ALVIN SULLENGER

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

ALVIN SULLENGER

By R. Peterson

A stream of smoke rose from the toaster just as Ellen Sullenger finished buttering the first two Wonder bread slices. Jan hurried past and grabbed a buttered one, tearing off chunks and stuffing them into her mouth so she wouldn’t smear her lipstick. Ellen handed the other buttered-slice to Alvin. He stared at it with a dismal expression, then his face crumpled. Ellen sighed and opened the fridge. Her youngest child demanded exactly one and a half spoonful’s of strawberry-jam on his toast … always. “I put tuna-fish sandwiches in your lunchbox along with cookies and a dime to buy fresh milk. No chocolate!” Keith walked past and grabbed a burnt slice from the toaster ignoring the charcoal as he chewed it dry. She spread jam on Alvin’s toast “Don’t you want me to scrape the burned bits from that?”

“No time.” Keith left mumbled crumbs on her cheek when he kissed her. “Rudford says everyone has to come in early all week. The mill has a new order and the processed lumber has to be finished by Friday.” He was already out the door. “Love you!”

“Daddy’s driving me. Love you Momma!” Jan was skipping through leaves on a front lawn as she headed toward the Nash.

 “Keep your coat buttoned until you get to school.” It was cold in September 1958 and Ellen worried about her youngest. Alvin was extremely smart and did well academically. It was the other fourth-graders that had her concerned. Alvin had been born with water on the brain and severe coordination problems. After a half-dozen operations, the scars on his head made him look like a pint-sized Frankenstein. Alvin had wobbled home on his spindly legs several times last year with a bleeding nose. He said he’d tripped, but Ellen didn’t think so. Children could be cruel to anyone labeled different, and Alvin certainly was.

Ellen grabbed his new jacket, the one the Sears man said everyone would be wearing, but Alvin shook his head. “No mama! The hood! I want the hood-coat.”

“You don’t want this new one? It’s your favorite color … red!” When Alvin set his mind to something he would not be detoured.

“No Mama. I want socking and hood-coat!” Ellen sighed and pulled a stocking cap from the shelf in the hallway closet and tugged it over his extra-large head, then pulled out last year’s ragged coat. “My you’re certainly bundled up!” She said as she helped him with the zipper. His ear-to-ear grin made her smile. She turned on the radio and watched Alvin wobble down the sidewalk as she scraped the last piece of burnt toast over the sink. After a commercial for Dash soap, Perry Como sang Catch a Falling Star.

-------2-------

Voices came from the other side of a large house when Alvin was almost to the corner. Terrell Adams and Mike Lee spotted him before he could duck behind Mrs. Descombey’s snowball bushes. “Hey Egghead! What do you eat for breakfast?” They were running toward him. Mike Lee laughed at his friend’s joke.

“I like toast with strawberry jam,” Alvin said, as if this information would satisfy the bullies. Terrell Adams, who’d skipped three years of school for medical reasons and was thirteen, always gave off a smell of almonds that Alvin associated with State Hospital North, Cloverdale’s mental health facility.

“You can’t eat eggs,” Terrell continued. “That would make you a cannibal … Egghead, Egghead, Egghead!” he taunted. Mike Lee snickered.

“My name is not Egghead,” Alvin stammered. “It’s Alvin … Alvin Sullenger.”

“I heard your name is Frankie …” Mike Lee pushed forward enjoying the look of confusion and fear on the younger child’s face, “…Frankie Stein!” Mike Lee laughed and looked at Terrell, but the older boy was rubbing his neck, perhaps he had another headache. Mike shoved Alvin into the bushes and Alvin’s lunch-box spilled on the sidewalk.

“Egghead likes tuna-fish!” Terrell shook his head and then stomped on the Saran-wrapped sandwich. Tuna, pickles and mayonnaise spattered onto the concrete and the bottom of Terrell’s boot. “Yuck!” He wiped his heel on Alvin’s pants and put the cookies in his pocket.

“Look a dime!” Mike Lee held up the milk money.

“Dib’s!” Terrell snatched the coin, and then knelt beside a sobbing Alvin. His eyes were evil. “You tell a parent, a teacher, or anyone …” Alvin pulled down the stocking cap and twisted the hood over his face as the bully began to batter his head, “… and you’ll cry a lot more!”

Terrell picked up the lunch box with a masked and caped Guy Williams riding a rearing black stallion on the front. “Just so you remember …” Terrell used a switch-blade knife to scratch a large jagged “Z” in the thin metal. “That stands for zero not Zorro,” he said. “That’s the number of people you are going to blab to!”

By the time Alvin wiggled from the bushes, he was the last one to board the bus. Lucky his glasses hadn’t been broken. “You need to get here quicker,” Mr. Cranston complained. “I almost left you!” Alvin sat in the first seat next to the driver. He rubbed his swollen face and nose. “I like socking and hood-coat,” Alvin jabbered as he looked at his clean hand. This time there was no blood.

Mr. Cranston shook his head as the bus rumbled away. Why did they make retards go to school?

-------3-------

            Alvin was the last one to totter into Mrs. Dern’s fourth-grade classroom. He had to wait for the crowds to thin-out in the halls or he would get knocked down in the bustle. Chloe O’Brian’s pigtailed and ribbon-tied hair tickled his nose as he sat in the assigned seat behind her. Alvin closed his eyes and imagined he was Clark Jensen. He had watched the tallest kid in the elementary kiss Chloe on the playground. Her light-brown hair always smelled like Halo shampoo and her voice sounded like Bridgett Bardot.

            “We will do our science lessons first …” the students moaned and Mrs. Dern slapped her desktop with a yardstick, “Does anyone remember who Sir. Isaac Newton was?”

            “Yeah,” Terrell Adams raised his hand and spoke without being called on. “He’s the man who invented gravity.”

            “That’s not quite correct,” Mrs. Dern said. “He experimented with gravity and discovered some interesting things. Who can tell me what some of them are?”

            “That an apple will fall on your head if you sit under a tree,” Ben Hicks blurted and the class laughed.

Alvin waved his thin arm. Mrs. Dern looked around the classroom but his was the only raised hand. She reluctantly chose him. “Yes, Alvin.”

“Every object in the Universe attracts every other object with a force directed along the line of centers for the two objects …” Alvin spoke like a talking encyclopedia. “…that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the separation between the two objects.”

“That’s more than correct Alvin.” Mrs. Durn turned and drew two circles with chalk on the blackboard- one large and one small. “Objects attract each other!”

Terrell Adams, leering on the back row, took the opportunity to hit the back of Alvin’s head with a spitball. “Your head is big enough to have its own gravity, Egghead!” he hissed. Several girls in the classroom giggled. Chloe turned and looked, but she wasn’t laughing. Alvin didn’t raise his hand again, even though he knew all the answers to Mrs. Dern’s questions.

Later, Mrs. Dern had just finished reading Three Billy Goats Gruff when the bell rang for morning recess. Terrell Adams stood up as if in a trance, foam ran from the corner of his mouth but no-one saw before he swiped it away with his tongue.  Alvin could almost taste the almonds lingering around Adams. He lingered in his seat but Mrs. Dern insisted he follow the other children out to play.

Finally Terrell stumbled outside holding his head and Alvin could breathe easier. The girls jumped rope on one side of the school while the boys played baseball on the other side. Terrell Adams and Brian Hicks were taking turns choosing teams. “Whoever ends up with Alvin bats first,” Hicks suggested. Alvin would much rather have played on the swing-set or on the old Merry-go-round, the one he’d gotten a finger caught in last year, than listen to the jeers and taunts of the other boys in his class. He listened as each boy in his class was selected. When he was the last child standing, the team captains didn’t even bother to call his name, Brian Hicks just shouted, “We bat first!”

Terrell Adams struck-out two batters and walked one before Hicks slammed the ball across the back-fence for a home run. Two other boys hit singles. The bases were loaded when it came time for Alvin to walk to the plate. “It’s not fair!” Hicks shouted. “This happens every time we play because we get stuck with this loser!” He kicked dirt on the boy with the big head picking up a bat and wobbling on thin legs toward home plate.

            “Easy out! Easy out!” The outfielders began to chant. Alvin had always been afraid of the fast moving hard-ball. His arms were trembling and he had a hard time holding the bat in the correct position.

            “Come on Egghead! Hit the ball for once,” one of Alvin’s teammates shouted.

Terrell Adams seemed out of focus as he threw the first ball low and inside. Alvin was so terrified he closed his eyes and waved the bat. The reaction was just as he expected. He heard his own teammates groan and the opposing team laugh. Someone on his own team yelled “You dork!” When Alvin opened his eyes the catcher was throwing the ball back to Adams.

The second pitch was at least a foot over his head. Alvin swung anyway. Both teams laughed.

            Alvin tried to remember all the things he’d read about baseball: The velocity of the ball, the angle at which it struck a fast-moving object and the opposing force behind the bat. He knew all the geometry and physics involved in playing the game, he just didn’t have the physical ability. Alvin squinted at the pitcher through his thick pop-bottle glasses. Terrell Adams liked to play ball, but he also had a sadistic side to him. He often threw the ball inside because he liked to see fear in others. Was there any way to defeat him? Alvin tottered a step back from the plate and choked–up (gripped it higher on the handle) to stop it from shaking. Every object in the Universe attracts every other object …

Adams grunted and stomped on the pitcher’s mound. “This little goat thinks he’s going to get past me!” The resident bully of Cloverdale Elementary wound-up like his hero New York Yankees pitcher Don Larsen and threw the ball viciously toward the plate but Alvin didn’t swing, instead he focused on the ball and stuck out the bat, holding it as firmly as he could along the line of centers for the two objects. The bat and the ball connected with a sound like a rifle shot. Alvin felt the force of the collision tear the wooden-bat from his hands. His team all seemed to be shouting at once. Alvin squinted at the ball bouncing high on the grass toward Mrs. Fowler’s fence. Brian Hicks grabbed Alvin spinning him around and shoving him toward first-base, just as the runner on third came charging into home. “Run you idiot,” he screamed.

The ball would have bounced over the fence if Kurt Smith hadn’t leaped into the air and caught it. He was too far out to throw to first, so he threw the ball to the pitcher.

            Alvin looked like a toddler as he stumbled toward first-base. A million thoughts ran through his over-large head. What if he made it? Did he have to stand on the base? He’s seen lots of other boys run past. Was it okay if you just stepped on it?

Terrell Adams caught the ball and spun around looking toward first base furious that the goat had somehow got a hit off from him. What should have been at least a triple now looked like it might even be a base hit for the biggest-loser in the school. This wasn’t the way life was supposed to work. If Alvin Sullenger made it to first-base his reputation as a ball player might be forever tarnished. The little goat was trip-tripping along, less than two yards from the base. What if first baseman Dan Reed missed the throw? Adams hurtled the baseball with all the venom and force he could muster.

Alvin’s wobbly legs were just a half-dozen tottering steps from success when the baseball slammed into his head. The world spun for only a second before he fell, but to Alvin it was eternity … the sound of children playing turned soft … and then became black.

-------4-------

            Alvin’s mind moved through a vast emptiness pushed by a heavy shadow from a place of less. There was no sight, sound, smell, touch or taste … only awareness of awareness. He was cognizant of the force from which all things are created … the God Power; the ultimate power of nothing.  Without matter and energy, and their negative counterparts, the fabric of space-time does not exist. He reached out with his mind and felt what scientists would later call dark matter and he was awe-struck at the implications. He knew the universe was in exacting balance. In order to have more than nothing, he realized you must also have less. Those who search for anything always stop when they find nothing, but Alvin now realized that you must keep looking … or you will never find the less that makes up 68% of the cosmos … dark energy the anti-gravity force that expands the universe.

Alvin became aware of something appearing just beyond the event horizon he had been pushed from.  Had it been energy, the change would have been millions of light years away. But without light he still had eons to search for the less … but still he must hurry.  He became aware of various size holes in the nothing and he found he could differentiate them … He thought about the one-hundred eighteen known elements and looked for the opposite properties. The something was moving closer at a very high rate of speed. The first dark element he found, the opposite of hydrogen he named Melantha after the Greek female name for dark flower. Instead of a single electron orbiting a proton and neutron, Melantha had a brace spanning a single hole to keep it from closing. The second element he called Adelphé, the sister with two holes and two braces at right angles to each other. He discovered the more holes the dark element had, the more braces it took to keep the dark energy flowing.

Alvin had identified and named eighty-six dark elements, dark sisters, before the something moving toward him arrived … and there was light!

-------5-------

            “We thought we’d lost you for a moment!” Mrs. Dern bent over Alvin on the playground.

            “Alvin ran right into the ball!” Terrill Adams was throwing his mitt on the ground, picking it up and throwing it down again. “Why does that damn goat always try to cross my bridge?”

            “Alvin Sullenger is a valuable member of society too,” Mrs. Dern said as she picked up and carried the now conscious boy toward the school. “I’d be happy to walk Alvin home,” Chloe O’Brian called. “I know his mother is always without a car.”

A group of girls had crowded around the baseball diamond. “What if Alvin dies?” one of the girls gasped.

            “So what if he does?” Terrill Adams smirked. “It’s his own fault he ran into the ball.”
            “I saw you throw that baseball right at him,” Chloe O’Brian stepped from the crowd and spoke up. “Alvin wasn’t anywhere near first-base. You hit him on purpose. If Alvin dies, that’s going to make it murder.”

Just then the bell rang. Terrell Adams was still glaring at Chloe as he followed the crowd into the building. Foam ran from the corners of his mouth. Adams knew one thing. Even if Alvin didn’t die, he wasn’t going to have someone trip-tripping on his future as a professional baseball player because of what Alvin, Mrs. Dern or that damn girl said.

Someone had placed a pan of almonds on a stove somewhere and the smell was sickly delicious. Terrell took a deep breath … and then many more. He smiled. Chloe usually walked home from school and so did Alvin. He’d watched them many times, and they had to cross several bridges before they arrived. Terrell thrust a hand deep in his pocket. The switch-blade knife he’d swiped from his father’s workroom drawer at home felt warm in his hand. There just might be a Great Ugly Troll waiting for one or more of the three goats when they got to a good place.

To be continued …

            

NIGHT FARM part 2

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

NIGHT FARM

Part 2

By R. Peterson

Stephen hurled a burning oil-lamp at the two figures looming over his mother’s coffin. The demons burst into flames, twisting and screaming as they sent lumps of charred and rotted flesh flying about the parlor. The white-haired hag on the ancient stairs hissed a warning as Stephen covered Camille’s face with his jacket and they crashed through a glass window onto a sagging porch. “Run,” he shouted.

“No, we should go back inside and politely thank our lovely host,” Camille snickered. Stephen’s prom date was already three steps ahead of him. “We don’t want to appear rude,” she yelled over her shoulder.

A large combine, sending cut, translucent, pod-shaped vegetables up a conveyor belt and into a truck-bed, stopped at the end of a row. The shadowy driver leaped from the harvester and scuttled forward on rotted legs that clacked as it jumped rows.  Fleshless skull eye-sockets tracked them from under a black hood. Stephen gripped Camille’s hand as they fled around the side of the decrepit house and sprinted toward a straw-stack. The wretched old woman crooned from the doorway. Her carefully constructed English words were now being distorted by her anger. “Run Johnny-cakes run. I’ll fetch my furcă and a mic of butter … and then we’ll have cina.”

Stephen and Camille covered themselves with loose straw, seconds before a group of hooded workers carrying scythes and pitchforks, searched everywhere for them. “We can’t delay a harvest of souls for two delicioase bites that show up neinvitate,” the old woman complained to the largest. “Back to work you skags! I’ll have Bluthund nose-out their locuri de ascundere (hiding places).”

“As you desire, Teroare,” the largest monster bowed, then led the others away.

“Do you really want to stay for dinner?” Stephen whispered under the straw. Camille’s fingernails digging into his flesh was answer enough. They listened as the searchers moved away and Stephen dared a peek. Teroare appeared across from the straw stack moments later clutching a curved horn from some unknown animal. She clambered up a mound of mossy field-rocks, placed the end of the horn in her wrinkled mouth, and blew three shrill blasts that sounded like ice breaking on a frozen lake. “Come to me Blunthund,” she screeched. "Vino la mine!"

Teroare lurched through an apple-orchard toward a well with a thick rope dangling from a hand crank. The old hag stuck her head inside the rock-lined shaft and her raspy voice echoed inside. “Come out Johnnycakes and we’ll have us a quick nibble …” Her voice spewed hate and venom. “Stay! and you’ll ripen like goat cheese.”

“We have to move!” Stephen nudged Camille.

“What?” Camille sputtered. “She hasn’t found us.”

“But she will,” Stephen told her. “I’ve a feeling whatever creature she summoned is very good at sniffing-out … Johnnycakes.”

Stephen and Camille ran to the shed the old woman had just vacated.

The small out-building was filled with farm-tools, bones and fertilizer. A skull, placed on a workbench, held down a stack of papers at one end of the room. Camille lifted the bone and read from a notebook. “Isn’t your mother’s name Louise?”

“Yes,” Stephen shivered as he thought about the body the horrible creatures had carried into the house.

“Well, according to this, your mother isn’t dead, and she won’t be until after she’s been planted and then harvested.”

Stephen snatched the notebook and scanned down a list of names. “You’re right,” he gasped as he comprehended the book-keeping. “Here is a listing for Lavar Hicks. His soul was planted on July third and harvested on July fourth of last year. That’s the day he got ran over by a freight-train at Townsend railway crossing. People in Cloverdale had a double-reason to celebrate Independence Day. Hicks was a dirty bastard, he’d shoot any animal that wandered onto his property. It was rumored that he kept kittens in a cage to lure curious dogs to their deaths.”

-------2-------

          Camille cracked open the shed-door and peered out. Her gasp made Stephen drop the notebook. “What is it?” He moved beside her.

Teroare stood on a wooden barrel fastening a rusted chain to a towering two-legged brute that looked as if it might be a cross between a bear and a bull. Shaggy, filthy, matted-hair sprawled over a black wrinkled snout with flaring nostrils that sniffed the air in all directions. A pair of upward curving horns looked as sharp as pitchfork tines.  Blunthund opened his mouth and roared, showing rows of enormous teeth.  Nested birds flew in all directions from the orchard. “Where’s Lavar Hicks when you need him?” Camille moaned.

            “She’s already looked here once,” Stephen said. “But that doesn’t mean her pet won’t poke his ugly snout inside.” He dragged a bag of steer manure from a stack and opened it. “You look so pretty,” Stephen grimaced. “I hate to do this.”

            “You certainly are different,” Camille mused as she smeared handfuls of the sterilized cow-poo on her dress and arms. “Most of my prom dates just give me a corsage.”

Stephen glanced outside. The beast was rampaging through the straw-stack throwing clumps of straw with its claws. Stephen poured the rest of the fertilizer around Camille as she sat on the floor and then dumped another over them both as he sat beside her. He let the empty sacks fall on top as if the fertilizer had spilled of its own accord.

Blunthund’s enormous head squeezed through the doorway moments later. Nostrils as large as gopher holes sniffed the air and dripped moldy ick on the wood plank floor. Teroare tugged on the chain trying to pull the beast back. “I’ve already looked in there,” she spat. “I’ll not have you dripping snot on my record books.” The creature crinkled its long nose in distaste, and peered around the room with dark murderous eyes for a long moment. The homicidal gaze of the brute lingered for what seemed an eternity on the piled fertilizer before the creature backed out.

Camille’s head popped up from the dried dung a second before Stephen’s. “Feelin' down and dirty, feelin' kind of mean..” Camille sang the words to the Foreigner hit-song with whispered falsetto as she brushed away the gunk.”

“I've been from one to another extreme,” Stephen laughed as he added the next line and then rose and staggered toward the door. He didn’t make it. He slipped in a puddle of Blunthund’s gooey slime and landed on his back.

Camille stood over him and giggled. She could tell he wasn’t seriously hurt. “Most guys don’t fall for me until after we’ve had our first kiss-” she lifted him to his feet. Her cheeks were smudged with grime but her eyes were as bright as sapphires glistening in water. Stephen brushed a clump of dust from her chin and then his lips touched hers.

-------3-------

            “My God! It’s the Axegoon Murderer!” Camille later gasped as she and Stephen watched the demonic farm workers from behind a group of trees. The giant harvester had finished reaping the field only an hour before and already an enormous machine towing a trailer filled with coffins was moving up and down the rows digging enormous round holes in the soil and dropping black boxes, like the one Stephen’s mother had lain in, vertically into the ground with a loud thump as each one was covered and compacted. The hooded figure that had startled Camille, was dragging a large axe as he lurched up and down the freshly furrowed fields ahead of the planter obviously making sure the rows were planted straight.

            “That’s my mother!” Stephen and Camille watched as a slightly charred coffin with Transport Des Morts carved on the side was inserted into the ground.

            “We can’t help her now,” Camille told him. “We have to leave while we can.”

The two hadn’t walked far when they heard the sound of an engine running. They watched from behind a clump of bushes as one of the large trucks that had been receiving produce from the harvester backed up to a moon-lit pond. Giant hydraulics lifted the truck-bed and began to empty thousands of human-shaped translucent pods between the gaping jaws of an enormous fish that had wiggled half-way out of the water. The green monster grinned as it displayed rows of spear-like teeth from a mouth as large as a railroad tunnel.

“So that’s what is going to happen to my mother after she’s harvested?” Stephen turned and started back.

“We can’t go back!” Camille protested. “We’ve narrowly escaped getting caught twice. It will be morning soon. The fog is lifting. I’m sure we can find our way out of this hellish part of Comanche County and bring back the police!”

Stephen pointed to several rows that had already been planted. Leafy stems were sprouting from the ground under the moonlight. A few already were developing the strange seed-pods that resembled the humans from which they spawned. “The time from planting to the harvest must be less than an hour this time of year,” he said. “That’s my mother out there. If I don’t put a stop to this, her soul will grow into nothing more than a few nibbles for a gluttonous fish.”

            “Alright, I’m with you,” Camille gulped as she followed. “But we can’t just go running out in the fields. I think these dead land farmers must do something to the people before they plant them, make them sick or something. That’s what will happen to us if we get caught.”

            “Do you have any ideas about how we’re going to get my mother out of there?” Stephen was confused and frustrated and he knew Camille had a better mind for figuring things out.

            “I think I might have,” she told him. “Do you still have that lighter?”

-------4-------

“It’s disgusting how many people have been planted and harvested in Comanche County in just the past year,” Camille said as she tore pages from the notebook. They were both inside the shed the old woman had retrieved the horn from; the shed where she kept her records. Stephen was dragging everything he could find, that would burn, into a pile next to the doorway.

Camille noticed several stacks of similar notebooks under the workbench as she blew dust off from a cover and looked for more paper. “This has been going on for years,” she gasped. “The date on this harvest entry is April nineteenth, seventeen thirty-four!”

            “That’s impossible,” Stephen said as he smashed a wooden pallet and broke the boards into kindling. “There were only Sioux, Blackfoot and Crow Indians and maybe a few snow-bound trappers living in this part of Montana in the eighteenth century.”

            “You’re right about that,” Camille gasped. She began to read some of the entry names out loud: Running Fox, Laughing Buffalo, Sky Spirit, Afraid of Bears … these aren’t your typical Irish potato-famine immigrants that these ghouls have been planting for hundreds of years.”

Stephen twisted one of the empty fertilizer bags around a broken rake handle and made a crude torch. “I hope this plan works,” he said as he lit the dry paper.

            ‘It should,” Camille told him as she tore pages from an even older record book that looked like it had been written with a faded brown liquid; perhaps blood. “You remember how all the workers came running when we escaped from the farm house. What do you think is going to happen when one of their buildings catches fire?”

            “Get ready to run,” Stephen said as he pulled Camille to the doorway. “We don’t want to be here to find out.

The pile of kindling caught fire quickly, too quickly! Seconds later the small fire was a roaring inferno and beginning to spread. Stephen heard Camille scream just as he started to turn.

Teroare, the white-haired hag from the house had Camille gripped tightly by the neck with her bony fingers. ‘I’ve never had this much probleme with a meal before,” she hissed as she reached for Stephen. “The bodies we receive here are but vessels for the soul without form or substanţă. I have hungered for fresh umane flesh for many long centuries.”

            “I’ll bet you have!” Stephen wiggled free from her claws, stepped back and then thrust the burning torch into the woman’s face. Camille jerked free.

Teroare screamed as she twisted and danced in the flames. A smell like rotted apples left in a pile by a lazy farmer and finally set ablaze filled the air.

Strangely, Teroare softly sang a child’s lullaby as she began to be consumed.

My  rulouri are ten for a penny.

Any less … and I haven’t any.

The pret you pay for anything.

Is equal to all durere you bring.

-------5-------

Stephen and Camille were watching from the trees when the first workers started to arrive at the fire. Several of the hooded workers tried to stomp out the flames and were sent running in all directions when the black robes they wore caught fire. Teroare was nothing more than a large glowing ember as she floated toward the stars. Still her lingering song could be heard on a gentle night breeze:

“I lăsaţi you now but I’ll be back.

Sun go backward, day turn black.

Sleep in pat with open eye.

To see me vin before you die.

Blunthund, the hairy beast Teoare used as a tracking animal, hoisted a massive dripping, three-hundred gallon livestock water-tank, that must have weighed over a ton, into the air and carried it in his bulging arms to the inferno. Undercover of the resulting blast of steam, Stephen and Camille dashed into the fields.

            “I don’t see your mother!” Camille moaned as she searched up and down the rows. Most of the fast growing plants were already producing pods, tiny growing faces that resembled the people who were going to die when the harvest came.

            “Here she is!” Stephen shouted. The commotion of the workers trying to put out the fire on the other side of the steam curtain concealed his voice. Stephen gasped. “All three of her!”

Three, three-dimensional figures growing from what looked like a strange Okra plant captured Louise Richards’ facial features in exacting detail, two younger but the last looking pretty much the same as when Stephen had last seen her only hours before.

            “It’s too late to dig up her soul vessel,” Camille said remembering how the old woman had described Stephen’s mother lying in the box. “I think her essence now resides in these pods.”

The steam was lifting; the workers almost had the fire under control. Several of the demons were beginning to look toward the fields. Stephen closed his eyes for a moment afraid that he would make a mistake. A look of grim determination came into his eyes. He picked all three pods and put them in his jacket pocket … and then they ran.

-------6-------

It was growing light on the eastern horizon as Stephen and Camille made their way through the trees. “I must say you really know how to treat a girl on a first date,” Camille giggled.

            “I’m so sorry,” Stephen apologized. “What on Earth are your parents going to say?”

            “I think they will be sad for a while, but nothing in this world lasts forever, not even grief.”

            “What are you talking about?” Stephen was beginning to get nervous. Camille linked her arm with his.

            “This whole night has been strange,” Camille said. “Too damn strange!” She leaned over and kissed Stephen. “I’ve felt like I was in a dream the whole time and I still do but it’s the kind of dream that I’m sure we are not going to wake up from.”

            “I’ve felt kind of the same way,” Stephen stammered. “But more nightmare than dream!”

            “How often in your dreams do you watch the sun rise?” Camille asked him.

            “It takes a lot more than sleep to make that happen,” Stephen agreed.

A vivid spot of illumination appeared on the dark horizon. It grew in intensity and magnitude until the entire eastern sky was glowing brilliant white. Stephen’s favorite songs filled the air with unbelievable stereo ambiance and so did Camille’s. Each listened to the special harmonies of angels singing along to the rhythm of their own heartbeats and desires.

            “Thank you for a wonderful evening,” Camille said.

And then they walked into the light.

-------7-------

“You found them?” Louise Richards’ hopeful expression turned to fear when she saw the look on the policemen’s faces.

The first officer removed his hat and stepped respectfully into the kitchen without being asked. The other followed a few steps behind. “We found your car on Canyon Road,” he stammered. “It appears your son …” He gulped as he looked at a tiny notebook in his hand. “And a Miss Camille Foster failed to negotiate a turn, probably because of the heavy fog last night and crashed through a barbed wire fence.”

            “Are they all right?” Louise felt like putting a hand over the officer’s mouth … she didn’t want to hear what it was that he didn’t want to say. She felt as if she might faint and felt the other officer support her arms as he led her to a chair.

            “The car they were riding in struck a concrete irrigation-canal levy…” tears flooded from the policeman’s eyes, “…and they were both pronounced … dead at the scene.

Hours later, Louise sat in her kitchen staring out the window. On A Cloud Garden, Cloverdale’s only funeral home, had just delivered Stephen’s blood-soaked suit in a plastic bag along with his other belongings. Louise forced herself to remove the clothing from the bag. She was so weary now, when earlier in the night she’d miraculously recovered from her illness and felt like she had the energy of three women. The blood would have to be cold-water soaked from the jacket and pants before they could be laundered. There was just not enough money to bury her son in anything else.

            She felt a lump in the jacket pocket as she opened the lid to her washing machine. Three chunks of Okra and a Bic lighter appeared in her hand. Stephen was always lighting the old gas burners, but she wondered where the odd vegetables come from. “What a strange thing for Stephen to have in his pocket,” Louise said as she held the seed pods up to a dim light bulb.

THE END? 

NIGHT FARM

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

By R. Peterson

                 “I’ll not have you argue with me while I’m sick,” Louise Richards told her worried son as he lingered at her bedside. Her face was as white as the sheets that covered her too-thin body. “I’ve put a bit of money away and it’s your senior dance we’re talking about.” Louise coughed blood into a ragged handkerchief.  “There’s ten dollars in the cookie-jar. Some of it is in change, dimes and nickels … but no pennies to embarrass you. Use the coins for your tip. I want you and your date to have a good time.” She grasped her son’s hand and her sunken eyes took on an urgent look, below eyelids too-wrinkled for thirty-six years. “Take Camille to Spare-a-Dime after the dance. Order the Breaded-veil Cutlet dinner if she agrees. I’m sure she will. The Fosters don’t ever eat in cafes either.”

Her fingernails dug into Steven’s wrist as if to convey something important. “Don’t just buy burgers or an order of fries to share. Girls like to see a boy spending money on them. It makes them feel appreciated.” His mother smiled for the first time in weeks. “Your handsome father took me there when we were dating.” Her eyes became dark pools of decades-old memories. “I grew up on a farm milking cows. It was the first time in my life I felt really special.”

Stephen had no memory of his father who had died in Korea in 1952. He often stared at the photograph that sat on the old console stereo that sadly only played 78 rpm records, not the 45’s that everyone bought nowadays. The uniformed man in the frame was a stranger.

Stephen thought about the empty cupboards in the kitchen and the doctor his mother needed but could not afford. Except for a few potatoes and some woody carrots, there was hardly anything to eat. He’d feel better buying milk, eggs and flour from Cloverdale Food Market than going on his first high school date. “But maw! I can’t leave you like this!” Louise released his arm and began to cough again. Even more blood spattered the handkerchief. “I mean it Stephen … you go and have a good time.” She pushed him away. “Put two dollars’ worth of gas in the Ford. The Fosters live way out on Canyon Road. I don’t want you to run out of fuel.”

Stephen looked at the money as he put on his coat. Gasoline was thirty-two cents a gallon at the service-station on Townsend Avenue. The car got fourteen miles-per-gallon. Canyon Road was ten miles from town. A dollar’s worth should be plenty. Maybe he’d buy a quart of the strawberry ice-cream his mother loved on the way home. ‘Have the time of your life,” she called as he adjusted his bow-tie and slipped out the door.

Stephen grinned as he started the battered 1956 Fairlane. He and Camille would have a memorable evening at the Cloverdale High School Senior Prom of 1971 … and so would his dying mother … when he got home later.

-------2-------

“This fog is terrible,” Camille said as she climbed into Stephen’s mother’s car. “It’s like swimming with your clothes on.” Stephen avoided looking at her, because when he did, it was hard to turn his eyes away and the road ahead, what he could see of it, was treacherous. The sixteen-year old junior was dressed in a simple yellow dress with lace on the sleeves and the hem. Stephen liked that. Camille’s light-brown Twiggy style hair fell halfway to her shoulders, soft and as bouncy as her personality. “Nice car,” Camille said. She’d found the broken-spring, hidden by a blanket, on the passenger-side seat and was bouncing up and down.

“I almost drove past your road,” Stephen told her. “I’ve had to stop twice to read the numbers on mailboxes.”

“Oh, you poor thing. You didn’t get out of your car did you?” Camille turned the rear view mirror towards her and was touching up her eye-makeup from a Heartbreaker all-in-one compact from Yardley of London. “Because my father says fog is an acronym for fears-of-God.” She aimed her green eyes at Stephen like weapons from a Sci-Fi movie. “And anything that God is afraid of is something I don’t want to handle … oops! Looks like my garden needs a bit of water.” She noticed a smudge on the bright orange, yellow and green cluster of flowers painted on her cheek as she turned her head back and licked a folded Kleenex cat-like to try to correct it.

“I did twice,” Stephen confessed. “Once at the Hicks’ farm down the road and a little earlier at the crossroads just after you cross the covered-bridge on the river.”

Camille gasped as she placed soft fingers on the back of Stephen’s neck and caressed it gently. “Loon’s hollow! I don’t feel any deep cuts or blood,” she said. “That god-awful creep must have missed you completely!”

            “Blood?” Stephen was hunched over the steering wheel and staring nervously at the road which seemed to vanish in a white blanket inches from the headlights. “What are you talking about?”

            “The Axegoon Murderer,” Camille said. “He’s one of the fears of God specific to these parts. All areas of the world have their own monsters. Boston has a Strangler, Portland has Bigfoot, probably more than one, even foggy old London has a Jack the Ripper.”

            “Why haven’t I heard of this Axegoon?” Stephen said. It looked like a crossroads up ahead, but he couldn’t quite be certain.

            “He silences his victims,” Camille said making a slashing gesture across her throat with a bright orange fingernail. “My father had a milk delivery route on the north east part of Comanche County about ten years ago. His cousin Herbert Grant was born semi-retarded and liked to ride-along the early mornings as an unpaid helper. Dad said the fog was so thick every road was as smooth as an ice-skating rink. All the potholes on Canyon Road had been painted over with the …” Camille finished the sentence in the trembling voice of Wolfman actress Evelyn Ankers. “… cold, deadly, vapors from hell.”

            “Kind of like this night,” It was a crossroad, and Stephen came to a complete stop; for a moment his vision seemed to spin. He shook his head, made a left turn and proceeded cautiously.

            “Exactly,” Camille said. “Dad stopped so that Herbie could deliver a gallon of milk, a pint of thick-curd cottage cheese and a pound of butter to Mrs. Kraust who used to rent the old Miller place.”

            “So what happened to Herbie?” Branches on both sides of the winding road seemed to jut outward like bony fingers trying to grasp the slow moving automobile.

            “He didn’t come back that’s what,” Camille said. “My father waited in the truck for nearly twenty minutes before he went looking.” Camille leaned toward him and Stephen was forced to look into her eyes. “Papa found his body in a rose bush halfway to the house. His legs were tangled and his head was missing, chopped off clean like that butcher at Gary’s Meats had done it.”

            “That sounds hideous!” Stephen braked hard even though he was driving less than twenty miles an hour. A large tumble-weed rolled across the gravel road and disappeared as the car skidded to a stop in the gravel. Stephen unrolled his window a sliver. Strange, there was no wind.

            “My, you’re skittish,” Camille grinned as she scooted across the seat to sit next to him. “You’re not afraid are you?” Her lips were moving so close to his ear he felt the tiny hairs tingle. It was not a bad feeling.

            “No, of course not,” Stephen said. “I’ve heard my share of ghost stories, but I stopped sleeping with the bed-covers pulled over my head years ago.”

            “Good,” Camille told him. “Because I want this to be a night that we’ll remember forever.”

She reached over and turned on the radio. A low rumble of thunder followed by a thumping bass line came from the dual speakers. Camille turned up the volume. The Doors playing Riders on the Storm filled the inside of the automobile.

Stephen didn’t see the tangled roll of barbed-wire spread across the road until too late.

He stopped the car and turned off the radio. Escaping air whooshed from both front tires as he unrolled his window. “Damn! This is all we need,” he said. Camille’s eyes were large and round. If she wasn’t scared, she was a good actress.

Stephen laughed in spite of the mishap. “Now you look frightened,” he said.

“Herbie’s legs were tangled-up with barbed wire when my father found him murdered,” Camille told him.

-------3-------

The barbed-wire hadn’t just flattened both front tires it was tangled around the steering-rods and the rims. Stephen felt dismayed. Even if he’d had the foresight to carry two spare tires, the mess of barbed wire would have to be cut away with metal snips. “I’m sorry Camille,” he said as they both stood in the fog. “This night isn’t going exactly as I planned.”

“That’s okay,” Camille put her arm through his as they began to walk. “I’m pretty sure I know what the school dance is going to be like. Tonight is an adventure and I have no idea what’s going to happen. I kind of like it. You don’t get many days like that in a small town.”

“Remember this is Cloverdale you’re talking about,” Stephen laughed out loud. It sounded forced even to his ears.

‘Yes I know,” Camille chirped. “Witches who drive old Buicks, Scarecrows that dance under the moon, ghost trains that rumble through the night and endless stairways that lead all the way down to the Devil’s summer home by a lake of molten lava. I heard enough stories as a child to fill twenty volumes.” She shook her head as she took a pack of Spearmint gun from her purse and offered Stephen a piece. “I’m trying to quit,” he told her. She slapped him playfully and stuck two sticks in her mouth. “Doublemint,” she said.

“We need to find a telephone,” Stephen told her. “But I have no idea where we are.”

“Follow the yellow brick road!” Camille’s high laugh sounded like a Munchkin. She began to kick up piles of yellow leaves lying on the road as she danced like Judy Garland.

“Is that a light I see?” A tiny speck of illumination glowed through the fog.

“Yes,” Camille gasped. “You have saved our lives!” She over-dramatized the lines like an off-Broadway actress playing to a bored audience, throwing her arms in the air, and then she kissed him.

The sound of some large machine rumbling through the field next to them made them both stop, hold their breath, and stare into the fog.

“I hope so,” Stephen told her. “I really hope so.”

-------4-------

The old farm house looked like it hadn’t been lived in for years … centuries even. Spider-webs clung to the frame of the wooden front-door. It sounded like a cat screeching when they shoved it open. “Anybody home?” There was no answer to the shout.

“I don’t think whoever lives here has electricity … let alone a phone,” Stephen said. Camille flicked a light switch up and down. “I think you’re right.”

A Bic lighter appeared in Stephen’s hand. It didn’t give off a lot of light but it was better than nothing. “I didn’t know you smoked.” Camille looked at Stephen accusingly as they entered the room.

            “I don’t,” Stephen old her. “My mom has an old gas stove in her kitchen and I have to light the burners all the time. I guess I carry this lighter out of habit.”

            “Too bad,” Camille said. “I could have really used a cigarette.”

Stephen spotted what looked like an oil lamp on a table next to a lumpy sofa. The inside of the house and everything in it appeared to be the same dull shade of grey. Stephen lifted the lamp-chimney and noticed a thick film of dust coating everything. He lit the wick and when he replaced and blew on the glass cover the room appeared as if by magic.

All of the furnishings were at least fifty years old, most were probably seventy-five. “I know we saw a light shining from an upstairs room,” Camille said. “There has to be somebody here.”

“I’d be willing to bet that when we find them they are way over thirty,” Stephen said as they walked toward a grand staircase with elaborately carved volutes on each side of wide carpeted treads. They were halfway up the stairs when the roar of several gasoline engines sounded from outside. Headlights appeared through the curtained windows seeming to move in random directions. “I didn’t really want to go upstairs anyway.” Camille turned and pulled Stephen with her. They were down the stairs and halfway to the door when a voice came from behind. “I wouldn’t go outside if I were you!” An old woman with a blizzard of hair the color of snow stood at the top of the stairs wearing what looked like a turn-of-the-century nightgown. “In your world people sleep when night falls but in my world the work is just getting started.”

“Your world?” Camille gasped as the lantern-light revealed a large black beetle crawling from one of the women’s flaring nostrils.

“Yes,” the woman cackled. “You put your dead in the earth, do you not?”

Stephen and Camille were both too stunned to speak.

            “Did you think that what you plant in the ground does not grow?” The old woman started down the stairs. The sagging flesh over her rickety bones made a scraping noise on the stair treads. She lifted a gnarly arm and pointed toward the window. “Behold the workers have arrived.”

Stephen and Camille both turned to where the woman pointed. At that moment two dark silhouettes moved past the window carrying a long box. The fog outside appeared to be dissipating outward in all directions from the farm house. A watery moon floated from behind a stand of leafless trees and illuminated workers as they moved up and down long rows in the fields. Most were bent double and all were wearing black hooded cloaks. Ghostly machines moved across distant fields cutting bulbous translucent plants and piling them into trucks.

Three loud booming knocks on the front door sent clouds of dust drifting from the ceiling. The door opened before Stephen or Camille could react. The two men entered the room carrying the long box that the better light showed was an elaborate black coffin with Transport Des Morts carved on the side. An ethereal light omitting  substance like Mercury dripped from the edges of the polished wood. “New seed for the farm.” A skeleton figure pulled back the hood he was wearing and grinned, showing a jawbone and rows of lanky teeth.

            “It must be fresh,” the old woman said. “Old seed is a waste of our talents.”

            “No more than an hour ago,” the first skeleton said as they pried open the lid. Neither Stephen or Camille wanted to see a dead body and they both closed their eyes. Finally curiosity got the best of Stephen and he opened one eye and then both. His scream made Camille open her eyes too. The woman inside looked peaceful but too familiar.

“Mom …….!”

To be continued …

            

FRANKLIN part 2

Copyright (c) 2015 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

Part 2

By R. Peterson

As the airplane nose-dived towards earth, passengers screamed. The woman, standing in the aisle, naked from the waist up and with artificial breasts obviously made of explosives, smiled as she held the detonation button in her fingers. Finally the plane leveled out. “Now you kafirler will know how the nations of God react, when you … senin ahlaki yolsuzluk bize zorla! (force your moral corruption on us!)”

“Please tell me what is happening?” Franklin begged Kim. “Somehow I don’t think this demonstration of a flying machine is what you were expecting.”

“It isn’t,” Kim gasped. “These people are terrorists, groups of radicals who get others to do their bidding by using fear. They’ve taken over this aircraft for their own political purposes.”

An overweight woman, wearing designer clothing, two rows ahead in the first class section, rose from her seat. “What do you people think are you doing?” she demanded. “You people aren’t Muslims … you’re white … you’re supposed to be on our side!”

            Flight four-nineteen was now cruising at an altitude of less than one-thousand feet. The pilot and co-pilot sprawled unconscious on the floor; the aircraft’s controls were being operated by the Nordic-looking hijacker. Two terrorists, who had stormed from economy class earlier wielding arm-rests torn from the seats, opened the exit-door at a signal from the pilot. The men dragged the screeching woman to the front and threw her out the door as the female with plastic explosives for breasts watched. “Islam is Allah’s law, not a race, you stupid sürtük,”she cackled, “think about that as you rush to kiss the ground!”

Franklin gasped as he watched the woman falling toward earth. “I see that cruelty has not gone out of fashion,” he said.

            “I’m afraid that with all the technological progress of our world some things still remain the same,” Kim said. “Evil people will always try to force their beliefs and values onto others.”  

            “Is twenty-first century man too sedated to fight back against these terrorists?” Franklin sounded astonished.

            “They have us completely under their control,” Kim said. “The men are armed only with armrests torn from the seats in the economy sections but the woman is wired with explosives which she can detonate with the button in her hand. It is best if we remain quiet. If we try to attack this woman she will blow up this plane and everyone in it.”

Franklin sprung out of his seat cursing. “They who give up freedom to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” he yelled charging toward the female terrorist with C4 explosives attached to her chest. The woman was startled and stepped back as Franklin lunged at her. Kim shielded his face sure that she would detonate the explosives. Franklin wrestled the struggling woman to the floor. “I’ve never struck a female before,” Franklin said. “But for this obvious political harlot I’ll make an exception.” He knocked her unconscious with three quick blows to the head.

“How did you know she would not detonate the explosives?” Kim was happy but curious.

“I overheard her and the other ruffians speaking an unusual form of the Turkish language when we were waiting to board this flying machine.” Franklin spoke with modest pride. “Listening without being noticed is a useful talent I often practice for getting the most out of diverse political meetings. She and the other malcontents only had enough real explosives to blow open the pilot’s door. The clay like material she is wearing on her chest is a harmless substance called Silly Putty.”

The two men wielding armrests for clubs rushed forward from the economy section. Kim bolted out of his seat and tackled the first man. Two men in marine uniforms tackled the second. The inside passenger compartment of the 727 was in pandemonium as they fought to subdue them. “Look,” a man pointed out the window as the terrorists were pinned to the floor. The Potomac River and the Washington monument with its long reflecting pool appeared on the far right; closer still the Executive Mansion appeared on the left. The airliner banked hard to the left. “My God! He’s going to crash this plane into the White House!” a woman screamed.

Tim and two others rushed forward into the cockpit. The airliner was now in a steep dive. Screaming like a banshee as it hurtled toward the symbol of American executive power that was last destroyed by the British in the war of 1812. Tim grabbed the hi-jacker by his short-cropped blonde hair and yanked him, with great difficulty, backward out of his seat. The suicidal fanatic screamed in Turkish as he clung tightly to the control yoke sending the aircraft into a spin less than a thousand feet above the ground. “Allah iyidir. Salih onun yargı bu kafirler tarafından bertaraf değil!” One of the marines managed to pry the man’s fingers from the yoke and half climbed half fell into the vacated seat as the man was dragged back and the aircraft began to roll.

Tim noticed a partially wrapped McDonalds’ Double cheeseburger and part of a medium order of fries suspended in nightmarish detail along with a flight checklist and other notes on a clipboard as the airliner plunged toward the ground completely out of control and making the passengers weightless.

The huge aircraft stopped rolling and started to level-out but Tim was sure that it wouldn’t be enough. He held his breath as the marine yanked back on the yoke and the front of the plane rose slightly just before it would have struck the ground. One wing severed branches off from a sycamore tree and the fuselage clipped the top of a large eighteenth century chimney showering brink and mortar all along Connecticut Avenue. Two cars collided in an intersection as the jet tore away a stoplight trailing electrical wire and bits of shattered metal pole. The aircraft slowly began to rise and the passengers cheered. “Thank God we had a pilot aboard!” Tim echoed the sentiments of the others.

“I’m not really a pilot,” the marine stammered. “I’m Lieutenant James Addison and I’ve just completed my third week of flight school, operating a T-45 Goshawk out of Haveloc, North Carolina.”

“I’d have to give you an “A” for this unexpected pop quiz,” Kim said as he tried to catch his breath.

“We’re not out of the fire yet,” the marine gulped. “Three bogies coming in at two-O’clock. They are ours and they are supposed to be friendly … but they don’t look that way!”

-------2-------

Three F-16 fighters streaked from the southwest horizon directly toward the airliner. Addison wasted precious time fumbling with the radio controls the hijacker had obviously turned off. “Langley Air base this is Lieutenant James Addison serial number 437-65-4682. I am in control of a Boing 737 after an aborted hijacking … do you copy?”

A pair of the jets converged on each side of the aircraft keeping their distance while the third shadowed the craft about a mile behind. “They are going to shoot us down,” Addison said. “It’s standard procedure in a case like this. They’ve probably been sending out warnings for the last ten minutes and received no response.” Lieutenant Addison tried a different channel and repeated his broadcast.

            “If they were going to shoot us down they would have done so,” Tim argued. “Wouldn’t they?”

            “Not necessarily,” Addison said. “We’re heading toward open water, they’ll wait until were over the Atlantic to reduce the chance of any collateral damage.”

            “Surely they received your transmission,” another marine said. ‘They can’t just shoot down an unarmed civilian plane.”

            “The brass at Langley must figure they don’t have a choice,” Addison said. “This aircraft has become a weapon and they have no way of knowing who is in control of it.”

Franklin entered the cockpit. At least twenty passengers were keeping the would-be hijackers securely on the bloody compartment floor with their fists and feet. “It sounds like the problem is one of communication,” he said.

            “The people who guard our nation would rather err with the loss of civilian lives than risk having a political target destroyed like the White house or the Capital building,” Tim said. “So it looks like our goose is cooked.”

            “Fly along the coast and don’t move out to open water just yet,” Franklin told the pilot.

            “Do you think maybe you can find a way out of this mess?” Tim asked the founding father.

            “Politicians and the military are most responsive to public opinion especially that which would make them look less than favorable,” Franklin said. He pointed to the iPhone Tim was using unsuccessfully to try to call Langley. “Can you use your communication device to show the media who we are and what we’re up against?”

            “That’s it,” Tim said. “I’ll shoot a video of ourselves inside the cockpit and send it to Network television. All of America is going to know who we are and what we’re doing.”

Just then a crackling voice came over the radio. “Delta Flight 419 resume your flight path east over the Atlantic … I repeat resume your flight path east over the Atlantic.”

            “Continue south,” Franklin told the pilot. “We need time to prove we are patriots.”

Expensive Atlantic coastal homes, factories and schools dotted the shoreline, the only thing keeping the jetliner from being blasted from the air.

            Kim used his IPhone to shoot a video of the subdued hijackers with commentary from him and the marines aboard the plane. “I just hope this is enough to keep us from being shot out of the air,” he concluded, “we’re Americans just like you, fighting for our lives.” He texted it to an up-and-coming reporter he knew from ABC News. “I just hope the future Walter Cronkite is answering his phone and not skinny dipping with some sweet thing at the New York Hilton.”

            The transmission from the F-16 fighter jets blasted two more times in ten minutes each time advising the airliner to turn east over the Atlantic or be destroyed. Addison replied, not bothering to hide his fury. “You think I don’t know what’s coming down? You got a radar-lock on our ass and any second an AIM-120 is going to crash through our back door.”

Abruptly the tone from the pursuing fighters changed. The voice was familiar. “Let’s go home James!”

            “Dark Wing is that you?” Addison’s voice was jubilant.

            “Dark Wing?” Tim was stunned “You know this guy?”

            “Like the cartoon character. He’s one of my flight trainers back at Langley,” Kim said, “a real hard-case but he has no love for political posturing.”

            “You are cleared for landing at Langley,” Dark Wing said. “We are pulling back.”

            “It’s a good thing you had a friend in the sky,” one of the marines said.

            “I’m sure my friend had little to do with it,” Addison said. “I’ll lay odds it was that video you sent to the media. I’ll bet every officer at Langley is watching it on television right now.”

            “Public opinion is the most powerful weapon you can use against any politician.” Franklin smiled. “That gadget in your hand is certainly faster than the lads I hire to deliver my news bulletins.”

-------3-------

                The officials at Langley insisted that all the passengers aboard the miraculously intact flight 419 be evaluated at a hospital before each was interviewed and given a background check. Franklin was sitting up in bed and watching Cartoon Network on Cable TV … he had the exuberant joy of a young child and kept flipping through channels with the remote control. “A gentleman in Paris showed me a stack of playing cards once,” Franklin said. “When you fanned them quickly from one edge they appeared to be moving. I presume this marvelous invention of yours is based on the same principal?”

            “It’s called persistence of vision,” Tim said. “But we’ve got bigger problems now.”

            “Oh,” Franklin sounded disappointed. “I thought we might delve deeper into this truly amazing science.”

            “We don’t have time,” Tim told him. “The CIA and officials from Homeland Security just finished with my interview and they’re on their way up here. That fake ID that I used to get you aboard the airliner will never pass their scrutiny.”

            “What will happen to me if I’m caught/” Franklin showed no fear … just curiosity.

            “They’ll probably put you in a glass case next to the Declaration of Independence inside the National Archives Building in Washington, DC,” Kim said. “If you’re lucky. If not, they’ll probably either shoot you as a spy or force you to run for congress.”

            “I wouldn’t mind being shot,” Franklin quipped, “at least there’s less suffering and admission to Hell isn’t as guaranteed as it is in politics.”

            “It might not come to that?” Kim said. “Quick inside the bathroom!” He helped Franklin crowd into the room’s facilities. “It’s a good thing this lavatory is handicapped enabled … it just might be large enough.” Franklin was flushing the toilet again and again with a look of ecstasy on his face as Kim closed the door, took a GPS reading and dialed his iPhone.

-------4-------

            Kim Jones and Alvin Sullinger were both watching as the Geodesic Voyager materialized in Alvin’s workroom. “I was afraid it might not fit,” Kim said. “Good thing the hospital had extra-large bathrooms.”

            “I thought it best to leave the brilliant doctor in the folds of space time until you arrived,” Alvin said. “He doesn’t know me.”

A door on the side of the sphere slid open and Ben Franklin extracted himself looking around the twenty-first century science-lab with great interest. “I hated to leave you at the hospital to explain my disappearance,” Franklin said. “Were you in a great deal of trouble?”

            “Not at all,” Kim told him. “I acted as surprised as they were that you were not in your room. I threatened to call the media about your disappearance unless they let me go.”

Franklin was looking at a wall chart that showed the corresponding dark matter elements to the periodic table that was known to scientists in the eighteenth century. “So much knowledge it boggles the mind,” he said.

            “I’m happy that you are enjoying yourself,” Alvin said. “But I brought you and Al into our century for a specific reason. A man with frizzy hair that stuck out from his head like a ball shuffled timidly in from another room. He was holding a hot sandwich from a microwave oven. His eyes too, had a whimsical child-on-Christmas-morning look of fascination. “I’m very pleased to meet you Doktor Franklin,” he said with a soft German accent. “My name is Albert Einstein.”

            “I’m currently working on a project that will change the world as we know it,” Alvin told the men as he led them down a long hallway toward a very heavy door, “and I need both of your talents desperately.”

            “More fascinating than time travel? This I have to see!” Kim followed behind the three. A moment later, Alvin Sullinger opened the door to an incredibly vast room filled with light and all three men gasped …

THE END?