Frazzled

The traps were set and baited with rabbits, catnip, and French postcards. To Wren’s way of thinking, no Neko could resist. She’d placed the traps carefully on rooftops and in alleyways, but so far, all she’d caught was a stray dog.

In the mean time, she was back to her attempts to lead kindly seeming passersby to their demise.

A sweet-faced nun fastened a helmet over her wimple, a curious smile playing across her lips. “It’s rather awkward, dear.” Even as she said the words, the top heavy iron spiked made the headgear pivot forward on her head. Wren stood with her feet apart, hands on her hips. “Sister, could you maybe hold the prayer hat upright?” She surveyed the dark clouds above and added “I don’t think the experiment will take long.” Sister Danielle nodded without thinking, but was able to catch the helmet before it slid forward enough to pose a threat to the little construct standing before her.

Wren moved to hide in the doorway of the rooftop stairwell. The building wasn’t the highest in Babbage, but she thought it unlikely she could get the nun to do the kinds of climbing and jumping required to get any higher, so she was restricted to places with easy access.

As the first, fat drops of rain began to fall, she called out to the woman “ok, Sister.. start praying.” She crouched low and watched the cooperative nun try to manage the lightening rod strapped to her head and commune with the almighty at the same time. Wren smiled, the woman looked angelic. She was going to like having the sister for a sister.

What Wren hadn’t taken into account, as she stood beneath the shelter of the covered stairwell, was that the nun, with her lightening-rod prayer-helmet, was not the highest point on the building, nor was the lightening rod atop her head the highest metal. Instead, the unsuspecting child huddled beneath the weathervane adorning the angled roof of stairs.

She would have no later memory of the flash and ear ringing crack of lightening that arched from the cloud, to the metal rooster, and leaped to the brass frame of her mechanical heart. She would only know she’d woken in the arms of the frantic nun. Her dress was scorched, her hair frizzed, and when she cleaned herself later, she would admire the burn mark which spanned across her torso like torn lace. The heat of the lightening had melted the brass frame of her heart, and warped cogs moved erratically, but she was able to get down the stairs with the nun’s help.

She picked a nearby house which seemed unoccupied and told Sister Danielle it was her residence. Slipping quietly in through the stranger’s front door, she waited in the hallway until she was certain the sister had gone beyond sight.

In the January drizzle, the little construct staggered the whole mile back to the laboratory to be repaired.