SFSD-X Short Story Smackdown

6.2 Win a Few, Lose a Few

My hand was on the handle. The lights flicked on.

"Mike! What did I say about the basement door?" Aunt Jordi was in her bathrobe, hairy calves pale and toenails blood red.

"I think there's something down there," I said. "There was a noise."

"Hey!" yelled a male voice from down the hallway. "You coming back sometime tonight, sugar muffin?"

I assumed he was talking to my aunt, whoever this man was.

She pursed her lips in annoyance. At me.

"You did not drink straight from the bottle did you? That's disgusting! You're as bad as your dad. You'd better pick up some more on the way home," she said. She grabbed the milk from the table and glared at me with all the pent up wrath of a wronged younger sister until I hurried off to my room.

The next morning the kitchen was suspiciously quiet. And I say suspiciously because there were usually a great number of creaks and groans in the house as we crossed the floors or ran water in the sink. But it was deathly silent. Aunt Jordi's visitor had also disappeared without a sound.

We were eating eggs and toast, not really talking. Aunt Jordi stood up, done.

Something splatted squishy road-kill fashion in the basement. I checked under the table, the uncomfortable knowledge that whatever splatted had hit the basement ceiling right under my feet and the table legs. Nothing untoward to be seen.

My aunt was smiling at me. "More eggs?"

"Yes, please. Nice and runny again."

"Sure. Toast?"

Splat. The floor vibrated. Aunt Jordi seemed not to notice.

"Why not? Two pieces."

"How late do you work today? I can put dinner in the oven or the fridge."

"Don't worry about me." Shica-shica-shica-shica. Like a huge wash cloth rubbing the underside of the floor. "I'm meeting up with some buddies at a bar. They've got chicken wings half off tonight and happy hour until seven."

A moan. Was that a man? Riiiiiiiip. Splat.

Aunt Jordi handed me the eggs. Very runny. "Which bar?" she asked, penciled in eyebrow arched high

"The Back Alley Cats."

"In that case, it's all right. Have fun."

I grabbed my plate with the toast and eggs to finish on the porch. That night, when I arrived home, Aunt Jordi was sitting in the kitchen, wearing fishing waders and boots, and...nothing else. It was my extreme good fortune that her rather large boobs hung low enough to hide in the waders bib.

"Did you have fun, Mikey?"

"We had a good time. I'm bushed, you don't mind if I go up to bed?"

"Of course I don't mind! I've got some gardening still to do."

I didn't check my watch. It had to be close to midnight, but sometimes she did gardening by moonlight depending on the month and phase of the moon. Gibbous moons and full moons were her favorites.

A knock rattled the back porch door and she jumped to answer it. I glimpsed our neighbor Ted, I think, but with fish gills forming in his neck and his lips wide and bulbous. His grey-green skin came in and out of view as Aunt Jordi's ample, rubber covered backside moved between us.

I didn't want to ask. I had a migraine coming on and the fireworks were flashing pixie sparkles everywhere. I crawled into bed after swallowing several painkillers, not able to take a shower or wonder why Ted was turning into a fish.

I dreamed my strange, saintly visions as usual where martyred men, women and children were alternately tortured or playing with cyborg animals. Goats appeared more often than anything else. As morning approached, the dreams varied from my normal fare into more futuristic scenes.

Four saintly believers about to be boiled in oil tore off the rags they were wearing to reveal black body armor suits decorated with ribbons of green lights. They even had masks with glowing eyes. One of the men, standing on a hill was bathed in green beams from above. The scene faded.

A space ship was constructed from a station on the moon and I was there to watch it launch – a monstrous construction of tubes and protruding parts. A round, grey-green pad pulsated with light in the rear. The thruster, I told myself, for the jump to light speed. Of course.

I was falling to Earth from the moon. Reentry was a bitch and I was spiraling out of control while burning up. I also seemed to be falling back in time, but time was relative. It was the eighties. A clunky Cadillac drove along a foggy neighborhood road, the woman at the wheel had curled and spiked her hair to do justice to David Bowie's Jareth character. Behind her, the hazy form of a T-Rex came stomping into view. Dogs started barking until their survival instincts kicked in and they slunk off silently to hide under porches.

I stumbled backwards and was in the Alps or the Himalayas. Snow was several stories deep and I knew that because the gargantuan robot standing in it had the stuff up to his shin. A stunned knight on horseback stared at the metal creature from a hilltop. I watched at them both as the robot brought one huge hand up, up, up and then suddenly down, down—

The scene changed right before I witnessed the abrupt end to the man and his horse. I was in space again. Black spires and small space craft surrounded a sort of glass placenta where a humanish baby was growing. Humanish because, like the robot, it was unbelievably big. I mean this was one big baby. I did not want to run into his mama on a bad day. Moving closer, I stretch out my hand to touch the walls of the clear placenta when I became aware that I was not alone.