This Week's Story
Leaving
It was late afternoon when they awoke.
The two Grandchildren were playing at their Grandma’s house, swinging from the rope on the Oak tree in the front yard and pretending that they were on Mars.
The Girl, eight years old, had just scrambled up the tree to peer through the veil of leaves.
“They’re coming” She said looking down at her brother “I see ‘em.”
The Boy, almost five, jumped around the base of the tree, running and leaping and grabbing onto the rope swing.
“They’re coming, they’re coming” He sang “Are they green?”
The Girl snorted.
“No. They can look like whatever they want to look like. One is a cat, gray and brown and the other is a stripey cat.”
“There’s just two?”
“No. The rest are invisible.”
This incited the Boy to run and leap even faster. He raced around the tree almost tripping over a root that folded up from the ground.
The Grandma looked through the kitchen window and gave a little nod of her head. She was on her way to the bedroom with a basket of sheets, fresh from the dryer, in her arms. The folding was finished and the dishes had been started when the first loud crack snapped through the air. The Grandma thought first of the children. It was only later she remembered the dishwasher stopping.
“Oh god,” She said as she heaved herself though the door and out onto the porch. The children were standing between the Oak tree and the house, their legs spread out as if they had stopped in mid run.
“Are you okay?” The Grandma asked.
The Children nodded dumbly. Their game had stopped.
The air reverberated with the noise of the crack. A low murmuring rumble began that was not so much heard, as felt in the chest and legs. The ground began to shake. Heavy thudding shudders coming at regular intervals. The Grandma stepped off the porch and pulled the Children toward her.
Another crack broke the air, louder than the first. Something that sounded like a scream, but not a scream, followed. It was high and crackling, as if a machine were screaming. As if electricity could scream. The thudding continued and the Grandma stood still with her arms around the Children.
Louder and louder the noises came. They were being overtaken by noise. When they thought it was too loud, when they did not think they could listen any longer, the crowd came into view.
First, the babies. Fifteen, twenty, feet tall and wooden. Frisking and hopping gleefully with their wire tendrils floating behind them. One of them tripped and fell over a truck. It flopped on the ground its straight unbending body useless. Tottering up quickly was a 10 story metal tower, earrings swinging off its shoulders. It gently wrapped a wire tendril around the fallen infant and lifted it to its leg. The infant leaned against the parent and allowed itself a caress before it hopped along even faster to catch up with the others.
There were hundreds of them. Thousands. They came along in large and small groups. The parents toddling after their children; the children frisky, gamboling over the fields. Bossy metal teenagers hopped after the parents, scolding their siblings with a sharp whip of their tendrils. Several elegant, slender radio towers hopped gently, trying to stay out of the way of the others. Groups of adolescent poles, taller then the infants but not as large as the metals, huddled together, flicking their wire appendages out as they crackled and shrieked. The noise was tremendous. There was crackling and screaming and thudding on the ground. There were buzzing, shrieking and whistling noises. The Grandmother imagined them as a family, noisy and boisterous, on their way to the beach. She shook her head, not knowing why. Underneath all the noise was a deep rumbling murmur, that they could not hear, but they felt in their chests; it made their legs tremble and feel like rubber.
The poles were passing by and they did not stop coming.
The Grandma and the Children stood there, watching until the light faded and darkness approached. Then they stood, until they were no longer able to see the poles or towers but still they could see the sharp crackles of light traced in the air by a waving tentacle. The sounds grew louder in the darkness. The Grandma wrapped her arms more tightly over the Children. They stood there until, slowly, in the darkness, the individual sounds faded away into a dim crackle and rumble. Then, that too, was gone. The silence was as large as the world.
The Children felt as if they could take deep breaths.
“Where were they going Grandma?” The little Boy asked breathlessly, looking up towards his Grandma’s face. It was too dark to see it clearly.
The Grandma shook her head.
“I don’t know honey.” She felt as if all the air had been knocked out of her lungs.
“Look” the Girl said. The Grandma looked down at her Granddaughter. She was pointing up.
They stepped off the porch, looked up at the naked night sky.