A Strange Little Desert Town, part 5 (Stripe 3.2)
A Strange Little Desert Town
Chapter Five - Revenge
(Stripe 3.2)
Technical details:
Generation 1: Miranda Stripe + Nervous Subject
Generation 2: Mike Stripe 2.1, 2.2 + MacKenzie Stripe (nee Knight)
Generation 2: Jacinta Stripe
Generation 3: Daniel Stripe [twin] 3.1
Aspiration: Romance
Life Time Want: Have 20 Simultaneous Loves
Star Sign: Saggitarius
Neat 0
Outgoing 6
Active 10
Playful 10
Nice 8
Generation 3: Ash Stripe [twin] 3.1
Aspiration: Fortune
Life Time Want: Become Chief of Staff (Medicene)
Star Sign: Saggitarius
Neat 1
Outgoing 9
Active 10
Playful 8
Nice 7
A Strange Little Desert Town
Chapter Five - Revenge
(Stripe 3.2)
Soon enough, the house had yet one more mouth to feed. Jacinta Stripe was born a healthy baby girl. Miranda couldn’t help but notice that Jacinta’s nappies smelt just as awful as her half-brother Mike’s had. But with a house as full as 93 Road to Nowhere, there were enough extra pairs of hands to make the task of nappy changing not so bad. While it may have been strange changing the soiled nappy’s of his baby sister, it didn’t really faze Mike. He enjoyed playing with his new little sister & was thrilled to finally have a sibling. Akamaru spent countless nights sleeping near to the cot to ensure the new cub’s safety.
Miranda planned to go back to work fairly soon after Jacinta could crawl. It hadn’t damaged Mike, so why change what worked? Besides, Jacinta had her half-brother & his family there to keep her company while Miranda was away. A year of being ‘trapped’ on earth had Miranda on edge. She needed to get out & hit warp speed. She needed the freedom that salvage & pirating gave her.
“Mum,” Mike said to Miranda one night, “why are you still here?”
“What?” Miranda asked.
“You’re going stir crazy,” he explained. “It’s obvious you are hanging to go back to your ship, & between me, MacKenzie & the twins we can handle looking after Jass.”
Miranda breathed a sigh of relief & smiled at her son.
“Thank you, Mike,” she said, wrapping her son in a warm hug.
She didn’t bother to hide her excitement. Miranda raced up the stairs to pack what she would need. She would fly out the next morning.
At 16 years old, Ash was a borderline fitness junkie. She spent countless hours after school & on weekends either on the treadmill, or just generally working out. She would ignore people who came to visit, so that she could work on her muscle tone. It wasn’t about being skinny. Ash was all about being fit. There was also the small matter of wanting a scholarship to University too.
Daniel was hiding in the downstairs bathroom, working on his pickup lines. Not to mention trying to get the Clearasil to start working better on his pimple issue. The high pitched alarm threw him from his reverie & he raced out of the bathroom to see what was happening. Alarms in this household were never ignored.
“Help!” shrieked Ash from her gym. “Ohshitohshitohshitohshit!!!”
Hearing the roar of the flames, & feeling the heat emanating from the gym, Daniel grabbed one of the nearby fire extinguishers. Miranda kept them all over the house to prevent severe accidents or deaths. After the death of their grandfather, Nervous, in a fire it was perfectly understandable. Daniel rushed into the home gym to find not only the equipment on fire, but his sister as well.
He blasted her with the fire extinguisher. Isn’t this how granddad died? Wondered Daniel as he hoped for the best.
“Stop, drop & roll, Ash!!” screamed Daniel over the noise. “I can’t do this all by myself!”
Ash was lucky. Daniel got the fire out & helped her see to her burns. Thankfully they were only minor, her brother arrived to her timely rescue. The bonuses to having a non-synthetic tracksuit were very obvious at that point. Ash knew though, that she was very lucky to survive.
“Do you think that maybe, just maybe, you could leave off the fitness freakout?” suggested Daniel.
“Er, yeh,” ash said weakly. “I don’t know about you, but I’m starving, reckon we could scam something to eat?”
Daniel laughed, relieved to see his sister back to her normal attitude so soon. He left her in the bathroom & went to see about grabbing some of their leftovers from lunch. Daniel realised that Ash was going to find it difficult to keep away from working out. He knew he’d have to help her remain distracted. The time together would be good; it had been a while since they’d done anything as just the two of them.
They started going out after school to some of the local hangouts. Daniel was known on a first name basis at the local Karaoke club. With his theatrical pursuits at school, he & his class mates would hang out there a lot. Ash hadn’t joined him in karaoke in nearly 8 months, so it was lovely to have her there. When the snow fell one night, deep enough to be worth playing in, Daniel dragged his sister outside.
“For old time’s sake, Ash,” he explained to his sister. “We were just kids the last time we built a snowman.”
“Yeh, but here?” she argued.
Daniel grinned as he looked around the fenced in area that had become known as the family cemetary.
“Why not? Grandfather would probably love the company,” he convinced her.
A few days after the twins’ snowman was erected, Miranda came home for a month long break. She’d loved her time away but she wanted to spend time with Jacinta before her daughter forgot who she was. Normally, Akamaru would greet Miranda at the letterbox. But not this time. Miranda found herself face to face with her late fiancé, Nervous Subject. He smiled broadly & threw his arms out wide as if to embrace her, welcoming her home. But Miranda couldn’t hug him. He was incorporeal.
Maybe I’ve been talking to him too much in my head & the long stint away has played with my mind a bit, thought Miranda.
She walked through him & went up the steps into the house.
Nervous howled his grief into the night air. She was lost to him. Lost. How dare she forget him? He slammed his transparent right fist into his left palm. You told me you would love me forever, he thought. Well I’ll show you. Nervous’s ghost glided around the house. He would wait.
He had all the time in the world.
Miranda walked into the front room & Mike looked up from the book he was reading to his half-sister. Akamaru growled softly. Alarmed at his dog’s sudden change of character, Mike looked sharply at Akamaru. But his loyal friend wasn’t growling at his master. He was growling at something past her. Something outside. Mike looked at his mother. She was white faced & looked slightly off kilter.
“Are you alright, Mother?” Mike asked, concerned.
Jacinta looked up & grinned broadly.
“Mummy!” she squealed as she raced over to hug Miranda.
The sudden contact with her daughter’s solid form broke Miranda’s reverie. She looked down & smiled softly, stroking her daughter’s hair. Jacinta had grown so much in the past year. She was a few inches taller for starters. Miranda took a step back & held her daughter at arms length.
“Let me get a good look at you, kiddo,” she instructed.
“Wow!” Miranda smiled at Jacinta. “You’re such a big girl now! You must be year three already.”
“Don’t be silly, mum,” Jacinta grinned at her mother, her front adult teeth not quite grown in yet, “I’m only in year one!”
MacKenzie smiled at Jacinta with her mother. She had been slowly getting better over the past few years. The twins were very supportive & understanding of her need for simplicity. Mike’s love for her had not changed at all, & the romance between them was not dead. Whether it truly was the house having special qualities or if it was just having such a loving & compassionate family surrounding her, MacKenzie was starting to get closer to functioning on almost a normal level again.
Mike walked over to his wife & slipped his arm around her waist. She let her body snuggle into his, enjoying the warmth & the feel of his touch. She may not always know what was going on around her, & complex things were far beyond her capability to understand, but she still loved her husband & children. There was nothing in the world more important to MacKenzie than Mike & the twins. Mike led her away upstairs, leaving his mother & sister to catch up.
Akamaru had stopped watching the door. He trotted over to Miranda & nuzzled her leg gently. He’d seen what had happened outside. He didn’t understand why she had walked past her old mate though. He knew she still pined for her dead mate. Miranda talked to him out loud in her sleep sometimes.
Akamaru tried to explain to his pack leader that she should be very careful. He tried to tell her that her dead mate was really out there. That he was now angry & that he posed a threat to their pack. Akamaru, for the first time since he was a pup, worried for his pack leader’s safety.
Miranda reached down & scratched behind Akamaru’s ears.
“I’ve missed you too, Aka,” she crooned, oblivious to the message her dog was attempting to get across to her.
Akamaru walked away to sit by the front door. If she wasn’t going to be able to understand what the danger awaiting her pack was, Akamaru would be there. He would protect this pack with his very life if it came to that. He would watch the cubs & make sure they were not outside at night wherever possible. He would greet all pack members by the letterbox & escort them inside after a late night finish from work or play. Akamaru vowed not to let the ghost of Nervous Subject hurt any member of his pack.
Unfortunately for the Stripe family, Akamaru couldn’t be everywhere at once. Steering the twins inside quickly after a late night jaunt out on the town, Akamaru didn’t notice MacKenzie walk outside. Not until it was too late.
MacKenzie’s scream reached the ears of the whole household.
Akamaru rushed to the sound with Miranda close on his heels instructing everyone else to stay where they were. Being the captain of a space faring craft crewed by brigands & ruffians, when Miranda barked an order it was followed. Her relatives were no different. When that tone hit her voice there were no arguments, just absolute compliance.
Only Akamaru knew what the cause of that blood curdling scream had been. While Miranda had ordered her family to remain in the safety of the house until it was known what was occurring outside, Akamaru knew with cold certainty that Nervous was responsible. Akamaru had watched his ghost wander the grounds each night. He heard the howls of despair & the calls for revenge. Please may Mike’s mate survive this, Akamaru wished. He knew she wasn’t very strong, but he hoped she could withstand whatever Nervous had done.
No! howled Akamaru as they reached the front yard.
MacKenzie was lying in the dirt to one side of the path, unmoving. Miranda tried to find a pulse on her daughter-in-law, but to no avail. Movement caught Akamaru’s attention. A cowled figure approached them, hovering just above the ground. Akamaru tried to stand strong in the face of the Reaper. It was the second time they had met, & he was not someone that Akamaru particularly enjoyed seeing.
MacKenzie didn’t make it.
Life went on as normal around them, but there was a sombre feel at 93 Road to Nowhere. The service was small, no one but family attended. MacKenzie’s parents attended, though they didn’t stay longer than a few days. Mike didn’t want to even imagine the pain they were going through, losing a child. He missed Mac terribly, especially at night when he could still smell her on her old pillow. Jacinta took it in stride, for an eight year old she was very down to earth. It was the twins who took it the hardest.
Missing Mac as badly as he did, Mike didn’t really notice just how hard his children were suffering too. Jacinta sent an email to her mother, requesting that she make an early trip home. She thought that seeing as Miranda had already dealt with both parental loss & the loss of her fiancé before, she might be able to help her half-brother & her niece & nephew.
Akamaru heard his pack leader come home & made sure to greet her & escort her inside. Jacinta was waiting for her in the front room, beside the dining table. After a short embrace, Miranda cut straight to the heart of the matter.
“Fill me in, Jass,” Miranda told her daughter. “What’s been happening?”
Jacinta sat her mother down & told her of how Mike & the twins weren’t handling the loss of MacKenzie. She told of how Ash cried herself to sleep most nights. That Ash had almost entirely stopped caring about school & her plans for University. Her niece had began to just coast; doing homework without putting any effort into it, staring out the window or doodling in most of her classes. She explained how Daniel had stopped singing. That he dropped out of all his theatre classes & stopped going to the weekly karaoke nights with his friends. She spoke of how Mike was all but buried in his work, & barely noticed anything else around him. Including the twins.
Miranda was stunned. She had thought that Mike would have been able to handle his wife’s death far better than this. But then again, he was so young when his father died. The sense of loss would be totally different for him in this case. Determined not to lose her family to grief, Miranda called a family meeting that night over dinner.
“This stops right now,” Miranda said suddenly, the finality in her tone unmistakeable.
“What?” asked Mike, coming out of a daydream.
“The moping,” his mother told them. “This is not how you mourn the passing of a loved one. This is unhealthy & it shames Mac’s memory.”
Her sharp edged words sliced right through the walls the three had put up around themselves. Jacinta stared at her plate, pushing a couple of peas around with her fork as she tried not to make eye contact with anyone. This wasn’t how she’d envisioned her mother coming to the rescue.
“If you keep this shit up, we’ll just end up losing you too,” Miranda continued. “You’ll mope your way into early graves & the cycle will do nothing but continue until someone with a brain in their head finally figures out to get on with their own lives.”
“Well how are we meant to get on with them Grams?” Daniel nearly spat the words. “Are we supposed to forget about mum? Is that what you want?!”
“If you try to move from this table young man you’ll find yourself suffering similar punishment to that of my crew. Don’t fucking try me,” Miranda’s voice suddenly had her menacing captain’s tone to it.
Daniel & Ash both sat statue-still in shock. Their grandmother didn’t normally swear. She was a tough woman, yes, but she didn’t need to swear to add emphasis to her sentences or commands. Mike took a moment or two to realise that his jaw had dropped & his mouth was hanging open. He closed it.
“When Nervous died,” Miranda continued, “I couldn’t just stop & wallow in a pit of despair. I had a job I needed to give my all to, & I had a small child to raise. No amount of walking around in a stupor was going to bring my love back. But a friend at work told me a beautiful saying that I swear by. A man never truly dies unless he is forgotten.
“So remember Mac as the beautiful, loving person she was when she was alive & stop remembering her as dead. If you keep her in your heart, she’s always going to be with you. She’ll be there when you two graduate high school. She’ll be there when you get each & every one of your breakthroughs in the lab, Mike. She wont be at her grave. Don’t waste your own lives standing beside a stone marker when she’s nowhere but within you.”
Silence descended heavily upon the dinner table in the Stripe Household. No more words were spoken throughout the meal. Jacinta was the first to rise, & cleared the table. The twins got up & walked away to think. Miranda fixed her stare on her son. Mike knew she was right. It might take a few weeks, but he’d try. Miranda knew she’d be home until they did. She didn’t want to leave them in this state.
Alarms sounded.
“Daniel!” screamed Ash from the lounge room.
Daniel was screaming incoherently. He was standing on the sofa, on fire.
Miranda couldn’t believe it. It was only a year ago that Ash had had the incident in the gym. What was going on with this family? Had Nervous’s spontaneous combustion all those years ago been caused by a genetic predisposition? Was it not really the freak accident that everyone believed it to be?
Ash had grabbed a fire extinguisher & was busy blasting her brother in white goo as she attempted to douse the flames. Miranda heard the sirens of a fire engine outside. Mike grabbed his half-sister & kept her away from the flames. Between Ash, Miranda & the Firey, they managed to put out the fire before it spread past the sofa. But there wasn’t much at all left of Daniel.
Ash stared at the charred remains of her older twin. She had to be dreaming. He didn’t just die. He couldn’t have. They’d only just lost mum. This wasn’t possible. Akamaru’s howl brought her to her senses. The heat, the smell of burnt hair & flesh, the scorched sofa & the white stuff from the extinguishers were very real. Daniel was gone.
Akamaru growled. The Reaper was attending his house again. But he wasn’t the only one to see him. Ash & Jacinta could see him. & Ash wasn’t about to give up on her brother without a fight. There was nothing in the world to her that was more important than her twin brother. She stared at the cowled figure before her with his clipboard. Looking him up & down, she sized him up.
Ash dropped to her knees & pleaded.
“Please, Sir,” she begged, the raw emotion in her voice undisguisable, “please don’t take my brother away from me. Please! I’d do anything for him, Sir. Give him another chance at life? Please?”
Contrary to most popular belief, the Grim Reaper isn’t a bad bloke. Sure he’s got a horrible job, but then so do telemarketers. Death was actually very nice. He liked horses, was terrible at plumbing, & had a daughter of his own. The pure sound in Ash’s pleas for her brother struck at his heart cords. Or at least, would have if he had organs. But his metaphorical heart bled for the polite young lass before him & he decided to give her a sporting chance.
Death motioned for her to stand up.
IF YOU CAN PICK THE HAND THAT HOLDS THIS BLUE ORB CORRECTLY, I’LL BRING YOUR BROTHER BACK TO YOU.
Ash wiped tears from her eyes, & nodded her understanding. The Reaper closed his hands & put them behind his back. He waited while Ash tried to make her decision. Left or Right? One hand would bring her brother back to life & the other would take him away. Take him away? No, he was already gone. Ash realised that she didn’t have anything to lose. Only the chance to gain. & the chance was a fair 50%.
Ash reached out & pointed at his right hand. The Reaper brought his hands to the front & opened them before her. Sure enough there, in his right hand, was the blue orb that would bring her brother back.
Death feigned disappointment. He couldn’t let Ash know that he’d rigged the contest. He had a reputation to maintain after all.
With a wave of Death’s skeletal hand, Daniel materialised on the sofa. He looked no worse for wear, no burns or scars or charring. Even his hair sat as neatly as it had at dinner.
“Okay, that was weird,” said Daniel.
“Oh Dan,” she sobbed, “I thought we’d lost you.”
Ash threw herself at her brother & wrapped him in a massive bear hug.
If his face hadn’t been hidden beneath the hood of his cloak, & had he had lips, the Grim Reaper might have been caught smiling.
~*~
To be continued