Symbiotic Puppets

by S. Kilroy

conclusion

“Eric, Eric, perfect, perfect.” Danny grabbed Eric by the arm and dragged him into the living room as soon as he had walked in the door

Danny glanced all around as if checking to see if anyone was listening. The house was quiet.

“Listen. Listen to me. I have something I need to talk to you about.” Danny glanced around again.

“Uh, I’m listening,” Eric said, staring at Danny.

A warbling, haunting song drifted in the windows from somewhere off in the forest. Eric couldn’t make out what was making the sound, but it sounded slightly familiar.

“It’s... it’s about Billy.”

Eric pulled his attention back to Danny and nodded. “Is something wrong? I’ve kind of noticed something going on with him.”

Danny grabbed Eric’s arm again. “You’ve seen it too. I knew it.”

Eric extracted his arm. “Seen what?”

Danny took a couple of steps away, stopped and turned in a kind of jerky way. “I think he’s about to go.”

“Go? Go where? You mean like run away?”

Danny stared at Eric as if he had just said something in a foreign language. Danny’s focus seemed to shift away. “I think Billy’s about to glance off.”

“Glance off? What are you talking about?”

Danny slapped his hands together and shot one straight off the other. “Glance off. Gone.”

Eric shook his head. “Danny, I don’t understand.”

Danny nodded his head vigorously. “Yes, you do. We all understand. Particles. We are all just particles of energy, held together by energy. At any moment any one of us could just shift from the particle form of energy to the wave form and glance off into the cosmos where we began.” Danny held his hand up in front of his face. “At any moment...”

Eric’s thoughts seemed to swim away from him for a moment and he thought he could see it. That sense of all the energy that bound him together starting to unravel. With a sudden spasm he regained his grip on reality.

“What are you talking about, Danny? Quantum physics? You’re a sales rep, you can’t possibly understand the intricacies of physics. More than that, you’re a Republican.”

In a bound, Danny was out of the room. “I’ve got to stop him.”

Eric spun around. “Stop who?”

“Billy.” Danny shouted over his shoulder. He was out the door and gone. The door swung wildly out and back.

Eric knew he needed to do something, but he couldn’t quite focus on what it was. And...he could feel a part of himself quietly sliding away from him. He looked down at his hands. They were shaking.

* * *

“So... what is it you needed me for again?” Sara asked.

“Sanity,” Eric answered as he drove.

“Hello. Did I not tell you my theory on microbial life controlling the universe? Are you sure I’m the best choice here?”

“I need you to help me figure out what’s happening here.”

“You’re right. This is kind out there a bit isn’t it?” Sara said as held on to the dash to lessen being jolted by the car.

“It’s just up here now,” Eric said.

The car came to a stop at the top of the long driveway. Eric and Sara got out. “And so...?” she said, looking around. It was quiet.

Eric shook his head. “Uh, I don’t know.” He cupped his hands up around his mouth to shout, but before he could, they heard it.

It was somewhere between a scream and a howl. They both turned and looked up the mountain, through the forest, at one of the rock outcroppings. It took them both a moment to spot him.

“Billy,” Eric said.

“What’s he doing?” Sara tried to shade her eyes to get a better view.

“I don’t know, but...” Eric’s voice trailed off. He seemed to be unable to focus on Billy or anything in particular.

“Well, don’t you think we should get up there?” Sara asked, looking over at Eric.

Eric stood, expressionless.

“Eric?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah.” Eric shook himself out of it and started up the mountain.

The going was tough. Rocks, dead trees and tree limbs, last fall’s dried leaves, soft earth and vines made the footing treacherous. Not to mention the steepness of the incline. Sara was in better physical shape and was climbing faster than Eric. She reached the base of the rock ahead of him.

It was forty feet straight up. She had to circle around thirty feet to the right and work her way up to the top. When she was on top she crossed to within ten feet of Billy. He stood out on the edge.

The front edge of the outcropping was not a 90-degree drop-off. It curved out before becoming a vertical drop. Billy stood out at point that curved sufficiently so that Sara thought it impossible that Billy hadn’t slid over the edge already. She hesitated.

There was a scuffling sound behind her, and from the huffing she knew it was Eric nearing the top.

Billy let out another piercing screech-howl. He held his arms out wide open as if he were trying to embrace something.

Sara took a step forward. Her foot slid slightly before it gained enough friction to stop. She hesitated again. “Billy?” she called out.

Suddenly, from behind Sara, across the small clearing that comprised the top of the outcropping, a wild thing came flying out of the forest. It was howling, tattered, flailing about as it ran, with sticks and leaves waving about in its red hair.

Sara let out a short scream in surprise as she half-turned back towards it. She stumbled, lost her footing and slid down the curved rock edge a couple of feet before coming to a stop again down on one knee.

The howling thing came straight for Saram and from its speed as it crossed the clearing it was obvious that its momentum would take both Sara and Billy over the edge with it.

With a grunt and after some wild scrambling Eric collided with the thing in the middle of the clearing. The two went tumbling over the uneven rocky ground.

“Danny!” Eric yelled. “Danny! Danny!”

They tussled for a moment longer before both stopped moving. They each breathed heavily.

Danny stared up at Eric. His eyes unfocused and confused. “Where...? Eric?” He glanced all around. “Why is my office such a mess?”

“Eric.” It was Sara.

Eric glanced over at her. Her body language told him she was afraid of slipping further down and over the edge.

Eric looked back down at Danny. “Danny, stay here.” Eric stood up. “Danny, just... sit in your office.”

Danny lay on his side. He pawed slowly at the thick moss that covered much of the rocky clearing. “My papers... these are not filed right at all...”

Eric scrambled over to Sara and pulled her back up on to more level ground.

Sara, still crouching, half turned and looked back towards the edge. “Billy,” she said softly.

Eric glanced over at Billy who was still managing somehow to stand on the precariously sloping rock face. He seemed to be mumbling or growling something, almost like a chant.

Eric took a couple of quick and tentative steps out towards Billy and in an instant the loose moss and lichen covering most the rock face crumbled away under Eric’s feet. He fell down on to his back with a heavy thud and slid down the sloping rock towards Billy.

“Eric!” Sara called out.

Eric tumbled down the rock and plowed into the back of Billy’s legs. Billy fell backwards, flat against the rock face. Eric slid past Billy and over the vertical edge of the rock face. After a moment, Billy, who appeared to have been knocked unconscious, followed Eric down.

Sara cried out and scrambled forward. She too started to slide downward, but after a moment of frantically dragging both hands and feet she generated enough friction to stop her descent.

Sara hung frozen and numb. Something caught her attention. To her left and right there was a slight movement. At first, she couldn’t identify what it was. Then she saw it. A thick, shaggy, dark-colored vine. It snaked along the rock face disappearing somewhere left of center and reappearing a short ways to the right of the rock outcropping. At both ends it was wiggling.

Overcoming her fears Sara let herself slide a little further down the rock face. Leaning out, far more than she was comfortable doing, she spotted them. Eric had grabbed the vine as he slid over it and now hung from it with one hand while in his other hand held a fistful of Billy’s shirt. Billy hung limply below him.

“Eric.” Sara said, almost whispering.

Eric looked up at her. “I don’t think... I can do this... very long.” He tried to smile, but he was straining to hang on.

Sara could see the ground on both sides of the rock outcropping sloping downward and meeting directly below Eric and Billy. They still hung, though, at least twenty feet above the several boulders that lay at the foot of the rock face. It wouldn’t be a pleasant landing.

Sara glanced about looking for some means of helping them. Then she heard it. An ugly cracking sound. She knew instantly it was the vine. She glanced to her left and saw strands of vine snapping.

“Eric, the vine.” Sara called out.

Eric looked up at her. His expression told her that he knew what was happening, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.

Another sound cut into the moment. It was an odd chirping sound.

Sara looked around. She couldn’t tell what it was or where it was coming from.

With a final crack the vine snapped and she watched a bizarre scene unfold in slow motion. The left side of the vine had broken, and Eric and Billy were now swinging downward; but as they did, their weight bent the right side of the vine back onto itself. As a result, the thick vine slowed their descent and gracefully swung them down onto the leaf-covered ground along the right side of the rock outcropping.

For a moment, everything was still. Then the odd chirping started again.

Eric rolled over and sat up. He felt like he had been beaten with a very large stick. He checked Billy. He was still unconscious, but appeared to be okay. It took Eric a moment to recognize the chirping sound next to him. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and stared at it.

“Well, I’ll be damned. It comes in up here.” He answered it.

Sara still clung numbly to the side of the rock face. She shook herself and, clawing as best she could, crept back up. When she reached the top she saw Danny staring closely at a piece of moss as if he were reading it. In the distance, from somewhere further up in the forest, she heard a woman’s voice singing.

Leaving Danny to finish the story of the moss, Sara scrambled down around the right side of the rock face to where Eric still sat.

“Is Billy okay?” Sara asked as she slipped down onto the leaves next to Eric.

Eric nodded. “I think so.” He held up his cell phone. “I called 911. They’re on their way.”

“Oh. That was your phone ringing?”

Eric nodded again. “It was the water people. They found a bacterium in the water they had never seen before and — get this — they suspect if you ingest enough of the bacteria you might be prone to ‘hallucinatory states’.”

From somewhere up the mountain, Jenny’s voice belted out her song again.

Sara glanced up the mountain towards the singing voice and where Danny still lay, paging through the moss. “I think it’s more than a suspicion now.”

Eric smiled at Sara. “You think?”

“Hey,” Sara said suddenly, “I think you just found the most interesting new species in the whole Biodiversity Project.”

“Well, what do you know? I found something after all.”

to Challenge 390...