Infestation

Listen next time

That night I had a strange dream. I remember now where I saw that silver banana. I've seen it in a reoccurring nightmare I had since I was a little little kid. It never made sense as a child because in my dream I'm a lot older, It was like my childhood self seeing me in the future. And when I say little I'm mean like 3 yrs old...crazy young...I remember because I slept down the hall from my parents and would wake up and walk down the hallway to their room. I remember I was 3 because I would sleep with a blue bunny I got for my 3rd birthday and I would squeeze the hell out of it as I would walk down the dark hallway to jump in bed with them. I walked because I was scared to run and bump into something and I thought if I walked slowly at least I could sense or perceive danger before hand and avoid it. My dry mouth got me up that morning not Ricky. The thought of ice cold water filling my mouth and down my throat was making me drool. I speed walked to the kitchen making sure to skip the squeaky floor boards as to not wake up my aunt. I tuned on the kitchen light and grabbed a cup filled it and drank. Repeat 3 x's. After my 3 rd cup I could feel my belly start to bloat. It didn't stop me I drank 2 more cups. Now that my thirst was quenched, now I was hungry. I looked around inside the fridge for eggs. I saw none. No matter we had sausage and I knew we had eggs outside. I sat on the concrete steps and shook my boots to make sure it was ok to put on. As I was putting on my last boot I looked up. It was still dark. Millions of stars piercing the dark sky. I saw a comet, the bright green tail was a dead gave away. I sat there in silence for along time, not just verbally but mentally. I was just starting to except maybe the country was worst than the cities. Maybe we should've stayed instead. That thought was interrupted by my stomach growling so I stood up and made my way toward the hens. They clucked happily and ran out the coop to pecked at the corn I threw out for them. I collected the eggs 7 in total. I turned around and could see Roberto sleeping. His heavy back rise and lower and his breath bouncing off the cold desert ground and fogging up around his face. During breakfast my aunt asked what happened last night. "Oh well, Mr. Johnson's well is acting up too and he's missing some calf but other than that nothing new or different." I said nervously... "ok...what about you...are you feeling ok." My aunt asked me giving me her I'm watching you, you better not be lying side eye...I assured her I was and was just tired. Cleaning up after breakfast I ran to the well to see if anything new happened. I brought with me this time a pencil to poke at it. The last time I used this pencil was to take a test. I didn't have one at the time and Mrs. Moore lent me it but she was very admit I return it back to her, shows you how well I listened. The silver liquid seemed to be solid from what i could see so I poked it. It was completely solid. I tried chipping it with the pencil it broke the lead tip. I than grabbed the hand trowel ( I probably should've used that instead of fucking up Mrs. Moore's pencil.) Using the trowel I managed to chip a piece off. It was about the size of a quarter. I wasn't sure if it was safe to handle so I ran to the clothesline and grabbed a shirt off the line. The shirt I grabbed was my uniform top for school. A white collar school uniform top. I hadn't been to school in awhile. 13 months to be exact. They made us homeschool, and started by sending school curriculums and materials for the parents to teach the kids every 2 wks, that soon turned to once a month to nothing. The shirt was thick material so I felt comfortable picking up the metal chip. I walked inside and boiled another pot of water and set it in the back of the fridge. My aunt was in her rocking chair watching one of her novelas. I don't know how she can follow those things, I had almost made it down the hall way when she asked "what's in your hand?"... "una camisa" I replied... " why did you only get one shirt? Why didn't you bring in the rest of the laundry too?" She asked " well becau" I started to reply " go get the rest of the laundry."... "but"... "GO!" her voiced boomed. Damn how can one little old lady yell so loud. "The weather man said it was going to rain and I don't want the laundry to get wet." "Ok tia" I sighed... " thank you mijo" she said sweetly. Thank you mijo, thank you mijo...bipolar fucker...I love my aunt I really do I just wanted to start experimenting with this chunk of "whatever" so very badly so I can start understanding, so I can start fixing. I started to believe whatever was happening in the city was leaking out to the country. I slipped the metal chip into my back pocket and threw my shirt over my shoulder and went outside towards the line. We kept a plastic neon pink wicker basket upside down on a pole near the line for the clothes. I placed it on the floor and started to go down the line of unclipping the clothe pins and picking up the clothes that sometimes missed the basket. I was half way done when the wind started to pick up. First it was refreshing, than it was making it hard to collect the rest of the clothes. It proceeding to get stronger where I was having to lean into the wind to keep from rolling backwards. At this point I had lost the plastic basket and was try to see and blink thru the dust cloud that surrounded the whole pasture. The little rocks and pebble being whipped up and stabbing my face was getting really fucking annoying. And the unbearable crunching my eyelids did every time I blinked from my eyeballs being encrusted with sand and dirt was getting old quick. I tried my best to keep my eyes open wide enough long enough to get a sense of my direction because I was sliding everywhere earlier trying to kept my balance...I was literally in a dance battle with the wind and getting my ass kicked..because there was no grip on my boots. Not only did it have a strong pushing sensation it had an ever stronger pulling sensation. I could see I was no longer near the clothes line, but instead a couple of feet from Robertos pasture. I could feel the sensation get stronger as it pulled, I could feel my pants shift as if it were being tug from behind, so I walked backwards to Robertos gate. I reached his gate and held it tightly I closed my eyes so tight I could feel the rocks under my eyelids dig in deeper...fuuuuck...I wanted to scream but I didn't dare open my mouth it'll be full of sand and dirt if I did. By now I'm pretty sure I'm in the middle of a tornado in between opening my eye and trying to see I saw the sky was still blue and clear. There were no rain clouds just this super massive sand storm. How'd the weather man fuck this up...I didn't start to panic until my legs started lifting up from underneath me being pulled upward towards the sky. I tried holding on to the gate, tried to weave my legs in between the panels but my boots were too chunky and didn't allow my foot to go thru. My whole bottom torso is completely in the air as I'm holding onto the gate my arm circulation being cut off by how hard I was squeezing. My pants are get pulled harder and harder and are super loose now, my ass crack fully exposed and full of sand and my boots are gone. Roberto is bucking wildly at the back of his pasture I can make out his body from time to time in between painful blinks. I turned my head to the left to face the well. I saw the solid mercury being pulled up in a long liquidy bubble shape. It shapeless mass carelessly floating up towards the sky. Big silvery blobs floating out of the well. Even the one in my back pocket. The once hard metal that broke my pencil, now floating in a long continuous stream in front of my face. So smooth, so shiny, so round and polished. It bounced around and off other objects before collecting with the rest and floating as one huge mass towards the sky...and as soon as all this wind started it stopped and was interrupted by rain. Heavy down pour rain. My legs dropped banging my knees hard against the gate. I held my hand out to collect rainwater to rinse my eyes out I was desperate to de-grit them. There was no more intense wind and no metal sap anywhere. I ran over to the well it was completely empty of metal as well. The metal seemed to be reheated thru a pulsating processes that allowed it to become liquid again? I don't know What in the hell just happened...I didn't even trust the rain I was understanding at this point nothing is to be trusted. I ran over to the basket and picked all the clothes that were strewn everywhere. I found my boots and threw them on top of the rest of the clothes in the basket. I tried wringing out the water and tried shaking off as much red mud off the clothes as I could. I ran inside and placed the basket on the floor, dripping wet and muddy I shook my hair to dry off a bit...my aunt just looked at me and sighed at the sight "I told you it was going to rain...listen next time."