Ethan let his fork clink onto the empty plate before him and drained his wineglass, then settled back into his couch. “Not bad,” he said aloud, and the dog isn’t even begging – yet. Spurred by that thought he swept up the empty glass and half-empty bottle of red in one hand, clamped the plate and fork with the other and tried to pluck it all from his coffee table without scratching the wood. He’d almost taken one whole step toward the kitchen before a loud bark erupted from the back of the house. Continue reading “Something’s in the backyard”
More things to hmm about
“The news said she didn’t make it, I’m sorry,” Lilly said, a hint of the old concern in her voice.
Today was Saturday, and Friday’s warm humidity had collided with the normal October coolness and produced a satisfyingly dense fog. I’d been perfectly content watching reruns of Castle from the familiar safety of my couch, but the phone had rung, and I, unwisely, had answered.
“You have some damned explaining to do,” said my phone. I knew the voice, the tone. I knew I was in for it. But instead,
“Oh? About…?”
“What are you doing right now?” she challenged.
“Watching Castle,”
“Snarky or serious?”
“Snarky one,”
Lilly paused, as if contemplating the relative worth of Castle versus whatever she wanted.
Hmm…
Is this what a panic attack feels like? the thought flickered through Ethan’s mind and was lost, one clear glimpse of a single piece of straw – in a hurricane. His mind was a strange and stormy place, ears full of booming blood and throbbing pressure. He could feel his heart hammering in his neck and constricting ice in his core. Sounds came to him twisted and diminished, the screams from patrons two tables over seemed to come from far away, traffic noise from beyond the patio was lost to him altogether.
A beginning?
As the panic spread, so did the smoke. When reality itself tears, turns out there are great gouts of acrid smoke to go along with that feeling of “holy shit what is that?” It’s visible for miles. Unless it’s foggy. Or raining. At night you can see it from even farther off as the edges of the tear burn sodium-bright through the smoke. The flashing is like a string of Satan’s own firecrackers tossed into the street. The tears burn, so we call them smoke.
What they are are rifts.
They are doors.