A series of inexplicable events

 

It was Friday night. The annoying, high-pitched sound of the alarm clock made Teri Chocolate wake up with a startle. As she looked through the window, she saw that it was still night-time. It couldn’t have been past four in the morning. Why was the alarm sounding?

Sleepily, she sat on the bed of the guest room she shared with her husband, Frasier. They were still guests in their friends the McFarlanes’ house. Her childhood friend Elizabeth, her husband Nicholas, the mayor of Arcfield, and their children Annabelle and Albie were out for the weekend, on an official friendly visit to a neighbouring village. She quickly turned the alarm off.

“Frasier, did you set up the alarm at this hour?”
“Hmmm… of course not, darling…”
Her husband was still half-asleep. At least he hadn’t woke up with a scare, as she had. Her heart was still pounding, and she was thinking of going down to the kitchen to get a glass of milk when she heard the cries of someone else the alarm had woken up. She quickly went to her baby daughter Crème’s cot.

“Mommy!” cried the little one, visibly scared by the sudden and loud sound. Teri hugged her and whispered soft words in her ear, trying to calm her.
At that time, her oldest daughter Freya appeared in the room, rubbing her eyes.
“Mom…? Is everything alright…? What was that sound?”
“Oh, just the alarm clock, it must be broken, I don’t know why it went off. Please, tell me the twins are still asleep”.
“Oh, yes, don’t worry, they are, and Coco as well. He always sleeps like a log. Do you want me to calm Crème so that you can go back to bed?”.
Teri felt grateful that her youngest children, twins Kabe and Breeze, were sleeping in little Albie’s room, that was farther away from her room, and that they hadn’t woken up. She wasn’t sure she could handle three crying babies at this late hour. She thanked Freya and left her little sister to her, knowing that she would get Crème to relax again shortly. Her daughter was great with her little siblings, and she felt proud at how quickly she was maturing.
With that happy thought, she went back to bed, but it took her a long time to fall asleep again, and she could feel that her husband Frasier was also tossing and turning.

The next morning, which seemed to have arrived a second after she had finally managed to drift off to sleep, Teri was positively exhausted. She had made some well-deserved coffee and tea for her husband and herself, since the children didn’t usually join them for breakfast on Saturday mornings. She watched the toaster absentmindedly as it prepared the bread, afraid of falling asleep on top of it.

In the living room, a similarly tired Frasier was getting everything ready for breakfast. Even though it was the weekend, he had a busy day ahead; ever since moving into the McFarlane’s house, he had been scouring the town of Arcfield in search of a suitable place to re-open their Chocolaterie. They would have to start small, but he couldn’t wait to start making money again and possibly being able to afford a new house, even if it was small, for their family. He didn’t want to overstay their welcome at their friends’ home.

It didn’t take long for Teri to come back with the rest of things they needed for their morning meal, and, unexpectedly, their daughter Freya also made an appearance in the room.
“Good morning!” she said, brightly.
“You sure are up early today, sweetheart” said Frasier, surprised.
“Poor thing” Teri said “The alarm woke her up as well last night. Didn’t you manage to sleep well afterwards?”
“Oh no, I slept quite well! I just woke up early and thought I’d come and have breakfast with you”.
Teri was quite pleased. Her Freya was growing up indeed. She was sure that Elizabeth’s daughter, Annabelle, who was very well-behaved, was being a good influence on her.
“Come sit down with us honey, you can have my toast and some milk. Would you be a darling and bring a cup for you and a knife for the jam from the kitchen?”
“Sure!”

And thus, the three rabbits sat down to have a cosy breakfast together. Frasier even turned on the TV and put on some cartoons for Freya. She was delighted! They hadn’t had a TV on their old house and it was quite the novelty for her.
Unfortunately, the peaceful and cosy moment was disrupted when Frasier, after taking a single sip of his coffee, coughed violently and almost spit it.

“What in the world is this?!” he exclaimed, the face red and an expression of disgust in his face.
“What’s the matter, Frasier?” Teri asked, quite startled. “Are you alright?”
“Teri, you put salt in my coffee! It tastes awful!”
“What?!”

Frasier got up quickly and went to the kitchen, desperate to remove the foul taste from his mouth. He opened the kitchen sink and started drinking water directly from it. Teri went after him, panicking.
“Oh, darling, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how this could have happened! Maybe I got the wrong container, as this isn’t our home and I slept so little…”
“That’s… OK…” said Frasier, between gulps of tap water.

A while later, an exhausted-looking Frasier went out of the door to resume his looking for suitable buildings for their business. Teri went to see him off.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything else to eat, my love? You basically didn’t have breakfast today”.
“No, that’s quite fine my dear, don’t worry. I couldn’t bear to have another bite”.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, I know that awful coffee spoiled your appetite, please forgive me. I don’t know how that happened!”.
“Don’t worry about it, it was just a mistake, I know you are also tired”. Frasier embraced his wife and gave her a goodbye kiss. “I hope to come back with good news today!”.
“Have a great day and good luck, my love”.

After her husband left, Teri busied herself with the cleaning of the house. Given that her family was living there for free, the least she could do was help Elizabeth keep the place clean.

So, she cleared the table and washed the dishes…

Looked for cobwebs…

Made the bed…

And, as she was getting started on the bathroom, she heard giggling and screaming from the next room over. She went quickly there…

And found Crème and Kabe happily playing and jumped on the bed! The bed she had just made! She panicked when she saw that Kabe was about to fall off from it and shrieked as she quickly went to pick him up. 

Afterwards she went to check on little Breeze, who was still happily asleep, same as her son Coco. Her youngest daughter was an angel and slept most of the day, but she was worried about Kabe who was already quite the troublemaker. Crème was also very lively. Teri sighed, she probably should be thankful that her children were all energetic and healthy, but it did get exhausting sometimes to keep up with all five of them. Freya was nowhere to be seen; she was probably playing out in the garden. Elizabeth, being quite the green thumb, had a gorgeous and well kept-garden.

After looking for the vacuum cleaner, Teri went back to the living room to start cleaning the floor and… saw that the table was full of cups, plates and other things they had used during breakfast. She was perplexed. Hadn’t she tidied and cleaned up all that already?
She began to feel nervous. First the coffee, and now this? How could she have forgotten to clear the table? And she was almost positive that she HAD, too! She let go of the vacuum and wringed her hands nervously. Could it be that she was going crazy? Oh, goodness, what would people say? Frasier would leave her, and he would probably take their children with him. She would never see them again…!
She took a deep breath, realising that she was getting anxious over nothing. She was probably just tired and confused. She thought of calling her mother, Patricia. Talking to her always calmed her down and put things on perspective.

Just as she was thinking this, the phone rang. Surprised, Teri ran to get it. She picked up the handle…
And the phone kept ringing! Teri panicked, unable to make the high-pitched sound stop. How was this possible? Was the phone broken? It was then that she saw the smallest piece of tape glued to the button that would have made it possible for her to answer the call when picking up the handle. Just then, she understood everything, or at least she had a strong suspicion of what was happening. The phone had already stopped ringing when she managed to get the tape off, so she hoped whoever it was would call again.
She breathed deeply once again, and with her sweetest voice, called out:
“Freya, darling, where are you?”
 “I’m… I’m in my room, mommy, doing my homework!”
Freya’s voice wasn’t coming from her bedroom though, and Teri quickly followed the sound…

… and caught Freya red-handed, standing on the kitchen cart, apparently trying to set a new trap in the front door!
“FREYA CHOCOLATE!” Screamed a furious Teri “You’re going to kill yourself! Get down here this instant!”
“Oops!” said Freya. As her mother quickly bent forward to catch her, she tried to avoid her and in doing so, lost her grip on the bucket full of water she had been trying to set up on the door…

Which fell directly on her mother, soaking her from top to bottom.
For a split second the two of them just looked at each other in silence, but when Teri started screaming again Freya quickly got off the cart and fled inside the house!
“It was you! The alarm clock, the salt, the dishes!”
Furious, maybe even more furious at the fact her Freya was laughing as she ran, Teri ran after her mischievous daughter, and in her way, without thinking, grabbed the only weapon she could find; the vacuum cleaner!

She did manage to grab the hem of Freya’s dress with it!
“Nooo!” Freya exclaimed. "Don't vacuum me!"

She did finally manage to free herself, and escaped once again, this time out the front door and into town! Teri, frustrated and very angry, thought briefly about going after her, but just then the phone rang again. It was her friend Elizabeth, who found the whole ordeal quite funny when Teri vented to her about it, wishing her children were as well-behaved as her friend’s.
Later that day, when both Frasier and Freya were back, Teri sat her daughter down to have a stern chat with her.

“Young lady, consider yourself grounded! What were you thinking?! Waking us up in the middle of the night, don’t you know your father has been out all day, every day, looking for a place to open our shop again? Why would you spoil his breakfast like that?! And you could have killed yourself climbing on that cart with wheels…!”
“It has brakes, mommy, I was using them…”
“That’s NOT the point! It’s enough that your baby siblings are such troublemakers, you must stop doing these things! I thought I had made it clear back in our old home that they were NOT FUNNY!”.
“Ah, mommy, but you have to admit that they WERE quite funny” Freya said, half-smiling. “Your face when…”.
“That’s enough”. Frasier said sternly, interrupting his daughter after seeing how angry Teri was getting again. “A joke’s a joke, but I think you’re old enough to know when something’s too much. Apologize to you mother”.
Freya stopped talking and lowered her eyes. Her father seldom scolded her, and she was beginning to realise that maybe she had gone a little too far with her pranks. She supposed they were right about some of the things they were saying. She sighed and looked at them again.
“I’m sorry, mommy. And I’m sorry about your coffee and waking you up, daddy”.
“That’s better. We forgive you, but please think things through a bit more next time. Now, go to bed”.
Freya obeyed and went upstairs. Frasier put a hand on his wife’s shoulder and then sat in one of the armchairs. Teri looked exhausted.

“I can’t believe she’s doing this again. I thought we were done with her pranks… And I had thought she was maturing!”
“Ah, but I think, despite everything, that this is a good thing” to Teri’s surprise, her husband was smiling. “Freya had been so down lately, since we left our old village… I believe that the fact that she’s pranking us again means that she’s feeling better, more like herself”.
Teri hadn’t thought of it that way. She looked at her husband tiredly, but with a smile.
“You know… I think you might be right”.