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Ozone Part 2



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Sat Nov 12, 2011 4:28 am
charcoalspacewolfman says...



Note: this is about a month after the events that took place in Ozone. If you haven't read Ozone, please do and if you have any questions at all about what happened, please, for the love of all baked goods, Comment and Ask. Also, please be specific on what you don't understand. I have issues with communication, so if I've made a leap in logical progression, please say so.

I was sick. It started out like I was getting a cold or something, then I woke up one morning, went to my job in the bakery and puked. It wasn't very pretty, either, since a piece of breakfast had lodged in my nose and when I tried to snort and get it out of my nasal passages, it flipped back, triggered my gag reflex and made me puke again.
My boss, Sarah, reacted poorly to the horrific occurrence by stating, "Ewwwww! Ew! Ew! Ew! Go home! Get away from my bread!"
"I'm nowhere near the bread!" I said, desperately clinging to the sink and letting the bile dribble out of my mouth.
Sarah stood there looking pained and unhappy. After a few seconds she started pacing and crying and I knew I should leave before she had a (nother) nervous break. She'd had several before, most of which ended up making coworkers and customers a little leery of doing business with her, but I hadn't minded as much.
I made sure to clean myself up well, then I made her sit down, told her to take several deep breaths, and lit a candle to cover the smell of puke.
"It smells like puke." She whined.
"Bake some sweet rolls. I already cleaned it up and I'm leaving."
She nodded and stared vacantly at the rising dough as I picked up my stuff and left.
It was a warm day, but I felt cold chills all over and was shivering as I got into my car. I started home in a light daze, almost getting killed numerous times by oncoming traffic before finally pulling into the parking lot of my apartment complex. I stumbled into the building and shuffled up to my room. I'm not sure if I locked the door or not; I didn't care after I flopped into my bed and immediately drifted off to sleep.
I was holding a gun. It wasn't loaded and I didn't have any bullets. I needed bullets. Or shells. Upon closer inspection, the gun turned out to be a 6-gauge double-barreled shotgun and I had some shells in a cargo pocket. I counted them and loaded two into the barrel. That left...I checked the other shells and found that they'd jumped away.
Figures, I thought, just when you need protection from the aliens...[/i]
Someone yelled at me from the doorway and I ran over.
"Just stick a piece of gum in your eyes and you'll be able to move mountains!" the man yelled. His eyes were staring straight at me, but he had a slightly glazed expression in his face that made me question his methods. I took the chewing gum for later, though.
Safely armed with my two shotgun shells, I walked down a hall in the old house. It was dark, but I knew there were aliens in the shadows, watching me. I wasn't sure which shadows to shoot, though, as they all shifted in and out like waves.
Someone was coming up the stairs. I knew if he made it up he'd kill me, so I emptied both barrels into his chest and sent him tumbling back where he came from. He had three friends downstairs and I was out of ammo. I put my chewing gum in the chamber and nothing happened.
[i]An alien tapped me on the shoulder.

"Sir? I'm having a baby." she said. She looked really pregnant and I could see something crawling out of her.
"What?" I screamed, "You can't have babies in here, it's filthy!"
"I can do whatever I want!" She yelled.
And with that, she had her baby. It flopped out and she picked it up, wrapping it in a clean white blanket.
"Aww." I said.
"Die, bitch." said an alien on the ground. She was pointing a gun at the new mother. I tried to talk her down, and so did the other aliens. She eventually started crying and dropped the gun.
The aliens took her to a penitentiary and strapped her to a table with a time limit. When the time reached zero, she would die.
I went to visit her. We didn't talk long before I unstrapped her and hugged her. We were just making out when the timer reached zero and someone began screaming in my ears.
My return to reality was shaky at first, then I felt a jolt and slammed into a wall. My room was a mess; my bed had been torn and flung all over, my dressers had been turned to splintery, unrecognizable pieces of wood, most of my clothes had been relocated in other rooms, and I myself had made a crater in the wall.
The shock didn't register for a good ten minutes. I had a headache and a sore throat, so I made myself a cup of tea and took an aspirin. When I had established that neither of these measures really helped matters, I went into my room and gawked at the destruction I'd caused.
When I’d finished gawking, I started picking up my clothes. Somewhere in amidst the mess, I found my phone. I was about to replace it in its cradle, but I noticed there was a voicemail and decided that it might be something important and dialed my messaging service.
“Hello?” came a hesitant female voice on the other end of the line.
I waited for the typical, “Please enter your PIN,” but instead the voice greeted me again, slightly uncertainly this time, “Hello, is anyone there?”
“Uh, hi.” I said.
“Um, you’ve reached the voice message service center. I’m Lindsey. What’s your number, sir?”
“Wait, you’re the voice message person?”
“Yes.”
“Why aren’t you a machine?”
“Because it’s broken.”
“It is? I never thought it did.”
“Well, it broke earlier today for your phone. What’s your PIN?”
“Don’t you have caller ID?”
There was a sigh. I could almost hear the many potential arguments lining up in her head for why she would need my PIN and I really did not want to frustrate her, but I was in fact stalling for time because I had completely forgotten my PIN. She made several inarticulate mutterings and some starts to sentences, then said, “Just give me your PIN. We don’t actually have caller ID down here, we just have a computer and some old telephones. Did you forget your PIN?”
“Yes.” I said meekly. “Sorry, it was really long and I can only remember that the last four letters are 7789.”
“Oh, when did you start with your phone service? If you can remember the year and month, I can pinpoint your PIN.”
I could vaguely remember that, so I gave her the information I could and she played me my messages. She was much easier to deal with than the automated system. Still, I felt bad about giving her a hard time.
“Henry? Hey, it’s Emily. [long pause] Um, I wanted to ask if you’d, um. [another pause] OK. Henry, when you get this come to my house. Mom is gone and I’m kinda freaking out. She...[long pause] Something’s [message end].”
I felt cold and it wasn’t just from the chills. It was partly from the chills, granted, but it was also because Emily sounded like she was going to cry and that made me feel very...
I drew a deep breath.
Lindsey said, “Are you done? Do you want to hear it again?”
“No.” I said, “I think that’ll be all. Thanks for putting up with me, Lindsey. I’ve got to go now.”
“Your welcome. Goodbye, mister.”
I hung up. My mouth felt dry, so I took a sip of my now-cold tea. It slid down my throat, burning my esophagus to smithereens and sloshing into my volatile stomach. I considered that perhaps straight water would be better.
The next couple of seconds blurred as I grabbed a water bottle, dashed downstairs to my car and peeled out of the apartment complex. The speed limit was all but forgotten as I careered through the evening streets, barely avoiding collision with numerous seemingly stationary objects such as people and other cars.
Somewhere in the midst of all this madness, a realization that I was endangering the lives of myself and others penetrated the foggy shadows of my desperate mind and I retracted my foot from the gas pedal. By then I was already at Emily’s house; I’d just missed it and would have to backtrack.
Emily answered the door, as usual, and, unusually, gave a small cry and furiously hugged me. She buried her face in my armpit, which I would not have recommended, and sobbed for a minute. I waited uncomfortably, clutching her form tightly and alternately thinking, What could be wrong? I’ll kill whatever it is! and, Holy cow she’s so...close. Do I kiss her? Pat her back? What?
Finally, she pulled away a bit and said, “Mom was (hic) baking brownies and (hic) somebody broke in (hic) and took her.”
“Oh.” I said. I wasn’t entirely sure what else to say and, indeed, didn’t have any time to say it as Emily’s face screwed up again and I quickly pulled her close as a fresh wave of tears popped out of her eyes.
“Did, um, did someone go after her? Did you call the police or anything?” I asked when she’d stopped shaking quite as much.
“No...” she sniffled and recomposed herself a little bit, “It wasn’t like a regular break-in. The guy wasn’t from...he was like a demon or something. There was a flash and...I don’t know.”
I pulled Emily along with me to the kitchen to survey the scene of the crime. There was brownie batter everywhere, and bits of aluminum cake pan were scattered here and there on the linoleum. There was a large red splash on the wall, which I tried to ignore.
The smell of unbaked batter assaulted my nostrils and made me sneeze. Then I realized that there was another, fainter smell. Something that smelled like...
“Ozone.” I said. “Does your mom know anything about magic? Did she fight back or anything?”
“No. I do magic sometimes in here; it could be that.”
“No, I know what your magic smells like. This is a little different.” I carefully wended my way around the mess to the wall opposite the stove. There was a corkboard with pins in it. There used to be little reminders on it as well, but most of them had been ripped out. One thing remained on the corkboard, however.
“What’s this?” I asked. It was a cross-section of a tree. It had been carved and stained. The words, “The Heller Family” was blazoned up high and names were burned in below.
“That’s from Aunt Hatty. She carved it out herself and gave it to us last Christmas.”
“Really.” I said, touching the wood. It was warm.
Something stirred inside me. At first I thought I was just my stomach, then I noticed the wood was growing warmer and had started glowing.
It turned out that while it wasn’t all my stomach, it was in part. The wood grew to combustion temperatures, blazed upwards and spread out to form a door. Meanwhile, the bile crept up my esophagus and I puked again.
Emily rushed to my side. “Are you OK?” she asked, worry plain on her face.
“I’m just a little under the weather. I’m well enough to go find your mom, though.”
“Sure?”
I hurried to the sink, washed off my face and ran back to the door. “I’m good to go.”
She looked concerned and fussed over me a little longer, then sighed and opened the door. Beyond was a green tunnel leading who-knows-where.
I took her arm, “Shall we?”
She nodded and with that we stepped through into the unknown.
HMS Tragedy?! We should-we should have known!!!
  





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Thu Nov 17, 2011 6:52 pm
Omni says...



Here to review!
Ok, first of all, I love this story, and I can tell it is going to be good.

There are some parts that troubled me though.
1. In my own opinion, I think you jumped from subjects and plots too much (unless you wanted to do that) It would make it better if you knd of stayed or elaborated on the small areas better. Give more details to where the person is at in some places, like the bakery.

I do like how you gave descriptions on the destruction scenes. Very powerful words that you used that made me feel like I was actually there in the mess of both the apartment and his mother's house.

I'm not really getting who Emily is. Is she his sister? Girlfriend? If she was his sister, then why would he want to kiss her when she hugged him?

Also, before I forget :) I like how you give that relaxed feel and that modern feel when you say Henry's thoughts.

That's all I have to say, I like the story overall and will follow you ! :)
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