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lybella Title: The Ballad of Helen Burman
Author:lybella
Fandom: Original - Writing Journal
Word Count: 2367
Summary: In which one Helen Burman, age 70-something, wreaks havoc on her convalescent home with the help of an accomplice, some dogs, and a turkey.
Author's Note: First, everyone in my class was given and picture of an old woman (the same old woman) and 7 questions we had to answer about her based solely on the image. She's smiling, wearing a tiara and a feather boa. The questions were simple, who is she, where does she live, what does she want, etc. It was an exercise in character developing. Then we had to pick another classmates character and writing a story. In it we had to include a turkey, an icicle, a bowl of quinoa, a bejeweled dog collar, hydrochloric acid, gobstopper candy, Cookie Monster, and a Nile Crocodile. (wtf, right? Well that's why those words are bold.) Helen Burman was created by Noel Balon.
My eyes scanned the room while I stood hesitantly in the doorway, fingers tightening around the the handle of my provided cane. I hated the thing but couldn’t walk without it. A bright flash in my peripheral caught my eye, the sun glinting off plastic gems set in a cheap tiara. I hobbled carefully across the room, favoring my healing leg and lowered myself onto the couch across from the woman. Her grey hair shone silver in the sunlight from the nearby window, the tiara nestled amongst the feathery flyaways.
“Hey, Skip.” She greeted me. My name wasn’t Skip but I’d given up on arguing with her about it. “Did you get it?” I nodded and extracted a baggie of gobstoppers, only the red ones, out of the pocket of my sweats. Her eyes brightened as I handed her the bag. The wrinkles on her old face reminded me of the lines on a topographical map, curving and intersecting again and again.
“You know they change flavors, right?” She clicked her tongue at me.
“Oh these aren’t for eating, Skip. They’re for bribing.” I watched her open up the back of the Cookie Monster stuffed animal that she carried around with her and stuff the baggie inside. When we had first met she had told me that the nurses thought she carried it around for comfort reasons. The real reason was to hide her “contraband”.
“What is it this time, Helen?” her blue eyes twinkled with mischief.
“Top secret. I’ll tell you as we go, that way if they catch you, you don’t know anything to get you in trouble.” She reached up and absently adjusted the tiara, she had stolen it a couple weeks ago when the nurses had put on a little play for the residents. She’d refused to give it up and they all knew that it was pointless to try and take it from her. “First things first,” she turned around in her seat and looked out at the other residents. She stood, stiffly, and walked towards Agnes and Louie where they sat playing Scrabble. She surveyed the board for a few moments before saying, “You spelled ‘bother’ wrong.” She leaned on the table as Louie began to sputter.
“I most certainly did not!” He said incredulously.
“You did,” she pointed to a word I couldn’t see from my vantage point. “That’s a P.”
“It’s supposed to be a P. The word is pother.” Agnes said calmly.
“Ridiculous! That’s not a real word.” Louie started to turn red in the face.
“I assure you, woman, it’s a word!”
Helen shrugged, “What does it mean then?” When neither of them answered she smiled smugly. “You shouldn’t use words you don’t know. With that she turned on her heel and walked away, slipped feet shuffling across the carpeted floor. She shot me a triumphant grin and left the room. She wanted me to follow, I knew, and I grabbed the forgotten stuffed toy, hobbling across the room.
“What was that all about?” I asked her once I’d caught up, she was fast for an old lady. She turned around, holding a pen in her hand, she’d taken it from the Scrabble table. “You could have just asked for a pen. I’m sure one of the nurses would have let you use one.”
“Oh, Skip.” She waggled her eyebrows at me and pinched my cheek. “Where’s the adventure in that? Besides, I need it for later.” I opened my mouth to reply but Helen wasn’t listening, her eyes on something further down the hall. I turned, Missy - one of three of the house dogs - came trotting down the hallway and greeted Helen enthusiastically. Missy was Helen’s favorite dog because “she has class”. I suspected it was more because she had a penchant for shiny things and she liked Missy’s bejeweled dog collar. She bent down to pet the dog.
“Perfect! Missy, you can help too! Come along, there’s work to be done and mischief to be made.” She continued down the hallway, trailing Missy and I behind her like an entourage till we entered the TV room. It was empty except for Willie, The Keeper of the Remote. If he wasn’t eating in the dining room he was in here. He never relinquish control of the channels to another resident, only grudgingly giving it up to the nurses when there was a movie night or some such thing.
“Would you be a dear and get me an icicle?” She waved her hand at one of the windows. Outside a neat row of the frozen stalactites hung from the edge of the roof. Most of the windows slid open horizontally and had screens in them, but this one was one of the old ones the opened from the top and bottom and only had screening over the lower half. Convenient. I pulled the window down and carefully gripped one of the frigid stalactites in my fist. It broke easily about halfway down its length. I was curious what the icicle was for, it seemed like a silly thing to need. I brought it into the room and slide the window shut again. Helen took the icicle from me and slid it under the cover of a couch cushion, then zipped it back up and placed it in its designated spot.
“What are you-” She shushed me, taking the stuffed toy from my hand.
“Willie?” She asked sweetly, “Would you do me a favor?” Willie grunted, I wasn’t sure if it was a grunt of ascent of not, Hellen took it as a yes. “At four there’s a show on that I think everyone would love to watch.” She pulled the baggie of gobstoppers out and waved it in front of his face, his eyes focused on the bag instead of the screen.
“At four?” His voice was gruff.
“Yes, four on the dot.”
“What’s the program?” Helen laughed.
“It’s a surprise, you wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise now, would you?” He grunted again and she dropped the bag into his hand. “Much appreciated, Ace!” She gave me a thumbs up. I looked at my watch, is was a little before 3:30. “All right,” she said, taking my free arm- not attached to the cane, and steering me back down the hallway. “Here’s what’s going to happen.”
“How did you know gobstoppers would work?”
“That man has the world’s biggest sweet tooth. Anything would have worked, but I know that he prefers hard candies, and red candies. Anyways, at 4:00 I’m going to gather everyone in the TV room. When you get the signal I need to you slip out the backdoor and go to the garden shed.”
“How will I know the signal?” She grinned at me.
“Don’t worry, you’ll know. Now, make sure it’s the backdoor, I’m going to prop it open after I put the code in to turn off the alarm. In the shed is a turkey-”
“A turkey?”
“Yes, it’s...blindfolded, I suppose.”
“Helen, where did you get a turkey?”
“Surely you don’t really want to know how I acquired a turkey, Skip.” Honestly, I was very curious how a seventy-something year old lady had caught a turkey, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me. “Bring it inside through the back door and wait for me there.”
“What should I do until then?”
She shrugged, “Whatever you want.” She tugged a small glass vial out of Cookie Monster. Using the pen she had stolen earlier I watched her write, in neat letters, HYDROCHLORIC ACID on the label.
“Helen...” She smirked, that mischievous light in her eyes again.
“It’s not really hydrochloric acid, Skip. Just water. But no one else needs to know that.”
“What are you...?”
“I’m planting it in the kitchen. Nothing like a good practical joke.” I shook my head but smiled. I couldn’t say that helping Helen with her schemes was ever boring, that was for sure. “Come on, Missy. See you at four.” She called over her shoulder as she walked in the direction of the kitchens. I wandered the hallways for a while, I was supposed to be trying to walk as much as I could to build up my muscle strength again. It was tiring and the muscles of my thigh ached but it felt good to be up and moving again after being stuck in a wheelchair or in bed for two months.
I’d met Helen when I first came to Pasco County Convalescent Home after a terrible car crash and subsequent surgery on my crushed leg. She’d been here for a little over a year when I got here. Most of the staff thought she was just some crazy old senile woman and this facade she put up for the nurses, always acting slow and slightly incompetent, belied her brilliant mind. The schemes and plots that that she’d come up with since I’d been here were nothing short of genius, truth be told, and nothing could be pinned on her. Or me for that matter.
Four ‘o'clock rolled around rather quickly and I made my way back to the TV room. True to her word it was filling up with other residents. I sat down in a chair toward the back of the room near the doorway and waited for my signal, whatever that was. I looked around the room and saw Howard, one of the older residents, was seated on the cushion Helen had put the icicle in. Of course. “
His rear is so swaddled up in that diaper he can’t even feel when he spills something.” I heard Helen’s voice saying in my head. Like clockwork Howard called out “Nurse! Nurse!” One of the nurses walked over to him, fussed over him for a few moments then called another nurse over. The first one levered him up off the couch and walked him down the hall to his room, his pants were conspicuously wet.
“That’s disgusting. He’s a grown man.” One of the other residents complained. The second nurse shushed the woman and took the cushion off the couch and left the room. It would have to be washed. The TV flickered to a new channel, a documentary on the Nile crocodile. As soon as I saw the crocodile launch itself up out of the water I knew, this would cause an uproar amongst the residents. This was my que. I slipped out the door as angry and disgruntled shouts filled the room, someone started wailing even. A whole platoon of nurses went rushing past me ready to placate the agitated group.
Sure enough, the back door was propped open when I got to it and I hobbled as quickly as I could across the lawn to the small garden shed. I swung the door open and heard a shuffling inside, there was the turkey, standing in place with a small burlap sack over its head. I guess that was one way of blindfolding it. Missy’s spangly collar was around its long neck with a leash attached, dragging on the floor. Guess that was how I was going to get it inside.
I carefully shuffled in, trying not to scare the bird, and stooped to grab the leash off the floor. I tugged gently on the on the lead and the turkey followed after me. Where the hell had she gotten a trained turkey? Making it back across the yard was easy going and I waited at the backdoor with the turkey for Helen to appear. When she did she was practically running (for an old woman), all three of the dogs close on her heels.
“Take off the bag and move!” She shouted, a look of manic glee on her face. Startled, I grabbed the burlap bag and pulled it off, shoving the turkey forward, gently, with my cane. The dogs broke into a chorus of yips and barks and took off after the loose turkey, gobbling at the top of its lungs. Whatever Helen had planned, this was the best distraction she could have thought of.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the administrator's office. The director ran out of the room, obviously to find the source of all the racket.
“Turkey! Turkey!” Helen babbled at the sight of the man.
“Stay here. I’ll take care of it.” He yelled, running down the hall. Helen snickered and pushed open the door to the office.
“All right, quick now! Look up Jimmy Buffett's address for me on the computer.” A stared at her.
“Seriously, Helen? All this for an address?” She was rummaging through desk drawers.
“And an envelope and stamp.” She raised an envelope above her head triumphantly. “Got one! Come on now, boy! We haven’t got all day!”I rolled my eyes and sat down at the computer, pulling up a search window. I saw Helen pull a folded letter out of Cookie Monster and tuck it into the envelope. She wrote her name in the top corner and then stamped the Home’s address on it with the mailer stamp.
“Here’s his P.O Box. It’s for fanmail.”
“That will work. Have you seen any stamps?” I open the desk drawer in front of me and pull out a roll of stamps.
“How did you...”
“I help with computer stuff sometimes. Keeps me thinking.” She nods and sticks a stamp on the envelope. The letter is mixed in with some of the other mail set to go out the next morning.
“Mission accomplished! Come on, let’s get out of here!” We shut the office door behind us, we can still hear the dogs and turkey causing chaos elsewhere in the house. The path of destruction is obvious, the dining room is a mess - someone upended a whole bowl of quinoa, the small grains spilled across the floor like sand.
“Was this all really necessary?” I asked her calmly as we stood in the middle of the mess.
“Is anything really necessary, Skip?” She looked around the room, obviously pleased with herself. “Of course not, but if you’re not going to have fun then what’s the point in doing anything?”
Author:
lybella Fandom: Original - Writing Journal
Word Count: 2367
Summary: In which one Helen Burman, age 70-something, wreaks havoc on her convalescent home with the help of an accomplice, some dogs, and a turkey.
Author's Note: First, everyone in my class was given and picture of an old woman (the same old woman) and 7 questions we had to answer about her based solely on the image. She's smiling, wearing a tiara and a feather boa. The questions were simple, who is she, where does she live, what does she want, etc. It was an exercise in character developing. Then we had to pick another classmates character and writing a story. In it we had to include a turkey, an icicle, a bowl of quinoa, a bejeweled dog collar, hydrochloric acid, gobstopper candy, Cookie Monster, and a Nile Crocodile. (wtf, right? Well that's why those words are bold.) Helen Burman was created by Noel Balon.
My eyes scanned the room while I stood hesitantly in the doorway, fingers tightening around the the handle of my provided cane. I hated the thing but couldn’t walk without it. A bright flash in my peripheral caught my eye, the sun glinting off plastic gems set in a cheap tiara. I hobbled carefully across the room, favoring my healing leg and lowered myself onto the couch across from the woman. Her grey hair shone silver in the sunlight from the nearby window, the tiara nestled amongst the feathery flyaways.
“Hey, Skip.” She greeted me. My name wasn’t Skip but I’d given up on arguing with her about it. “Did you get it?” I nodded and extracted a baggie of gobstoppers, only the red ones, out of the pocket of my sweats. Her eyes brightened as I handed her the bag. The wrinkles on her old face reminded me of the lines on a topographical map, curving and intersecting again and again.
“You know they change flavors, right?” She clicked her tongue at me.
“Oh these aren’t for eating, Skip. They’re for bribing.” I watched her open up the back of the Cookie Monster stuffed animal that she carried around with her and stuff the baggie inside. When we had first met she had told me that the nurses thought she carried it around for comfort reasons. The real reason was to hide her “contraband”.
“What is it this time, Helen?” her blue eyes twinkled with mischief.
“Top secret. I’ll tell you as we go, that way if they catch you, you don’t know anything to get you in trouble.” She reached up and absently adjusted the tiara, she had stolen it a couple weeks ago when the nurses had put on a little play for the residents. She’d refused to give it up and they all knew that it was pointless to try and take it from her. “First things first,” she turned around in her seat and looked out at the other residents. She stood, stiffly, and walked towards Agnes and Louie where they sat playing Scrabble. She surveyed the board for a few moments before saying, “You spelled ‘bother’ wrong.” She leaned on the table as Louie began to sputter.
“I most certainly did not!” He said incredulously.
“You did,” she pointed to a word I couldn’t see from my vantage point. “That’s a P.”
“It’s supposed to be a P. The word is pother.” Agnes said calmly.
“Ridiculous! That’s not a real word.” Louie started to turn red in the face.
“I assure you, woman, it’s a word!”
Helen shrugged, “What does it mean then?” When neither of them answered she smiled smugly. “You shouldn’t use words you don’t know. With that she turned on her heel and walked away, slipped feet shuffling across the carpeted floor. She shot me a triumphant grin and left the room. She wanted me to follow, I knew, and I grabbed the forgotten stuffed toy, hobbling across the room.
“What was that all about?” I asked her once I’d caught up, she was fast for an old lady. She turned around, holding a pen in her hand, she’d taken it from the Scrabble table. “You could have just asked for a pen. I’m sure one of the nurses would have let you use one.”
“Oh, Skip.” She waggled her eyebrows at me and pinched my cheek. “Where’s the adventure in that? Besides, I need it for later.” I opened my mouth to reply but Helen wasn’t listening, her eyes on something further down the hall. I turned, Missy - one of three of the house dogs - came trotting down the hallway and greeted Helen enthusiastically. Missy was Helen’s favorite dog because “she has class”. I suspected it was more because she had a penchant for shiny things and she liked Missy’s bejeweled dog collar. She bent down to pet the dog.
“Perfect! Missy, you can help too! Come along, there’s work to be done and mischief to be made.” She continued down the hallway, trailing Missy and I behind her like an entourage till we entered the TV room. It was empty except for Willie, The Keeper of the Remote. If he wasn’t eating in the dining room he was in here. He never relinquish control of the channels to another resident, only grudgingly giving it up to the nurses when there was a movie night or some such thing.
“Would you be a dear and get me an icicle?” She waved her hand at one of the windows. Outside a neat row of the frozen stalactites hung from the edge of the roof. Most of the windows slid open horizontally and had screens in them, but this one was one of the old ones the opened from the top and bottom and only had screening over the lower half. Convenient. I pulled the window down and carefully gripped one of the frigid stalactites in my fist. It broke easily about halfway down its length. I was curious what the icicle was for, it seemed like a silly thing to need. I brought it into the room and slide the window shut again. Helen took the icicle from me and slid it under the cover of a couch cushion, then zipped it back up and placed it in its designated spot.
“What are you-” She shushed me, taking the stuffed toy from my hand.
“Willie?” She asked sweetly, “Would you do me a favor?” Willie grunted, I wasn’t sure if it was a grunt of ascent of not, Hellen took it as a yes. “At four there’s a show on that I think everyone would love to watch.” She pulled the baggie of gobstoppers out and waved it in front of his face, his eyes focused on the bag instead of the screen.
“At four?” His voice was gruff.
“Yes, four on the dot.”
“What’s the program?” Helen laughed.
“It’s a surprise, you wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise now, would you?” He grunted again and she dropped the bag into his hand. “Much appreciated, Ace!” She gave me a thumbs up. I looked at my watch, is was a little before 3:30. “All right,” she said, taking my free arm- not attached to the cane, and steering me back down the hallway. “Here’s what’s going to happen.”
“How did you know gobstoppers would work?”
“That man has the world’s biggest sweet tooth. Anything would have worked, but I know that he prefers hard candies, and red candies. Anyways, at 4:00 I’m going to gather everyone in the TV room. When you get the signal I need to you slip out the backdoor and go to the garden shed.”
“How will I know the signal?” She grinned at me.
“Don’t worry, you’ll know. Now, make sure it’s the backdoor, I’m going to prop it open after I put the code in to turn off the alarm. In the shed is a turkey-”
“A turkey?”
“Yes, it’s...blindfolded, I suppose.”
“Helen, where did you get a turkey?”
“Surely you don’t really want to know how I acquired a turkey, Skip.” Honestly, I was very curious how a seventy-something year old lady had caught a turkey, but I knew she wouldn’t tell me. “Bring it inside through the back door and wait for me there.”
“What should I do until then?”
She shrugged, “Whatever you want.” She tugged a small glass vial out of Cookie Monster. Using the pen she had stolen earlier I watched her write, in neat letters, HYDROCHLORIC ACID on the label.
“Helen...” She smirked, that mischievous light in her eyes again.
“It’s not really hydrochloric acid, Skip. Just water. But no one else needs to know that.”
“What are you...?”
“I’m planting it in the kitchen. Nothing like a good practical joke.” I shook my head but smiled. I couldn’t say that helping Helen with her schemes was ever boring, that was for sure. “Come on, Missy. See you at four.” She called over her shoulder as she walked in the direction of the kitchens. I wandered the hallways for a while, I was supposed to be trying to walk as much as I could to build up my muscle strength again. It was tiring and the muscles of my thigh ached but it felt good to be up and moving again after being stuck in a wheelchair or in bed for two months.
I’d met Helen when I first came to Pasco County Convalescent Home after a terrible car crash and subsequent surgery on my crushed leg. She’d been here for a little over a year when I got here. Most of the staff thought she was just some crazy old senile woman and this facade she put up for the nurses, always acting slow and slightly incompetent, belied her brilliant mind. The schemes and plots that that she’d come up with since I’d been here were nothing short of genius, truth be told, and nothing could be pinned on her. Or me for that matter.
Four ‘o'clock rolled around rather quickly and I made my way back to the TV room. True to her word it was filling up with other residents. I sat down in a chair toward the back of the room near the doorway and waited for my signal, whatever that was. I looked around the room and saw Howard, one of the older residents, was seated on the cushion Helen had put the icicle in. Of course. “
His rear is so swaddled up in that diaper he can’t even feel when he spills something.” I heard Helen’s voice saying in my head. Like clockwork Howard called out “Nurse! Nurse!” One of the nurses walked over to him, fussed over him for a few moments then called another nurse over. The first one levered him up off the couch and walked him down the hall to his room, his pants were conspicuously wet.
“That’s disgusting. He’s a grown man.” One of the other residents complained. The second nurse shushed the woman and took the cushion off the couch and left the room. It would have to be washed. The TV flickered to a new channel, a documentary on the Nile crocodile. As soon as I saw the crocodile launch itself up out of the water I knew, this would cause an uproar amongst the residents. This was my que. I slipped out the door as angry and disgruntled shouts filled the room, someone started wailing even. A whole platoon of nurses went rushing past me ready to placate the agitated group.
Sure enough, the back door was propped open when I got to it and I hobbled as quickly as I could across the lawn to the small garden shed. I swung the door open and heard a shuffling inside, there was the turkey, standing in place with a small burlap sack over its head. I guess that was one way of blindfolding it. Missy’s spangly collar was around its long neck with a leash attached, dragging on the floor. Guess that was how I was going to get it inside.
I carefully shuffled in, trying not to scare the bird, and stooped to grab the leash off the floor. I tugged gently on the on the lead and the turkey followed after me. Where the hell had she gotten a trained turkey? Making it back across the yard was easy going and I waited at the backdoor with the turkey for Helen to appear. When she did she was practically running (for an old woman), all three of the dogs close on her heels.
“Take off the bag and move!” She shouted, a look of manic glee on her face. Startled, I grabbed the burlap bag and pulled it off, shoving the turkey forward, gently, with my cane. The dogs broke into a chorus of yips and barks and took off after the loose turkey, gobbling at the top of its lungs. Whatever Helen had planned, this was the best distraction she could have thought of.
She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the administrator's office. The director ran out of the room, obviously to find the source of all the racket.
“Turkey! Turkey!” Helen babbled at the sight of the man.
“Stay here. I’ll take care of it.” He yelled, running down the hall. Helen snickered and pushed open the door to the office.
“All right, quick now! Look up Jimmy Buffett's address for me on the computer.” A stared at her.
“Seriously, Helen? All this for an address?” She was rummaging through desk drawers.
“And an envelope and stamp.” She raised an envelope above her head triumphantly. “Got one! Come on now, boy! We haven’t got all day!”I rolled my eyes and sat down at the computer, pulling up a search window. I saw Helen pull a folded letter out of Cookie Monster and tuck it into the envelope. She wrote her name in the top corner and then stamped the Home’s address on it with the mailer stamp.
“Here’s his P.O Box. It’s for fanmail.”
“That will work. Have you seen any stamps?” I open the desk drawer in front of me and pull out a roll of stamps.
“How did you...”
“I help with computer stuff sometimes. Keeps me thinking.” She nods and sticks a stamp on the envelope. The letter is mixed in with some of the other mail set to go out the next morning.
“Mission accomplished! Come on, let’s get out of here!” We shut the office door behind us, we can still hear the dogs and turkey causing chaos elsewhere in the house. The path of destruction is obvious, the dining room is a mess - someone upended a whole bowl of quinoa, the small grains spilled across the floor like sand.
“Was this all really necessary?” I asked her calmly as we stood in the middle of the mess.
“Is anything really necessary, Skip?” She looked around the room, obviously pleased with herself. “Of course not, but if you’re not going to have fun then what’s the point in doing anything?”