The Acolytes of Crane (Theodore Crane, #1)(5)

“It was the second to the last day of my grounding. I was still bored in bed, having re-read my adventure books for the third time. There was a beam of light entering through the window, and I was fascinated by the highlighted dust I could scatter around with my hand.”

There was a brisk smell of possibly an early frost in the air. I had my window open, and I could hear some couple outside yelling at each other at eight in the morning. They were fighting about the garbage, of all things. Apparently, she threw out his sports listing and a bottle of high fat milk that was ninety-five percent depleted anyway.

My calico cat Meghan entered the room. She hopped into my lap and kneaded my belly. There was sudden excitement on her face, because a fly had just snuck through a dime-sized hole through the mesh screen of my window. My cat went into a berserk attack mode. It was thrilling. I was cheering her on. Meghan snagged the fly with her claw, and brought it to her mouth.

‘Please no, don’t eat it whatever you do!’ I exclaimed, forgetting my dad was asleep.

She ate it. Immediately, the contents of my stomach became the contents of my throat, then mouth. I was like a bulimic squirrel. I ran toward the bathroom as fast as I could, puking with sporadic bursts on the tan apartment carpeting in the hallway, despite my hands over my mouth. Just before I reached the bathroom, I encountered an immovable force—my dad.

‘What in the hell is going on here Theodore? You are puking all over my God damn house?’ my dad asked furiously. His face was red on the left side, probably from sleeping awkwardly, and his mustache was crinkled at the left corner of his upper lip as it twitched.

I firmly pressed my left hand against my mouth, still in a delicate state. I pointed with my right index finger to my face, with pleading eyes, and he reluctantly understood.

‘Go clean yourself up!’ he roared at me as he shoved me in the bathroom, closing the door onto me.

Gasping, I finished off my vomit in the porcelain sink. As my stomach dry heaved, I knew there was no more to come. Deadly afraid that my dad would open the door any moment, I quickly splashed water on my face and grabbed a towel to dry myself off.

My premonition proved correct. The door flung wide open as my father, out of control, grasped me by my pajamas collar. He shoved me, still maintaining a steel grip on my collar, toward the scene of the crime. Splotches of vomit still decked the hallway, plus some backsplash on the walls near the floor.

Spinning me around ferociously, he clasped his rough hands around my neck, and just like that, lifted me off the floor, my feet dangling. In that fateful moment, two lessons were branded on me like a searing cattle prod. Abuse of power was the first lesson—a familiar one he had pummeled into me several times in the past. Second—and the most fresh and damning—my dad could drain the life from my body any time he wanted. My dad wasn’t trying to strangle me. Rather, he was showing me that he held the power and that one wrong move could mean the end.

My feet were not touching the floor, and it was a good indication that the trial wasn’t over. I swallowed the rest of my puke. It tasted extremely acidic with crunchy peanut butter a la mode. Then, the balls of my feet hit the carpet, stiff in the spot where someone spilled mustard weeks before, and I realized that it was over. My dad faded into the darkness of the hallway and disappeared behind the slam of a bedroom door.

After spending the next hour trying to clean up the vomit, I set up a war game in my room. I wore myself out marshaling my anger into a fierce engagement. Mainly, the battle was between a plastic muscular commando and his army of transforming robots, versus the relentless onslaught of monochromatic green army men with baseplates. They were essential to any army or battle scene forged by the imagination of a kid.

The day crept on. When it was dark out, a sweeping series of elongated shadows intermingled on my floor, as the bright lamp on my dresser relentlessly shone through the darting miniature figures embroiled into battle.

It was now way past bedtime, and no one had yet checked on me. Exhausted yet still haywire from my war games, I retreated quickly to my blankets after I turned off the lights. I had darted across the floor as if it was sprinkled with hot coals. Once under my blanket, I hummed a popular cartoon theme song.

My eyes shuttered and slowly began to close. Just as my eyes were about to close entirely, something bizarre, shimmering with iridescence, slipped in through my window.

I sat up quickly, and the blood rushing through my head made me wobble. Hovering just above my feet at the end of the bed, the strange object glowed and flickered against the walls in my room. It was a warm and gentle light. I gasped. Was it a tiny spaceship?

The object bearing the multicolored radiance steadily hummed as it deliberately glided toward me. Its trajectory was in line with my window sill. Now, it was as if anti-freeze was being poured into the crevices in my brain. Panicking, I inched to my side away from the hovering object, feeling the full effect of the “flight” instinct. In doing so, I fell off my bed and thudded clumsily against the floor. Panting, I sat up on the floor, placed my hands at the edge of the bed, and peeked over my comforter that was bundled upward.

‘What! Is this for real?’ I exclaimed.

The object was foreign and weird. It had a jewel the size of a quarter linked to a necklace. Finally, as if surrendering, it stopped glowing, quickly descended right before my eyes, and landed on the apex of a blanket wrinkle. I leaned in and held out my hand to scoop it up. Suddenly, like the projector at a drive-in, it emitted a luminescent array of cryptic characters through the darkness, against my bedroom wall. The message read—