Neighbourhood Watch

 

“Remind me because I think I'm going giddy in my old age, but why do you shave their heads first?” Martha looked over the paraphernalia sprawled across Molly's kitchen table. Over the decades, the two women had shared many meals here, but now it was home to a cut-throat razor in a bowl of foamy water, a mug of tea with a saucer of freshly pruned leaves and of course, a make-up bag of epic proportions.

“Oh Martha...” Molly smiled sweetly at her dear friend. “Why, it's to help the wigs stick longer of course. The glue just sets so much better to the scalp than it does to hair. Besides, they could just cut that off, couldn't they?” She turned back to her project and gave the blank-faced boy a knowing look as she continued to work her pencil around his painted lips.

“Of course, silly me...” Martha chuckled as she admired her friend's work. “Wait, I know this one. Leo, isn't it? My granddaughter says he's a right nasty piece of work. Always taking money off the neighbourhood kids. Probably shoplifts too.”

“Oh, he's money motivated alright,” Molly sighed. “All I had to do was offer him money to cut my grass and you could practically see the dollar signs in his eyes. Probably had designs on my purse when my back was turned too. I know his sort. Plenty of them have come through this kitchen, as you know. A mug of my home-grown tea certainly made him more obedient.”

“He'll have a shock when he wakes up!” Martha reached over to stroke the bead necklace wrapped around the boy's neck. Her hand moved to the faux-fur jacket and then the shimmering twenties style ballgown. “Oh Molly, don't you remember when we used to dress up like this?”

“Oh, he's awake already,” Molly sat back so Martha could get a good look at Leo's vacant gaze. His eyes stared out lifelessly from behind layers upon layers of cosmetics and his bottom lip hung open as if weighed down by the pink gloss. “Can't you see the look in his eyes? My tea doesn't put you to sleep. It just makes you compliant. Leo here is aware of everything but can do nothing. Hence the wide-eyed 'dying on the inside' look. I'm just finishing up and then I'll send him off home. By the time he regains control, half the neighbourhood will have seen him.”

“Do you think he will learn his lesson?”

“I'm not sure it matters,” Molly put the pencil back it her giant makeup bag. “After his parade home no one is going to take him seriously as a bully ever again. Besides, like I said, the glue sets really nicely to the scalp, the makeup is my permanent stuff and there's always this little trick...” The old woman pulled out a tube of glue from a fold in her apron and squeezed it liberally over the zippers on the back of dress and the fronts of the high-heeled shoes housing Leo's feet. “He'll still be in this dress by the time he gets to our age,” she joked. “Won't look half as good though...”