Dangerous Worlds by Brian Herbert

Author:Brian Herbert [Herbert, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, SF, Fantasy, Horror, Satire, Steampunk, Humor, Religion, Politics, Internet, Space, Universe, Galaxy
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Dropoff

by Brian Herbert and Marie Landis

Tom Mullen’s memory of his childhood summers was a farrago of frightful nights, sunny days, a large lake, and his Mummy’s screams.

He was thirty-three years old now, but her screams still reverberated in his head, distant, indistinct echoes that came and went. Sometimes he thought they might be no more than a case of intermittent tinnitus, a ringing in his ears. But once in a while her words would come back to him in dreams, loud and grating like a fire-truck siren, and he’d awaken damp with sweat.

“The dropoff will get ya, Tom. Ya hear me?”

Her voice rasped his memories like metal scraping a blackboard, and with it came the image of her face, wide with small eyes set close together above a stubby nose and cheeks tinted with round circles of pink rouge. The same color that covered her ever-moving mouth. A cookie face, he thought, decorated with two raisins and colored frosting.

Her resonant voice belied the rest of Mummy’s physiology. She’d possessed a tall, angular body with shoulders wider than his father’s. Mummy could have lifted his short, flabby father off the floor any time she’d wished to do so. He wondered if his father had recognized how vulnerable he was.

Tom was glad he’d inherited Mummy’s sturdy body structure, one of the few things he appreciated having received from her.

When Tom was young, his family spent summers at the lake. At least he and his mother did. His father was only there for evenings and weekends, while the rest of the time he worked as a bartender in town.

They stayed in a log cabin that had once belonged to Grandpa. The structure tilted to one side, as though foundering in the sea of weeds that surrounded it. The interior smelled of mice droppings and rotting wood. The stench never seemed to bother his parents, who, for the better part of the summer stayed inebriated and unaware of their environment.

It was difficult to conjure a pleasant picture of the cabin. It sat in naked ugliness upon a piece of land cleared of everything but stumps and weeds. Beyond the structure lay a serene body of water, a large lake surrounded by a forest of fir and cedar and coarse ferns. A low dock jutted into the lake from the shoreline, a place where you could tie a boat if you owned one, or read a book, or sunbathe, or watch sunsets.

His family never did any of those things. Mummy and Father stayed inside the cabin and played cards and drank beer. There was never any breakfast or lunch, but for dinner they ate pork and beans and Mexican corn from cans. His parents drank beer and puffed on their “ciggies” and, if Tom was lucky, they might come up with an Orange Crush for him or give him a puff of a cigarette or, on a good day, a Hostess cupcake. The rest of the time they kept him locked out of the cabin.

He searched his memories for a good day.

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