Good Morning
Sunlight streamed into the un-aesthetically messy room over Coke cans, dirty laundry, and wrinkled pieces homework. One toe of a large foot stuck out into the light as if checking its temperature to see if it was warm enough. A small-stature girl walked into the room boldly and headed toward the spot where the foot was hanging off the bed and out of the covers. She was still in her pajamas, but her hair had been stuffed into a towel. Wet tendrils stuck to the back of her neck as she turned her head to search for the Kleenex box. Finding it and grabbing a tissue, she brushed it gently over the protruding appendage. The foot shot back under the cover like a turtle that sensed danger and was quickly followed by a little moan from the opposite side of the bed. A dark brown head that had fallen off the pillow moved forward and under the fluffy headrest so that it bulged upward and made the boy look like a headless, armed caterpillar.
“Wake up,” the girl said loudly, moving towards the pillow.
A stifled grumble came in reply and the lump under the covers shrunk and rose.
“Fine, but it’s 7 o’clock,” she said. She promptly turned and left and she was out the door and half way down the stairs to breakfast when a reply rang out of his room through the open door quite clearly:
“You were supposed to wake me at six!”
Several bangs and booms later along with a shower and crash of drawers, the boy was dressed and down in the kitchen to scrap up his breakfast to go. The girl leaned against the doorway, a little smug, but patient as her brother ran around dodging chairs and the table like a puppy runs after its tail.
“By the way, a letter came from Dad,” she said. “He’s going to have to stay in Beta Space a little longer than he thought.”
“Where’s mom?” the boy replied through a piece of toast he stuffed in his mouth as he reached for his backpack. His sister moved out of the way as he flew out of the kitchen and she followed him to the front door.
“I don’t know if she came home.”
At those words, a white car entered the driveway and as it gently floated down to the ground, a very tired woman got out, still wearing her scrubs. The boy smiled but ran past her; the girl stopped for a quick kiss before running after her brother.
“Sorry,” the woman yelled after them, but she knew they wouldn’t stop as the yellow bus floated into the bus stop while they were still a quarter of a block away.
This entry was posted on Saturday, April 4th, 2009 at 5:30 pm and is filed under Fiction Prose, Realistic Fiction, Science Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.