90_Minutes_to_Live (32 page)

“Julia,” his voice sounded raspy, as though he needed a glass of water.

She started toward him but Trich held up his hand.

“Not so fast,” he glared at Sam. “Who are you?”

“I'm here to make sure you sons of bitches don't do anything stupid,” Sam said.

Trich raised a brow, as he looked him over. Sam's size must have intimated him enough, since he stepped back. He returned his attention to Julia. “Show me what you got.”

She felt Emilie stir inside her. “No problem.”

Romani flowed from her lips. They moved at such a fast pace Julia couldn't decipher the words. She could only feel the charged emotion behind each syllable. Her head jerked up to the night sky as Emilie's power strengthened inside her. Energy coursed through every single pore, like rivers made of boiling water. The streams collided into a pool in the pit of her stomach. She removed the plastic baggie from her pocket that held the lock of Trich's hair and raised both arms over her head. Her voice grew louder.

A strong breeze knocked Trich's fedora off his head, revealing a pale, bald scalp.

“Jules.” Sam's voice broke through the spell and blowing wind.

She wanted to call out to him and tell him she was fine but Emilie was in charge. The gypsy continued chanting, harnessing power into her hands until her chest ballooned. With one more shout, she lowered her arms and the wind died down. She opened her palm and the lock of hair was gone.

Trich touched his head, now thick with blond hair. “Excellent work Julia. My associate is very pleased.” A grin broke out on his pale face. “Oh fuck it. I killed that gypsy and now I get to kill your daddy.”

Julia's entire body went numb. The guard holding her father poured a bottle of whiskey over her father's head.

Trich snapped his finger and a small ball of fire formed over his index finger. One spark would set her father on fire in an instant.

“You see Baby Girl, I gave you my word I would return your dad but I never said he would be alive,” he flicked the fiery ball toward her father's alcohol-soaked body.

“No!” she lifted her arm and an electric current surged from her chest to her fingertips. The ball of fire froze mid-air.

Trich's eyes bulged. “What the-”

Even she was surprised but Emilie knew what to do next. She slammed the ball of fire into the driver. His flailing body fell to its knees and quickly turned into a burning sack of bull.

“Shoot him!” Trich wailed to the guard holding her father.

The guard pulled a handgun from under his blazer. Sam charged forward, pushing him away and slamming the demon against the convertible. They wrestled for control of the gun.

Another whirlwind started beneath Julia’s skin and a new string of Romani words flowed from her lips. With each one more blond hair sprouted from Trich. The hair on his head grew past his shoulders and down his back. Hair streamed out of his nostrils. His knuckles sprouted blond locks; hair appeared from under his nails.

Julia glared into his now hairy face. “So, this is how you chose to repay me.”

Trich sneered as his own words were thrown back at him. “You bitch!” She wasn't sure if he was addressing her or Emilie but it didn't matter. He gagged on a very large hairball and soon, hair spilled out from his ears and his eyes.

“
Prender fuego
,” Julia said under her breath.

To catch fire.

She repeated the Spanish spell with no help from Emilie. This was the spell she had been saving for Trich. She had to fight fire with fire.

The edges of his pants burst into flames. He stomped his feet on the hard pavement and pulled at his hair but with each strand he removed, ten grew back. His muffled howls echoed in the parking lot as the fire engulfed him.

“Julia!” her father called out to her. He and Sam pinned the last guard against the convertible but the demon overpowered them both, tossing them aside. He picked up the gun from the ground, aiming it at her father.

“
Cucaracha explosión
,” she cried out.

Before he could pull the trigger, a hacking cough overcame him. He doubled-over and something black scurried from his mouth. Then another and another. Cockroaches scrambled across the cement. On his hands and knees, the demon's back arched and he fell over as lines of cockroaches poured from his gaping mouth.

Her father ran past Trich's charred body and into her arms. He pushed his hands through her hair. “Oh Baby Girl....”

Exhausted, she closed her eyes and let her father hold her.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded, blinking back the tears.

Her father cupped her face. “How did you do all that?”

She smiled at Sam. “I had a little help,” she stepped away and a burning sensation formed in the middle of her chest as Emilie's spirit separated from her body.

“Thank you,” the woman said. She headed toward the ocean and her image faded into the dark horizon.

Julia put her hand over her heart. Emilie had left behind one thing: that feeling of being centered and at peace.

*   *   *

Three weeks passed.

Julia was on her way to her father's place for dinner after work. She worked as a fourth grade teacher's aide now. She was still putting her knowledge to use answering questions from curious human and También children.
Why does Amy only have five fingers? Why doesn’t Nathan have a belly button?

After the library board found out what had happened to her book she was almost put on trial for breaking her bond but Sam's testimony saved her. Instead of being punished with jail time or a large fine, her book was burned. In her opinion, that punishment was worse. Sam didn't get off easy either. He was dismissed from the library for helping her but he still could use his book in his new consulting job with the Stockland Police Department.

A lot had changed over the past weeks but as she approached her father’s door, she heard the familiar chatter from CNN coming through the open window. She took out her keys to find the copy to her father's house and smiled at the photograph dangling from the heart-shaped keychain. It was the picture of her young parents, which used to hang from her refrigerator. Now the L.A. Lakers magnet held up a photo of Lulu, which seemed to please the cat, since she purred at herself whenever she passed the fridge.

“Hey, Dad,” she entered the house to find her father in his recliner in front of the television.

On the screen, Anderson Cooper was reporting on the latest scandal. Gideon Salazar, the También's beloved leader, had been caught tweeting shirtless pictures of himself to women who were not his wife. It was only a few months before that Salazar had been going off on human politicians for
their
infidelities.

“Look at this,” her father gestured to the news. “I told you he was a phony.”

Julia rested on the recliner's arm and leaned down to kiss his cheek. “I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

He patted her knee. “Not everything Baby Girl.”

She smiled in return, just as a knock came from the door. She stood to answer it, narrowing her eyes at her father.

He gave her an innocent hug. “Must be dinner.”

When she opened the door, she put a hand on her hip and cocked her head. “What are you doing here Sam?”

He leaned against the doorway with a crooked grin. His gray eyes twinkled as he held up two large paper bags from Willie’s.

She stepped aside. “Well, come on in.”

THE END

Uninvited

(Young Adult)

By

JG Faherty

It all started in Bev Pietro’s garage, like so many other adventures. Except none of those ended in death.

“What the heck is that?” Kit Bannon reached out to touch the object in question on his best friend’s work table.

“Don’t touch it!” Bev Pietro leaned forward, blocking his outstretched hand.

“Geez, Bev. What’s the big deal?” Kit walked around her so he could get a better look. He’d seen her build some odd things before but never anything like this.

From arm’s length away, it looked like she’d created some type of computer-board club sandwich. Only, it was a monster; something Dagwood Bumstead might have made, if he worked with electronics instead of bread and meat.

Six circuit boards sat one over the other, tiny corner rods keeping each one about two inches from the next. A dizzying array of wafers, pronged chips and fans sat side-by-side with last-generation resistors, capacitors and transistors. Coiled wire and cordless phone batteries added to the forest of growths on both sides of each board. Thick globs of solder held everything together.

Completing the tower of confusion were two triangular antennae, which Kit recognized as normally used for pulling in hard-to-get FM signals on a home stereo. Five feet of speaker wire connected them to the top-level board. The antennae rested on the table behind a PC monitor, one of the old-fashioned kind from before flat screens became so popular.

“I don’t know what it is but it works,” Bev muttered, twisting a lock of hair between two fingers—a habit she’d had as long Kit had known her. It meant she was really concentrating.

He leaned closer. The monitor and the keyboard Bev currently cradled in her lap were both plugged into USB ports on one of the middle boards, which was connected by wires to something that looked like the inside of a cable receiver box. Knowing her habit for taking apart the family’s appliances, he had a feeling they wouldn’t be watching television in Bev’s house anytime soon.

“What do you mean, it works?” he stuck a brick of grape bubble gum in his mouth and spoke around it as he chewed. “What does it do?”

“I’m not sure. I just finished putting it together. I hit the power switch and everything lit up.”

“I don’t see any lights.” Kit bent down, peered at the underside of the boards. A power cord ran to an outlet under the bench.

“That’s ‘cause I turned it off, doofus. You can’t plug a monitor or keyboard into a computer while it’s running.”

“I knew that.”

“Yeah, right.”

Kit blew a bubble; let it get almost as large as a softball before carefully sucking it back into his mouth. Bev would kill him if he got gum on any of her stuff.

“It’s a computer?” he asked, wiping the sticky leftovers from his lips.

“It’s got parts from one.”

“What were you trying to build?”

“A satellite receiver but something else happened.”

“Yeah? What?”

Kit pulled up a chair and sat down next to her. Some of his friends at school goofed on him for hanging out so much with a girl a year younger than him but he paid no attention to them. Let them dream about their pop stars. He had a real girl to spend time with.

And someday she’d realize they had something special and then they could date instead of being
just friends
.

Kit was nothing if not patient. You had to be if you wanted to hang out with Bev. She had a habit of getting lost in her hobbies and forgetting anyone else was there. Sometimes she drifted off in the middle of a conversation—like right now. Most people would think they needed to repeat their question but he knew Bev had heard him. She’d answer in her own time.

Meanwhile, he could sit and stare at her pretty blonde hair, her ocean-green eyes and her cute little nose. Since school let out for the summer and the weather had turned hot, he’d also taken to staring at other parts of her body, parts that had just recently started getting larger.

She touched a small button on the bottom board. A humming sound filled the air, followed by the whir of several computer fans all turning on. Her pale, lightly freckled hands sat poised over the keyboard, as if ready to start a typing competition.

Kit found himself waiting as anxiously as she did. He never doubted
something
would happen.
Everything
she built worked, although not always well…or the way she intended.

“Last time I got a picture. Something weird.”

The monitor in question changed from black to sky blue, indicating it had power.

Before Kit could ask his next question, a swirling, twisting shape appeared on the screen. Colors danced within it, as if someone had poured colored dye into one of the miniature dust tornadoes you’d find whirling down the road in the hottest parts of an Oklahoma summer.

“Cool! How’d you do that?” he leaned in closer.

“I didn’t. It just does it by itself. It’s the same picture I got before. That’s why I hooked up the keyboard. I want to see if I can change it.”

“Change it how?” In Boy Scouts, he’d built a simple two-band radio and he could use a computer. But he knew he could no more build something like this than he could make one of his mom’s triple layer fudge cakes. Bev was the engineering geek, not him.

“We’ll see.” she tapped some of the keys.

Nothing happened.

“It’s not working,” Kit said; his head close enough to hers to smell the fresh apple scent of her shampoo. He’d never known shampoo could make a person get all tingly inside.

“It might not do anything else.”

She tapped out another sequence of keystrokes.

The rainbow wind-devil continued to perform its gyrations in the center of the screen.

“Let me try.” Before Bev could object, he leaned over her and touched the Up arrow on the keyboard.

Instantly, the wind-devil got larger.

“Hey, it worked! I made it zoom in!” he tried to touch the key again but Bev smacked his hand.

“Stop it! You might break something. We’ll try each key one at a time.”

Bev tapped the Down arrow with a ragged, broken nail.

The image returned back to its original size.

“Try the Left and Right arrows next.”

She hit the Left arrow and the image disappeared, replaced by a new, easily identifiable picture.

It was a field but unlike
any
field Kit had ever seen.

Black rocks lay scattered across ground the color of the funky brown mustard his dad used on hotdogs. No grass but several clumps of what looked like dead bushes, except instead of leaves these had wicked-looking thorns sticking out all over. Behind those, the cloudless sky was bright green.

“Are you sure your monitor’s color is adjusted right?”

“Yes. I don’t understand it. I’m not even using a video program.”

“Hit another key, see what happens.”

This time Bev touched the Page Up key.

The scene changed again. Now it showed something that might have been a tree, if the tree was made of wax and left out in the sun. Instead of bark, sagging ripples covered the dark-gray trunk. The branches drooped as if tired of fighting gravity anymore. A few orange-yellow leaves, large and round, fluttered in an invisible breeze.

From behind a cluster of leaves, a head peeked out.

“Do you see that?” Kit pointed at the two bright yellow eyes set in the brown fur.

“I see it. But what is it?” Bev moved forward until her face was almost pressed against the glass. One hand twisted in her hair.

“How should I know? Zoom in on it.”

Bev hit the Up arrow and the picture grew larger but the animal, or bird, remained unidentifiable.

“Let’s see what Enter does.” Kit leaned across again and hit the key before Bev could say no.

A loud crackling noise sounded, like paper bags being lit on fire.

“I told you not to touch anything!” Bev pushed back from the workbench. A smell of overheating copper wire filled the garage.

“I’m sorry.” Kit looked at the tower of circuit boards but no smoke or flames were visible.

“Oh, crap.” Bev’s voice sounded more surprised than angry.

One look told him why.

A yellow glow had built up between the two antennae. In the space of a few seconds, it went from the size of a walnut to somewhat larger than a softball.

“Kit!” She got up from her chair and backed away from the bench. He stayed right with her.

“Don’t blame me, it’s your machine.”

They’d managed to put ten feet or so between themselves and the table when the amorphous, luminescent orb, now the size of a basketball and filling the entire space between the two antennae, turned black.

At the same moment, there was a
pop
, hardly louder than a cork pulled from a bottle.

Kit still jumped back another foot and felt Bev do the same.

From the center of the black circle came a screeching, flapping creature with yellow eyes. Kit had only seen something like it once before….

—On Bev’s computer screen, hiding in the branches of a mutant tree—

“Look out!” Bev ducked and raised her arms over her head as the thing swept past.

Kit ran to the work table. Everything seemed back to normal; no mysterious glowing orbs, no black circles, no burning metal smell. On the monitor, the alien tree still fluttered in the breeze.

But no yellow eyes peeked out from among the leaves.

He turned back to where Bev sat curled up, her arms over her head. “Bev, it’s gone. C’mon, we have to find it.”

“Find it? How can it even be here?” she stood up slowly, eyes darting all around as if it might be waiting to pounce.

Maybe it is.

“I don’t know but we can’t let it run loose. Our parents will kill us.”

They ran outside. The bright summer sun momentarily blinded Kit after the dimmer light of the garage and he pulled his Oklahoma State ball cap down low to shield his eyes.

Life on Glenmore Drive continued on as normal. Children rode their bikes; Mrs. Gartley watered her flower beds. Down the street, Andy Kilmer and one of his friends were washing their cars. Birds sang, bees flew and dogs barked.

No one screamed. No police sirens shattered the calm.

“Kit, it could be anywhere.”

She was right. He didn’t even know where to start looking. It could be in any one of a hundred trees, or in someone’s attic, or ten miles away.

“Oh, man, I can’t believe this.”

“Did you get a good look at it?”

Kit thought for a minute. It had flown past so quickly that he’d only gotten an impression of it. Maybe the size of Chihuahua? Fluffy, dark fur, large, owlish yellow eyes, long arms and legs. A tail.

And of course, the
wings
.

“It was like a tiny, flying monkey.” That didn’t seem right but it was close enough.

“Yeah. It went right past my face. It didn’t have a beak like a bird would. But I couldn’t see a mouth or nose either. Just those big eyes.”

“We better go back and turn that machine off before anything else comes through.”

“Turn it off? I want to see what else is out there!”

“Are you crazy? You do realize you opened up some kind of black hole to another world, don’t you?” Kit took off his hat and wiped a hand across his fresh crew-cut. He was slick with sweat and he didn’t think it was from the heat.

“Well,
duh
. I think that’s pretty obvious. And it can’t be a black hole. It’s more like a gateway or a wormhole.”

“Whatever. I just don’t think you should mess with it anymore.”

She poked him in the chest. “I didn’t mess with it! You did! You’re the one who hit Enter. That’s what opened the gate. As long as we just look, think about all the things we can discover. We’ll be famous!”

Kit started to object but had a sudden picture of them, together on the cover of
People
magazine. ‘Oklahoma Teens Discover First Life On Another Planet!’ In his mind, he and Bev were posing before her machine, smiling.

And holding hands.

It could happen.

“All right but we only look,” he followed her back to the workbench.

“Well....” Bev sat down and pulled the chair up to the table.

“Well what?”

She had that tone, the same one she’d used the day she talked him into helping her break open the bee’s nest so she could photograph the hive’s structure for a science report.

She still claimed she didn’t know there were bees in it.

“It’s just that, no one will believe us if we don’t have any proof. So, maybe we could just bring some samples across, some leaves or dirt. Nothing alive,” she was already busy using the arrow keys to zoom in on one leaf of the freaky tree.