Of Duct Work and Duct Tape
The following is a snippet from a 3,220 word story. The full story is located at:
http://www.mentallyincontinent.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=166
[snip]
We loved playing with the Sarlaac Pit - it was our favorite scenario. Since we weren’t really allowed to play outside due to the condition of our neighborhood, we had to do it indoors. However, there was only one vent in the house large enough to really do it right and that was in my sister’s old room. Normally, we weren’t allowed in that room because of all the bums and vagrants that would come up to the back of the house and rattle the burglar bars, but my mother relented that day after our constant prattling. After all, I had just gotten the skiff for Christmas and it would be a shame if there were no pit to use it with.
Her concerns were a little deeper than just random dreck and ghetto trash rattling some bars on the back window. After all, we had lived with that for years. Her main issue was we were extremely clumsy kids. It was a sure bet that, given time, the few toys she had worked so hard to buy us would end up down the chute and lost forever. In an effort to curb this, she kept us in check by telling us that if we ever dropped a toy into the duct, it would catch the house on fire and everything would burn.
We lived in terror that this would happen and tried every way we could think of to keep it from being a possibility. Everything from a pillow case to my mother’s panty hose that came in the little egg-shaped container was draped across the opening to impede the free-fall of any toy we sacrificed to the almighty Sarlaac. The problem was, everything we tried intruded upon the overall ‘look and feel’ of the vent duct as a pit. Everything except for the yellow netting found wrapped around whole turkeys. It was perfect: big, thin, and the color of sand. Luckily for us, my mother had just purchased a turkey a few days previous. We counted on this net to catch any of the wayward figures that we sacrificed to the hungry Pit.
Well, the netting - stringy and mostly melted from having been strung across the vent for the past few hours while the heat was on - didn’t really do its job. Jenny made Lucky march to the edge of the plank, say his last words, and then plunge to his demise. Unfortunately, once she let go of him, Lucky the Care Bear proved to be too much of a load and went tumbling haphazardly past the protective netting and down the chute.
Every clang and bump that echoed up from the vent rang doubly loud in our stomachs. We knew those sounds heralded an impending inferno. Jenny was petrified - she was the one who dropped lucky into the pit, so technically it was going to be her fault when our home was incinerated.
“Joe!” she exclaimed, pulling my attention away from the dark and foreboding hole to the vast unknown and onto her horrified expression. “What are we going to do?? The house may catch fire!”
The way I saw it, there was only one thing we could do.
”You can fit in there. I say you go get it!”
”NO WAY! I can’t go get it! I’ll fall in and get stuck!”
”Don’t worry, I’ll hold you! You HAVE to go get it, you put it there. If you don’t, our house will burn down!”
”But YOU made me do it! I didn’t want to kill Lucky and you said that he displeased the Hutt family! It’s YOUR fault!”
”Is NOT!”
”Is SO!”
This wacky cross-examination continued on for a few minutes until finally, in a flash of brilliance, I devised a plan.
“Ok, I know! You can tie the sheets around your waist. I’ll hold them while you go get the bear.”
”Why don’t YOU go get it?!?”
”Because I can’t fit, dummy! Besides, YOU put it there!”
After a few more minutes of general bickering, Jenny finally relented and agreed to fish around the vent for the wayward Care Bear.
We pulled the sheets off of her bed and fashioned a makeshift harness by tying the sheet around her waist - it was SUPER secure, because I used a double knot. She slowly poked her head into the vent, noting that she couldn’t see anything at all.
”How am I supposed to find him if I can’t even see him??”
”Hmm… let me think...”
Another grand idea materialzed: “I know!”
And with that, I left the room and headed to the kitchen. My mother was seated at the breakfast table, reading “Passions of Lust” or some other such nonsense. Very casually, I tried to make light and un-foreboding conversation.
“Hey mama.”
”Hey sweetheart.”
“Whatcha doin?”
”Just reading a little, honey. What do you need?”
Located in the random tool drawer beside the sink were an Eveready flashlight and some duct tape. Should I make a play to obtain these items, it would have completely blown the gig.
”Umm, I just need a few… batteries! Yeah, My X-wing is low on power.”
”Ok,” She said, never removing her eyes from her harlequin novel, “You know where they are.”
”Thanks, mama!”
I pulled out the drawer and reached in, the entire time watching my mother like a hawk. I pulled out the flashlight and tucked it into my shorts, then grabbed the duct tape and put it under my shirt.
”Ok, got ‘em! Later mom!”
”Ok, honey, have fun…”
I returned to our little fiasco, gear in hand. “We can use these.”
”Umm… I understand the flashlight, but why the tape?”
”To tape it to your head, dummy! You might drop it down the vent if you hold it.”
She thought about it a second, then said ”Yeah, I guess that makes sense…”
She was 5 and I am her older brother. A lot of things made sense to her that probably shouldn't have.
I proceeded to place the flashlight flat against the top of her skull, pointing outward so that it shone wherever she turned her head. I then looped what must have been 100 yards of duct tape around the flashlight and her skull to base of her jaw and back up. By the time I was done, she was clad in a gigantic silver helmet with a huge hump at the crest of her head where the flashlight rested.
”Ok, it’s on there. Are you ready?”
”Yeah, I’m ready.”
She poked her head back into the vent, noting that she still couldn’t see anything.
“It’s still dark! You forgot to turn it on, you dork!”
I hoisted her back up and proceeded to unwrap the tape to get to the switch. It took almost 10 minutes to get to the base layer of the quacky adhesive strip, at which point I began peeling it off of her skin and hair.
It wasn’t pretty.
Jenny muffled as best she could her howls of pain while I tried to separate the tape from her head. Finally giving up, it was determined that there was no way this tape was coming out of her hair.
”Oh, NO! Look what you did to me!!!”
”ME? It was your idea!”
”NO IT WASN’T! How is this my fault?? You are the one who came up with this! You taped the flashlight to my head, superdork!”
”Well, you let me, you moron!! So there!! Besides, we can just cut it out.”
Sheer panic crossed her face.
”NO! Please don’t cut my hair!”
”What else can we do? It’s not going to come out.”
She pondered for a moment. She went over to the mirror and took a look: a gigantic silver and brown wad bobbed back and forth atop her head. She looked like the worst rendition of medusa I had ever seen.
She finally realized that I was right. I ran into my mother’s bedroom and grabbed her Fiskars, then proceeded to lop the disgusting lump off of my sister’s head - 100 yards of duct tape and her once-beautiful waist length hair.
“There, that’s the last of it.”
”Ok, so what now?”
”We turn it on and re-tape it!”
”No, I don’t wanna do that again…”
”Jen, you have to get that bear out of the vent or it’s FWOOOSH!” I said, raising my hands and twiddling my fingers much the way a Baptist minister does when he is describing Hell.
Her eyes nearly fell out of her skull at the thought, and quickly she grabbed the flashlight, turned it on, and held it in place on top of her head. I wrapped the rest of the roll of tape around the light and her head and once again, she was down peeking in the vent to try and spot Lucky.
“OK, I think I see him! But I can’t reach him.”
”Put both arms in, I’ll hold you tight!”
”I don’t think that’s a good idea…”
”FWOOOOSH!”
”Ok, Ok! I’ll do it!!” and with that, she came back up, put her hands in front of her like she was praying and dove head-first into the vent. I held her ankles in an effort to keep her from slipping forever into the abyss.
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