brought them down onto the window.
Eric’s fists never made contact, as there was a sudden explosion of light, blinding him for a split-second before an invisible and immense force blasted him off his feet and across the garden. His head cracked against the small wall surrounding the centre flower display, knocking him unconscious.
Good Reactions.
“And?” The gravelly voice scratched its way out of the speaker.
“It worked.” Eklan replied.
“Excellent.”
There was a moment’s silence and Eklan waited, knowing that you never interrupted a Supreme Commander, and you only spoke to them when they spoke to you.
“Witnesses?”
“None.” She replied. “The subject was alone, in a single-roomed building when we encountered him, and nobody would be able to see us.” She lied, knowing that there was a window, but she doubted the child she’d smiled at with an evil slit of a grin would have survived their escape plan. She looked away from the computer, as if she was trying to find an ally to back her with the lie and was greeted by the blank look of her office wall. Sat on an uncomfortable plastic chair in a plain box of a room, a sheet of metal sprouted out of the wall, bent in the middle and fell to the floor to create a very simple and basic desk. She had a small laptop computer with a pair of speakers off. Knowing that her Supreme Commander was very good at reading facial expressions, she was pleased that there was no picture feed, being so far apart. He would easily have spotted the lie. She pinched the bridge of her nose as the twinge of pain crept under her skin.
“Excellent.” The voice crackled back to her. “We haven’t got the resources to attack too many of them at once.”
“I know.” Eklan replied. “All my investigations and interrogations signalled him to be The One true subject that could be the downfall of them all.”
“And in such a humble location.”
“The coward had fled and had been hidden from our prying eyes for 15 years.”
“Typical of his kind.” The voice growled through the speakers. “Cowards to the core, every one of them.”
“As we’ve always found when faced one to one.” Eklan replied, having had a number of similar encounters to her name. “I’ve yet to meet any of them who would personally try their hand in combat, as they’d rather hide within their numbers, or use weapons ultimate destruction.” She lied once more, knowing a couple of named people who she would give full respect to.”
“So, have you completed your mission?”
“Yes Sire.”
“And I presume you will be returning here.”
“Yes Sire.”
“I look forward to your findings.” A click ended the call
Dreams.
“DAAAAD!” Eric screamed and his eyes shot open wide. His vision was blurred and his young brain was trying to compute what had just happened. Then it came, the clarity of the moment, the hooded figures, his dad, the blue liquid being injected in and. Fear and anger coursed through him as he screamed once more. “DAAAD!”
Emma Peterson burst into the room. “Eric, Eric Sweetie.” He heard his mum calling to him and it took all of his strength to blink.
“Mum, it’s Dad!” Eric called out.
“Wake up honey.” His mum continued, gently stroking his arm.
He sat bolt upright and looked straight at his mum. “Mum, it’s Dad, the explosion.” He stopped as his brain took everything in; his eyes focusing on his bedroom. The posters of his heroes from comics and film lined the walls, covering the aging royal blue, white, with a touch of yellow on the border football-styled wallpaper that had been hung by Simon Peterson when Emma was in hospital after giving birth to their only child. The TV / DVD player stood on the top of a set of aging store-bought and always slightly rickety chest of drawers. A stack of opened DVD cases spread out across the available tops, their contents spewed out before them collecting dust. The two door wardrobe was still standing, but now had tilted to the side in a drunken slump after the fibreboard backing popped off for the final time. Clothes helped decorate every space, giving them an ever changing splash of colour as newly cast-off items were hurled to their resting place until used once again, taken away by the magical washing fairies, or placed back on hangers or in drawers by the magical tidying fairy. The bedside clock flashed away, the information being beamed onto the wall meaning nothing for a few seconds. Eric blinked and checked everything again while his brain re-booted.
“I know sweetie.” His mum said and gave him a hug. “You’re here now, it’s been so long since it happened Hun.” She pulled away to look at her pride and joy, stroking a few loose strands of hair out of his eyes.
“The garage, it…” Eric replied, his brain struggling to reboot from the locked memory of what had happened.
“It’s OK sweetie.” She hugged him tighter, holding him for a few seconds before releasing him. She sat back on the side of his bed and held his arms, her eyes reading every microscopic twitch of a cheek, the distant look in his eyes, the way he furrowed his brow; all those sign of him trying to reason with the end of the very real dream to the reality of now. “So you’re still having that same dream?” She let him go, a perplexed look on her face before letting out a long sigh. Standing up, she tidied a few loose splashes of colour away into their drawers, hanging a couple of items on hangers and placing them carefully into the wardrobe. All the time she glanced at her son, giving him the time to work through his trauma.
“Erm, well…” Eric blinked a few times to check where he was. “Yes, I think I must be.” His realisation came clearer from the dream to the reality of his bedroom. He turned sideways and caught his reflection in the mirror, flinching at the sight of the dramatic change from the boy in his dream only minutes before to the near man who looked back at him. He looked back at the beamed information from his clock and could now understand it. Saturday June 22nd 2013, 8:53am.
“2 years on and still no better?” She asked picking up a discarded bundle of cotton, folded it neatly before placing it in his t-shirt drawer. She paused, flattening the final creases out on a handkerchief, knowing it was a losing battle as her mind was focused on her son and the pain it caused her inside. “Does it still feel so real?” She continued with the same questions that were raised every few weeks.
“So very real, Mum.” Eric replied looking distantly across his bedroom. “I know the flash was the lightning hitting the garage, and part of me knows it’s just seeing my dad….” His voice stumbled a little. “You know, collapsing…..” He took in a long slow breath while he thought of the next words. “And as he…died.”
“It’s OK babe, you don’t need to”. She sat back down and took his hand into hers, attempting to lovingly pass the strength she’d got to him. As Emma looked at her precious creation, she also, once again, re-lived all that had happened those 2 long years before.
Emma Peterson had been in the lounge when she’d heard her son’s screams. Racing into the kitchen she looked through the window as the blast threw Eric across the garden. Feeling so helpless and angry at herself for not knowing any sooner that there was a problem, and then came the sickening feeling that drove down to the pit of her stomach as she watched and heard the deafening crack of Eric’s head smacking against the low brick wall. Every fibre of her being, down to the depths of her soul felt as if they were burning in the fires of Hell for being so useless when her son had needed her the most.
As soon as the emotions threatened to crumble her legs from underneath her, an automatic shut-off valve closed them down as she went into action mode; as she managed to find from somewhere the calmness and maternal strength to dash over to Eric and check for a pulse. A small pool of blood had appeared at the back of his head, and still she didn’t panic as she rang for an ambulance. Emma called out for her husband, calmly, not knowing what had happened to him only metres away. She cursed him under her breath repeatedly as she waited those ex
cruciatingly long 6 minutes for the sound of a siren along Brownside Lane.
“It’s OK honey, I’ll just go and show the paramedic where they needs to go, and then I’ll be right back”, Emma said, her voice calm and loving, stroking Eric’s face once more before dashing down the drive to direct the quick response unit to the correct address.
Emma’s memory of the time-line started to blur after that, as another ambulance appeared moments later. They were rushed to the local hospital, as minutes became hours as scans and x-rays morphed into one tortuous memory.
A full 24 hours passed before Eric screamed “DAAAAAD” once more. Hours became days, whilst Eric slowly recovered in hospital. The post postmortem stated that Simon Peterson had died from being hit by Lightning, and asphyxiated on the dust created by the collapsed garage. They would never realise the true cause, in that he’d actually died of a very virulent and deadly form of a completely new and virtually undetectable cancer after being injected in the neck by unknown assailants.
Many tears fell over that time as Emma struggled to come to terms with their loss, and help her son through his nightmares of what he’d seen. Many hours were spent with Psychiatrists, helping Eric come to terms with what his dreams meant, and what his brain was fabricating. Emma always had a tiny notion that