Another unproductive day today, and tomorrow won't be much better! My son is going for his first ever sleep-over tomorrow (we're on our way out of lockdowns over here) and I plan on having a highly-selfish ME ME MEEEE DAY!! 😂

Today's prompts are -- aggressive -- and -- glitch.

Onwards to Joey and Jenny!

 

_{Header image CC0 and courtesy of Pixabay, and manipulated in the deep dream generator.}

Maynia -- Day Four -- 1038 words

The Noon News was on the small television, the screen flickering intermittently. A frantic man paced back and forth in front of the camera, wringing his hands as the reporter looked on.

“Sir, did I hear you correctly? The goat ate your wife?”

“My poor Milly! She’d been feeling poorly, feverish, sweating more than a pork sandwich slathered in gravy, then she died — she died!” he wailed. “She took one last breath, one last shuddering breath as I held her in my arms, then her skin! It erupted in this green fuzz. And then this jerk,” he pointed an accusatory finger at the dopey looking goat standing at his side, muzzled like Hannibal Lecter. “This jerk,” he repeated. “Raced up the stairs faster than a goddamned bullet and started to eat her!”

The reporter blinked, looked at the camera, then turned back to the man.

“I’m sorry,” he began “Your wife… she broke out in green fuzz?”

Jenny’s eyes widened. Before she could think, could recall Blair’s gloating announcement to his staff earlier that day, the programme was cut and only static remained on-screen. A few moments passed then the Noon News returned; Hannibal the Goat, the reporter, and the frantic man had all disappeared and instead the two newsroom reporters sat in the middle of the screen, looking pale and horrified. One of them cleared her throat and continued her spiel as though nothing had happened.

“Uh, thank you, Logan, for that bizarre report.” She shuffled some papers. “Next up, uh, we have the weather and—”

Jenny rubbed at her face. It couldn’t be — no, this couldn’t be the work of Blair’s great fungus, could it? Breaking out in a green fuzzy wasn’t quite the same as turning into an exploding mushroom. It was probably just a glitch in the matrix. That poor goat, though; hopefully it would be okay.

Leaving the half-eaten muffins on the tray, she climbed to her feet and slowly walked home, in a daze of both tiredness and apprehension.

The walk, though only a kilometre, seemed longer than normal. The town centre was busy with people darting in and out of Blaire’s Wares — she bet the toilet paper ‘display’ had been fixed already, probably within five minutes of her departure from the store — people were eating lunch together at the smattering of restaurants, dozens of people filed in then filed out of the local liquor store, and the sole pub in town, the Whispering Fart, was serving their famous Aggressive Beef n Beer lunch combo. She smirked. It was called that because the first time they’d served their Beef n Beer combo a group of bogans had wandered in, ate lunch, then went on a rampage through the place, knocking out a bartender with a heavy pint glass and leaving the pub in shambles. The owner then renamed the Beef n Beer to the Aggressive Beef n Beer and ended up getting three times the amount of lunch-time customers. Clever. Who knew why they called the pub ‘the Whispering Fart’ though.

It was probably better not to know.

The town centre soon turned into suburban housing. Neat brick houses lined the street in identical little plots all with the same white columns, white edging along the windows and metal roofs, and all had similar gardens. It was idyllic yet boring. Further down the eternal street of brick and a sudden turn to the left and the view transformed from perfect to an unkempt chaos as suburbia met wilderness.

The foot of Esraelle Mountains only had four houses on it. Three were semi-modern monstrosities strewn with garbage, and the last, the fourth, was the rustic home that Joey’s aunt had had built. Presumably thanks to her cucumber wine empire, Jenny shook her head.

As if right on cue, as she approached the majestic timber building black smoke billowed out from around the far corner, swept across with the wind and zoomed up her nostrils.

“Joey!” she shrieked, eliciting a movement from behind a window of the house next door, the same house that always had their television on at full volume at unspeakable hours of the morning.

“Don’t worry,” Joey called from behind the house. “It’s all under control!”

“What is all under control?”

“Sanitation. Can’t make and sell wine if it’s unclean, Jenny.”

“Sanitation,” she muttered, then shouted, “You know they have stuff for that, right. Liquidy stuff. You don’t need to burn the place down.”

Joey’s head popped out from behind the corner, his ginger curls tipped with soot, and he grinned widely as he said, “I like fire,” and darted back around the corner.

“I don’t want to know. I’m better off not knowing,” Jenny winced. “Just go inside. It’ll be okay.”

Crashes and bangs emanated from around the side of the house, followed by the sharp crack of shattering glass.

“I don’t want to know,” Jenny repeated and forced herself to go inside.

As she walked through the door, she couldn’t help but noticed that the two remaining door-muffins had disappeared and shook her head. Typical — he had eaten them after all — but, at least nothing else fell on her head as she entered.

Without realising she was doing it, she soon found herself at her laptop, tapping the search repeatedly.

“Milly. Wife. Goat. Green fuzz,” she muttered beneath her breath.

There were several links available but every time she clicked on one the page showed an error. That wasn’t suspicious at all. Turning to Twitter, she tried to find evidence of whatever Blaire had mentioned earlier that day, but couldn’t find anything about fungus and exploding mushrooms. There was no doubt he was tripping, but the green fuzz on the News twisted her gut with a strange anxiety.

She spent a few more minutes futilely searching when the battery icon flashed across her screen.

5% remaining.

She cocked an eyebrow and glanced down at the floor. The power cable was plugged into the wall. Reaching up, she flicked the light-switch and sighed. Nothing.

“Joey!” she cried. “There’s still no power.”

His head popped up in the window in front of her, sending her leaping backwards.

“Hi,” he grinned. “Guess who’s camping tonight!”