Short Stories by Texas Authors by Bert Beeb

Author:Bert Beeb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Texas Authors, Inc via Indie Author Project
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Personal History of the Story: The writer’s group I’m a member of has a tradition of writing Halloween stories every year. A couple of years ago, during the craze over the Twilight series, I decided to write a story showing my group that Stephanie Meyers had it all wrong – you cannot trust vampires.

Black Star

Bert Beeb

Shawn Walters sat in front of his bedroom window, watching as his younger brother Judd came strutting through the privacy fence gate into the backyard of their beige, two story suburban home wearing nothing but a pair of neon green swim trunks and a rifle slung over his sunburned back, his shaggy blond hair glowing in the uninterrupted sunshine. When his brother disappeared from view he set his gaze back on the glimmering black star that bedazzled the baby blue afternoon sky.

Shawn envied him. It was all a just a game. He was too young to grasp the doom that loomed overhead. His thirteen year old mind was convinced that they could survive anything down in the basement. Shawn knew better. The reality of death was like a demon that had possessed him.

The last radio reports said the size of the mass was inconceivable. Scientists were baffled as to what it was. They only knew that it was a perfect cube with a height and width five times more massive than the Oort cloud that encased the solar system. The most disturbing thing was how fast it was coming. Its blackness made it difficult to detect until a blotted out region of stars was discovered two weeks ago.

The jarring pop of a gunshot ripped Shawn from his thoughts. He scrambled from his cluttered room, bounding down the stairs, knocking family photos off the wall. He burst out of the back door from the kitchen, scanning the area. Judd came running from the left side of the house, red faced and out of breath.

“Two guys hopped the fence and went for the back door. I fired a warning shot and they took off like stray cats!” Judd hooted.

“Get in the damn house now, Judd!”

Shawn slammed the back door after Judd walked through. He pulled out a chair at the round wooden kitchen table, sat down and started rubbing his temples with his palms. The gunshot had reignited his anxiety.

“We can’t keep living like this!” Shawn cried out, slamming his fists down, knocking a yellow post-it off the table onto the floor.

He got up and went to the sink for some water. When he turned the faucet, the water came out in an erratic burst, followed by nothing but spurts of air. Shawn threw his glass into the aluminum sink. The shattering impact caused shards to ricochet in all directions, one shard hitting Shawn on his left cheek. He felt the warm blood trickle down his face before the sharp sting of the cut. Judd harrumphed and stormed out of the kitchen, stepping on the note.

Shawn cleaned up the glass and picked the note up from the brown linoleum floor, dusted Judd’s dirty footprint off it and put it back on the table.

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