Jinn Part 5

Sam gently pushed in her front door, trying to be as quiet as
possible. She could hear her Mother and Father laughing in the
kitchen as they prepared dinner. She gently pressed the door closed,
placed her shoes in the rack beside the door and carefully placed her
bag up onto the coat rack. A loud creak shot through the house. Dead
silence. Then suddenly a giant rottweiler burst through a side door,
drool flying across the room as it skidded on the hard wooden
flooring before clattering into Sam and knocking her down.

 

“Okay okay okay, you got me! Get off you fat animal!”

 

The large dog clambered off and sat panting as Sam clambered to her
feet.

 

“Happy now Alfi? My uniform is ruined, yet again. I thought you'd have been
too tired from all that walking that Dad was supposed to be doing
with you?”

 

She said in a loud and deliberate manner.

 

“Well I was about to but then I had to pick up some food for dinner, and I
met Suli at the market in the other village and well, I completely
lost track of time.”

 

Her Dad boomed from the kitchen. Alfi shot off into the room and
clattered into someone else.

 

“I swear this dog does it on purpose now!”

 

Sam's mother stepped out of the kitchen. She was covered in flour,
with her long auburn hair hanging to her side. She looked incredibly
young for her age. She would be sixty four in just two weeks. Her
short, slender figure made her look even younger.

 

“We're making your favourite for dinner by the way... and yes I mean that
favourite. Not like the last time your Dad made them. I'm helping this time.”

 

They both laughed as her Dad peaked out from behind the door.

 

“Hey! They weren't that bad! And how was I supposed to know exactly which
flour to get? You're the one who made it and didn't label them
properly!”

 

“One of them clearly says 'self-raising' flour and the other says just
'flour'. How hard is it to notice?”

 

Sam and her mother laughed together as they stepped into the kitchen.
Alfi was also covered in flour and some sort of tomato paste on his
cheek that he tried to lick off but couldn't quite reach.

 

“Well personally I blame your Mothers terrible hand writi-”

 

Sam's Mum threw her apron at her husband before escaping from the
kitchen quickly as a ball of dough shot past Sam and hit the wall
beside her.

 

“Stop throwing the dough or we won't be eating dinner at all! What toppings
do you have there any way?”

 

Sam slides next to her father at the kitchen counter and scours over
the menagerie of bizarre ingredients. Various meats, vegetables, a
few types of fruit and some strange looking vegetable types items.

 

“Umm, Dad, what even is... that?!”

 

Sam holds up a long, thin red and green vegetable.

 

“Ha, that's a funny story actually. You remember how your mother wanted to
try and splicing together some vegetables to see what would work and
what wouldn't? Well, that's a Cumato. Or was it a Tocumber? Either
way, it's a tomato-cucumber hybrid. And between you and me...”

 

He leans in closer.

 

“IT'S DISGUSTING!”

 

He bellows at the top of his lungs. Sam's mother peers around the
corner and leers at the pair.

 

“Oh I'm sorry, did I say that out loud? My mistake. Your invention is
delicious my darling wife!”

 

Suddenly they hear a retching and turn around to see Alfi pushing
away a half-devoured cumato and washing out the taste with his entire
bowl of water.

 

“See, even Alfi doesn't like it. And he licks himself clean! Sam, could
you go and set the table. We're using the baking stone today so the
pizza's shouldn't be more than five minutes.”

 

Sam skipped out to the dining room. The perfectly round oak table
shimmered in the warm amber glow of the plasma candles hovering
around the room on anti-grav plates. The room was lavishly decorated
with family portraits, statues, carved scenes of great beauty and
little ornaments. A marble statue of Alfi stood in the corner besides
an overflowing oak bookcase with a smartglass screen. The table had
the glass screen as well. Images of rolling meadows and a waterfall
danced across it as fish played about in the shallows of a pool. Sam
loved staring at the colours dancing beneath her as she ate. She
often wondered what it must be like to be an animal, so disconnected
from the troubles of the human world.

 

“Grubs up!”

 

Her Dad burst into the room with two large wooden palettes floating
beside him holding two enormous pizzas.

 

“Why don't you ask Kai to come over for dinner sometime Sam? I worry that
he gets lonely over there sometimes?”

 

“I have done Mum but he says that he likes to cook for when his Dad
comes back home. And he has to take care of Tali. I said he could
bring her over but he says that she doesn't like to eat at other
peoples homes. I'll see if he does tomorrow, his Dad should be back
then right? Maybe he could come over too?”

 

“That's a fantastic idea Sam! What should we cook? I could do my famous steak
soup”

 

“Dad, no offence but your steak soup is famous for something and being
delicious is not one of them.”

 

“I'm getting better damn it! All this negativity doesn't help anything.
Isn't that right Alfi?”

 

They all looked at the looming figure of Alfi who had perched his
head just on top of the table, slowly inching towards Sam's plate
with a longing in his eyes and a trail of drool following behind his
massive head.

 

“Ohh fine Alfi, you can have my chicken okay?”

 

The dog clambered down and let out a loud bark of satisfaction, his
tail wagging furiously and his eyes glittering as Sam tossed him a
large slice of chicken from her pizza.