Setting Things Right, Part 3: meet the Robbins family - kids in the attic - a hero - an impromptu cesarean - thin ice (495 hits)
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Submitted by X54 (View user info) at 2008-10-07 15:12:14 EDT
Part 1: http://www.ubersite.com/m/118878 I meet Colonel Barnes - a standoff - their mission and mine
Part 2: http://www.ubersite.com/m/119080 I depart with the convoy - a burned down house - waiting for Mr. Robbins - reflections on surviving the pandemic
Part 3:
We found the attic trapdoor in the hall ceiling. The sounds of shuffling feet, creaking wood and muffled voices grew louder. We positioned ourselves down the end of the hallway near the top of the stairs, hiding just around the corner in the gloom. The trapdoor swung down. Steps unfolded. A man with a flashlight descended, then another. They reached up to help the next person, a woman having difficulty negotiating the steep steps. She huffed and puffed as they coaxed her down. A second woman offered encouragement from above. Once all four reached the bottom they walked down the hall toward us.
Grumpy flicked on the light and we stepped out, he with his MP5 silenced 9 millimeter assault rifle and I with my Remington 870 tactical 12 gauge shotgun. They stopped short, the women hanging back behind the men. "Hands up," said Grumpy.
They raised their hands. "Who are you?" said the older of the two men. "What do you want?"
"Not to worry, folks," said Grumpy. "This is just a precaution. We're looking for Mr. Robbins."
"I'm Eric Robbins," said the older man. "This is my house."
"Is there anyone else in the attic, Mr. Robbins?"
"No."
At that precise moment a child's voice floated down, "Mommy, can we come down now?" I couldn't help smiling. Kids always say the darnedest things at the darnedest times, don't they?
The woman who'd had trouble with the folding steps was very pregnant, dressed in a baby blue maternity gown and black tights. Her long brown hair hung down about her swollen breasts. "No!" she said. "Stay there until I tell you."
"I have to go to the bathroom!"
"Be quiet," said Mommy.
"But Mohhhmmy," whined Grumpy. "I have to go to the baaathroom."
"Who the hell are you," said Eric Robbins. "I demand that you leave immediately."
We strode forward. They backed up. Aside from the flashlights, they were unarmed. "Keep those hands in the air, folks," said Grumpy. "We wouldn't want anyone to get hurt." As we passed the folding steps I shoved them back up into place and closed the trapdoor with a thump.
"Please, don't hurt us," said Mommy, her voice high and trembling. "Take whatever you want. We'll leave if you want. You can have the whole house. Just please, please don't hurt us."
"That's very generous of you," said Grumpy. He covered Eric Robbins with his weapon. "Mr. Robbins, if you'll kindly step forward and lie face down in the floor, Sir."
The second woman stepped forward, flaming red hair with ghastly three inch gray roots, designer jeans and a faded pink blouse. "Please," she sobbed. "Leave him alone."
"Barbara," said Eric Robbins. "It's all right. I'm sure these are reasonable men. As soon as they get what they want they'll leave us alone." He eyed Grumpy.
"What I want," said Grumpy, "is for you to step forward and lie down."
"There's no need for that," said Eric Robbins. "We're not going to cause you any trouble. Why don't you just tell us what you want. Money? We have some of that, for whatever it's worth now. There's food downstairs. There's gasoline out back. Take whatever you want. We won't cause you any trouble."
Throughout this whole confrontation I'd been aware of a rising sense of anticipation. I wouldn't say it was of a sexual nature exactly, though it wasn't far from it. It was more like the feeling I had as a child waiting in line to ride the roller coaster for the very first time, excitement building and building inside me until it became excruciating. But a man can only stand so much excruciation before he has to follow through with whatever it is he's anticipating.
The four of them had backed up against the end of the hall where a dark, solid looking table stood beneath a small window. I advanced on Eric Robbins with my shotgun held up, ready to buttstroke him. As I approached, the younger man suddenly moved to the fore, his flashlight held up like a club.
Several things happened at once.
Mommy shrieked, "Dennis, no."
Eric Robbins shouted, "Don't be a fool, Son."
Barbara grabbed Dennis from behind.
Grumpy doubletapped him. Two subsonic hollowpoints smacked his chest with a resounding splat-splat. The silenced MP5 cycled with less noise than your typical air rifle. Dennis dropped to his knees, frothy blood spurting and spraying from the twin holes in his white Polo shirt, gurgling up from his wide open mouth, staining the beige carpet brilliant pink. Barbara screamed and stood looking down at her own bloodsoaked breasts, holding her hands out like a freshly scrubbed surgeon avoiding potentially germy surfaces. Mommy knelt beside her man. He turned his head. Their eyes met. She screamed and he collapsed face down, the back of his shirt drenched in exit wound gore.
Without missing a beat, I stepped in and smashed Dennis Robbins's face with the shotgun's buttstock, dropped him like a big, heavy sack of shit. Then I pressed the muzzle up against the milky underside of Barbara's chin. "Boo!" I said, and that poor old bitch turned her eyes up so all you could see were the whites and crumpled to the floor in a dead faint beside her husband.
I tilted my head back and howled with laughter, roared with it. The children screamed and yammered in the attic. Mommy looked up at me from the floor, brown eyes wide, mouth agape, hyperventilating, blubbering. I slung my shotgun over my shoulder and helped her roughly to her feet. Putting on my most disarming smile, I looked into her glistening eyes and placed a hand on her surprisingly firm belly. I do believe I may have felt the little tyke give a kick or two before Mommy pushed my hand away.
I gave her dress a good hard yank, ripped it away. She stood cowering in her bra and tights, her naked belly swollen like some overripe fruit, shaking her head and mouthing the word, "No" over and over. I drew my machete--my beloved machete!--and slid the blade up under her bra-strap. "What's the matter, Mommy," I said as I sliced her bra free. "Cat got your tongue?"
Hands clutching her milkswollen breasts, she pulled away from me. Grumpy grabbed her from behind. She squirmed and writhed, thrashed her head and kicked her feet, grunted and screamed but all to no avail. I tapped her belly with the flat of my machete blade. "Is it a boy? Or a girl?"
"It's a boy," said Grumpy. "I'll bet you."
"You're on," I said. "Winner gets the kids."
With that, I brought my machete up against the underside of her distended belly, just as close in as her legs would allow. Pressing firmly upward, I drew the length of the blade through her soft skin and sliced open her womb. And do you know, the baby and all the rest of that sloppy mess she had in there dropped out just as pretty as you please? Right on the carpet. She screamed and sobbed and would have fallen had good old Grumpy not been there to support her. I reached down and snatched her wrinkly, slimy little bundle of joy and held it overhead by the ankles, amazed at the length of its umbilical cord.
"It's a boy," said Grumpy. "I win."
I didn't care. Nothing, not even losing the bet to Grumpy could dampen my euphoria. It bubbled up in me like a thing alive and burst out in the form of an old song I hadn't thought of in years. "Momma loves her baby," I sang at the top of my lungs. "And Daddy loves you, too." I swung Junior low over Daddy lying in a pool of his own blood, just in case some glimmer of consciousness still flickered within. "And the sea may look warm to ya Babe." I smacked his wet little ass with the machete blade because he seemed unhealthily quiet. "And the sky may look blue." I'd often been complimented on my singing voice before the pandemic. "Oooh, oooh, oooh, ooo-oooh babe." I closed my eyes and sang with such emotion, the piano music playing full volume in my head. "Oooh, oooh, oooh baby blue. Oooh, oooh, oooh, ooo-oooh babe?"
Grumpy let Mommy crumple to a heap in the sopping mess at his feet. He laughed and clapped, "Bravo!" and it suddenly dawned on me that he was a survivor too.
I slammed Junior down atop the table with a wet thump, all pink and trembling on the dark and solid wood. "If you should go skating on the thin ice of modern life," I sang, as I chopped him free of his umbilical leash. "Dragging behind you the silent reproach of a million tearstained eyes." Grasping his shriveled alien face in my fingers, I turned his head one way, then the other to see what was the matter with him. But still he made no sound and I couldn't tell why. "Don't be surprised when a crack in the ice appears under your feet." I put my face down close and sang that part softly just for him. "You slip out of your depth and out of your mind with your fear flowing out behind you." I raised my voice along with my machete and snarled the last line, "As you claw the thin ice." For the life of me, I can't imagine how people could ever have considered abortion anything but murder and I swung that blade down hard and set his little head rolling free across the table. It dropped off the edge and plunked onto the soaking carpet beside Mommy, still clutching her exit wound and boo-hooing there in the middle of the afterbirth mess and I imagine she must have been thinking of all the discomfort and inconvenience of those past nine months come to naught. Oh well.
Tugging my embedded blade free of the tabletop, I looked at Grumpy and he at me. We stood there smiling until the pitter-patter of little feet drew our eyes to the ceiling.
(The Thin Ice lyrics by Pink Floyd.)
User Reviews
Submitted by nargles (user info) at 2008-10-09 18:45:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
dear God that's disgusting!
Submitted by Banjo (user info) at 2008-10-09 16:08:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Bloody hell, only 1 review!!!
You're writing is always worth reading but I think you are not promoting yourself well enough.
+2 for you sir.
Submitted by stucker (user info) at 2008-10-07 15:38:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Isn't the correct phrase 'an hero'?
I'm sure this was good, I just didn't read any of it.