Flash Fiction #1
The sun was setting by the time I went out to bring Ellis back for dinner. It melted low and red on the horizon; shadows stretched. The kid was kneeling in the center of the quiet street out front, humming to himself. He was playing with his chalk set — from up the street, I couldn't quite tell what he was drawing.
"Hey buddy," I called.
Ellis didn't look up.
"Hello! Earth to Ellis!"
Two serene eyes alighted on me. "Yes, daddy?"
"You hungry? Dinner's ready!"
Ellis smiled. "What is it?"
"You'll need to come in either way," I laughed. "But it's grilled cheese, your favorite. Let's get a move on!" I clapped my hands together in a sort of "chop chop" motion.
Anticipation dawned on Ellis. "Oh yeah? I'll be right there dad!"
Smiling excitedly, Ellis began collecting the chalk crayons. While I kept an eye on him, I tried to piece together what he'd been drawing. It took him a few minutes to track down where Ol' Yellow had gone — it had rolled under a nearby parked car — but even by the time he'd collected his precious artistic kit, I still had no idea what it was. It was complicated, lines zig-zagging everywhere in a frenzied yet somehow orderly way, covering a few square meters of the road, but I couldn't make any sense of it at all. One can never fathom the mind of a kid, I shrugged to myself.
Then he was buzzing up the street, past me, and into the kitchen, where he slammed enthusiastically down into his chair at the dining table, and my bemused pondering was quickly put to an end.
"Whoa there crazy, careful you don't tip your chair over!" I said, rushing after him just in time to see it tilt precariously from the force of the ten year old throwing himself into the chair like a madman.
"Sorry!"
Laughing, I steadied his chair with a hand and spatula'd two sandwitches off the pan and onto the paper plate sitting in front of him on the table, then served myself.
Just as I was about to sit down, Ellis looked at me, sudden intensity in his eyes. "Where's the grape juice?"
"Huh?"
"Aren't we going to have anything to drink?"
"Your water's right there, kiddo."
No response. I shrugged. Not worth fighting over.
"Sure, why not."
I peeled the fridge open and pulled the big bottle out from where it sat on the top shelf. Ellis's eyes followed it with a strange intensity as I poured him a glass, then myself, then put the bottle back in the fridge and sat down.
Dinner went quickly; I've always been a fast eater, and very few things in the world eat faster than a ten year old boy who's been outdoors running around all day. A teenager might take the medal for quantity, but watching Ellis eat, I felt sure he'd take the speed medal over anyone, any day.
The foster care workers said he'd just showed up in their system one day — no known relatives, no birth certificate, no social security number, no existing guardians. Totally off the grid, until one day, boom. When I'd agreed to adopt, they'd been skeptical of a single parent household, but I'd proven myself, and now here we were. I couldn't be happier. I also couldn't imagine just deserting a kid like this. Smart, sensible, enthusiastic, artistic. I couldn't have asked for better.
Ellis saw me staring at him instead of eating my sandwiches. "What's up?"
"Nothing. Just thinking about how much I love you, Ellis."
"I love you too, dad."
I lay awake that night listening to the rushing sound of the cars on the street below my window ebb and flow and the sounds of the nightlife in the street's riparian zone across the way, watching the slatted light and shadow of the cars' headlights through my blinds skew across my bedroom ceiling, running through repeated nonsense transformations in different shades of white and orange.
For some reason, it was the chalk pattern on the street that kept me awake. It bugged me.
Kids just make nonsense patterns sometimes, I told myself sternly. Hell, we all do. I did in my notes in the boardroom meeting Friday, for god's sake.
What's your deal, Alice?
I got up. Maybe some tea would calm this nonsensical attack of new parent nerves. Quietly, I inched the master bedroom door — always prone to squeaking loudly — open and padded down the hallway and past Ellis's half-open bedroom door, letting my eyes stretch wide, using the faint shapes of dark on darker and my mental map of the house to guide me.
I letmy hand play along the banister as I trotted carefully downstairs, images of tripping, falling, and breaking my neck in the darkness running through my head like a paranoid workplace safety video from hell.
The kitchen was peaceful. Gentle city light streamed through the window over the sink onto the dining table; the fridge hummed a hymn softly. God's in his heaven, I smiled to myself as I cracked the fridge open to pull out a cold green tea.
It was in the light of the fridge, as it spilled like warm butter out of the kitchen and across the house, that I realized the front door was open.
Chilled, I closed the fridge and, after waiting a moment to let my eyes adjust, approached the door. I felt around. No signs of forced entry. Pulling my pepper spray off the hook next to the door, I peered outside. I looked up the street, towards the bigger street that fed onto it, first. Nothing. Then I looked down it, and saw Ellis.
He was working on his chalk drawing.
Concrete and tarmac cold and harsh on my bare feet so recently pulled out of a warm bed, wrapped only in my light pajamas, I padded across the street to stand beside him.
When I got there, he didn't give any sign he'd seen or heard me — he just kept drawing, attention utterly transfixed by the unknown pattern that he was unfolding from deep within. Lines crosshatched lines, in ways that reminded me somehow of hair; curves latched together in Escherian tessellations that gave me goosebumps. I still couldn't see what he was drawing.
"Hey," I said softly. "You're supposed to be asleep, Ellis."
No response. Gently, I bent down and put my hand on his shoulder. "What's going on, buddy?"
His shoulder felt strange. It seemed to ripple beneath my hand, to shift slightly. But finally, Ellis turned and looked at me.
It must've been the moonlight, but his eyes seemed to protrude from their sockets, round and full like fruit left too long before being plucked.
"You're not supposed to see this," he said. There was a strange choral note to his voice I'd not heard before, like many similar voices, nearly overlapping, but getting their timing slightly wrong. "Please. I don't want you to see this."
"See what?" I said, grabbing both of his shoulders. Again there was that strange shifting sensation in them, as if something was moving under his skin.
With a shuddering sigh, Ellis answered me.
Insects.
Rustling insects, all over my hands, my feet.
I screamed and stepped back, accidentally crushing a few of the insects into gooy paste under my bare heels in the process.
"This," the rustling said. "We must renew. You were not meant to see."
I made a choking noise. I'm going insane. "Ellis?"
"Now that you've seen, it can never be the same," the voice moaned. "Why did you do this?"
"Ellis? Where are you, Ellis?" Nothing sensible came out of my mouth. There was nothing sensable in my mind. Just the rustling blackness of insects.
"So, Alice," the clean-cut therapist said, running a hand through his thick blonde hair. "How are you doing? I hope the anti-psychotics are helping you."
"Better," I said softly. "I still wonder where Ellis went, or whether he was entirely a figment of my imagination. Somehow, I can't find any of the paperwork. Just… dust, where I thought it should be. Sometimes, I think I still hear his voice, in the rustling of the insects in my walls."