Amy Guy

Raw Blog

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Forced fiction 2: billfold, circuitry, macintosh, reaction, usual

(What is forced fiction?)

[Words were generated randomly. I swear I didn't expect them to be this topical.]

Little Steve poked at the pile of circuitry in front of him with a screwdriver the length of his forearm. His nose wrinkled with concentration as he carefully extracted a string of spaghetti. His father would not be pleased.

As usual, the aliens had come whilst his parents were sleeping. Last time it had only been the TV remote that they'd abducted. The time before that it was a standing lamp. This time, it was his father's brand new Macintosh computer. Steve did not want to be around for his dad's reaction, but being four-years-and-seven-months old, he struggled to find excuses to be absent from the house. So he would have to face the consequences.

They always blamed him of course; not when things went missing, but when they came back. Because most of the time, things came back having been partially transformed into something tasty. The lamp had been embedded with chocolate chips. The insides of the remote, filled with ice cream. They never believed him when he explained about the aliens and their faulty teleporter. His mother just eyed him with suspicious terror, and his father talked in a stern voice about respecting peoples' things, and the cost of psychological counselling.

Steve reached for tweezers in an attempt to extract flecks of bolognese. The machine had been quite literally turned inside out before being dosed with a hearty Italian meal. It may well be beyond salvation.

He sighed, rolling his eyes at the spot in the night sky in which he knew their mothership resided. If their pattern of taking increasingly sophisticated devices was to continue, something must be done.

Steve crept through the dark house and reached a tiny hand onto the desk in the study. The hand withdrew with his father's billfold clutched firmly inside. He extracted all of the notes, and returned the wallet to its previous position. Tiptoeing through the kitchen, tiles chilling his bare feet, Steve tucked the money between his lips and shrunk to all fours to squeeze through the dog-flap in the back door.

The plantpot where he made his offerings was beside the door; Steve squashed the cash into the mud, making sure it was covered, then popped a marble on top so they'd know.

"Fix your teleporter," he hissed into the darkness.

Steve returned to bed, hoping sincerely that the aliens would deal with their technical problems before it was his turn.