn't get moved when Mom vacuums."

"There's the stereo."

"There's no room under the stereo for candy," he pointed out. He stopped talking as he climbed the stairs. She noticed that her floss was already removed from the bannister.

They were both silent until he was back in his room, lowering her to the door of her cage.

"So, you left clues you got out, but you figured I'd never find the stash?"

"Cache," she corrected. "Stash is a secret, a cache is inaccessible."

"The salient detail being that I'd never get your candy," he nodded. "Kind of like where I cached the dental floss."

"It's on top of the medicine cabinet," she said. "Which I can reach by climbing the towel rack."

"Malicious kids is right," he muttered. "Well, I cleaned up all the floss I could find, so we won't get in trouble for getting up during the night."

"You should have left it," she said. "You could show Dad that I really DID steal all your floss!"

"He's already rejected that defense," he said with a shake of his head. "There's no point revisiting it, even if the officials use the replay to vindicate me."

"Oh. That's very adult of you," she said.

"And he'd blame me for putting climbing floss strategically around the house to fix the blame on you," he continued. "Which will make it harder for me to prove your guilt in the future, even with evidence."

"Ah." She looked him over for a second. "That's very advanced tactical thinking on your part, Master."

"I learned from the best," he said. He grasped her suddenly, but lifted her gently. One soft kiss was placed on her forehead. "Merry Christmas, Annie."

"Happy Solstice, Raymond," she replied. He put her back down inside the cage, gently closing the door. She crawled into bed as he turned out the light.



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