Unprepared Read online

  David opened his eyes to see Steve sitting against the living room doorway, legs outstretched, mouth open, deep in a world of dreams. “This is what happens when you hire a lawyer to protect your family,” he thought. He crawled over and touched Steve, who bolted awake in much the same way he had, 30 seconds earlier.

  “What’s happening?” Steve asked.

  “I was about to ask you,” David replied.

  “Oh. Guess I dozed off a bit.’

  “Ya think?”

  “You reckon that kid’s still outside?” asked Steve.

  “We gotta find out,” David answered, waking up Kelly and Maureen to watch the kids and get back on high alert.

  The room organized itself and David and Steve approached the back door. They looked at each other, nodding seriously, both aware that such a Rambo-like gesture meant absolutely nothing. David instructed Steve to stay on the look out, while he was going left, around the side of the house. Steve nodded, slowly turning the doorknob, releasing them both into the crisp morning air. As David approached the corner of the house, he wondered if the child was still there on the other side. After all, if it was indeed a decoy, it would either have wandered back to its captor hours ago, or died of hypothermia. David braced himself and, holding his torso straight, slowly allowed one eye to peer around the perimeter of Steve’s house, in the direction of the child. His eyes focused on the foreground in front of him. It took around one second for the object before him to translate into signals which his brain could interpret and recognize. He raised his eyes slightly upward, scanning the lawn and area down to the road, but it was empty. David dropped his eyes down again, focusing his attention on the object in front of him. He visibly relaxed and dropped his shoulders, breathing a long and world-weary breath, before turning around to Steve, who was facing the forested area behind the house, gun extended.

  “Hey, Inspector Clouseau,” he called out.

  Steve turned to him, confused.

  “Come here, you fucking dingus.”

  Steve began moving over, still on edge. David began to shake his head at Steve, sighing once again.

  “Put your gun down, Steve. You’re not gonna need it.”

  Steve approached the edge of the house and peered around to see what had taken three years off their lives through stress. David helped him out.

  “It’s a goose.”

  “It’s a goose?” Steve asked.

  “It’s a goose,” David confirmed.

  “It’s a goose!” Steve repeated, allowing himself a breathy laugh, mostly out of frustration.

  David dropped his head down, exhausted, then moved towards the bird, touching it with his foot. It was a goner. Steve bent down and picked it up by its neck, inspecting it, before taking it inside.

  “It’s alright, everyone, no cause for alarm. It’s a goose.”

  “A goose?” Kelly asked, confused.

  “Yep, a goose,” said Steve.

  “What? It was a goose?” Maureen asked.

  “It was a goose,” David confirmed.

  “Well... That’s great!” said Maureen, perking up.

  “That’s... weird,” added Kelly.

  Maureen boiled water and put coffee in the French press, the dead goose sitting on the kitchen counter. Despite enduring a night of uncertainty and stress, there was still humor to be had.

  “So I guess the butcher is still doing deliveries after all,” Kelly chimed in from the sofa.

  “That was a fowl attempt at humor,” David shot back.

  “Don’t give up your day jobs, guys,” said Steve from the sofa, feeling a little guilty that the feared child decoy turned out to have feathers.

  ‘I dunno, I thought the jokes were pretty good,” Maureen chimed in from the kitchen, adding “Me goose-ta those jokes.”

  “Well, they’re not quacking me up,” Steve added, immediately aware that ducks quack, not geese.

  After they’d exhausted every possible goose-related pun, perhaps as an involuntary stress-relieving mechanism, the four adults and two children pontificated how the goose had come to hit their roof. No theory was considered too far-fetched as they searched for answers.

  “Two geese in as many days, though. That’s pretty weird,” said Kelly.

  “But they’re migrating, no? Don’t they migrate around this time of year?” asked Steve.

  “Yeah, but when do you ever see them dead?” David asked.

  “Well… Geese don’t live forever,” Maureen added, not entirely unhappy with the idea of another delicious serving of goose.

  She wondered if this one would last long enough in the cold outdoor air to be cooked for Christmas, two weeks in the future.

  “But they don’t normally fall out of the sky,” David responded.

  “Maybe it was hit by a plane?” Steve added, optimistically. “Do you think they’re sending planes now?”

  “If a plane hit that goose it would be a mess, but look at it,” David continued. “It’s got a bloody beak, but otherwise it’s fine.”

  The group sat in silence for a moment, pondering, while Maureen filled up four cups with hot coffee. They might be living in the Book of Revelation, but at least they still had fresh coffee.

  “It must be sick. Why else would it be bleeding on its beak?” proposed Kelly.

  “That could be from hitting the roof,” Maureen suggested.

  “If it is sick... Is anyone feeling unwell from dinner?” Steve asked.

  Everyone looked at each other, for some reason scared to answer the simple question. Perhaps out of fear they'd all been poisoned.

  “No,” David said first.

  “I feel fine,” Kelly added.

  “Me too, said Maureen.

  “Good, me too,” said Steve. “You guys feeling fine?” he asked Portia and Braxley. The kids were tired, but feeling normal.

  “Well, that’s all good then. This coffee tastes like pennies, though,” Steve joked, adding, “So, goose for Christmas, then, huh?”

  Chapter ten

  Christmas

  Christmas day was twelve hours away, but you’d not know it by looking out the window. The suburb was silent and the lawns overgrown and not a single home had Christmas decorations. Though the mood in David and Kelly’s house was beginning to be positive again, if only briefly, caused by the distraction of preparing for a Christmas get-together with Steve and Maureen.

  A week prior, the two had decided to decorate the inside of the house; something they were both acutely aware was fairly pointless, but at the very least it gave them something to do and created an atmosphere of expectation. Anything to break the monotony.

  David and Kelly had tried to mend the cracks in their relationship by talking each evening about what personal issues they were having and how they could create plans to work through them, but this wasn’t an easy task, given that the issues were shared.

  Distractions, therefore, became essential to their survival. In the spare room, David continued tinkering on his homemade crystal radio, sadly without success, apart from hearing an occasional crackle, while Kelly converted the spare room to a darkroom in the evening, enlarging and developing her rolls of film from the last few weeks. She’d been busy photographing anything and everything since the pulse, with her plan being to hold a photo exposition if normality ever returned. She'd also been busy developing and enlarging a photo for Christmas day at Steve and Maureen’s house, with the plan being to give the photo to their neighbors as a Christmas gift.

  David had also turned his hand to baking, creating Christmas pot brownies in a makeshift oven outside using bricks, a risky thing to do, with smoke from the fire visible to anyone who walked nearby. This risk meant that Kelly was employed as both his bodyguard and spectator while he encouraged a small fire to burn in the winter air behind their house.

  The colder, northerly winter winds also meant a few dead birds lay around their section every now and then, something to which they had became accustomed, with scavenging cats a
nd other animals quickly removing the dead creatures like nature’s vacuum cleaners.

  Kelly had also been keeping a journal of their lives, something she thought might compliment her photos when, or if, life ever returned to normal. The biggest problem she faced was trying to find things to write down. Daily life was mostly reading books, eating and sharing chores such as washing clothes or dishes. Tomorrow, December 25, offered them a welcome reason to shake up their routine.

  In the living room, David took a bite of a pot brownie which he had baked earlier in the day. It was a little bland and he’d added a touch too much baking soda, making it slightly bitter, but it wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever eaten. He put the rest in his mouth and chewed, happy with its moistness, thanks to the cooking oil which took the place of butter. He thought about how much he missed cheese and dairy products; with powdered milk offering a pretty poor replacement for the real thing.

  “It was milk, then it wasn’t, then it was milk again,” he thought, amusing himself with his philosophizing. Or perhaps that was just the weed.

  Once night had fallen, Kelly got busy developing her last roll of film, which she had filled up with photos two weeks prior. She knew there were probably some decent photos on the roll, but part of her was also a little reluctant to see them, as they were taken during the lowest point in their relationship so far.

  David knew not to open the door to the spare room while Kelly was working on her photos, as the light, even from a candle, could ruin the process. In the current boredom of their lives, he wanted to see how the process worked, but obviously couldn’t. Although he once joined Kelly in the room while she narrated what she was doing in the pitch black, something which David found hilariously pointless. David, who still disliked the smell of the developing chemicals, was now finding himself excited whenever Kelly produced developed photos, hanging on a line over their bathtub. It was a welcome relief to see something new in the house.

  Kelly placed her first, freshly developed negative into the enlarger and placed photographic paper on the base. David had replaced the enlarger’s 110 volt lamp with a 12 volt lamp taken from a car headlight, powered by a car battery. It did the job remarkably well, and produced fine photographs, though once normality returned, Kelly told herself that she would take her negatives to one of the few remaining photo stores to have them all professionally enlarged.

  Each photo she removed from the tray filled with chemicals took her back in time to the moment the photo was taken. She lifted up the next photo, dripping wet with fixer solution, and hung it on the length of fishing line which David had installed in the spare room. The photo dripping in her hands was of David’s face. It was just before he yelled at her. This wasn’t a photo she wanted to keep, but she realized its artistic value, amplified by the situation in which they were living.

  “All done,” Kelly said, carrying wet photos down the hallway to the bathroom, hanging them up over the bathtub.

  David got up, candle in hand, and walked into the bathroom as Kelly delivered another two photos, using clothespins to hold them up. David held the candle a little closer and leaned in, looking at the faces staring back at him.

  “This one’s cool,” he said, his face inches away from a photo of himself mixing pot brownies in the kitchen. “But there are no photos of you,” he added, aware that she was always behind the camera and not in front of it.

  “They’re a bit dark,” he added.

  “Yeah, I know. I think my chemicals are getting stale. Or that car battery is getting flat.”

  Kelly was a perfectionist when it came to her craft of photography, so the darker photos annoyed her, more than she was letting on.

  “Merry Christmas,” Maureen announced, opening the rear door and inviting Kelly and David inside.

  “Merry Christmas,” Kelly responded cheerfully, a large, flat gift in her hand, wrapped in a blanket.

  “We come bearing gifts,” David added, four pot brownies on a plate in his hands.

  “Hey, come on in, guys,” Steve announced from the decorated living room.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” Maureen continued. “The goose is almost done.”

  David squeezed past them and headed to the living room, shaking Steve’s hand.

  “Can I help with anything?” Kelly asked Maureen.

  “It’s pretty much all done here. Grab yourself a drink. And you can fill mine up while you’re at it.”

  Kelly poured some brandy into Maureen’s glass.

  “Cheers!” they said, clinking glasses and talking of the day’s events.

  Steve and David did the same in the living room, while Braxley and Portia amused themselves, drawing pictures on paper by candlelight. It almost felt like a normal Christmas.

  “Oh my God. This is delicious,” said Kelly, putting another a piece of oily goose into her mouth. “I don’t know if it’s possible, but it’s even better than last time!”

  “It’s really good, Maureen,” David added. “Thank you for going to all this trouble.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing,” Maureen responded. “It gave me something to do today.”

  “It’s not bad,” said Steve. “Tastes a bit like pennies, but not bad.”

  David let out a chuckle.

  “It does not taste like pennies,” Maureen added, somewhat offended.

  David tried to change the subject.

  “I've got an after dinner surprise. You all saw the brownies, but there’s something else we’re gonna enjoy after this meal, which is delicious, by the way. Don’t listen to Steve.”

  Maureen smiled in appreciation.

  “Thank you, Dave. Now, what’s the surprise?” she asked.

  David was no good with keeping surprises a secret, so he announced it at the dinner table.

  “I brought over four cigars. I’ve been hanging onto them since Steve and I went to the mall.”

  “Oh, dude. You’re a legend,” said Steve, who imagined the sweet taste of a hand-rolled tobacco leaf and dense smoke on his tongue.

  Normally none of them smoked, but considering the rarity of cigars, it was something they were going to enjoy, no matter what.

  “And I have something special for you both,” Kelly added.

  “And a little something for you guys too,” she said, turning to Portia and Braxley. The kids were excited with this news.

  Steve put down his fork and picked up his glass, golden brandy swirling at its base.

  “I wanna make a toast,” he said. One at a time, each of the four adults picked up their glasses and held them off the table. Steve looked around at his dinner guests.

  “Here’s to good friends. And the future.”

  “To good friends and the future,” the table chanted back, clinking their glasses.

  Braxley and Portia were hyperactive after dinner, something to which Maureen and Steve were immune, but something which made David and Kelly uncomfortable.

  “Sit down, guys,” David told the kids, climbing over the the furniture.

  Normally, in modern America, telling another person’s unruly child to be quiet or calm down would be a great insult to the parents. Of course it never used to be that way, but parenting in the Land of the Free had somehow become less about teaching right and wrong in a functional society, and more about child worship. Parents bowed and swayed to their child’s every whim, creating entitled, free-range brats, as a visit to any mall food court could attest.

  Fortunately, Steve and Maureen had become so close to Kelly and David, that they didn’t mind them reprimanding their kids. If anything, it meant they didn’t have to.

  “I wanna brownie!” Portia demanded, her shrill, eight year old voice getting on Kelly’s nerves.

  A wicked thought entered her mind. She wondered if she could get away with tearing a chunk of pot brownie off her own and giving it to Portia. “Would that harm her? Is that legal?” she thought to herself, realizing the absurdity of the question the moment it appeared as a notion. There were no laws
anymore, not even moral ones. She kinda did want to see a stoned kid, though. Especially one with such a stupid name. It would be hilarious. Kelly thought for a second. “No,” she told herself. “Grow up.”

  She stuffed the rest of the brownie into her mouth, to Portia’s disgust, her eight year old face screwing up into a pout.

  “These are for adults,” Maureen told her. The girl crossed her arms and walked over to the presents on the floor.

  “Can we open the presents now?” she asked.

  “Yeah, can we?” added Braxley, looking up from his drawing; a rocket ship flying past a crater-filled planet.

  “Yeah, whatta you guys think?” Steve asked the room. “Presents then cigars?”

  “Sounds like a plan to me,” David said, the two women nodding.

  “Oh, Kelly,” Maureen said sincerely. “It’s great. Really, really great.”

  The two kids clambered over the sofa to get a better look at what Maureen was holding. It was a large photo of their family, taken two weeks earlier. The individuals in the photo weren’t doing anything remarkable, just sitting on the sofa, but the fact that it was an actual photograph in her hands, taken after the pulse, made it incredibly special.

  “We used to take photos for granted,” Maureen said, staring into the photograph. “They were like music. They were everywhere. Now they’re so precious.”

  She looked up at Kelly.

  “I remember when I was a kid, when someone in the family would go on a trip somewhere, they’d come back and we’d sit together in their living room, passing the photos around in a circle.”

  “We did that too!” Kelly replied.

  “Hmm,” Maureen pondered. “You know, photos seemed to have more value back then. But then digital photos and Facebook came along and… I don’t know, we just got saturated with photos. Everyone has a camera in their pocket.”