Family Secrets

                                            “Family Secrets”

         The night was silent, and the moon shone through the window like a dim light bulb.  Gregory, his blankets pulled up to his shoulders, surveyed the room.  It was dark, but his eyes had adjusted to it.  His eyes swept from the ceiling to the wardrobe in front of his bed, across the immaculately clean room, and finally landed on his state-of-the-art computer.  It’s light was blinking on and off showed it’s STAND-BY status.  The light going on and off splayed shadows across the wall.  He watched the oddly hypnotic blinking of the light and smiled.
         Settling deeper into the bed, Gregory closed his eyes and immediately fell asleep.  A minute later the moonlight from the window disappeared, and the blinking light from the computer stopped.

***
         Gregory woke to birds chirping and his mother calling him down for breakfast.  He pushed his blankets away and swung his legs over the edge of the bed.  Stretching his arms above his head he used the momentum to stand up.  He had laid out his clothes the night before, so there was no reason to search through his dresser.  He changed quickly and went into the bathroom to complete the rest of his morning routine.  There was a buzzing in the bathroom that he would have to tell his parents about.
         Gregory walked slowly down the stairs so that he wouldn’t trip (he had a vague memory of doing that before).  No matter how quiet he was, he never surprised his mother, and she always had his breakfast waiting for him on the table, just as she did today.  He sat down, scooted the chair under the table (without so much as a squeak) and said, “Hello, Mother.”
         She smiled at him, teeth pearly white.  “Good morning Gregory.”
         “Where is Father?” Gregory said.
         “He had to leave for work early,” she said, scooping eggs and bacon onto her plate.  “He was gone before you woke up.”
         “There is an odd buzzing in the bathroom upstairs,” Gregory said.
         His mother said nothing, just walked over to the table, set her plate down, and then walked over to the phone.  She picked it up and dialed “0”.  “Operator, we have a malfunction in Room B,” she said.
         Ever since Gregory could remember his parents had always called the operator when something had broken.  He didn’t know who the operator was, but he assumed the operator called the repairmen.
         He cut off part of an egg and picked it up carefully so he wouldn’t drop it.  There was no dripping from the yolk because the egg was fried hard.  He chewed it and, as usual, it was perfect.
         He finished his breakfast quickly, stood up, kissed his mother good-bye and rushed to the door.  When he reached it he slipped on his shoes and as he reached for his backpack and pet his cat, Felix, who was always waiting for him at the door.
***
         School that day was odd.  “I’ll have to get my eyes checked,” Gregory thought.
         He had never felt sick a day of his life, but today he felt lethargic (he knew because he had all the symptoms he had studied) and his eyes were playing tricks on him.  Objects would flicker in and out of visibility, and others just changed colors.  The door to his homeroom had changed a deep red.  He wasn’t a superstitious boy, but that had scared him.  Other than that stuff the school day had passed uneventfully.
         But another odd thing had happened on his way home.  As he was passing by a tree he glanced at it and stopped.  He walked nervously over to the tree and stopped in front of a branch.  Though the wind was blowing, not a leaf on the tree was moving.  He blew gently onto a leaf, but it still didn’t move.
         He tried to push a leaf with his fingers, but his hand pushed right through the “branch”.  Gregory’s entire body went tense.  He felt what could possibly be terror.  He fled, running the rest of the way home.
***
         Gregory burst through the door into the kitchen, kicking off his shoes and throwing his backpack against the wall. His mother was at the counter chopping meat, and she glanced up and looked at him, concern flashing in her eyes.  “What’s wrong sweetie?” she asked.
         “I need a doctor please,” he said in between gasps.
         His mother didn’t ask any questions because she saw how scared he was, and it confused her.  She picked up the phone and dialed the operator, going back to cutting the meat.  “Hello, operator, my son needs a doctor,” she said as Gregory left the room.
         He walked into the living room and sat in the recliner in front of the television.  Felix walked across the teal carpet, over to Gregory, and jumped up onto his lap.  Gregory, still breathing heavily, started petting Felix’s head.
         Felix had a spot behind his light brown ears that made his head twitch when it was scratched.  Gregory liked the spot because it made it look like Felix’s head twisted all the way around.
         His hand hit the spot behind Felix’s ear and the cat’s head twitched in that special way.  Every time Felix’s head twitched Gregory would move his hand away.
         He stared at the television, trying to calm himself.  When he reached down to scratch behind Felix’s ear again, his hand touched Felix’s chin.  He lifted his hand to get to the cat’s ear, but found only air.  He looked at Felix’s reflection in the television screen.  A cold sensation, the same as he had felt earlier at the tree, crawled it’s way up his spine, vertebrae by vertebrae.  Felix’s head had literally turned upside down.  His chin was raised in the air, and his ears, along with the rest of his head, was hidden behind his body.
         “Meow.”  Gregory looked at the cat in horror.  The feline eyes looked up, or down, at him.  The cat, no thing, meowed again.  The surrealistic nature of the scene froze Gregory in the chair.  Slowly he pushed the thing off his lap, too slowly it seemed, because it tried to claw it’s way up his leg.
         He kicked out and the thing went flying across the room, hissing, and hit the speaker next to the television.
         He stood up quickly and ran out of the room.  He stopped in the doorway leading to the kitchen.  His mother stood in front of the chopping block, still chopping, with the phone press to her ear by her shoulder.  “Doctor. Doctor. Doctor. Doctor.”  She repeated the word over and over.
         “Mother,” he said, and she turned around.
         The chopping motion, and the repetition of “Doctor” continued.  She started slowly walking towards him.  The knife left her hand as she chopped down, and buried itself in her foot.  Sparks flew out and disappeared on the floor.  He ran across the kitchen to the door, and rushed outside into the driveway.  He ran towards the sidewalk, but tripped halfway there.  He fell, twisting his ankle on the way down.  He felt no pain, but saw that his ankle had twisted 180 degrees. 
         He got up, and in a limping run reached the sidewalk.  He looked around and gasped.  Trees, people, cars, the sky were all flickering in and out, sometimes showing themselves, and other times showing a metal room.  There was only one thing that didn’t flicker.  A car was driving down the street towards him.  He turned to run away from it, and saw that things had stopped flickering, and now showed only the huge metal room.  He couldn’t even see the end of it.  He ran, slowed by his limp, but didn’t get far before he blacked out.
***
         Gregory opened his eyes and saw white.  Nothing else.  He heard though.  Voices, asking about wires, commenting about frays.  “It’ll take a while to fix.  We could be here past dinner guys.  Check his status Frank.”
         “His core system is operational Tim, audio wise at least,” the voice that was Frank said.
         “Shut it off,” Tim said.
         There was a click

The End