500 words a day

752 words - 12th August 2009

It sounded as if she was saying his name, but his Mum’s voice had a strange buzz or a clicking sound that went with it, as if she’d somehow swallowed a cricket or got something dry and crsipy caught in her throat.


He called out to her


         ‘Mum, is that you?’


         ‘Yessz!’


         ‘What’s wrong with your voice?’


She didn’t reply so he headed down the stairs. He found her, or what sounded like her, in the kitchen perched on the counter with her head in the sugar bowl.


         ‘Jesus Christ!’


         Cricket mum leapt in the air at this, taken by surprise. She landed on the table ribbing her back legs together creating an incredible loud chirruping cricket-like sound, only much louder than usual. The windows vibrated and he had to put his hands over his ears.


         ‘Mum! Or whatever the hell you are.’


         ‘Oh SZorry deeaar.’


         ‘What the hell has happened to you?’


         She explained. Not surprisingly it was to do with Dad. He was obsessed with inventing things even though he’d had little or no success with it. He was always watching things like the fly and Honey I shrunk the kids. The latter being his absolute favourite.


         ‘He was a genius, a misunderstood genius,’ he often repeated.


According to cricket-mum he’d invented something similar to the contraption in the fly to transport things from one place to another, apparently it worked really well and he’d managed to get it working over really long distances He’d used inanimate objects at first, then small animals, flies obviously and then a snail, and that annoying dog from next door that kept breaking into the garden. They were all fine. Eventually he’d showed his wife and after a lot of demonstrations and pleading he’d got her to operate it with him inside. Short distances first, from the garage to the shed at the bottom of the garden, but after a while he got more ambitious. He took it – it being the transporter booth – down to the shops, left it behind Sainsbury’s in the car park, drove back, got in and Mum sent him off there, then quickly drove over to collect him. Soon he got round this problem by making a remote control. SO he didn’t need his wife anymore, he could it on his own and send himself back too. He had a couple of problems when a few teenagers broke into it and another time it fell over in the wind. He soon repaired it though. He decided to make it so it could fit in the back of their old transit and with a few adaptations to the height of the van he managed to do it fairly easily.





Now he could drive it off somewhere, get out of the van and into the back, zap himself home and then whenever he wanted he get back to this place he left the van. For the last few weeks he parked it at work, 50 odd miles away in town. He went on, according to cricket–mum about how he’d reduced his commuting time to 1 second. He’d timed it apparently, that’s how long it took whatever the distance. Last week apparently, he’d driven up North to just outside of Glasgow in the middle of a field and zapped himself back home, in one second, it was fantastic love, so his mum buzzingly told him.


It was when he persuaded her to have a go that things went wrong. He sent her back to Glasgow with her phone and told her to ring him when she got there and ring him when she was about to get in and was ready to go back. He forgot to tell her about precautions, she’d never watched the Fly, didn’t realise the obvious complications of letting something else get in there, left the door open and the van doors while she had a little stroll around, cricket hopped in and hey presto cricket-mum.


They had been looking for a tiny human body with a human-cricket voice for the last few hours but so far no luck. Please be careful where you tread when you go out in the garden wont you. Dad’s in the garage now rigging up some high powered headphones. Reckons it’ll l mean he can hear the smallest sound amplified, He thinks it’ll be speaking or squeaking or something and maybe he’ll find it that way, silly old sod, said his mum hopping down from the table back to the sugar bowl.








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Steve Wybourn





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