Precious D's Pearls for Swine

Jane’s uncle Finbar was a spelunker, which is a very fun thing to say. Try it now. “Finbar the spelunker.” Finbar had once given Jane one of his old spelunking helmets, the kind with a light on the front. Jane packed it into her overnight bag along with her blue nightgown (the one with daisies on it,) her toothbrush, and her aluminum baseball bat. Jane also took a very old sleeping bag with pictures on it from a TV show she had never seen. She liked the pictures anyway and had made up her own names and stories about them.

At the Somebody’s house there was macaroni and cheese for dinner. They only had cheap store brand soda, so Jane had the root beer. Root beer is hard to mess up. During dinner Mr. and Ms. Somebody tried to maintain a happy chatty mood, but their eyes were filled with despair and hope. Little Susie hardly ate a thing. She looked pale, drained, and tired. Jane had three helpings of macaroni and cheese.

After dinner they watched a video, something insipid about princesses, and then it was time for bed. Jane changed into her nightgown, put on her helmet, and crawled into her sleeping bag with her bat. They had offered her the bed, but Jane thought things should be set up as close to normal as possible. Ms. Somebody turned out the light and Jane pretended to go to sleep.

After several hours of waiting Jane herd a sound, a sickly, slurpy, suckling sound.

posted by Dominic @ 11:16 AM