Fireflies - Day Thirteen (Live-Blogging A Story)

Unlucky day thirteen.  This was a part of the story that I didn't want to write, but it was how things went, so I had to document them.  Sigh.

Anyway, I wrote 534 words today.  Not as many as on other days, but they got me to the end of the scene.  That puts me at 12,601 in total.

And now, for those of you who have been waiting for what happens after that cliff hanger, here you go:

Just as his fingers touched the door handle, the creature blasted a flipper through the wall of his garage.  Broken chunks of stucco covered wood rocketed into him, breaking his right leg at the femur, breaking his right elbow, and smashing into the right side of his head.  He crumpled with a scream of anguish to the brick driveway.  

Now it was his turn to float in a daze.  It was a panic filled daze.  Somewhere deep in his mind, a voice was hollering that he was supposed to do something, something that would save them all.  But the voice didn’t say what that something was, and Oscar’s thoughts couldn’t manage to summon it either.  They were too occupied with the agony that was coursing through his whole right side where it had been crushed by the flying debris.

He moaned and writhed on the ground.  No matter how he shifted he was in immense pain.  His ears rang, and his vision was foggy.  The monster passed over the top of the two of them again, a trailing tentacle snapped out and struck the neighbors’ Lexus again, flipping it onto its side with a bang and a crunch.

The noise must have triggered something in Simi, because she suddenly shook off her daze, and rose to her feet screaming hysterically.  She ran haphazardly into the street, and turned to head northeast up the road.  From his position on the driveway, Oscar saw the creature react for the first time to its environment.  Simi’s scream seemed to draw its attention.  It spun in midair, and swam back toward her.  His fuzzy mind cleared just in time to scream a warning.

“Simi, no!”

Then the creature pounced on top of her.  Its mouth, an enormous hole lined with rows of teeth and tentacles like a cross between a shark’s mouth and the center of a sea anemone, plunged down and closed over her.  She disappeared completely, covered by the creature’s maw as it crashed down into the asphalt, leaving a dent of crushed pavement where its head struck.

“No!” Oscar screamed, “No!  Simi!  No!  Please, No!”

She had simply vanished into the creature’s mouth.  No biting or chewing, she was engulfed.  And she was gone.  Gone.  Oscar’s eyes flooded with tears, and he cried out in his grief.  Gone.  Judging from the cut he’d received on his arm from the orange cactus-like creature, the damage these dream creatures did while they were around did not reverse itself when they disappeared.  So, even if he managed to wake Trevon, it wouldn’t bring her back.  It had eaten her.  She was gone, and so was his reason for living.

The creature rose back up off the ground, and brought another tree crashing to the ground with a flailing flipper.  Oscar’s broken right side throbbed with pain, but he now remembered what it was he was supposed to do.  Despite the pain that coursed through him when he did it, he dragged himself to the car, and pulled the door open.

“Trevon,” he shouted at the top of his lungs, “Goddammit, Trevon! Wake up!”

The baby cried, the creature disappeared, and Oscar passed into unconsciousness.

END OF DAY THIRTEEN