AtomicCafe1
07-05-2010, 11:55 AM
critique, critique, critique! Please :) And thanks!
Suddenly there is a knock on the front door and Valerie and her son Billy, both in the front room, turn their heads, but next to the front room in the living room, the head of husband Wendell remains transfixed to the television, because the volume of the television is too loud. Just moments before, Valerie was sitting cross-legged on the ground, contentedly reading over yesterday’s Life section of the newspaper, and Billy was motoring a toy fire truck back and forth on the carpet, vroom-vroom, and then the knock on the front door. And then Valerie said to Billy, “Who in the world could that be?” It’s dark out, and it must be two hours since they’d eaten dinner.
“Wen—” Valerie begins to call out, but she cuts herself short, as the last time she interrupted Wendell from his game on the television, which was about an hour ago, he’d leaned forward from his Laz-E-Boy and started, “Are you really doing this to me now? Are you—are you really doing this? Game five, quarterfinals—are you—are you really?” It was enough for Valerie to make the decision on her own if she was to fix him dessert or not. Which she wasn’t. But that dessert, now in Valerie and Billy’s stomach—homemade chocolate pudding—isn’t on her mind anymore, the only thing there is the fact that someone’s at the door when it’s dark out and it’s two hours past dinnertime.
Valerie and her son Billy, but not Wendell, hear the knock on the front door again, and Valerie stiffens, and she gets up, muttering, “Who in the world . . . ” She turns to the living room, to where Wendell is shouting at the TV, “Idiot, idiot! You idiot, what the heck are you doing!” and then shuffles to the door, flips on the outdoor light switch and looks out the window.
“Billy, you stay there,” she calls to the front room, but she could have gone without saying it, because it’s as if Billy were an ice sculpture, he hasn’t moved a muscle since the first knock. Then Valerie, her whole life a tender, cautious person, touches the doorknob like she’s testing if it’s hot. She turns the doorknob at the speed of a second hand on a clock, and finally the latch clicks open and she inches the door open, peeking outside.
She isn’t prepared for what stands outside of her front door, even though she isn’t really prepared for anything that would be at her front door in the dark, two hours past dinnertime. But after peeking out the door, she can’t help but gasp. Standing there is some type of creature that resembles a television—like the one in the living room—about three feet tall with slender, wavy antennas coming out of its top. The creature has three big eyeballs where the television screen would be and also a gaping hole, which must be its mouth, and it appears to move as a snake does, because it sneaks closer when the door opens, and it doesn’t have any legs. Valerie, out of instinct, looks for any slime on the ground but can’t see any.
“What in the world—” Valerie begins, but the television creature interrupts, “I need to come in,” as it barges past her through the crack in the door and slides to the front room. Valerie’s head swings from where the creature was just standing outside the door to the front room, back and forth, her brown hair whipping, and then she races to right behind it.
“Who in the world!” she asks as the creature slithers up to the boy, who still hasn’t moved a muscle. The creature stops about two inches from Billy’s face, and it stays there for nearly a minute. “Honey. Don’t move!” Valerie advises her son, barely surpassing a whisper. And her son listens, or else he doesn’t even hear her, doesn’t even hear anything; just sees the three eyeballs of a strange television creature.
The scene that follows is the boy and the creature facing off, frozen—save for the creature’s antennas, which slowly sway back and forth—while Valerie stands a few feet behind, every so often lurching forward but then immediately drawing back, afraid. In the background Wendell groans, “Oh come on!” at the television.
Finally the creature pulls back and looks at Valerie.
“Ma’am, Lady, Missus, Your Highness—we need this boy.”
“Wh—who—ha—wuh—why?” Valerie manages to blurt out.
“I think that it has been pretty,” the creature starts, then pauses. It has the voice of a man with a grizzly beard and an axe in his hand, only a little bit deeper. “It has been pretty evident,” it continues, “throughout your whole life that your son eventually needs to go away.”
Valerie nods, she keeps on nodding like she can’t stop, and she says, “Well, I dread the day. But I know my boy’s got to go to college sometime. Which, and I’m hoping he makes the correct, decision, you know, the college me and Wendell went to, ha ha, at—”
“It has been pretty evident throughout your whole life!” the creature quickly snaps. “That your son eventually needs to go away, not to a college or a university or a job or the armed forces! It has been pretty evident.”
Valerie doesn’t know what the creature is talking about, but she nods anyways. And then her nodding stop and she turns to Wendell’s voice in the living room, where it must be a commercial on the television, to it going, “Val! Has the boy taken out the trash? He needs to take out the trash!”
Valerie quickly responds, “Yes, I’m telling him right now.”
“What?”
“Yes, I’m telling him right now,” Valerie says a little louder.
“What did you say?”
“I said yes, I’m telling him right now,” Valerie says a little louder, and Wendell either hears her or gives up, and Valerie turns back to the creature. “What are you talking about?” she asks it.
“It has been pretty evident,” the creature begins, but right then Billy—who has remained an ice sculpture the entire time—slowly raises his hand as far as it allows him to go, so far that it looks as though his socket is about to pop out. The arm is left hanging for a long time as Valerie and the creature watch him, before finally Valerie ask, “What is it, Billy?” and Billy pipes out, “I need to go to the bathroom.” Valerie looks at the creature, as if to ask its permission, then says to Billy, “Go ahead.” He stands up and runs to the bathroom, down the hallway, and Valerie and the creature watch as he enters into the bathroom and closes the door, and they continue to watch as they hear him lift the toilet seat and start to pee. Then Valerie turns again to the creature.
“Could you please explain to me—” and then her voice falls down to a whisper, “what all is going on?”
A query about if the boy has taken out that trash yet comes from the living room, another commercial on the television.
“He will,” Valerie answers.
“What?”
“He will!”
“Yes it’s full, that’s why he needs to take it out! And you bet yer bottom dollar somethin’ll happen if he doesn’t!”
“Yes,” Valerie says, and then back to the creature, “I’m so sorry, please, do continue.”
“It has been pretty evident—”
The bathroom door opens, and Billy comes racing down the hall and, nearly tripping over his toy fire truck, he sits down and becomes an ice sculpture again.
“Ma’am, Lady, Missus, Your Highness,” the creature says. “It has been pretty evident your entire life that this boy of yours needs to go. And that he needs to go to save your world!”
“Oh!” Valerie squeals, and Billy stirs.
“I don’t have to say it twice, because, frankly, it has been pretty evident your entire life.”
“Oh!” Valerie squeals again.
A string of expletives comes from the living room about an idiot on the television who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“Why—why is it my son you need?”
“It just is the way of the universe and there is no way to change it, and frankly, it has been pretty evident your entire life,” the creature says.
“And, and why—” she lowers her voice, “why will the world end?”
“Did I say the world would end? No, I said your son will save your world.”
“But, but—save it from what?”
“Don’t you watch the news?”
Valerie straightens her head and quickly says, “Yes!” because she does, every single night—even though every single night she usually tunes out and just reads one of her magazines.
“Then it is pretty evident,” the television creature says.
“But, but . . . how long do you need him for?”
Billy is still an ice sculpture, his eyes staring straight ahead at a picture of a sailboat that hangs on the wall.
“In order to save your world, we’ll need your son for the rest of his life. It has been pretty evident.”
“The rest of his life! But, but . . . he’s my baby boy! Can’t you take him for only a few years? Or, just a year—or just a, just a few months. Just a month!”
“We need him for the rest of his life.
“Just a month!”
“We need him for the rest of his life, because—”
“Just a month!”
Valerie’s face is plastered with pleas and her eyes beg from the bottom of her heart to let this strange television looking creature only take her son for a month in order to save the world. The creature, with all three of its eyes, stares back, and finally, disgruntled, he says, “Fine, one month will do! Give me him right now though.”
“Oh? Oh . . . Oh.” She sighs. “Oh. Ok.”
“You idiot!” Wendell screams at the television from the living room.
The television creature slithers past Billy and past Valerie, and it slithers and stops in front of the door, as if waiting for the boy to come, but it gives no indication of this because it is just facing the door. Valerie again sighs, and approaches Billy, still staring at the sailboat picture. Having stared at the picture for so long, Billy has noticed quite a few things he has never noticed about the picture. Even though it is very hard to see, for some reason he swears that the lady on the boat is screaming, looking down into the water, and that there are faint ripples to indicate that someone has just jumped off the boat and drowned. He never noticed it before. It’s very hard to tell, though, because the person on the boat could just as easily be laughing as she could be screaming.
Billy jumps when Valerie places her hand on his shoulders, but then he turns around, welcoming, and faces her.
“Oh Billy,” Valerie says. “Oh Billy, I’m going to miss you.” She hugs him tight, and then tighter, and then tighter, and Billy coughs out, “Mom—can’t breathe!”
Valerie lets go of her son and looks him straight in the eyes, smiling.
“I’m so proud of you, Billy, saving the world! I’m so proud of you!” She thinks about how she’ll tell her sisters how important Billy is, and the neighbors, and his teachers, and the girl who is waiting on them at a breakfast diner someday way down the road. She hugs him again, and then she gets up and ushers him to the door, where the television creature is standing and waiting.
“Don’t be nervous Billy. You’ll do just fine, I know it. Oh. Oh!” All of a sudden she bursts into a fluff of tears. “Does he really have to do it? Does he really?” she asks the creature.
The creature turns around, and in its gruff, axe-holding voice it says, “It has been pretty evident—” and Valerie knows that there is nothing she can do.
And then one of the thin, wavy antennas, apparently very strong, pulls open the door, and the other grabs the hand of Billy. The two start walking down the driveway, but suddenly Valerie shouts out, “Wait! Wait!” She starts running to the front room, and then she stops, stricken with tension. She makes a few jerky moves, as if she’s a football player in front of her about to tackle her and she needs to dodge him, and then she turns to the couch and grabs a few books, ones that she had checked out for Billy but that are too advanced for him, as he tells her, even though she doesn’t seem to pay attention. She kicks the fire truck on her way back to the door, and then she races out to the driveway.
“I almost forgot, honey,” she says as she pushes the books into Billy’s arms. “We can’t have you forgetting everything you learned in school over the summer now!” Then she hugs Billy again swiftly, and tells the television creature to keep Billy safe. “Bye honey, don’t be nervous!” Then she watches as the pair disappears down the street.
Valerie stays there for quite some time, sighing every so often, wondering whether it was right to let her son go. It’s a pretty easy decision though, isn’t it? she thinks. I mean, I wouldn’t press a button that says “Ends the World” now, would I? And not giving up Billy is basically the same exact thing. And it’s only a month. I give up sugar for forty days during Lent! She finally stops looking off into the distance, and walks into the house and sits cross-legged in the front room in front of the boy’s overturned fire truck. She looks at it, and then her mind turns to Billy again, wonders what in the world they are going to do to him, he’s not going to get hurt, is he? But she has nobody to ask. She reaches out and grabs the toy truck, and she runs it back and forth, softly saying, vroom-vroom. Then she looks at the picture on the wall, the one that she and Wendell bought on sale from that cute little shop in the mall. And then she frowns and looks closer, and is that person on the boat screaming?
“Val! That trash taken out yet?”
“Huh?” She has gotten up to look more closely at the picture, and she stands right before it, peering at the lady.
“I said Val, that boy take the trash out yet?”
“He’s—” and Valerie breaks her concentration with the picture. “He’s with the McLeenies for a month.”
“He’s what?”
“He’s with the McLeenies for a month.”
“Jesus, I can’t—” he mutes the television. “What?”
“He’s with the McLeenies for a month,” Valerie says, sitting down and grabbing the Life section of yesterday’s newspaper.
“Oh. Well. So he left tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well as long as that trash gets taken out!”
And with that he unmutes the television.
Suddenly there is a knock on the front door and Valerie and her son Billy, both in the front room, turn their heads, but next to the front room in the living room, the head of husband Wendell remains transfixed to the television, because the volume of the television is too loud. Just moments before, Valerie was sitting cross-legged on the ground, contentedly reading over yesterday’s Life section of the newspaper, and Billy was motoring a toy fire truck back and forth on the carpet, vroom-vroom, and then the knock on the front door. And then Valerie said to Billy, “Who in the world could that be?” It’s dark out, and it must be two hours since they’d eaten dinner.
“Wen—” Valerie begins to call out, but she cuts herself short, as the last time she interrupted Wendell from his game on the television, which was about an hour ago, he’d leaned forward from his Laz-E-Boy and started, “Are you really doing this to me now? Are you—are you really doing this? Game five, quarterfinals—are you—are you really?” It was enough for Valerie to make the decision on her own if she was to fix him dessert or not. Which she wasn’t. But that dessert, now in Valerie and Billy’s stomach—homemade chocolate pudding—isn’t on her mind anymore, the only thing there is the fact that someone’s at the door when it’s dark out and it’s two hours past dinnertime.
Valerie and her son Billy, but not Wendell, hear the knock on the front door again, and Valerie stiffens, and she gets up, muttering, “Who in the world . . . ” She turns to the living room, to where Wendell is shouting at the TV, “Idiot, idiot! You idiot, what the heck are you doing!” and then shuffles to the door, flips on the outdoor light switch and looks out the window.
“Billy, you stay there,” she calls to the front room, but she could have gone without saying it, because it’s as if Billy were an ice sculpture, he hasn’t moved a muscle since the first knock. Then Valerie, her whole life a tender, cautious person, touches the doorknob like she’s testing if it’s hot. She turns the doorknob at the speed of a second hand on a clock, and finally the latch clicks open and she inches the door open, peeking outside.
She isn’t prepared for what stands outside of her front door, even though she isn’t really prepared for anything that would be at her front door in the dark, two hours past dinnertime. But after peeking out the door, she can’t help but gasp. Standing there is some type of creature that resembles a television—like the one in the living room—about three feet tall with slender, wavy antennas coming out of its top. The creature has three big eyeballs where the television screen would be and also a gaping hole, which must be its mouth, and it appears to move as a snake does, because it sneaks closer when the door opens, and it doesn’t have any legs. Valerie, out of instinct, looks for any slime on the ground but can’t see any.
“What in the world—” Valerie begins, but the television creature interrupts, “I need to come in,” as it barges past her through the crack in the door and slides to the front room. Valerie’s head swings from where the creature was just standing outside the door to the front room, back and forth, her brown hair whipping, and then she races to right behind it.
“Who in the world!” she asks as the creature slithers up to the boy, who still hasn’t moved a muscle. The creature stops about two inches from Billy’s face, and it stays there for nearly a minute. “Honey. Don’t move!” Valerie advises her son, barely surpassing a whisper. And her son listens, or else he doesn’t even hear her, doesn’t even hear anything; just sees the three eyeballs of a strange television creature.
The scene that follows is the boy and the creature facing off, frozen—save for the creature’s antennas, which slowly sway back and forth—while Valerie stands a few feet behind, every so often lurching forward but then immediately drawing back, afraid. In the background Wendell groans, “Oh come on!” at the television.
Finally the creature pulls back and looks at Valerie.
“Ma’am, Lady, Missus, Your Highness—we need this boy.”
“Wh—who—ha—wuh—why?” Valerie manages to blurt out.
“I think that it has been pretty,” the creature starts, then pauses. It has the voice of a man with a grizzly beard and an axe in his hand, only a little bit deeper. “It has been pretty evident,” it continues, “throughout your whole life that your son eventually needs to go away.”
Valerie nods, she keeps on nodding like she can’t stop, and she says, “Well, I dread the day. But I know my boy’s got to go to college sometime. Which, and I’m hoping he makes the correct, decision, you know, the college me and Wendell went to, ha ha, at—”
“It has been pretty evident throughout your whole life!” the creature quickly snaps. “That your son eventually needs to go away, not to a college or a university or a job or the armed forces! It has been pretty evident.”
Valerie doesn’t know what the creature is talking about, but she nods anyways. And then her nodding stop and she turns to Wendell’s voice in the living room, where it must be a commercial on the television, to it going, “Val! Has the boy taken out the trash? He needs to take out the trash!”
Valerie quickly responds, “Yes, I’m telling him right now.”
“What?”
“Yes, I’m telling him right now,” Valerie says a little louder.
“What did you say?”
“I said yes, I’m telling him right now,” Valerie says a little louder, and Wendell either hears her or gives up, and Valerie turns back to the creature. “What are you talking about?” she asks it.
“It has been pretty evident,” the creature begins, but right then Billy—who has remained an ice sculpture the entire time—slowly raises his hand as far as it allows him to go, so far that it looks as though his socket is about to pop out. The arm is left hanging for a long time as Valerie and the creature watch him, before finally Valerie ask, “What is it, Billy?” and Billy pipes out, “I need to go to the bathroom.” Valerie looks at the creature, as if to ask its permission, then says to Billy, “Go ahead.” He stands up and runs to the bathroom, down the hallway, and Valerie and the creature watch as he enters into the bathroom and closes the door, and they continue to watch as they hear him lift the toilet seat and start to pee. Then Valerie turns again to the creature.
“Could you please explain to me—” and then her voice falls down to a whisper, “what all is going on?”
A query about if the boy has taken out that trash yet comes from the living room, another commercial on the television.
“He will,” Valerie answers.
“What?”
“He will!”
“Yes it’s full, that’s why he needs to take it out! And you bet yer bottom dollar somethin’ll happen if he doesn’t!”
“Yes,” Valerie says, and then back to the creature, “I’m so sorry, please, do continue.”
“It has been pretty evident—”
The bathroom door opens, and Billy comes racing down the hall and, nearly tripping over his toy fire truck, he sits down and becomes an ice sculpture again.
“Ma’am, Lady, Missus, Your Highness,” the creature says. “It has been pretty evident your entire life that this boy of yours needs to go. And that he needs to go to save your world!”
“Oh!” Valerie squeals, and Billy stirs.
“I don’t have to say it twice, because, frankly, it has been pretty evident your entire life.”
“Oh!” Valerie squeals again.
A string of expletives comes from the living room about an idiot on the television who doesn’t know what he’s doing.
“Why—why is it my son you need?”
“It just is the way of the universe and there is no way to change it, and frankly, it has been pretty evident your entire life,” the creature says.
“And, and why—” she lowers her voice, “why will the world end?”
“Did I say the world would end? No, I said your son will save your world.”
“But, but—save it from what?”
“Don’t you watch the news?”
Valerie straightens her head and quickly says, “Yes!” because she does, every single night—even though every single night she usually tunes out and just reads one of her magazines.
“Then it is pretty evident,” the television creature says.
“But, but . . . how long do you need him for?”
Billy is still an ice sculpture, his eyes staring straight ahead at a picture of a sailboat that hangs on the wall.
“In order to save your world, we’ll need your son for the rest of his life. It has been pretty evident.”
“The rest of his life! But, but . . . he’s my baby boy! Can’t you take him for only a few years? Or, just a year—or just a, just a few months. Just a month!”
“We need him for the rest of his life.
“Just a month!”
“We need him for the rest of his life, because—”
“Just a month!”
Valerie’s face is plastered with pleas and her eyes beg from the bottom of her heart to let this strange television looking creature only take her son for a month in order to save the world. The creature, with all three of its eyes, stares back, and finally, disgruntled, he says, “Fine, one month will do! Give me him right now though.”
“Oh? Oh . . . Oh.” She sighs. “Oh. Ok.”
“You idiot!” Wendell screams at the television from the living room.
The television creature slithers past Billy and past Valerie, and it slithers and stops in front of the door, as if waiting for the boy to come, but it gives no indication of this because it is just facing the door. Valerie again sighs, and approaches Billy, still staring at the sailboat picture. Having stared at the picture for so long, Billy has noticed quite a few things he has never noticed about the picture. Even though it is very hard to see, for some reason he swears that the lady on the boat is screaming, looking down into the water, and that there are faint ripples to indicate that someone has just jumped off the boat and drowned. He never noticed it before. It’s very hard to tell, though, because the person on the boat could just as easily be laughing as she could be screaming.
Billy jumps when Valerie places her hand on his shoulders, but then he turns around, welcoming, and faces her.
“Oh Billy,” Valerie says. “Oh Billy, I’m going to miss you.” She hugs him tight, and then tighter, and then tighter, and Billy coughs out, “Mom—can’t breathe!”
Valerie lets go of her son and looks him straight in the eyes, smiling.
“I’m so proud of you, Billy, saving the world! I’m so proud of you!” She thinks about how she’ll tell her sisters how important Billy is, and the neighbors, and his teachers, and the girl who is waiting on them at a breakfast diner someday way down the road. She hugs him again, and then she gets up and ushers him to the door, where the television creature is standing and waiting.
“Don’t be nervous Billy. You’ll do just fine, I know it. Oh. Oh!” All of a sudden she bursts into a fluff of tears. “Does he really have to do it? Does he really?” she asks the creature.
The creature turns around, and in its gruff, axe-holding voice it says, “It has been pretty evident—” and Valerie knows that there is nothing she can do.
And then one of the thin, wavy antennas, apparently very strong, pulls open the door, and the other grabs the hand of Billy. The two start walking down the driveway, but suddenly Valerie shouts out, “Wait! Wait!” She starts running to the front room, and then she stops, stricken with tension. She makes a few jerky moves, as if she’s a football player in front of her about to tackle her and she needs to dodge him, and then she turns to the couch and grabs a few books, ones that she had checked out for Billy but that are too advanced for him, as he tells her, even though she doesn’t seem to pay attention. She kicks the fire truck on her way back to the door, and then she races out to the driveway.
“I almost forgot, honey,” she says as she pushes the books into Billy’s arms. “We can’t have you forgetting everything you learned in school over the summer now!” Then she hugs Billy again swiftly, and tells the television creature to keep Billy safe. “Bye honey, don’t be nervous!” Then she watches as the pair disappears down the street.
Valerie stays there for quite some time, sighing every so often, wondering whether it was right to let her son go. It’s a pretty easy decision though, isn’t it? she thinks. I mean, I wouldn’t press a button that says “Ends the World” now, would I? And not giving up Billy is basically the same exact thing. And it’s only a month. I give up sugar for forty days during Lent! She finally stops looking off into the distance, and walks into the house and sits cross-legged in the front room in front of the boy’s overturned fire truck. She looks at it, and then her mind turns to Billy again, wonders what in the world they are going to do to him, he’s not going to get hurt, is he? But she has nobody to ask. She reaches out and grabs the toy truck, and she runs it back and forth, softly saying, vroom-vroom. Then she looks at the picture on the wall, the one that she and Wendell bought on sale from that cute little shop in the mall. And then she frowns and looks closer, and is that person on the boat screaming?
“Val! That trash taken out yet?”
“Huh?” She has gotten up to look more closely at the picture, and she stands right before it, peering at the lady.
“I said Val, that boy take the trash out yet?”
“He’s—” and Valerie breaks her concentration with the picture. “He’s with the McLeenies for a month.”
“He’s what?”
“He’s with the McLeenies for a month.”
“Jesus, I can’t—” he mutes the television. “What?”
“He’s with the McLeenies for a month,” Valerie says, sitting down and grabbing the Life section of yesterday’s newspaper.
“Oh. Well. So he left tonight?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well as long as that trash gets taken out!”
And with that he unmutes the television.