The Creature in the Laundry Room

by C. F. Sheeler

The Creature in the Laundry Room

  By

  C. F. Sheeler

  Manuscript Copyright 2015 by C. F. Sheeler

  Cover Copyright 2015 by C. F. Sheeler

  This e-book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, any place, events or occurrences are purely coincidental.

  The Creature in the Laundry Room

  I was sitting one night watching some old movie about a guy helping a man escape from Nazis during World War II. My wife Emily was cooking one of those frozen pizzas, pepperoni or something that was going to keep me up all night with heartburn. This was how me and the wife spent most Saturday nights.

  We were in our early sixties and didn't go out to much these days. Our only daughter was a lawyer in the big city and very rarely came to visit. She did however call from time to time. She always picked times when I was away from the house. I'm not sure if that was planed or not.

  We had been apple growers. We made a decent living at it. But now days we just grew them for us. We are hoping that one day we will have grandchildren that will be interesting in apple growing since our daughter never was. We will probably end up selling the place though or our daughter will sell it after we're gone.

  The wife brought the pizza into the living room and we each took a slice. We ate while I tried to explain what was happening on the movie. I was just about to catch my wife up when we heard an explosion. It was so loud that the sound waves shook the house. It knocked out the TV, but the lights went off for just a minute and then came back on.

  "What the hell was that?" I asked. I had to pat my wife on the back because she was getting choked on the pizza. "Sip some of this," I told her handing her my beer.

  "What was that Eustace?" my wife asked coughing. "It sounded so close." she said the last sentence in a low whisper.

  "I don't know," I said looking through the drawer of the stand that we kept by the front door. "But I'm sure as hell gonna find out." I found a flashlight and headed out the door slowly.

  "Be careful Eustace!" Emily called in a whisper. She only poked her head halfway out of the door.

  ***

  Whatever it was had hit in the orchard. It was lit up down there and I believe a few trees were burning. I got a closer look and saw that something had broke the apple trees as if they were matchsticks. A long row of trees were nothing but splintered stumps of varying sizes.

  I slowly crept through the orchard and thought I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I quickly shone the light that way, but whatever it was had ran off fast. It was probably an animal, a dog or something, that was frightened from all the commotion. I probably scared it more with the flashlight. I continued on toward the source of the explosion.

  The closer I got to the source the stronger an awful odor became. It smelled as if an entire henhouse's eggs had all went bad at the same time. I pulled my shirt up around my nose and mouth and continued on. I finally came upon the source of the smell and the explosion. It was a crater of some kind. There was green and white smoke billowing up from the crater. I shined the flashlight down into the hole, coughing as my shirt wasn't enough of a filter from the smoke.

  I must have been too close to the edge because the next thing I knew the ground gave under my feet and I fell into the crater. To have made such a mess out of the apple trees surprisingly the hole wasn't all that deep. But it was deep enough that it came up to my shoulders when I stood up.

  I fell into some kind of gooey liquid. The smell from the gooey stuff almost took my breath away. I not only put my shirt back over my nose and mouth, but I also put my arm over my nose. I quickly found my flashlight and shone around the hole. The gooey crap was every place. It was about an inch deep on the bottom of the crater and oozed and dripped off the sides.

  In the middle of the crater was what looked like two large rocks. A closer look revealed that it was the same rock, but had been split into two pieces. The gooey stuff was thick in the middle of the two halves. The two pieces were hollow on the inside too. The whole thing reminded me of an egg that had been cracked open.

  It took about three or four tries, but I finally got my sixty-two year body out of that damn hole. I was breathing hard and wanted to catch my breath before returning to the house, but the smell of that thing was too great. So I headed back with my arm and shirt over my nose and mouth.