Flash: GoTime 2

Photo 276330 © Kiankhoon | Dreamstime.com

Word count achieved! And at the perfect finish point for the chapter.

Morgan closed the file, resaved it locally, to her USB stick, and to the cloud under draft thirty-four. She made a note on her outline and typed in the opening sentence to the next chapter.

“Fighting for what is right is never wrong.”

Too cliquish? Yeah, and in the entirely wrong voice for the POV character of this chapter. Good thing she had time to sleep on it before tackling the next chapter. All, she blinked her tired eyes to focus on the date-time in the bottom right corner of her laptop, three hours and fifteen minutes before getting up in time to get the kids off to school. Tomorrow will be a long day at the office.

Sharpie was doing the cat thing, staring at nothing and hissing. If Morgan didn’t know better, she would think their home was haunted, but it had only been built five years ago. No ghosts here.

She leaned down to pick up the family calico to take him and the laptop in for the night. Sharpie darted forward toward the laundry room, making Morgan overbalance reaching for her, falling flat, her hands saving her from a full face plant. The air sizzling over her head kept her down.

Morgan lifted her chin up. Shapie hovered midair, clinging to … something. Not a ghost. Ghost didn’t shake around while claws dug in.

She rolled to the side, landing against an oversized planter and reached into the waterproof holder beneath the orange tree for the revolver she kept there since finding the copperhead in the backyard last summer. Two shots to the torso, either side of Sharpie and two where she guessed the head should be. Since no drywall puffed up behind, she judged her target right. Hard to miss at this range.

She had gotten lucky in whoever they were missing her.

Sharpie rode the body down, until he hovered midair about a foot from the ground on the invisible being. The cat rocked back and forth, scratching and biting, indicating whatever was there was injured, not dead, and Sharpie was displeased with that status.

Standing, Morgan kept the handgun pointed at the danger. Two bullets left. Thank god she had trained to hit snakes to keep her children safe. She glanced at her laptop.

It was … partially missing. Not melted, just parts gone. Not broken. Nothing falling or blown back into the yard just beginning to become visible in the false dawn. Just missing.

She gulped.

Her eyes did one snap to the intact USB, breathing a silent breath of relief. Then made her way over to her cat imitating a rider on a bucking bronco.

A huge gun, more ridiculously complicated then her children’s bubble rifles for their water balloon wars, was visible to one side, its strap torn. She kicked it further away, wincing as soon as her foot made contact thinking: That was dumb. What if it went off?

She pointed the gun at the empty air. “Freeze motherfucker.”

Sharpie continued to bounce around on nothing, hissing.

Then Morgan heard the noise she was hoping she wouldn’t hear came.

“Mom,” Henry appeared at the other side of the laundry room, his ten-year scrawny body in front of his six and eight year old sisters,“what’s happening?”

“Don’t know yet Monster Man,” she nodded at Sharpie’s antics, “take your sisters and go next door to Fred’s. I’ll come get you when I can.”

“But–”

She sent Henry the Mom Look.

(words 592, first published 3/4/2023, Make the Mood Monday 500-word Expansion – one out of five of the FB group stories get expanded)

GoTime Series
GoTime (1/1/2023)
GoTime 2 (1/8/2023)
T is for Time (GoTime 3) (4/23/2023)