Day 83: Patented Move

Concentration concentration concentration.  That's all.

Noticed lately that people like me better than I like myself.  And I definitely like myself.  So this is weird.  End of emo rant.

Writing is getting better!  Not that it's necessarily going anywhere, but my focus is improving and my "minds eye" is something which may have come into existence.  Pretty sure you can just will anything into creation.
            I apologize to everyone for the quality of this one.  No, I don't.  It's short, what more could you ask for?

            A steady line of ducks emerged behind the first one, each becoming larger and more brightly colored in visual accordance with the previous one.  The yellow sheen of their coats resembled shag carpeting.  They showed little alarm for the bulging chains, the straining wood, if it hadn’t been their cause all along.           

Jim watched with a raised eyebrow.  He imagined an enormous mother duck type of duck in the building pumping these out.

            The door of the shack flung open and Otto came storming out, his boots falling in thunderous thuds.  He looked like a giant trying to stomp out a forest fire.  Roger was inside relaxing with his plate of ribs he had heated on the stove, standing pensively over the sink.

            “Still working on the stem cell physics stuff, huh?  You old rascal, I thought you gave it up.”  Jim said, watching Otto use his enormous arms to gather up the ducks like dribbling a giant furry basketball.  “I thought after you left Grey you were just going to be a man of the land.  As it is, you’re a lot like me.”

            “Didn’t hide it very well?  Well, we’ll get into that.”  Otto said.  “Help me push these little bastards back inside.”

            The birds started chirping, a quiet golf clap at first growing louder and more aggravated as Jim and Otto tried to shove them back towards the shack.  Otto scurried around, grappling like a professional wrestler.  Their sizes were fixed now, but Otto refused to acknowledge the fact they wouldn’t fit back in the tiny mousehole sized crack.  Roger stepped out onto the grass, nervously gnawing at the hunk of meat.

            “Go back in the house, get me my rope.”  Otto said, armdeep in the yellow muff.  His head faced the opposite direction, sprawled out with his legs back like he was trying to push a car out of a snowy situation.  “We gotta tie these suckers up.”

            Otto let go of the chicks to see what they’d do.  They all stared up at him and Jim, confused and derelict.  He tried to compress one back down to its original size using his hands like a vice, and it squashed out flat like a pancake.  When he released it, it popped back open into a ball and walked around aimlessly again, like a balloon with legs.  Jim watched as the chains snapped like elastic bands, and the smaller shacks door squeeked open.

            Roger had returned inside and was looking around the house for rope.  He checked under the couch, stared up at the ceiling, and was by all practical standards ineffectual.  He stared up at the wooden chest in the bedroom, the inevitable end to his journey.  It was curiously quiet outside, the chirping had lulled down to an agreeable level.  He gripped the metal banister and proceeded up the stairs.

            Otto’s doorless room was basically a giant bed orbitted by a dresser, a bookshelf, and a hole in the ceiling that passed for a skylight.  Roger hit the light switch next to the door, and an overhead light buzzed on with the sound of an old fashioned tube TV.  He crouched down and lifted the bed, pulling the crate out from underneath with great difficulty because he could only get two fingers through its metal bearing.  He thought of those moms who use adrenaline rushes to rescue their babies from underneath debris.

            The box was full of intertangled wires, each connected like bundles of nerves.  He pried them apart with a sickening plop, the area underneath full of foggy viscuous liquid.  He couldn’t make out the objects inside of the fog, and his hand slowly glided into the void as if by its own volition.  When he couldn’t see it, it didn’t feel like his hand anymore.  He felt something inside grab his hand, when he tried to grab something with his hand.  When he retracted his arm by the elbow, he saw he was holding a long strand of rope, and as he continued to pull at it more and more continued to come out.

            Jim and Otto stepped back into the house,  covered in yellow fur.  Otto’s arms hung like violent eels out of water.  He looked around for Roger, upon noticing him upstairs he flew up the flight three steps at a time.  He slapped Roger back with enough energy to send him sprawling in a heap into the wall, and grabbed the rope and started pulling.  His mountain man lumberjack arms worked at it, pulling rope until it became taut at the end, at which point a heave ripped it free from whatever it was connected to.  The box squeeled and a clear mist sprayed over the room, coating everything in an ambriotic layer.

            Jim disappeared back outside, and Otto stood in the center of the room with the rope stretched over both of his hands, like it was something that died.  Roger pulled himself up and pushed his palms into his eyes, his head spinning.

            “What was that?  You said you wanted rope!”  Roger said indignantly. 

            “This is rope to you?”  Otto said, and Roger looked in horror as the rope had revealed its nature as a long black tendon.  “You could never understand the mechanics of this invention, long story short its alien technology.”  Roger was horribly disappointed with this explanation.

            Roger had been distracted from his mission long enough.  Things were happening too fast.  He pushed past Otto and back down the stairs, and then out onto the gravel walkway.  An overpowering smell of burning took his senses by storm, a cloud of smoke rose from the seemingly empty desert in the distance. 

            Jim stood at the gate of the shack, facing Roger.

            “This is what we need, it’s in here.  This is how we get there.”  Jim sounded self assured and confident. 

            Otto stormed outside.  “You’re not going to be using any of my stuff, Jim.  The road ends here.  Both of you guys seem alright, it’s nothing personal, but I’m going to make sure you stay here.”