Flobersons II

The Flobberson’s got to the minivan just in the knick of time, because the area was destabilizing, becoming unsafe. Daddy was fiddling with the three-year olds baby seat. He heard the seven year-old click into her chair and he said:

“Hit it, Mommy.”

She did. The force of the reverse sent them all leaning forward and sent Daddy into an uncomfortable looking tuck between the windshield and the dash. He got it sorted out when Mommy reached the bottom of the driveway and smashed the thing into gear from a half-spin. Then Daddy went careering into his own front passenger seat and Mommy was gone. 85 miles per hour and climbing when Daddy started feeling the ground shake. The thing was still coming.

Mommy: “What the fuck is that what the fuck is that? What the fuck…..Bill!!!!!”

Daddy: “Drive honey, just drive honey. Go Go Go!!!!”

But before kids got a chance to chime in the car was shaken off the road. The roar of each deliberate foot fall was like thunder in the car with them. The thing was right behind them, Daddy knew, and soon it would be over. The next foot-fall ground rumble sent the Windstar smashing over some poor soul’s bursting Azaleas and into his front yard, almost flipping from the conflicting G’s. Daddy unbuckled and had turned to grab the three-year old’s seatbelt when he saw the foot outside the window. It was about fifty yards away so that would put the giant right…

He saw a hand the size of the minivan outside the window, and his screams mixed with his family’s. The car was lifted then, to eye level with the beast at a hundred feet, and then shoved into his left breast pocket. The dark car was silent save for the sobs of the Flobberson kids, afraid and hanging in their seats.

***

What was happening, Daddy hadn’t the slightest clue. They were still facedown in the things pocket and the seatbelt was eating into his shoulders. He was scared to move, scared to stand still. He sat there listening to his wife and kids moan and whine and suddenly he had it!

“Mommy! You awake!?”

But then the car was being dragged out of the pocket by the trunk and he had a terrible feeling. They were being held in front of the beasts face and he could see its features. Deep furrows and worry lines dotting a brow as wide across as a city bus. The size of it, daddy saw, was incomparable to anything that’d come at them yet. He couldn’t help but feel a little amazed even through the terror.

Mommy woke and felt the movement. She said:

“What’s he doing with us?”

“I dunno, he had us held up. He just put us down and I heard a big bang, like a door being slammed. A vault maybe…Looked like a micro…”

He trailed off, too certain to go on, he just waited for what he now knew was coming. Seconds later the car began to rotate.

It was Daddy who went last so he saw all of it. He was first aware that the car had begun to spin, slowly, on a center axis, as if they’d been put on a record player with the car centered over the record-hole. The spinning went on for seconds that seemed like hours, and then his daughter began to scream. Not cry and scream like a spoiled girl trying to get what she wants, no. This was something primal. Something altogether truthful and real. Daddy felt a dagger point of heat at the base of his neck then and the pains intensity straightened him up in his seat. He’d tried to scream but nothing was coming out, he’d felt, very correctly as a matter of fact, like his guts were burning and melting on the inside. He heard a grunt from the back seat and then a sound like a jar of red sauce being dropped to the floor and busting. The windshield inside the car was suddenly painted red and yellow and he saw the boiling fluid dripping down the dash. His head was burning now, totally on fire and he writhed and coughed, desperate for any relief. He rued in agony to Mommy, and she to him. Their eyes met, and then Mommy’s eyes both burst like two eggs on pavement. Her head went then, it split from the top, and a flood of tissue and bone and fluid rushed out. Daddy reached for her and he saw his hands explode, and flame up at the wrists.

It took one minute and twenty-four seconds to melt the entire Flobberson family to a chunky red slurry, which the giant let cool a bit before eating with a spoon for dinner.