Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter

teeth. I lift Erg from my pocket for an instant, staring in bewilderment. A trickle of blood slips from her dainty ruby mouth, and she motions frantically at my pocket for me to put her back.
    As soon as I do the old lady is standing there, looking at me with wide, pitying eyes.
    Something has a hold of my hair, wrenching a huge hank of it up behind me. Something strong. On the floor the wounded hand starts springing up and down, one accusing forefinger pointing my way. Its nails are painted with emerald glitter.
    â€œOh, little one,” the old lady whispers mournfully, “you were stealing. Weren’t you?”
    It’s funny but it takes me a moment to realize I’m the one she’s accusing. “I was not! I think that sick thing on your floor was stealing. It was flopping all over that candy bar like some kind of squashed fish.”
    The hand’s fingers all jerk straight at once and it spasms with indignation, then points at me again.
    â€œHe can’t steal,” the woman reproves me. One of her irises is completely veiled in some gray-white, sticky web of disease. “He works here. Keeping the shelves tidy, cleaning … I don’t think you young people understand how much harm your thieving does. I’m all alone, and my store here is all I have. I hope you realize now that what you did was very wrong.”
    I try to move, and the thing behind me jerks my head back so hard that the skin of my throat strains. In front of me the wounded hand bounces excitedly, then takes off scampering down the aisle with a weird grabbing motion.
    I have an awful sense of what it might be going to fetch.
    â€œI was not stealing!” I’m yelling now. “I didn’t take anything!” The hand reappears behind her, hopping along more slowly with a heavy axe swinging awkwardly in its grip.
    â€œYou must have been,” she mutters. “That’s why he was pointing you out. You could at least say you’re sorry.” The hand has begun climbing the shelves at her side, mashing the steel support between three undulating fingers and its palm while the axe sways between thumb and forefinger. The blade is curved and mirrored, reflecting bags of white bread as it creeps upward. It smacks against the shelves with a dull, recurrent clank. The blood in my head is buzzing and my legs start to go slack. That nasty fleshy spider has climbed almost high enough to—
    â€œI’ll empty my pockets!” I scream. Erg kicks me. “Really! How could I be stealing, when I don’t have anything of yours?”
    It’s pathetic to realize that those are probably my last words. I’m most ashamed at the thought of what this will do to Chelsea and how she’ll blame herself. The hand reaches the top shelf and swishes the blade triumphantly upright.
    The old lady sighs. “No,” she tells the hand. “She’s not wrong.”
    The hand jumps in protest and knocks a pile of cereal boxes off the shelf.
    â€œThere are rules,” she mutters. “Rules for everybody. Always rules. The candy would have to be on her person somewhere for it to really count. There’s too much … ambiguity. You’d be getting us into difficulties with the fussy types, the sticklers and quibblers, wouldn’t you? There’s an element of doubt.”
    The hand drops the axe with a clunk. The falling blade slices a box of sugared flakes wide open and they rustle onto the floor.
    â€œThere’s a lot more than doubt,” I snarl. Now that I’m not seconds away from being butchered I’m ready to spit at her. “You’d better let me go, now!”
    She levels her eyes at me, one gray and one veiled. The problem with staring back at her is that I start to get the sense that her sick eye is orbiting like a dead planet, and that my head is its sun.
    â€œNot that much doubt,” she whispers. The blotchy pink and yellow flowers on her dress