Prompt n. 5
Assignment: Create a character that defies their own type – i.e. a terrifyingly surly biker gang member that loves babies and bunnies.
Mrs. Greywen was the kind of lady who had always looked old. People had a notion that she must have been very beautiful as a young woman, yet no one could remember her ever being one. Her pearly white hair had been skilfully set in the same whort haircut for the past thirty years, her gold-rimmed sewing glasses had been hanging from the same thin chain since forever. She wore knee-length skirts tones ranging from dark brown to burgundy, and woolly cardigans she had knitted herself over the years.
Mrs. Greywen was a creature of habit. Like clockwork, her thin figure will appear at the baker's door at 7:05 am, catch the poor man in the middle of his first proper coffee. She would apologise, of course, only to come back the next day at the exact same time to buy exactly the same three bread rolls and a box of long-life milk.
The townsfolk were quite forgiving towards Mrs. Greywen, as she inspired the sort of reverence an old relic would.
But patience comes with age, and respect with understanding, and some people had neither.
One morning, a young man – a boy, in fact, sixteen or seventeen perhaps – decided to follow Mrs. Greywen on her way from the post office, where she had collected her monthly retirement pay.
As soon as she turned a corner into the narrow alley she used as a shortcut, the boy ran up to her and pulled out a knife.
“Hand over the money and I won't hurt you,” he threatened.
He was a tall, lanky teenager, all nerves and tendons. Mrs. Greywen looked at the tip of the knife, then at his hand clasping tightly around the handle. His fingers were twitching lightly.
“I haven't seen you before, are you new in town?” she asked, calmly, watching him above the edge of her glasses.
“I said hand over the money!” he repeated.
She nodded and put her grocery bags on the ground. He wetted his lips and shifted his weight from one leg to the other in anticipation.
With the speed of a snake, Mrs. Greywen grabbed the boy's wrist and pressed her thumb at the base of his palm. The boy let out a high-pitched whimper as the knife fell on the ground.
“You must be new in town,” she assessed, twisting his arm behind his back and forcing him to his knees. She picked the knife from the ground with her free hand, folded it, and carefully placed it in her purse. She then released the boy's arm, picked up her groceries, and went about her day.
“Go chop some wood and try again in a couple of years, darling,” she said as she walked away.