Theo's Sweet-tooth

Chapter One

Miss Ulla, despite needing help, refused it. She had lived in her small Swedish village for ninety-two years and wasn't about to leave the house she was born in for an elderly care facility; in fact she would only allow people to leave notes or food on her back porch. The postwoman made one exception for Ulla, that being leaving her mail just inside the mud room door under a weighty stone. The trash collector often skipped her as she rarely threw anything away. In fact, other than a local hunter, Theo, she had not been seen by anyone is the last five or so years.

Theo was a strange bat himself, remote places always have more than one eccentric resident. He was raised by a very gentle father that had known Ulla as a young woman; she out lived his father even though she taught him mathematics in middle school. Theo's father recounted that she was spooky, cold faced and sat alone to eat the same lunch everyday, one red apple and a small cheese and cucumber sandwich; she shyed away from the teacher's table and never smiled. She did have quite the stare, a stare that made many of her students cringe. Other teachers looked away when she passed by. His father was, like most men around, a labourer for the sawmill. Theo's mother died when he was four and his father rsaised him on his own. He compensated the lack of Theo having a mother by over feeding him, binge eating on home baked pies, cakes freshly made by Theo's father, Johan Olavsson. Both of them had a good stomach reflecting their indulgences.

Theo's father, who eventually died from a heart attack at the mill, had no siblings and his grandparents were deceased on both sides. His son was his life and he was dutiful in all respects, although he drank too much on the weekends which is common in the dark, long winters to say the least. He had more money than the other sawmill workers. He had never bought anything other than a big screen television, food, beer, second hand clothes and for kicks he enjoyed working on other people's cars to pass the time. That extra money he used for wants, not needs. He left all he earned to Theo who despite his sizeable bank account refused to see a dentist even though his teeth were in desperate need of attention. His love of sweets had earned him the nick-name, Sweet-Tooth. On his own time he was quite lonely and wished he had someone bake up some cinnamon buns or gingerbread like his father had. All in all, Theo was a thirty-five year old pudgy, naïve, and aimless soul who worked at the same sawmill as his father before him along with childhood friends and all of their fathers.

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Theo, chewing his caramel string candy, was sitting high up in a wooden hunter's hut watching for moose; he had a thermos of coffee and a bag of candy like a child on Halloween. He had parked his old muddy, black volvo combi on the road side near Ulla's house. He wasn't blocking any other road, breaking any laws and whilst looking through his binoculars he saw not a moose, but Ulla. She was leaving a note on his windshield. She was bent over slightly with a mass of gray hair piled upon her head, using a wooden push sled to glide through the snow she peered up at Theo with a wicked gaze. As she turned her eyes toward Theo's car, he knew that his father had not been exaggerating as his own hairs stood up on the back of his neck. "Shit!" he downed some hot coffee and with his rifle and backpack climbed carefully down the rickity old ladder from the hunter's hut. Awkwardly, he ran toward his car through the first six centimetres of snow which carpeted the ground earlier that morning. His heavy clothing and camouflage gear weighing his already stout body down caused him to reach his car before Ulla had slid quietly through the snow, slammed her door and pulled her curtains closed.

"She's one weird witch" is what he told his snus packing gang back at the old hunting cottage he'd inherited from his father. Beer bottle caps were opened then sloppily dropped wherever they sat; the old friends laughed around the fire blabbing about having no kills but at least Theo saw a witch. "She gave me a fuckin' ticket man." He read it out loud; the drunken ole boys quieted.

"To Theo Olavsson, son of Johan Olavsson; for destroying my view you owe me one day's work." Everyone laughed yet Theo couldn't. He put some macaroni on for five big eaters and started frying meatballs. The guys had already eaten all the weekend snacks and no one seemed to cook but him. "I dare one of you laughing to go park up there tomorrow". Kjell, a red-faced friend with a mangled beard stood up, "I'll go, I know what that ole witch needs" he slurred, then did a humping motion on the old sofa arm. Theo was starved and rolled his eyes and through a meatball at Kjell. He almost caught it with his teeth but instead it landed in the fire. They ate, they drank, they snussed, they snoozed.

Four a.m. "Wakey, wakey my friends." Coffee, bread, ham and cheese stuffed their mouths like starving hogs. They got their gear together and Kjell was about to leave when Theo reminded him of his drunken promise. "Hell, no way I'm worried about some hundred year ole bitch, I'll do it." Kjell was the smallest of their bunch. None of them were likely to be friends at all, but being as they had all grown up together in the sparsely populated area, they were more or less stuck together.

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Chapter Two is On it's Sleigh!!