- Text Size +

Home for the holidays

The flight out had been boring, the drive to the house, no less so. Although it was a week away from the school, Tom found the holidays a tedious time, stuck in the transition of feeling at home and moving on with his life and severing the umbilicus.

Tess seemed to become more excited the closer they got to the family home.

The house originally belonged to their grandfather, but was since transferred over to their father. The house was large enough to be called a mansion, but still small enough to be possess an idyllic charm situated as it was on a fair parcel of property, complete with its own pond.

Pulling up the tree lined drive, their mother was waiting near the front door of the house as they circled the fountain, a big radiant smile on her face. Tess stepped out of the limousine first, rushing over and wrapping her arms around their mother. Tom shook his head and smiled, it did indeed look as if their mother had almost cloned herself, the two women of similar height and build, Tess perhaps a little narrower through the waist. Tom got out of the car and walked over to the pair. Their mother broke the hug with Tess and took him by the shoulders before kissing him on either cheek and enfolding him in her arms. Tom looked at Tess and scrunched up his face, quickly transforming it back into a big smile when she let him go and smiled at him

“My children are home,” she said, voice full of love and happiness, pulling both of them in for another hug.

Tess spent much of her time with their mother while the novelty of being home wore off quickly for Tom, the days dragging by laboriously. He did the usual things, touched base with a couple of friends still local, spent some time gaming online, but even that couldn’t dispel the sense this place was no longer truly his home. On his second to last day of the break, the ennui palpable, he decided go down into the wine cellar and perhaps sample a bottle from the reserve there to help time pass more quickly. The stairs leading down into the cellar were off from the kitchen, made of stone, matching the décor of the fancy masonry in the kitchen. As he descended, the air grew cooler, his father’s voice springing to mind, “Never more than fifty five degrees for the reds,” he had often said.

Arriving at the bottom of the stairs, he clicked on the light, a couple of ballasts with fluorescent lights hummed as they came to life. He looked over the series of bottle laden racks stretching back and away from the stairs. At the far end of the cellar was a door leading to a large room his grandfather had used as a makeshift shop, citing the cooler temperatures down there were important for his work. Thinking of his grandfather made him smile, he missed the old guy now that he was in a home. When Tom Sr. had lived in the house, he had left the running of the business to others while he whiled away his time engrossed in his ‘projects’. Tom laughed, remembering the time his grandfather said he was going to invent a time machine. Walking through the wine cellar, he stopped at the door. Reaching above the door on the trim was the key. Tom chuckled again, he didn’t understand why the old man kept it locked if everybody knew where the key was. Sliding the key home, he turned it, the tumbler clicking as the lock was disengaged. Pulling the key out, he set it back over the door before flicking the switch beside the door. Opening the door, he walk into the room. The memories stirred by being here brought a smiled to his face, remembering the wonder he felt every time has was allowed to come into the room while his grandfather worked. He shook his head, the room seemed much smaller than he remembered, trying to recollect the last time he had been in here, three, maybe even four years ago he wondered.

Shelves with pull out trays filled with all manner of mechanical parts dominated three of the wall, a board bench the fourth. There were four windows situated high up on the wall, light seeping in.

A big broad table was near the workbench, his grandfather called it his workstation, where he used to tinker and fiddle with his robots and machines. Tom frowned, dragging his fingers over the dusty workstation, leaving lines as he circled around the wide table.

The assortment of gadgets atop the table were not very neat and seemed disorganized. He remembered some of the cool things his grandfather had shown him and Tess, like the metal hand that seem to react to touch and the small metal cube that seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. The unbidden memories were bittersweet.  While his grandfather tried desperately to excite Tom about science, the boy never had much desire to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps. He chuckled to himself, he father was experiencing similar disappointment in the fact neither was Tom much enthused by the idea of going to business school. He picked up one of the metallic objects lying on the table, blowing off the accumulated dust. “Somebody should come down here clean this up,” he mused, rolling the object over in his hands before setting it back down. He stopped at an irregularly shaped cardboard box on the table. Pulling up the flaps, he looked inside. Inside was a mess of tangled wires and other refuse. Near the end of the table was a machine he thought resembled an old piece of 1970’s stereo equipment, writing on the side. Tipping the contraption onto its side, he read the felt marker hand writing on the side of it, “Molecular de-stabilizer,” he chortled. “Sounds like something Marvin the Martian would build,” he said, “My Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator,” he said doing his best to impersonate the cartoon character before laughing at his own humor. Releasing it, he let it drop back to the table, a small cloud of dust kicked up off the table by the impact. The machine made a beeping sound, a whirring kind of noise and several lights started flickering. Looking at the machine, he frowned. Reaching out, he turned a couple of the dials and the light stopped, the machine started clicking, like an egg timer, all the while there was a background sound like it was winding up. There was a flash and a pulse. Tom staggered backward, actually feeling the impact of the wave in the hollow cavities of his chest forcing him back, skirts of dust up thrown up into the air. He coughed into his right hand while he waved at the dust clouding the air, streaks of lights from the windows shining through the airborne particulate matter.

“Fuck,” he mumbled, coughing again and sneezing several times.

It started in the center of his chest, a tingling sensation, like when an extremity is deprived of blood, a pins and needles feeling. He though he was probably inhaling too much dust, that that might be the source of the feeling. Pulling up the collar of his shirt, he covered his nose and mouth to filter out the dust, but the sensation seemed to be expanding, not necessarily painful, but certainly disconcerting. Dropping to his knees, he doubled over, he just couldn’t stop the coughing fit, wracking him, the sound stridorous and screechy. Still the sensation travelled outward from its initial point of origin, moving up and down the vertebrae in his spine, out into his extremities and finally his head. He didn’t know how to define the odd sensation, like everything was tightening up, his arms, chest, legs, everything. He fell onto his back on the ground, but it still felt like he was sinking further and further into a marshmallow, everything growing incredibly distant and unusually large. There was a rushing, whooshing sound in his eyes and everything went dark but he was still aware, the feeling still racing through his flesh like an electric current. He felt weight bearing down on him from above, like being caught in an avalanche.

When finally the sensation subsided, he lay there a moment, heaving, chest burning, sharp pain in his ribs from coughing so hard. He felt like he was still on his back. Pushing against the weight on his, the coarse material yielding some. Rolling onto his stomach, he crawled through the material until he could see an opening. Pulling himself free, he rose to his free and stood up, wiping his hands together. Looking up and around, his eyes grew wide in alarm. It appeared as if he were still in the same cellar room, except everything seemed to be incredibly bigger. Looking at his feet, he realized he was standing in the space between two buttons in his shirt near where they had been tucked into his pants.

“No,” he said, chuckling nervously, disbelieving.

He closed his eyes and opened them rapidly, hoping the situation was simply some delusion of the mind. Nothing changed, dust continued to settle around the room.

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head. Looking at the runner he had been wearing, he guessed himself to be two maybe three inches in height.

“Aargh,” he screamed into the cavernous room, eye growing wide with panic.

Emotional outburst at an end, he frowned. Panic still gripped him with icy fingers, but screaming was not going to be of much use.

Looking at his pants, he could see about half of his cell phone protruding from a pocket, wedged there. Grabbing hold of it, he soon realized that though he could move it some, there was no way he would be able to pull it free of his jeans. Looking down the side of the phone, he knew he could get to the button that would bring the phone to life. Reaching for the button, he tried to depress it, pushing as hard as he could to activate the device, but it didn’t respond. Taking a deep breath and using both hands, he braced himself and pushed with his entire person, finally the screen lit up. Circling around, he tapped in his lock code on the screen, then positioned himself close to the microphone.

“Text Tess,” he said loudly.

“Texting Tess,” the phone replied.

“Tess I need you to come down to grandfather’s shop in the cellar, immediately, please hurry, I’m near the table and I think I might be in a lot of trouble, or really, really loopy on dust,” he said, making sure to enunciate each word carefully. Sitting back on his pants, he hoped she would get the message.

 

You must login (register) to review.