Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Beyond the End ❯ Really bad modern sculpture ( Chapter 2 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
Chapter Two
The bright stars hung high in the sky on the night of July twelfth. It was shortly past eleven o'clock P.M., and Janis Weiss was fast asleep on her futon bed, her long black curls fallen across her green pillow and her green comforter drawn up to the nape of her slender neck. Her breathing was slow and peaceful, and her mouth curved upward in her sleep as though she was having a pleasant dream.
As the digital clock on her bedside table had its luminous green numbers change from 11:04 to 11:05, a rushing noise came from directly outside her room, followed by an enormous crash from her backyard. Janis woke with a start, a small scream tearing from her lips as she jumped in surprise, upsetting the empty ginger ale can on the side of her bed. She rushed to the window and looked out in horror at the sight.
The twisted metal on the now-scorched grass of her backyard may have once been a small plane, but now resembled modern sculpture. Really…bad…modern sculpture.
Of all the nights for mom to work a double shift at the station! Janis thought as she pulled a fleecy emerald bathrobe over her jade-colored pyjamas before tearing out of her bedroom and down the stairs to the kitchen.
Quickly picking up the old-fashioned red phone from the receiver, she dialed 9-1-1 frantically.
“9-1-1 emergency, how may I help you?” a bored-sounding voice said, sounding as though the owner had been taken unwillingly from a riveting game of computer Solitaire.
“Yes, there was an accident behind my house. Something big and metally fell from somewhere and is on fire,” Janis said, and even as she spoke she realized just how much she sounded like a deranged mental hospital patient.
“Ma'am, have you been drinking this evening?” the operator asked, now sounding slightly frustrated and more than a little skeptical.
“NO!” Janis half-shouted, half-cried into the phone, “I woke up to a loud crash outside my window and it was there! Burning my backyard!”
“I'm sorry, ma'am, but we can't take prank calls like this one undoubtedly is seriously. We've got a hell of a lot of real emergencies going on to start dealing with fake ones. Have a good evening,” the voice said before a click and a dial tone told Janis that she'd been hung up on.
“Man, what a jerk,” she mumbled under her breath, hanging up the phone and heading quickly out to the backyard.
Up close, Janis could smell the acrid stench emitting from the large…thing…in her yard. It made her eyes water, and it was all she could do to open her mouth to speak.
“Hello? Is anyone in there?”
A soft groan came from what looked like the back of the object. Upon closer inspection, Janis realized that it was a person, a boy around her own age, huddled protectively over two other figures. Janis rushed forward in alarm, ignoring the foul odor.
As she got closer, she could tell by the fact that only the boy was breathing that the other two were dead. Her breath caught in her throat. Sure, she'd seen dead people before, the most recent being her father four month previous when he'd collapsed and died nearly instantly of a massive heart attack directly in front of her. But she'd never seen death dropped from the sky into her backyard. If she hadn't bumped against the counter on her way outside and given herself a large bruise on her hip, she might have been convinced that this was all a bad dream.
Instead, her adrenaline taking over, she rushed to the three bodies and pulled each one out from the wreckage, laying them side-by-side. She pulled out her cell phone from her bathrobe pocket (kept there at all times, mainly because Janis could never remember to move it) and dialed her mother's work phone.
“Greenvale police department, how may I help you?” a light feminine voice asked.
“Mom, I need your help. There was an accident outside our house and 911 won't send anyone over because it was too bizarre,” Janis said breathlessly.
“My god, Janis, are you all right? Is anyone hurt?” Mrs. Weiss asked, now sounding slightly panicky.
“I'm fine mom, but I've found two dead and one injured. The injured one is unconscious at the moment, so he can't tell me if there's anyone else or what happened,” Janis said, entering her life-protecting mode. After all, if she wanted to be an emergency doctor when she grew up, she would have to learn to keep cool in tough situations such as this one.
“Alright Janis, we'll send an emergency team over right away. Don't hang up the phone till we get there, okay hon?”
“Yeah, thanks mom.”
Janis put the phone on speaker and put it down on the ground. She knew it was too late for the two women, but she wanted to save the boy.
He's bleeding from the head…I have to stop it or he'll die, she thought, looking around for something to stop the blood flow. Here eyes rested on her nightgown and without further ado, she tore off a bottom section and pressed it over the boy's head wound. It was quickly stained red with blood.
“Janis?” her mother's voice said from the phone.
“Hi mom,” she replied.
“We're nearly there. It'll be about another thirty seconds more, okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
True to her word, the emergency team arrived seconds later. Janis heard them speaking loudly from the front of the house.
“There appears to be nothing amiss.”
“God, not ANOTHER false alarm!”
“We'll check the perimeter.”
“Okay men…”
“And women!”
“…And women, lets head on around.”
Immediately following this last order, two officers appeared from around the left side of the house. One of them, the small red-headed woman, Janis recognized as her mother, Helen Weiss. The other was a slightly pudgy man in his late forties, his balding head covered by his blue officer's hat. This man was Helen's partner and close friend, Aaron Reicker.
“We got injured, captain!” Aaron yelled back around the house, “Man, they look bad. And what in God's name is that thing?”
“Alright, bring that ambulance around back, folks. We got people hurt back there. Lets go, lets go!”
The piercing wail of a siren assaulted Janis's ears, and she could see the reflection of the dancing red lights as the vehicle pulled all the way up the driveway. A group of people hopped out, carrying stretchers, and made their way into the backyard.
“Poor things…two of `em seemed to have passed on. The boy looks like he's alive, though. Well, lets get `em up,” the man who looked like he was in charge of the ambulance crew said.
“Careful, he's got a head wound,” Janis said as they stabilized the boy and put him on the stretcher. The head EMT nodded and kept the makeshift bandage pressed over the bleeding cut.
“You want to come in the ambulance with us? It may do him good to see someone near his age when he wakes up. Might prevent him from goin' nuts, too,” he asked. Janis looked silently at her mother, who nodded her approval.
“Give me a call when he wakes up, okay Janis? Get his name and we'll try to locate his family, if he has any left,” Helen instructed her daughter as Janis climbed into the emergency vehicle.
“Don't worry mom, I will,” Janis smiled at her mom before an EMT shut the hatch and the ambulance screamed off to the hospital in the nearby city of Manchester.