“Excuse me, did you drop this?” Maggie turned around and saw a young boy with shaggy brown hair holding her ribbon in his hands. She walked back towards him and said, “Thank you, young man.” She ran her hands through his hair. She felt a shiver going down her spine and felt the familiar warm feeling inside. He was perfect.
“It is nice to see such young, honest children do still exist. What’s your name?” she asked him.
He looked around; she could tell he was nervous about talking to strangers. “And such a smart boy. I’m sure your parents told you not to talk to strangers,” she said.
He began to relax a little bit and said in a low voice, “Michael.”
She felt he was beginning to trust her, which is exactly what she wanted, and reached out to shake his hand. He reached out and gently took her hand. Maggie smiled and said, “My name is Maggie. Nice to meet you, Michael; now how about that ice cream?”
Michael smiled. This old lady was just like his grandma, but nicer. She never gave him ice cream because she was a health nut, and what twelve-year-old wants fucking grape nuts for breakfast? He looked around once more and said, “Sure,” and followed Maggie down the street to her store.
The bell in the door chimed when the door was opened. Maggie put her arm out and pointed towards the table in the corner of the store. Michael took a seat at the table and looked out towards the street and saw the people walking back and forth. Maggie turned the small radio on to some music to lighten the mood and went around the cabinet that held all thirty-nine flavors.
“What flavor would you like, Michael?” she asked. “Chocolate, please.” Maggie nodded and said, “He has manners as well.”
She reached into the cabinet, but instead of ice cream, there was some rope and knives. He was perfect and would do just fine with his sweet disposition. She reached down and found the button on the side of the cabinet. The shutters fell down with a clank, and the door locked with a thud.
Michael screamed and ran towards the door and pulled as hard as he could. Maggie walked around with the rope and knife and said, “It will be better if you don’t fight.”
“The fuck it will,” Michael said and ran around her and behind the counter.
Maggie forgot how fast little kids could be. It had been years since she had to feed again, and even though she wasn’t like any other human, she still felt the effects of age. She hurried around the cabinet as the lights began to flicker and then went off. ‘That little fucker found the light switch,’ but Maggie wasn’t worried because she had night vision.
She looked and saw something was missing. She had left the shotgun behind the counter. She had avoided using that because she didn’t want hamburger. She was hungry for some twelve-year-old aged steaks.
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” She said down the hallway. She wasn’t worried about him escaping because of the steel locked door to the back alley. She also hadn’t loaded the shotgun because that would just be stupid.
Michael was hiding behind the corner where the office was. He had already looked in the chamber and realized it was empty, but he had a surprise because Maggie wasn’t the only one hunting today. He pulled shotgun shells out of his pocket and loaded them into the magazine and racked one into the chamber loudly so she heard it.
The sound of the pump action being worked made Maggie stop in her tracks, and then she heard the little bastard call out, “Listen, bitch, you picked the wrong kid to fuck with.”
Walking out from the office, he said, “I’m the oldest twelve-year-old you will ever meet, and the last one.”
Maggie ran at him screaming, but was stopped short by a blast from the twelve gauge. She fell to the floor like a sack of potatoes. Michael walked up to her; she was still alive but barely. He stared down at her and smiled.
“You thought I would be your next meal, didn’t you? Unfortunately for you, I wasn’t the one being hunted; it was you. I’ve been twelve now for, oh, I don’t know, fifty-some odd years. I’m a witch hunter.”
He could hear her try to say something, but all he heard was gurgling, and then that finally stopped; she was dead. He reached down and grabbed her ribbon from her hair and looked at it with a sense of victory and said, “Another one dead and another souvenir.”
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