Prudence by Christy Stillwell
They put the shock collar on the boy and that was it for the nanny.
First they put the collar on one another. They were professors in English and Philosophy, all of them smart people. Like all smart people, they did dumb things. For instance they were educated and superior but wore feed caps and John Deere T-shirts so that they resembled the rural people surrounding them. Even this, playing Find-the-Hidden-Object-Using-the-Shock-Collar, felt false. They only wanted to be seen doing a dumb thing. Seen by whom, was the question. Each other? God? They did not seem the religious sort.
“Take two steps towards the garage. It will be in the shadow.” A shock if you went in the wrong direction. The object was a bottle of Ballimore whiskey. They asked the nanny to play. Flattering but she declined. “You’re no fun,” they said. A man from the Philosophy department, a man often ignored and interrupted, turned the dial up past 120 and the woman wearing the collar yelped. Next they put the collar on the dog, but he proved hopeless. One needs a certain level of intelligence or it’s no fun, said the Philosophy professor.
It was June, light till ten, the end of her shift, but here came Copper. Copper, short for Copernicus. A wispy thing, drifting across the yard like cottonseed. His pajama cuffs hit him mid-way up the calf. The sight of him made the nanny’s insides collapse in a soft swallow. “I’d like a turn,” he said. Always smiling, always game. Always trying to get their attention.
She watched with agitation as they cinched the thing around his neck, nodes next to his skin. He nicked and shocked as he wandered the yard, turning this way and that. Still smiling. The nanny would never forget his smile or his freckles and funny teeth. How he searched in one bush, got buzzed and ran to the next. His father held the transmitter. His head jerked back when the current hit him, guiding him away from his instincts, away from himself, into their laughing, ridiculous mouths.
“Much smarter than the dog!” someone cried and that was it. A hot slithering in her stomach. Her hand darted to the pile of water guns. She grabbed the derringer and shot Copper’s father in the face. It was a good gun with a long, firm stream of water. The man was so stunned he dropped the controller and shrieked like a child. Again and again she hit him until it ceased to be funny. The others gasped. The nanny did not stop until Copper’s mother snatched the gun from her hand.
Doubled over, the father cursed her, saying she’d put his eye out. He would never see right again. The others shook their heads and sucked their teeth, murmuring disapproval. Typical, thought the nanny, headed for her car. Bullies always play rough until one of them gets hurt. Then they pout.
Christy Stillwell’s first novel, The Wolf Tone, won the 2017 Elixir Press Fiction Prize. Stillwell holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College, an MA from University of Wyoming and a BA from University of Georgia. Past work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Hypertext, Salon, and Literary Mama. More recent work can be found at Subtropics, DoesIthavePockets, BrilliantFlashFiction and forthcoming from Pithead Chapel. She has been in residency at Vermont Studio Center and Chateau Orquevaux. Learn more at www.christystillwell.com.
