#omg caiden was left alone

[caffeinewitchcraft]

Narrative Town: Uncle Ralph

Summary: It's a Rule not to get involved in grown-up stories. But when your parents' lives are in danger, even you will break a Rule.

Based in this world (X) where a magic town forces people to live out popular stories/tropes

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You’re used to your parents coming in and out of the house at all hours of the day. They always have a good excuse for why they keep such unusual schedules, but there’s no way they could have an excuse for everything. Being full time thieves is a hard thing to hide.

While they do their best to keep you out of whatever heist they’ve planned, there are some things that slip through. A grappling hook hanging over the edge of the mantle. A map of City Hall spread out over the dining room table, only partially covered by the nice table cloth that you use during the holidays. Police sketches on the news that bear a striking resemblance. Little things. Things you can ignore.

The old guy sitting at the table when you come down for school? Yeah, not something you can ignore.

“Oh,” the old guy says. He looks like he scams people who own yachts. His salt-and-pepper hair is slicked back and he’s wearing a linen suit at seven in the morning. He casually flips his phone face down and starts gathering suspicious financial documents back into a folder in front of him. “Good morning, kiddo.”

There’s a clatter from the living room and your mom lunges through the doorway. You haven’t seen her in two days and she looks rough. There are dark bags under her eyes and her hair is a frizzy cloud around her head.

“Fern,” she says, voice, tight, “honey. I thought you were staying at Caiden’s house.”

“I did the night before last,” you say. You’re trying to figure out how involved you need to get here. The guy is looking at you with way too much interest. It’d be just your luck if he tries to use you against your parents later down the line when he inevitably betrays them. At the same time, he looks like he’d leave one of your parents for dead if it benefited him in any way and you do not want that to happen. You let your backpack slide off your shoulder. “Who’s this?”

“Um,” your mom says. “He’s— he’s—“

The guy sits there smiling slightly, delighting in the rising tension.

“He’s—“

“My half brother,” your dad says from behind you. He’s got motor oil high on his cheek and smells faintly of sweat and iron. He grins and, being a much better actor than your mom, you can only see a bit of uneasiness in his eyes. “Fern can know, darling. I don’t want to keep it a secret anymore.”

The guy is delighted. He rubs his hands together as he stands, stepping around the table to hug you. “That’s who I am,” he says, arms spread wide and a shit-eating grin on his face. “Your uncle. Uncle Ralph.”

Your dad steps in front of you, pretending like the hug was meant for him. You’re treated to Uncle Ralph’s grimace as he’s forced to accept the bone-shaking slaps your dad rains on his back.

“So good to have him back,” your dad says, clear warning in his voice. He turns, one arm still slung over Ralph’s shoulders. They look nothing alike. Your dad is completely bald, shoulders well-muscled under his working shirt, and he’s got a face made for laughing. Ralph is cologne-ad-handsome and scowling. Your dad forces himself to smile. “He’s only staying with us for a couple days.”

Yikes. You watch your mom hover in the opposite doorway. She’s not happy at the sound of Ralph staying for a couple of days, you can tell. But she doesn’t say anything to contradict them and her eyes are like daggers on Ralph rather than your dad.

You study the three adults. You make it a rule to never get involved in adult stories. There’s always a higher chance of a bad ending. Death, dismemberment, general mayhem. Unless there’s a romance component to their stories, there’s very rarely a happily ever after. Judging by your parents’ reactions, romance with Ralph isn’t in the future. So it’s a regular heist story. Regular heist stories with a kid…

Well, they end really, really badly. Usually for the parents. Unless the kid steps in at just the right time.

“Awesome,” you say. You run over your school schedule, calculating. There aren’t any tests coming up and you haven’t missed any classes yet this quarter. “Can I stay home from school? I’d love to get to know Uncle Ralph better.”

Your mom makes a noise of protest. “Did you say you had a- a school project?”

“Nope,” you say cheerfully. You kick your backpack to the side and slide around your dad to go to the fridge. You’re going to need breakfast before this one. “I can take a day off.”

“Won’t Caiden miss you?” Your dad is better at hiding his desperation than your mom, but you still catch the edge in his voice. “You can always see Ralph after school—“

“Caiden needs to make his own friends eventually,” you say. You keep looking in the fridge so they can’t see the expression on your face. You’re very worried about Caiden, but he knows the Rules. You’ve got to believe he’ll be fine for one day. Two, tops. You turn with a yogurt in hand to blink innocently at your parents. “Why can’t I just take one day off?”

“Well,” your dad hedges. “That’s—“

“Just one,” your mom says. She ignores the panicked glance your dad sends her. “Okay?”

The magic takes hold all at once. You watch as it washes the resistance from your parents’ shoulders so that they stand, slumped and defeated on either side of Ralph. It settles into your bones and whispers your new possible roles into your mind. Child. Hindrance. Bait. Winner. Loser.

“Great!” Ralph claps his hands together. His eyes are calculating as he looks you over. “I can’t wait to get to know you, Fern.”

You bare your teeth and take glee in the half-flinch Ralph can’t hide. “Same, Uncle Ralph,” you say. “Same.”

——48 hours later ——

Alarms blare, earth shatteringly loud in the stillness of the night. You’re crouched under a desk, a flash drive clenched in one hand, waiting for your parents to come back to get you. The complex is big enough that they’d hidden you in one building and gone to create a distraction in the other. If all goes to plan, the three of you will be at home in less than an hour.

You breathe in deeply through your nose, straining your ears for any indication that they’re on their way. All of your preparation comes down to this moment. There’s nothing else you can do to influence the story.

Someone enters the office and shuts the door behind them.

You hold your breath, knuckles white around the flash drive.

The screaming of the alarms continues but muffled enough that you can hear the footsteps of the person approaching your hiding spot. Your heart sinks. Not two sets of footsteps. One.

“Little niece,” Ralph croons. He stops what sounds like a dozen feet from your hiding spot. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Your mind races. He’s supposed to be dead. The first phase of the plan had involved swimming through flooded tunnels to get into the building. There’d been a problem with the equipment and he’d forced your mom to take his oxygen tank so she could continue on. Your mom cried when she got out, relaying how he’d swum away from her to hide his final moments.

He made my mom cry, you think. You roll out from under the desk, gaining your feet in the walkway between cubicles to face Ralph head on.

“Not surprised? I figured. I knew you knew I was alive,” Ralph says. He doesn’t look like a scam artist anymore. No, he looks like a true villain. His hair is tangled around his face and he’s no longer in the wetsuit you last saw him in. He’s wearing a guard’s uniform.While you and your parents struggled to infiltrate this place, he just walked right in the front door. “Clever little niece.”

You feel the magic of the town all around you now, thrumming with tension. If there was an orchestra soundtrack, it would be swelling over this dramatic reveal. You’re dressed like a mini-version of your dad in a full, black jumpsuit and you’ve got your mom’s grappling hook over your shoulder. Ralph’s uniform is all white and tan, just like the suit he first appeared in. You’ve been changed by this story. Dragged out of the naive high schooler persona you once inhabited to become a thief, like your parents.

Ralph? Ralph was always going to betray you.

“What happens now?” You gesture to Ralph and then to the building your parents are still in. “You fake your death and…take the flash drive?”

“By force, if necessary,” Ralph agrees. He smirks. “I knew I would never be able to take it off your dad or your mom. They’re the best hand-to-hand specialists in the business. But their defenseless, untrained daughter? It was a cakewalk to manipulate the situation in my favor.” His face hardens and he holds out a hand. “The flash drive, Fern. I know you have it.”

You let the moment stretch. The alarms are still blaring and you don’t hear the car horn that’s supposed to be the signal for you to come out. Your parents aren’t coming yet. They probably won’t make it in time.

Your shoulders shake. You duck your chin against your chest to hide your expression. The flash drive is hot in your hand.

“I don’t have all day, Fern,” Ralph growls. “Give me the flash drive!”

You give in. You throw back your head, howling with laughter.

Ralph blinks, hand faltering. “What?”

“I knew you knew that I knew you faked your death,” you say. You snort a little. “Giving up an oxygen tank? Swimming away to die? It was all just a little too kind for the Uncle Ralph I know.”

Ralph clicks his tongue. He’s wrong-footed, eyes darting to the doors and windows, but trying to hide it.“You should know that I’m not your uncle.”

“No duh,” you say. You wipe your eyes. “That’s why I’ve been watching you this entire time. I know you were in contact with the CEO. I know he paid you to steal the prototype and blame my parents for its theft and for the theft of the financial records.”

“Well,” Ralph says, “I knew you overheard that phone call. So I’ve been monitoring your conversations with your parents this entire time! That’s how I found out that they were planning to frame me for the theft of the financial records if we got caught. So I faked my death and set the alarms off on them so they’d be caught red-handed!”

“I knew you knew I overheard the phone call,” you counter. A spotlight outside swings towards you, silhouetting you for this revelation. “I knew that neither of my parents could stop you when you had such a powerful backer. Only one person could get in your way. That’s why I called —“

“The police, I know,” Ralph says. He takes an aggressive step towards you and the spotlight casts him in shadow like an avenging angel. “What you don’t know is that I was the operator on the other end of the line! I knew you knew your parents wouldn’t be able to get out of my little web. They were going down and there was nothing you could do to stop it. Why you didn’t tell your parents, I don’t know. But I knew the instant you knew I faked my death, you’d call. So I hacked your phone—“

“I knew you hacked my phone,” you interrupt, taking your own aggressive step forward. Ralph’s mouth clicks shut. The magic of the story wavers around you as the plot twists yet again. “So I played your little game and pretended that I thought I was talking to the police.” You draw out your phone and turn it to show Ralph. “But really? I was sending an email to your boss.”

The magic is really confused now. It undulates around you, trying to keep the narrative tension tight. Ralph is struggling to follow the timeline of what you’re describing and, to be honest, so are you.

“The CEO?” Ralph shakes his head. “No, he’s already in on everything. He knows that I hired your parents to steal the financial records to cover for when I stole the prototype for him so that the shareholders would never know it doesn’t work—“

Magic sparks out of his eyes as he talks faster and faster, trying to keep one step ahead in this convoluted story. You’d pity him if he hadn’t made your mom cry.

“Not him,” you say, “your real boss.”

The magic snaps like a twig. The alarms stop blaring and the searchlight blinks out as the electricity dies in the building. The light of the full moon streams through the windows. Ralph gapes at you, frozen with his hand still outstretched for the blank flash drive you’re holding.

“Don’t you think it’s strange,” you continue softly. This is the tricky part. You’ve met Ralph toe-to-toe. If you’re not careful, you’re going to become his arch nemesis. “Why would the CEO hire not one, but two teams of thieves for this?”

“Your parents are the smokescreen,” Ralph says numbly. But his eyes are far away. “So that I don’t get caught stealing the prototype—“

“But the CEO wants people to know the prototype got stolen,” you say. The magic is starting up again, this new narrative forming right before your eyes. You talk a little faster. You need to get out of the center of the story before it solidifies. “Why wouldn’t he just hire the one team to do that? Why the financial records as well? It doesn’t make sense.”

Ralph is silent for a long moment. Then he inhales sharply, body jolting as if waking. “No,” he breathes. “No, it does.”

You nod. “The shareholders are your real boss. They don’t want the stock to go down. They want it to go up. Their real goal is the financial records. The prototype is a trap. A trap for—“

“A trap for me,” Ralph says. He finally looks back at you, his jaw square. There’s the sound of a car engine in the distance. “I see it now. I see everything. From the very beginning, it wasn’t about the company. It wasn’t about the money. It wasn’t even about the CEO. It was about me.”

Oh geez. You watch as Ralph paces to the window. You weren’t going to say that. You were going to claim the prototype theft was a trap for the CEO. That way the shareholders could put someone a little more willing to fudge the books in power. That way Ralph and the CEO would team up against the shareholders and resolve it together. If Ralph thinks this whole ridiculous sequence of events revolves around him…

You purse your lips and stay quiet as Ralph stares out towards the other office building.

“I’m sorry,” Ralph says. He turns and, with the moon backlighting him, he looks very tragic. Like a lone wolf. Or an anti-hero. “Forget everything you know, Fern. I shouldn’t have dragged you or your parents into this.” He closes his eyes briefly. “This is…this next job has to be me. Just me.”

You like the sound of that.

“My parents think you’re dead,” you say. You hold up your hands when he looks tragically back at you. “I don’t know what you realized, but this?” You whistle lowly. “I’m seventeen. I can’t be involved in this.”

“And you won’t be,” Ralph says. He clenches one hand into a fist, shaking it slightly. “After everything I’ve done, I owe your parents that. So long as they think I’m dead, they’ll be safe. All of you will be safe.”

“Great,” you say. A car honks outside. “Be safe, Ralph.” You turn to go.

“You too, Fern,” Ralph says. He laughs a little, seemingly unbothered by your hasty retreat. “It was fun being your uncle.”

You’re almost to the door. The magic is at your back. “Yep. Too bad you’re dead to us now. Off on your lone-wolf crusade. Later.”

“Wait!”

You unwillingly pause at the door. You can feel the story drifting all around you. You don’t turn to look at him.  “Yes, Ralph?”

“Your mom,” Ralph says awkwardly. Like the words hurt him. “She… she cried for me, didn’t she?”

Oh, yuck. 

“Nope,” you say. “No, she did not.”

“Oh,” Ralph says, nonplussed. “I just thought—“

“Bye, Ralph,” you say and race out the door.

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Thanks for reading! I really love this universe and especially Fern! 

Next week’s short story is already up on my Patreon (X)! If you’d like to support me and read stories a full week in advance, please check me out there!

Summary: You are caught by a devil in the woods. She wants to talk about deals and you have always been a good listener.

#my writing #second person #narrative town #fern is a badass #omg caiden was left alone #he is not going to be handling that well #lmaooooo