Thursday, November 15, 2012

An Excerpt from TMATC: Zero


 The blue light-bulbs barely light up the garage. All I can see is the car in front of us and then after that it's all black, except way off at the other end a little bit of outside light comes in. Really quiet, dad tells mom that's where the booth with the keys is. It's hard to tell with so much dark, but it feels like forever away.

Mom hits into a car's bumper with her leg. She curses at it in whispers.

“Your phone has a light,” dad tells her.

“I don't want to attract attention. We don't know who else is in here.”

Her saying that makes it so much worse. Staring into the black, just tires and mirrors looking back, pieces of metal and rubber and shiny glass, right now they all feel like they want to wake up and come after me, which is crazy and not possible, but sometimes things that are crazy and not possible happen anyway.

Without any words we tip-toe through the dark garage toward the little bit of moonlight at the other end. It's so quiet, I can hear dad's breath in his nose-hairs.

All of a sudden, a little too loud, mom says, “Elliot?”

The white shirt looks like it's floating in the dark toward us. When it gets closer the big man's face is above it, sweaty and with big, wide eyes. I don't know what he's going to do, if he's our friend or not, but then he brings his shaky hand up to his mouth, and in barely a whisper, barely something we can hear, he says three words.

“Under...the...car.”

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