The Catalyst of the Destruction

914 Words
An old, bed bug-ridden paperback book flies across the living room to a drooling Timotheé on the couch, sleeping. He jumps out of the couch, flabbergasted. “Someone has been knocking on the door for fucking ages! Check who that idiot is!”, his father, Glenn, exclaims. Timotheé squints due to the brightness of the room, rubs his dried up saliva around his mouth and replies, “Why don’t you go and check it yourself!” Glenn’s eyes widen, he stands up, but struggles because of the clutter of empty Budweiser bottles, bills and leftover pizzas on the floor, he picks one of the bottles, and threatens to throw it to Timotheé, “You son of a–”, he stops himself and throws the bottle away. “Wait, why did you stop? You were supposed to call me something. Do you want me to finish it for you? Or did you already realize it’s also gonna point back to you?” Timotheé replies, breathing heavily. Glenn slowly takes his seat again, staring at the floor. He slaps his face, stares at Timotheé, his eyes red of anger and hungover, and says, “Fuck. You.” Timotheé opens his mouth, but closes it immediately and storms out of the room to his bedroom. He locks the door and stands still, facing the yellow painted wall for a full ten minutes. He then turns on the radio and its volume to full. He jumps to his bed, face down, fighting back the tears from coming out of his eyes. “America, forget whatever you are doing today because today you are going to witness a very special, very rare astronomical event that has never happened in the country since the early 20th century: a total solar eclipse across the entire contiguous United States!” The voice of the radio announcer booms out and fills the entire room. “What makes this event more mesmerizing is that the path of totality or the path where the moon totally covers the sun from the Earth can be seen here in Illinois among the other 13 states in the country. Isn’t that awesome Gigi?” Another announcer replies, “Definitely, Karina, and in light of that, let’s open up this bottle of Chardonnay that’s been gracefully and beautifully sitting on the table, just waiting for its perfect consumption...” Timotheé lies down on his side and closes his eyes. The moment he does so, he starts hearing voices inside his head, “What a pathetic excuse for a son!”, “Most people can’t count their friends because they have tons of them, but you can’t count yours because you have zero of them, ha-ha-ha!”, “When their plans don’t work, people get down to brass tacks to focus more on the solution, but when your plans don’t work, it is and only is because you suck!” Timotheé, unable to control his anxiety anymore, opens his eyes, the conversation from the radio drains all of his thoughts. “You always say it’s 5 o’clock somewhere Gigi just to justify your wine drinking!” “Oh, shut up Karina! Well, I’m not going to use that excuse today, at least. Because I have a better and far more interesting one, guess where the longest duration of the totality occurs? None other than here, in Carbondale, Illinois for 2 minutes and 41 seconds! That’s almost 3 minutes of daylight darkness!” “You have a nice way of calling it that, Gigi. Whatever, let’s cheers to that!” The clinking of the 2 glasses is heard from the radio as the program breaks for its advertisements. “An exclusive solar eclipse trivia brought to you by Grandma Cherry’s Soybean Cookies. During the June 8, 1918 Total Solar Eclipse, a group of Alaskan fishermen, while fishing for salmon, claimed they witnessed the rise of an island moments after an earthquake struck underwater in the pacific, just south of Alaska. They further claimed that the island only rose for a couple of minutes and sunk back under the ocean. Interviews have been made and a research conducted, leading to the experts concluding that such phenomenon was affected by the solar eclipse happening that time since the longest duration also occurred in the pacific, south of Alaska. However, a new research using modern and accurate methods and technologies by the same team has been made and the conclusion was demoted to an assumption. This trivia has been brought…” Timotheé finally falls asleep with the sound of the radio lullabying him. After a couple of hours, he wakes up and feels his stomach growling. He looks down on his stomach and taps it, saying, “Okay, tum-tum, you don’t have be angry. Let’s get you all cleaned up and empty.” He heads to his bathroom. After doing the deed, the ground starts shaking. The tiles on the walls begin to shatter and the bathroom floor breaks into pieces. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened from seeing things breaking and hearing the ground shaking tremendously. The damage worsens as the destruction spreads very fast. He climbs up the bowl and squats, hugging his knees. “Holy. Fucking. Shit.”

Great novels start here

Download by scanning the QR code to get countless free stories and daily updated books

Free reading for new users
Scan code to download app
Facebookexpand_more
  • author-avatar
    Writer
  • chap_listContents
  • likeADD