1420 Emerson Lane

part 4

Lana was hot, but the kids didn’t seem to notice the heat as they ran around the yard, jumping through a sprinkler while the sticky juice from popsicles dribbled down their arms. They weren’t her kids, but today she was supervising the neighborhood brats while the association parents held an emergency meeting in the Emerson Lane clubhouse. Which was air-conditioned, unlike her parent’s backyard. Lana’s jeans were rolled up to her knees and her feet were plunged into the kiddie pool. After being repeatedly splashed she finally gave up on the tepid romance novel her mother seemed to favor, and was resigned to torment and abuse. She was on her second Popsicle.

The kids started screaming, in itself not a concern because summertime kids do that, and when Lana opened her eyes, a couple of weird creatures skittered off the lawn and began climbing the privacy fence. They dropped over the side and crawled back up the coconut palm on the other side, in Mr. Mood’s yard. The animals were dog sized and armored, and in Ohio such things were seldom (as in never) seen, much like the palms that were sprouting and thriving up and down the street. They weren’t the strangest things Lana had seen, that would be the floating plastic gas sacks with eyes that swooped in slow motion over the rooftops. Only Emerson Lane seemed to be having these… problems. The 50 homes were ostracized by neighboring residents and the Wade Road people had blocked off their street access, so now the only way in and out was via Buckwheat Road, and most frightened drivers were taking lengthy detours to avoid that section.

The clubhouse was actually a meeting room in the old Moose Lodge, just a couple yards over, and Lana was thinking about corralling the dozen kids and marching them over to see what was the holdup. Just then the wind kicked up, then the dust and leaves swirled under a blast of hotter than normal seasonal air, and a righteous thrumming blotted out the senses. Everyone fell to the dry grass, scattering lawn chairs and Popsicle sticks, and a shadow momentarily blotted out the sun. Lana rolled her head and peeked through her splayed fingers. She watched as the aircraft, something between a jet and a flying saucer, hovered overhead then touched down noisily in neighbor Moody’s yard. The palm trees shriveled under the cooking engines and fell over, crackling into flames before foam spurted out of holes in the ship and put out the fires.

A section of the fence fell over, sending the kids into a second cacophony of shrieks, and a sudden quiet descended.  Lana gathered herself up from her undignified yard sprawl and righted the folding chair, which she sat upon while the children ran hither and fro, eventually all disappearing into the house where they hid behind the sofa. All but one little boy who crawled into her lap and continued to chew on his splintering stick.

Lana’s feet were in the pool and her left pant leg had fallen down and was soaking up the warm water. She watched as the newest strange thing on Emerson Lane happened. The residents by now were running up the street and she could hear Mr. Moody hollering about his perfect lawn, never mind that most of the shingles had blown off his roof onto his and the neighbor’s front yards. The space ship hissed and a hole opened in its side then a ramp pooped out and stuck in the ground. An astronaut strode expertly from the darkness followed by, of all things, a retinue of Space Moles.