Category: Random scene

Rabbit hole revenge

 © Batke82 | Dreamstime.com

“Hey! What the —” the rabbit said as I tumbled onto his head.

“Sorry, bun,” I said. “How did I get here?”

“I am so over people like you,” said the rabbit, his whiskers twitching. “You fall into my hole, eyes all glazed, rude as can be, land on my head or wake up my kids, and you have the nerve to ask, ‘How did I get here?’ You know dang well how you got here. You’re just too embarrassed to say.”

These last few words were accompanied by a series of strong finger jabs to my chest. And before you try to tell me rabbits don’t have fingers, let me point out that rabbits also don’t talk.

“Honestly,” I said apologetically, “I’m as surprised as you are.”

“Then you’re not surprised at all,” the rabbit sniffed, and sniffed again. “What did you think would happen? You pick up that insidious device all the time, knowing it can send you down a rabbit hole, and you scroll and scroll until you find a perfect little rabbit hole to dive down. Well, enough is enough. Come on, guys!”

All of a sudden I was surrounded by rabbits. Drumming started to thunder out of the walls, and the rabbits began to sing along with a jangling electric guitar.

“We’re not gonna take it, no, we ain’t gonna take it, we’re not gonna take it anymore,” they sang as they swarmed over me.

I will probably post a link to this story, like always, but as I glance over at my iPhone and contemplate opening Facebook, I break out in a sweat, remembering the hordes of vengeful furry animals crawling on my chest and weighing me down, shouting Twisted Sister in my face.

My therapist says with a few years of hard work, I may be able to function normally again. But in the meantime, I can’t go out in the backyard.

There are bunnies out there.

Just wait until you meet her

I do not expect this scene to appear in any of the books I’m writing about Jeep Thompson, but the moment sprang from a daydream about Jeep’s formative years. I hope it will pique your interest for that hopefully-inevitable time when you finally meet her.

“Your daughter is reckless and disobedient,” the teacher said. 

“Oh, yes?” Beverly Thompson said. “What makes you say that?”

“She is always trying to do things her own way. She won’t follow instructions.”

“Does she understand the concepts you’re teaching?”

“Only too well. As I say, she applies them wrong.”

“Are they wrong, or are they different from what you want?”

“It’s the same thing!” the teacher exclaimed.

“No,” Beverly said. “If she discovers her own way to apply the concepts, and her way is valid, then it’s only a different way, it’s not a wrong way.”

“Well! I can see why your daughter is incorrigible. No good will come of that one!”

“My daughter will save the worlds because she knows how to think. Not only will she put a square peg in a round hole, she will reshape the pegs and the holes and change the course of time and the universe.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about!”

“And that’s the sad part — you, her supposed teacher.”

“Well, I never —“

“Apparently that much is true. Come, Jeep, let’s go home.”

Fighting the impulse

Cellphone © Iofoto | Dreamstime.com

“Hello, Muse, are you out there?” he asked, taking a deep breath and positioning his fingers to write. “How can I serve you today?”

The fingers trembled a bit, but no words came. He looked up and saw the phone, sitting on a box on a book stand, the little electronic connection to the world that he carried in his pocket.

“Pick me up,” the electronic toy beckoned. “Lose yourself in me.”

“N-no,” he told the toy. “I promised myself I —“

“You would what? Deny yourself a news update? Keep yourself in suspense as to whether the package really will be out for delivery today? Not know whether anyone Liked your comment? Miss all your friends’ comments? You know you want to. Pick me up. Come on. You wanna.”

He stared at the persistent electric nag and saw his addiction. It had become his go-to time filler, a place to glaze his eyes while he was between tasks — even during a pause in his task. It always pulled him in and away from his real life.

But he had made a promise to himself.

“I will not let you control me,” he said, even as the impulse took control and it began to require serious energy to fight it. In the quiet of the morning, a raging soundless battle ensued.

He began to inch forward in his analog task by making a new promise, to reward himself with a digital peek when he completed his morning goal. In the corner of his mind, he held onto a conviction that it was OK to break a promise and yield to temptation if you agree not to yield until after resisting for a certain period of time.

He employed the old “one moment at a time” tactic: He could resist the temptation for just this moment, right? And now this moment … and on and on.

The words kept flowing onto the page, and the temptation waned a little, but the fear he could yield at the next pause remained. “Better not to pause, then, mate,” he told himself, and he kept going.

Having set a goal to fill three pages before allowing himself to peek at the phone, he declared victory at the bottom of the fourth page, even if his victory included, in part, several paragraphs written in the third person about being addicted to looking at his cellphone.

“Take that, you miserable electronic demon,” he said, reaching for the device. Just before he picked it up, however, he stopped, looked into the sky, shook his head, and left it alone.

“You’ll regret this!” the phone screamed at him as he walked away. But he never did.

Ironic ain’t it

He took a deep breath.

“Here goes nothing,” he said.

“You got that right,” she said.

“What?”

“How long have I known you?” she said. “You always say, ‘Here goes nothing,’ and that’s what comes out. Nothing ever comes of it.”

“Now, that’s just mean,” he said.

“Not intentionally,” she said. “All I’m saying is stop saying, ‘Here goes.’ Just go. Just do something or don’t, you know, like Yoda says.”

After the climax

“What now?”

After what had just happened, the question — a quiet explosion from somewhere in the back — seemed out of place. Wasn’t that enough? Did something else have to come next?

But it was a good question. Everything was going to be different now, and the difference would be profound. What now? What to do first? As sure as the last moment was the end, this next moment would be the beginning.

May as well start with the obvious.

“Now we move on,” she said, and sure enough, everyone started moving.

The Origin of Tom Twister

“OMG, OMG, OMG,” Ron McFarlane said as he saw the tornado crash across the highway directly at his pickup truck. So this was how he dies, too soon, too young. He wasn’t ready.

The truck lifted off the ground and smashed brutally onto the pavement. McFarlane looked out the front of the truck sideways. The wind’s roar was deafening. He tingled all over as the overturned vehicle spun along the ground.

And then the wind pushed the truck back onto its tires. “What the —?” the stunned driver muttered, the wind still screaming in his ears.

He shook his head, mashed the gas pedal, and the truck sped away down the highway.

Did that just happen? Was he really safe after having his truck pummeled by a tornado? In shock, he didn’t remember driving home and falling into his wife’s arms, so grateful to be alive.

+ + + + +

“Police are warning people to stay in their homes,” the morning news anchor said grimly. Band of looters are reported wandering through the stricken neighborhoods.”

“The storm missed us by a block,” Beth called up to Ron. “The Smiths over on Adams Street lost their home.”

“Unbelievable,” McFarlane said as he emerged into the upstairs hallway.

“Somebody got video of your pickup in the storm!”

“No way,” he said.

“Really! I can’t believe it, you just drove away, and HEY! What do you think YOU’RE doing?” A sudden crash crashed from the kitchen.

“Beth? What’s going on?”

“Just be nice and nobody gets hurt,” came an unfamiliar voice.

When McFarlane reached the kitchen, he saw three surly-looking young men surrounding his wife. Two of them held guns on her, and one of the goons turned his weapon toward Ron as he approached.

“Like I said, let’s all just be nice,” said the surly-looking young man.

What happened next took place faster than it will take to describe it. Suddenly Ron McFarlane was not there, and in his place was a 7-foot-high twister. The little tornado barreled into the three men, scattering the weapons, lifting them off the ground and smashing them to the floor. And then Ron McFarlane was standing over them, hands curled into fists, snarling at the groaning young men underfoot.

“Ron?!” Beth said, and suddenly Ron looked as confused as she was.

“I don’t know what I just did,” he said. “I was so mad to see them threatening you, it was like I became the storm.”

“Maybe when the storm hit your truck last night, you absorbed some of its powers,” she said.

“Like being bitten by a radioactive spider?” He laughed.

“I don’t know,” she said. “You have a better explanation?”

They looked at each other across the room. One of the not-so-surly-anymore young men groaned in pain.

“Whatever just happened,” he said, “we’d better call 911.” 

Final minute of a lame thriller

Photo © Jimmy Lopes | Dreamstime.com

“I don’t understand what just happened,” she said, brushing debris from her skirt and tossing her tousled hair in a way that made him happy to be alive just then.

“Henderson did it,” he said.

“Wait, what? He did all of it?!”

“Yep. The murder, the frameup, the theft of the Eiffel Tower, he was behind it all.”

“But his wife was the victim!”

“First one you suspect is the husband.”

“But he was in Jakarta when it all came down! How did he pull it off?”

“That’s where I came in,” said a sudden voice, attached to a menacingly dapper man holding a gun.

“OMG, Henderson! But you just died.”

“No, that was my twin brother, Oleg Henderson.”

“You mean —“ she said.

“Yes, I’m Sven. And now you die — ULK!”

The blade that protruded from Sven Henderson’s chest surprised all three of them. The second twin to die in the last 30 seconds slid to the ground to reveal the grinning face of Graham Fox.

“Graham!” he cried. “You survived the plane crash!”

“Obviously,” grinned Graham. “I’m too tough to die.”

“So the Henderson twins pulled it all off,” she said breathlessly.

“Almost,” he said.

“But they didn’t count on one thing,” Graham said. “You can’t outfox the Fox boys.”

“I guess not,” she said with a fetching smile, “I guess not.”

And they all laughed and linked arms as, somewhere, a crescendo crescendoed.