He laid him down in the crib in his room--he’d given up the bassinet a little while ago. Then he and Simi sat down together to watch some TV.
There were times that Oscar felt a little dismayed at his new domesticated routine. They never used to spend evening after evening watching TV. But now with a little baby around, more often than not that’s what they did. A year ago, Oscar couldn’t have come up with the names of any of the shows presently on television. He could have recommended several good restaurants in each part of the city, he could have said which nightclubs had the best scene, he could have related which beaches were the best to sit in front of a campfire at night in a sweatshirt on, but TV he knew nothing about. Now, he had several shows that he watched weekly. From the violent, dirty ones on HBO to the cute, romantic comedy ones Simi preferred, and the gritty cop procedurals that were everywhere, he followed them all.
It was a different life than the one he’d lived, but he still loved it. Sitting on the couch with Simi snuggled in beside him, head resting on his shoulder was a good place to be. On occasion, he could even persuade her to get frisky with him on the family room floor. Not tonight, of course, since they’d already took advantage of Trevon’s Yo Gabba Gabba distraction. Tonight was an episode of Castle with a glass of wine or two. A quiet evening.
Only it turned out to be anything but.
V
About forty minutes into the TV show, just as the wine had softened their senses to make them less than on top of it, they heard a crash from upstairs.
“What was that?” Oscar asked. He wasn’t a big fan of wine, so he’d only drank one glass to Simi’s two.
“Hunh” she muttered. He realized that she had fallen asleep on his shoulder, and had probably been that way for at least ten minutes.
“There was a crash from upstairs,” he said, “You didn’t hear it?”
“I think I was asleep,” she responded. Then there was another, louder crash. “I heard that though,” she said, worry in her eyes.
Oscar extracted himself from under Simi’s draping body, and hustled up the stairs. Another bang sounded before he reached the top. It was coming from Trevon’s room.
When he opened the door, he was confronted with a ten foot tall monstrosity. It looked like a giant orange cucumber with arms and legs...and spines. The spines jutted from dozens of places on its body, arms, and legs. They looked dangerously sharp from where Oscar stood, mouth agape, in the doorway. The thing had one large eye on its head, but appeared to have no other facial features.
It was thrashing around in the room as if it could see nothing out of its single eye. Trevon’s baby books, toys, and diaper supplies were littered on the ground, along with the remains of the shelf that some of them had been resting on. As Oscar watched, dumbfounded, the creature banged a hand on the wall--although it didn’t actually have hands, its armed just sort of rounded off at the end--knocking a picture frame down.
Simi screamed, loud and frightened. She’d just made it to the top of the stairs behind him. The creature didn’t even look toward them. Apparently, it had no ears as well.
The initial shock worn off, or screamed out, she now decided that it was important to be quiet, so she whispered in his ear, “what is that? What do we do?”
“It’s in there with Trevon, and it’s tearing his room apart. We have to get him out of there before it hurts him.”
END OF DAY EIGHT
1 comment:
Reading, and you are right, those characters are freaky...
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