Mitty

Written for NYCMidnight's 2023 Short Story Challenge (Fiction)

Provided Prompt: Genre - Action/Adventure, Subject - Resourcefulness, Character - a preschooler

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Another migraine was creeping across Ryka’s forehead like it always did after a phone call with her mother. They seemed to always have the same conversation.

“Mitty, you’re wasting your life. You could be doing something productive,” she would say, using that childhood nickname she always pulled out of the past whenever she was trying to get on Ryka’s good side.

“I’ll figure it out, Mom,” Ryka would always say to placate her, as if the overdue bills on her kitchen table weren’t enough to remind her of her current writing slump.

Ryka sighed and stood up from the old leather couch and shuffled across her studio apartment to the bathroom. As she flicked on the light overhead, she caught a glimpse of her long stringy red hair and thin, tired face in the mirror. Thirty-five may as well have been sixty-five for all the luggage she was carrying under her eyes. She hated herself a little bit more these days.

Her reflection darted away as she opened the mirrored cabinet and pulled out the half-empty bottle of pain reliever. She swallowed two of the pills dry and then padded back out into the living room, plopping down on the couch to stare at the white laptop screen in front of her. The curser blinked on and off like a glaring neon sign. She scowled at it and then, with a groan, flopped onto her side and sank into the cushions. Her soft gray pajama shorts didn’t protect her from the leather couch’s chill and Ryka vaguely wished she had thought to grab a blanket on her way back from the bathroom. She just needed to wait for the pills to kick in, then she’d write something.

Ryka hadn’t realized she was asleep until she was jolted awake.

“You’re here!” a tiny voice squealed at her. Ryka’s eyes snapped open and she came face to face with a smiling, red-haired toddler. Ryka shouted and lurched backward, reaching down and grabbed for the cushions to steady herself, but to her surprise, her fingers were met with crunchy brown leaves instead.

Her bare feet scrabbled at the ground, toes sinking into the warm earth beneath her as she desperately tried to stand up. Finally, she stumbled and lurched backwards, her hands blindly grabbing out for anything to hold onto. Her fingers brushed against rough bark and she snatched her hands back as if she’d been burned.

Instead of her apartment, Ryka discovered that she was now standing in the middle of a birch forest, like something out of a Bob Ross painting. The woods were bright; almost too bright. Beams of light filtered in between the branches of the black and white trees to lay white stripes on the moss-covered earth beneath their canopy. If she wasn’t so freaked out, it might have been nice, maybe even beautiful. But panic took the shine off a lot of things.

And then, of course, there was the child. Right in front of her, like she was waiting for Ryka to notice her, stood a skinny little toddler. Ryka’s wide eyes stared at the smiling child and she smiled back uncertainly. The girl’s dirt-smudged face lit up like one of the beams of light blazing through the trees.

She wore a little red shirt and a pair of overalls that were rolled up to her knees and smudged with dirt. Her tiny little feet were caked with mud, just like Ryka’s, and she bounced forward, easily closing the distance between them and wrapping her little arms around Ryka’s legs. Ryka stood, frozen, feeling the little girl gripping her bare legs in a hug.

“Hi?” Ryka asked, stupidly. The little girl laughed and stepped back, looking up at Ryka like she was the moon.

“I’m Mitty,” she said joyfully, poking a finger at herself and then the same one at Ryka.“You’re me.”

“What?”

“You’re the old me,” Mitty explained.

“That’s…” Ryka stopped, looking pointedly at the girl in front of her. “…weird.” Her brain took a moment to finally supply her with a vague memory of a Polaroid her mother had taken of her when she was five.

Ryka’s mind played the memory like she’d just popped a tape into an old VCR. It had been her last day of preschool. She remembered that her mom had bought the overalls at Kmart the day before and had warned her not to get dirt on them. Ryka smiled down at the little smudges of soil all over Mitty’s clothes.

“You’re me…when I was Mitty.” Ryka said, the penny finally dropping into place.

“We’re really pretty,” Mitty said running her hand through her tangled red hair. Ryka couldn’t help but laugh as she watched her fingers get caught in the wild knots. If her mother could see her now, she’d run straight for that horrible comb she always kept in her purse. She would practically rip clumps out of Ryka’s hair with that thing and scold her all the while.

“Are you gonna stop the Evil Queen?” Mitty asked, abandoning her hair and reaching down to the ground to pick up a stick. She gave it a critical look and then waved it around in the air.

“The Evil…what?”

“She’s scary,” Mitty said, poking the stick into the ground between her muddy little toes. “And she’s doing bad stuff to the trees.”

Mitty pointed the now-muddy stick into the distance behind Ryka’s left shoulder. Ryka turned to follow her gaze and saw a clump of trees, about thirty feet away, completely shrouded in darkness. The bark on the trees curled in black tendrils and the light that bathed the rest of the forest seemed to fizzle out as it reached the branches.

“Someone did that?” Ryka asked, looking deep into the darkness.

“The Evil Queen hates me,” Mitty explained, casually. “‘Cause I play pretend and stuff.”

“Figures,” Ryka muttered absently, trying to peer deeper into the clump of trees. It was as if all the light had been sucked out of the woods. Ryka felt a shiver run between her shoulders the longer she looked. A depressing kind of cold crept through her veins and spread down to the tips of her fingers.

Ryka tore her eyes away and looked back at Mitty.

“So where is this Evil Queen?” she asked, stooping over and picking a stray leaf out of Mitty’s hair. The girl’s eyes went suddenly wide as she peered over Ryka’s shoulder. She stumbled backwards with a squeak, hiding behind a nearby birch and pointing the stick in the air like a sword.

Ryka turned around toward the dark woods and there she was.

“Right on cue,” Ryka said, crossing her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes. The Evil Queen looked exactly as she had expected: like Ryka.

Though she appeared many years older—somewhere in her late 40s—she looked as familiar to Ryka as if she were looking in the mirror. This older version of her wore her fiery red hair in a tight bun and her slender figure was covered in a ridiculously tight black satin dress. It was something Ryka would absolutely never wear.

“Not even the best dry cleaners can get mud out of satin,” Ryka commented, going for cocky but ending up sounding unsure. The Queen’s lips turned into a smile and she chuckled softly before taking a few measured steps forward. She looked smug in a way that Ryka had only seen in her mother. God, she hoped she didn’t look like that, too.

“You should mind your own business,” the Evil Queen whispered.

“This is my business. It’s my dream,” Ryka said with a shrug. The Queen smiled again and shook her head, sadly.

“Is that what you think?” she cooed, reaching her slender fingers down to the stump of a tree beside her, her eyes still locked onto Ryka’s. The wood beneath the Queen’s fingers shimmered and shuddered unnaturally. Suddenly, the bark changed into coarse gray fur and the dead branches twisted into long legs tipped with sharp claws. The shape of an enormous dog—no, wolf—overtook the ground where the stump once stood and Ryka took an unconscious step backward.

The wolf’s yellow eyes opened slowly, blinking in the bright light of the forest, and it peeled its lips back in an unsettling grin. Before Ryka could even process what she was seeing, the creature snapped at her legs, missing her thigh by only inches as she lurched back in terror, shrieking.

Adrenaline flashed bright and hot in her chest as she turned awkwardly, slipping on green moss and stumbling over her own feet. When she finally got her legs under her, she careened desperately toward the tree Mitty was hiding behind, reaching out to grab her little hand as she ran by.

Ryka felt Mitty take a few stumbling steps before a loud sob escaped her lips. She turned to see Mitty’s terrified little face, realizing with a jolt of worry that she wasn’t going to be able to keep up.

“It’s ok, I got you,” Ryka soothed, quickly scooping Mitty up into her arms and settling her on her hip.

The wolf snarled and snapped at Ryka’s heels, having gotten closer in the time it took to pick up her younger self. The monster’s rancid breath was hot on her bare heels as she took off through the woods, but she didn’t chance a look back at it.

Ryka ran faster and faster, her thighs screaming with the effort of running with the extra weight of Mitty. She could hear the wolf’s paws pounding like mallets on the dirt behind her, it’s wet jaws poised to snap again at any moment. She tried, desperately, to breathe through her panic, but Ryka knew she couldn’t run like this forever. She had to come up with a plan.

She heard Mitty sob into her shoulder and her heart broke a little. She remembered a time when she was Mitty’s age—when she was Mitty—and she would cry for her mother. But her mother would just roll her eyes and remind her that little girls shouldn’t cry because little girls became adults one day and adults definitely didn’t cry.

Ryka felt her heart clench at the memory and her chest felt tight, like she wasn’t going to be able to drag in enough air. Desperately, she looked around for anything to help her.

Then, as if her desperation had simply conjured it, the forest opened up and became a clear field of green. Ryka noticed a large boulder in the center of the clearing and it looked just tall enough to be a struggle for the wolf to reach the top. Ryka knew this was her only chance. She aimed for the rock, using whatever was left in her legs to heave them both toward it.

“Ryka!” Mitty cried into her ear. The wolf roared behind them, its jaws snapping again and again.

“Everything’s gonna be ok!” Ryka shouted between gasping breaths. Her knees ached in protest as they carried her closer and closer to the rock in front of her. Her throat was on fire and her chest felt like it would burst at any moment. She felt Mitty’s fingers grip and twist at the neck of her t-shirt in fear. Unconsciously, Ryka tightened her grip, hoping she could squeeze reassurance into her.

As they hurried closer to the rock, Ryka shifted Mitty and plucked her hands from the neck of her shirt.

“Grab the rock!” she cried, pushing Mitty forward. Her fingers reached out and pulled her little body up onto the top of the boulder and out of the way of the freight train of fur flying toward them.

Ryka stumbled at the change in weight and fell down onto her knees beside the boulder, rolling onto her back in the grass. The wolf thundered down on her and Ryka quickly scrabbled backwards, kicking her legs out. One of her feet connected with the boney parts of the wolf’s jaw and it lurched back, whining in shock. Ryka scrambled to her feet and crouched down, trying desperately to catch her breath. The wolf snarled again and took a measured step forward.

“Leave us alone!” Ryka shouted. The wolf’s ears twitched at the sound, but it just peeled back its lips, ready to strike. Ryka clenched her hands into fists, her mind racing with what to do next.

“Such bravado,” said the Evil Queen, appearing next to the wolf as if she had materialized out of thin air. The wolf bristled and the Queen ran her long fingers through its gray fur, stilling its movements. Ryka shivered as the Queen crouched down in front of her.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Ryka hissed, her eyes welling with angry tears. The Queen smiled and leaned forward, inspecting every detail of her face. A tear escaped down Ryka’s cheek, betraying her defiance.

“I think you are,” the Evil Queen replied, reaching out and plucking the tear from her face. “You’re just a scared little girl.”

Ryka could hear her mother in the Evil Queen’s voice and she hated it. She hated this version of herself and she couldn’t stand that it existed, even if it was just in her own mind. Ryka just wished she could lean forward and give this person a hug and tell her everything was alright.

So that’s exactly what she did.

In one quick motion, Ryka lurched forward and wrapped her tired arms around the Evil Queen’s shoulders, just like she wished her mother had done for her many times before. The Queen stiffened beneath her and the wolf let out a low whine beside them. Mitty shouted her name from the top of the boulder.

But Ryka didn’t let go. She just closed her eyes and held her breath, feeling the Queen’s cold satin dress wrinkle under her sweaty palms. It took a long time, but eventually, she felt the Queen’s own hands settle on Ryka’s back and, finally, she breathed out.

“It’s ok,” Ryka whispered.

For a moment, she just floated there, letting the warmth of the strange embrace wash over her. Eventually, though, Ryka opened her eyes and blinked a few times, expecting to see the Evil Queen and the wolf beside her. But her eyes were met, instead, with the dim light of her apartment and the laptop in front of her. The bright black curser still flashed on the screen, waiting impatiently. Ryka sighed and closed her eyes again, letting the real world cascade back over her. It was just a dream.

But as she sat up and swung her legs off the couch, she looked down at the laptop again. With a smile, she reached out and pulled the laptop closer, letting her fingers fly over the keys as she typed:

“Once upon a time there was a young girl named Mitty…”