Mrs. Obuabang had screamed when the masked man shot their dog, and Mr. Obuabang grabbed his baseball bat and took a deep breath to go out the door. This was bad. This was SO bad! The children were sleeping on either side of the hallway, and a stray bullet could easily stop their fragile little lives. Even worse, if Mr. O died, they might sell the house and go back to live with Mrs O’s parents! That house had no room for me! No, this was MY home and these were MY people.

It took only a moment for those thoughts to scream through my mind before I bared my teeth and launched at the intruder. I meant to kill him, but being unaccustomed to combat I accidentally pushed him too hard. He slammed into the wall putting a head-shaped hole in the drywall and cracking one of the studs behind it. He fell limply to the floor and lay there breathing but totally unconscious. People in the movies have all this time to chatter and call police when the bad person is knocked out, but real knockouts don’t last that long. I knew that, of course, so I zipped into Mrs. O’s room and grabbed the tie from her bathrobe. Hogtying the intruder took only a moment and my chest was still heaving from adrenaline when I looked up at the horrified faces of my host family.

Apparently Ghana does not have boggarts. I learned that very quickly when they started screaming “demon!” and trying to hit me with the bat. We boggarts are very quick, and very strong, but stainless steel is close enough to cold iron that it’s rather inconvenient. “Stop!” I shrieked as I dodged once and then again. “Stupid humans I’m TRYING to help you!”

By the grace of God, little Amma came out of her room and her scream stopped Mr. O in his tracks. She was only 4 and still young enough to see me under normal conditions. We played often and her mother thought I was the imaginary friend. Amma ran over to me and put her chubby little arms around my neck, “Daddy! No! Don’t hurt Buggy!” She shrieked it right into my ear. Being just a young human, she was had been unable to pronounce “Boggart” when we first met, so she always called me Buggy.

Her father stopped and told her to get away from me. His eyes were so round I thought they might pop out of his head. She glared at him with the ferocity of a very small lioness and said, “No!” “Ahem” I interrupted, “Perhaps I can explain if you would just put down the bat for a moment?” He started to lower the bat when the sound of sirens cut through the air. In the fury of the moment we had both forgotten about the original problem. The original problem was awake now and staring at me with his mouth hanging open. Right. Gesturing at the hog-tied intruder I said, “Let’s deal with this first and then I promise I’ll explain.”

The family looks at me with shock and fear. I admit, I must be quite the site. I've just burst through the basement door and broke a lamp over the madman's head. But to them it probably just seems like one madman attacked another. In fact, I'm pretty sure I look crazier than the unconscious guy on the floor, with my unshaven beard and raggedy old clothes.

I put down the lamp and hold my hands out in front of me, like Chris Pratt trying to calm down the velociraptors. I don't want them to attack me. I tell them I mean them no harm, and I was just living in their basement for the last few months. This had the opposite effect of what I intended.

The mom in particular starts freaking out. She grabs the kids and pulls them behind her. I tell her its okay, I have just been living there in the basement and eating their food, but I would never do anything to hurt them.

I explain to them that the fight they had about the missing watermelon was actually me. I took the watermelon when everyone was sleeping. I'm sorry that I almost caused a divorce, but also they should probably go to couple's therapy if a missing watermelon could shake their marriage to the core like that. From the look on their faces, this suggestion was not something they received with open arms.

I also apologized for the missing condoms, I had a girl over and wanted to practice safe sex like a responsible adult. The dad's face fell, and the mom looked confused. She said that they didn't have any condoms, she had her tubes long ago. The dad gave me a look that said "You better save this play or I'm gonna kill you."

I thought long and hard about how to recover. Then I told the dad that whenever the mom has friends over, all they talk about is how she is thinking of taking the kids and leaving him. They start yelling at each other. At this moment, I realize I was being naive by thinking the core problem of their marriage was a watermelon.

[deleted]

Life was never kind.

I have no memories of my biological father, and I’m not even sure if the loving memories I have of my biological mother are real or if it’s just my brain desperate for affection deceiving me.

Nevertheless I should be grateful, I was lucky enough to be accepted into a family when I was young. In my memories, although it all happened in winter it felt so warm. The glistering lights, the sweet smell in the air, the electrifying excitement and joy of being part of a family. Ah….

And tonight those cozy memories and a couple of old blankets are my only heat source. Closing my eyes I try to capture that warmth for just a bit longer, I try to remember how it feels to be loved for just a bit longer.

Nevertheless I should be grateful, I was lucky enough to be betrayed by those I called a family during the summer, the weather was hot but in my memories they felt so cold. Would I have survived being completely alone during winter?

Opening my eyes I silently thank the small shed I’m in now, it’s not much, but I won’t have to sleep completely in the open, fortunately it seems like the old man who lives here forgot completely about the garden. The grass is unkept, there’s trash everywhere and no Christmas decorations. He spends most of his days inside the house, but recently he always leaves the house for about 2 hours each afternoon which gives me time to get some drinkable water and steal some food.

Living like this is exhausting, but I’m glad I’m still alive. And with those thoughts I drift into a slumber trying to survive one more night.

In the middle of the night an unusual sound awakes me, I carefully look outside and see a man trying to enter the house through one of the windows facing the garden. Although I could be putting everything at risk for someone who doesn't even know I exist and that he saved my life, I can't stand doing nothing knowing he could be harmed.

So without hesitation I latch on to the suspicious man’s leg, biting him as hard as I can. The man shrieks in pain and quickly a crowd of people helps me immobilize the thief, who later gets taken away by the police.

Letting go of the man I shrink away, afraid of my future, but as I do this, I lock eyes with the old man.

“I’ve tried using food and water to try and make you come out of that shed, but you only touch the bowls when I’m out of the house, never once you have approached me, but when you see me in danger you immediately go and help me. How did such a good boy like you end up here?”, he says, approaching me slowly.

When he’s closer he carefully caresses my cold body.

Ah, affection is just as warm as I remember.

Friends and fellow contributors to Cornerblock Weekly, thank you once again for your time. I come to you all today to tell you a story, and to address a problem within our otherwise splendid community.

I am a house brownie. I find this important to mention, only for the convenience of the wise and just sprites that have written to me, complaining of my only mentioning this fact after my previous article, and how it does not address my own personal biases before the article is read, therefore diluting the transparency of the whole paper. To that I say, you make a good point.

To the gnomes and the squirrel that brought those mushrooms around this side of the river last week, you have my gratitude and the gratitude of my fellow urban dwellers.

Most days I simply watch my Family.

Humans are strange beings. They lumber clumsily from chamber to massive chamber, their movements imprecise and unfocused.

Most of the humans in this fortress are like that, at any rate. I am lucky to have so much cover in the form of their discarded barrel-sized mugs and empty soda cans.

Shivering at the thought of the day the Family buys another cat, I watch silently from an inconspicuous hole in the wall behind the top of a couch in the living room. The man who has invaded our home carries a large tool (the Father has called one of them a crowbar), and the black mask over his face makes his eyes and forehead almost look like a pale djinn beginning to form in the gloom.

It does not take time to realize that he has done this sort of thing before. His movements are swift, his pauses absolute, his groping silent.

And then there's a quiet "thump-thump-thump" above us.

Now, I have lived in this fortress a very short time (a meager 60 years), but I have already witnessed three robberies. In two cases, the robbers simply took some valuable things and left without any incident. In the other, the masked man had heard footsteps above and fled.

This man was not like that man.

I watched in horror as the dark shadow swept behind a wall adjacent to the stairway. It stood there, tensed like a panther. I could see his eyes. There was a desperate light in them. A hunger. Something else I couldn't really identify, but something that filled me with an oddly vague sense of dread.

When Kate came down the stairs, it was only two seconds before the intruder had his crowbar to her neck and a knife pressed into her back. At this particular moment I was too stunned to act. It was as if I were watching a horror film I had no part of, no presence in.

But, maddeningly, living around a Family has its' consequences for a brownie. And soon, my eyes were on Kate's face, her eyes. Kate was 13, mature for her age but still just a child, not truly scarred by the chaotic and violent potential of humanity.

When she screamed, I snapped out of my stupor and let out a little squeak of terror. A scream like that in this situation, in my near 600 years of life, has nearly always led to the death of the victim, at the moment of the scream or afterward.

I had to do something. I could hear the creaking of bedsprings high above, groaning like great tree trunks and giant coils of aluminum.

If the Parents came down, there would be a confrontation. The fact that the intruder had only clapped his hand onto Kate's mouth was a miracle in of itself. Obviously thinking quickly, he pulled her backwards, into the shadows.

Well, what would have been the shadows for a human. I, of course, could still see him perfectly. And I could hear the Father tramping down the hallway above us and down the stairs.

"you do everything I tell you to or the knife is going through your kidney. Do you understand? Just nod. Just nod."

The whisper was like a wasp sting. The words were hushed, so quiet they are almost nothing, but the "s" sounds he made whistled through the chilled air like light beams.

And so there was light. Father had flipped the light switch.

And now we come to the point which the problem intersects the story.

Many of the older brownies and sprites, as well as the Council of the Old Wood are rather upset about what I did in those following moments. However, I must maintain that, while there are many bad humans in this world, the belief that fae should leave humans to Death when they come for them (regardless of their natures) is absurd. I am not sorry.

Of course, it doesn't take a lot to distract a human when you're small and spindly, and have a general idea where their eyes and ears and nostrils are. It helps to have great balance.

The Family never saw me. At least, the Father and Mother never saw me. All they found were a disoriented and terrified Kate, running from the man screaming and slapping himself for seemingly no reason. The Father had him down on his chest in a moment, and in a moment I was gone. I barely bothered to watch as the flashing lights appeared outside a time later. I had done what I wished to do. I did what many would wish me not to do.

I do not feel bad for saving Kate, and I welcome any free discussion on the methods of determining whether your human is kind enough to protect, as well as those who do not believe any are worth protecting. My discussion column shall be open from the 4th to the 7th, and replies shall be made on all counts that following issue. Let us decide upon the Human Dilemma as a block, and perhaps the rest of the known lands will follow.

Welcome to the Prompt! All top-level comments must be a story or poem. Reply here for other comments.

Reminders:

>* Stories at least 100 words. Poems, 30 but include "[Poem]" >* Responses don't have to fulfill every detail >* See Reality Fiction and Simple Prompts for stricter titles >* Be civil in any feedback and follow the rules

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