Fireflies - Day Twelve (Live-Blogging A Story)

Woohoo.  I'm going for it.  It's Independence Day today, and I should probably be out celebrating and having a good time, and I'll get to that later, but this morning, I wrote some more on my story.  Rish said on Facebook that he was at 11,380 in his story, and if I wrote today, I'd probably pass him by, since he would be out enjoying himself.  Well, I guess that was all the motivation I needed.  I wrote 1,172 words today, making my story a grand total of 12,066 words (although I think the word count tool is counting each of my "END OF DAY ELEVEN" proclamations, so it's probably closer to 12,000 even.

Anyway, here's words:

Photo provided by: s58y Creative Commons I added the title and border.

VIII

It was one of those days that he would have remembered forever as one of the best days of his life.  Trevon had never been so cute as he was when he was toddling shakily around the dark rooms lined with fish tanks.  He was too small to know what was supposed to be neat and what was just ho-hum, so he marveled at everything, from the sharks, octopuses and dolphins to the shimmering schools of tropical fish all the way down to the eels, anemones, and worms.

Oscar and Simi couldn’t help but laugh out loud each time Trevon pointed, made a big ‘O’ shape with his mouth, and loudly shouted, “Woah!”  And when it was feeding time, he shouted lustily every time one of the bigger fish pounced on a smaller one and devoured it.  They felt like the luckiest people in the world to have such a beautiful, happy baby to call their own.  Dozens of people stopped them to comment on how cute their little boy was, and those that didn’t stop them still smiled and chuckled to themselves when they saw his antics.  He was simply darling, irresistibly darling.

Once they’d finally seen all the sea creatures, birds, and reptiles the aquarium had to offer, they headed back out to the car, strapped Trevon into his carseat, and headed home to relax for the rest of the afternoon.  It was a Saturday, so the traffic was light on the drive home.  In no time, they were back in their driveway.  Before getting out, Oscar leaned over the center console and kissed Simi on the forehead.  She raised her head and gave him a long, soulful kiss on the mouth.  It was the natural response to a day so happy.  They were both so content with the family that they had.  A beautiful, vivacious wife.  A loving, nurturing father.  A darling cherub of a child.

The two of them separated, opened their doors, and got out of the car.  And were knocked to the ground by the flailing tentacle of the enormous creature that had been swimming through the air behind their car.  They both hit the ground with a breath-crushing thud, and rolled to see the newest nightmare that their perfect little son had conjured from his REM state.  

It wasn’t any one thing, but more like a little of all things.  Pretty much every creature they’d seen at the aquarium had a piece attached somewhere to this creature, from the spiny starfish to the stingrays to the crocodiles.  And it was huge.  It was at least the size of a house, its tooth-laden maw was big enough to swallow their entire Audi in one bite.  Trevon may not have grown past toddling yet, but his dreams had grown way, way too big for their britches.

The pattern that they had worked out over the last several months was to turn to the nightstand at this point, grab the air horn, and blast it to wake Trevon up.  But they were outside, where there were no horns, and Trevon was still in the car, which would probably protect him from sound enough anyway.  Instead, he had to get that car open, and shout that baby awake before this behemoth caused some serious damage.

Oscar jumped to his feet and raced to the back door of the car.  Pulling the handle, he found that it did nothing.  The door was locked.  He tried the front door and it was locked too.  How could that be possible?  He’d just come out of the door only seconds before.  He turned ask Simi for the keys, when the creature slammed into the large Eucalyptus tree in their side yard, ripping it it from the ground as effortlessly as a person would pull a weed.  The tree crashed to the ground, as Oscar flinched, and reflexively covered his head to protect it.

The tree fell streetward, which was a very good thing for both Oscar and Simi.  It was a towering tree, and would have crushed either or both of them, whether they covered their heads or not.  The tree clipped the neighbor’s Lexus as it crashed down, crumpling the trunk, and slammed into the earth with enough force to make the ground shake beneath Oscar’s feet.  He had to move fast, or things would only get worse.

“Simi,” he called, “where are the keys?  The car is locked somehow.”

She looked at him with dazed, unfocused eyes.  Her hair, cinched in a tight neat bun moments earlier, was loose and frazzled, and a trickle of blood ran from her right nostril.  He could tell she didn’t know what was going on, and might not even be able to say who he was.  The bump she took from the creature when they’d gotten out of the car must have been much stronger than the one he’d suffered.

He ran to her side, diving to the ground as a long, spiny octopus-like tentacle and flapping stingray-like wing passed through the space he had been occupying.  He took her by the shoulders and lifted her to a sitting position.  She looked very pale, whiter than he’d ever seen her.

“Simi,” he looked into her eyes, they didn’t seem to be looking back, “where are the keys.  You just had them in your hands.  Where are they?”

She was gone.  Shock, and probably head trauma, had rendered her catatonic.  He wanted to shake her to snap her out of her trance, but from what he’d heard about concussions on NFL broadcasts shaking her would only make the problem worse.  He needed those smelling salts that he’d seen coaches hold under the noses of dazed players, but of course he had none.

    He looked up at the creature to make sure it wasn’t too close.  It didn’t even seem to know that they were there.  It was merely playing.  Swimming through the air as if it were water, swirling, cavorting, and dancing.  It seemed to have the energy of a happy dolphin at feeding time.  As he watched, it knocked over another tree across the street, toppling it into the house it had stood proudly in front of for at least fifty years.  Then it turned their way.

The creature passed above them, a flipper-like tail batting at the air.  Oscar grabbed Simi and ducked back to the ground.  She cried out in pain, and rolled to the side, grabbing at her hip.  Oscar looked to see what it had been, and saw that it was her keychain.  She must have landed on it when she fell, and, in a fluke, pressed the button on the key fob that locks the doors with her body.

He snatched the keychain up, and jammed his finger on the unlock button.  He heard a click from the car next to them, and dragged himself to his feet to yank open the back door, and wake up his son.  Only he never got that far.

END OF DAY TWELVE

I could have kept going, but this seemed like a fun cliffhanger to leave you on.