This is an attempt for National Novel Writing Month. It is not perfect. It's probably not even especially good yet. Xen is not going back to revise anything until he is completely done. So, deal with it.
Jasmine sat across from him in a dark blue chair. In the light of day, she could almost see what her little sister found so appealing about him. His brown hair was loosely constricted in a ponytail, tendrils of it escaping to frame his tanned, stubbly face. One could almost say that Dylan too "devil may care" to an art, except that art needs to be practiced and he gave the aura of obliviousness toward any true effort. If he knew that he was in for an interrogation, his demeanor gave no evidence. If anything, he telegraphed gratefulness to be off of his feet, was though he'd worked all day in the fields and this was his first chance to simply sit. He occupied the maximum amount of space his could on the sofa, the knees of his frayed jeans spread wide in a posture that would be highly immodest were he a woman.
Chrys sat next to him, shot her sister a look, and then nestled closer. Dylan seemed likewise indifferent to this slight increase in physical intimacy, but it wasn't for him that Chrys cuddled.
"Where exactly are you taking my sister?" Jasmine began.
"Is that really the question you want me to answer?" he replied.
"Yes, of course it is," she answered.
"Because you are her mom proxy?" he asked, but not as snidely as Jasmine would have were she offering the question. To him, it was simply a question like any other.
"No, because I'm her only sister and I care about her welfare."
Dylan shrugged his shoulders. "No, I don't think that's what this really is. I walked into some sibling rivalry fight, am I right?" Chrys rolled her eyes and nodded in retort. "Thought so. We're just going to drive around, enjoy this day, carpe our diems. You are welcome to join us as a chaperone."
Chrys pulled away. "No, she isn't."
"You don't want me there, Chryssy?" she asked, calling her the nickname she disliked almost as much as her actual name.
"No, Jazzy, I don't," Chrys said, responding in kind.
Their battle of eyebrows and flared nostrils was interrupted by Dylan. "I do. You really should come, I think I can entertain two Woods girls as easily as one."
In unison, both sisters let out a huff of disgust, their expressions twins even if their faces were far from. Dylan didn't seem to pay attention to this, either.
With no more questions, having felt she somehow lost this interaction, Jasmine let this boy take off with her sister. Let her make stupid mistakes, Jasmine thought. Chrys must have a brain in her head--no Woods woman was exactly a dumb bunny--but it certainly didn't extend to common sense.
When she returned to the living room, she saw a new book on the coffee table, a hardcover with the words "Quiet Trespass" emblazoned over the stereotypical UFO on the cover. Jasmine sighed and brought this lover's token up to her sister's room, throwing it on her bed before the aroma of incense could invade the rest of their house.
Jasmine spent her after noon trying to summon forth company before her parents returned home from work and enlisted her help in any number of home improvement projects. It seemed the majority of her high school friends--not merely those who she knew at Pine Bush High School, but those she actively considered "besties" until the days they walked between rows of folding chairs on the football field during graduation--were either not yet home from college, spending their summers abroad, or their lines were no longer in service. She considered it her own fault for not keeping in touch in the intervening year. Last summer, she'd spent almost entirely hopping from one summer program to another to circumvent requirements at Annandale University, ignoring others as she was now ignored. Still, if someone didn't contact her soon, she was doomed to a dull summer.
Around two in the afternoon, there came a knock on the door, three perfect sets of raps like a clockwork woodpecker was soliciting entrance. Jasmine glanced through the peephole and saw two men in starched black suits. Behind them, distorted by the fisheye lens, she saw a black Cadillac. The Jehovah's Witnesses were certainly upping the ante.
She opened the door a crack, leaving the security chain in place. "Sorry, we already have a savior and we aren't accepting solicitations, but thanks for coming by."
Jasmine slammed the door, but it didn't close. She looked what was blocking it and saw four pallid fingers squeezed between the door and the doorframe. Immediately, she slid open the chain and opened the door so the fingers could be liberated. The front most man slowly retracted his hand and put it at his side. Then he said, "You are going to let us in."
"What? Yes, yes, of course! I'm sorry about your hand, I didn't see it there."
Both men nodded in unison and walked into her house. There was something about the way they walked that reminded Jasmine of a wind-up soldier she'd been given as a little girl, its parts never quite moving in a sensible way. It was like these men had not grown up with joints and were uneasy about fully using them now.
The men sat on the couch and the short one fumbled with a curling wire projecting from behind his ear. Jasmine wondered why a Jehovah's Witness would need one of those, but then decided it must be for an old hearing aid, though that man was too young for such assistive technology. Or was he? It was difficult to settle on an age for either man. Certainly older than her, but not discernably so.
"Let me get you some ice," Jasmine offered.
"Ice?" asked the taller man. "Yes. Ice. Get us ice now."
Jasmine dashed into the kitchen and placed some ice cubes in a ziploc bag, covering this in a paper towel. How much more than this would be required for mashing some religionista's hand in her door? It was mostly his fault, anyway, for putting it there. Maybe she would accept a copy of the Watchtower and pretend to care for a few minutes, but then they were out of here.
She returned and asked to see the injured man's hand.
"Yes. Let us show our hands," the man said. Both men stick their arms out, palms up. Jasmine purses her lips at this strangeness and reaches out for the injured man's left hand. His fingers are long and pale, as well as cool to the touch. The skin around the knuckles is torn but bloodless and, for a moment, Jasmine thinks she seems something more beneath the torn skin, something silver or gray. The man retracts his hand to his side. Jasmine gives him the parcel of ice.
"What is this?" the other man demands, looking up at her with his mouth frozen half opened. His eyes are dark, the irises looking almost black to her and he does not blink as long as she looks at him.
"It's ice. For your friend's hand."
"Yes," said the first man, matching Jasmine's cadence. "It's ice. For your friend's hand."
The two men take the bag full of ice and, after a cursory examination, disassemble it on the coffee table into its components: ice, plastic bag, and paper towel. Then they begin to put each, in turn, into their mouths. Jasmine takes several steps away from them and then there attention returns to her. Both of their mouths are half opened now, a sliver of paper towel sticking to the bottom lip of the smaller one.
"I think you two should leave now. My parents will be back any minute and my father might shoot you."
"You have no gunpowder in this house," the first one said as though he were trying to mimic the robot from a fifties sci-fi movie. "We are from your government. We have questions." Both men removed from their suit jackets badges Jasmine could not read, but which looked official.
"I really think you should talk to my parents, then."
"If you want to see your parents alive, you will answer our questions," the smaller one said. "I am Ensign Donald and this is Vice Admiral Erikson of your government. You will answer our questions."
Jasmine sat, though her instincts were to run. Donald removed a device from his pants, a small grey box with lights, and put it on the table between them. "What do you know about UFOs?" he asked.
"I don't really know anything. People see them, I guess. I've never really been interested."
Erikson jumped to his feet, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back as though he were going to topple. "They most important subject in the universe and you are not interested?!"
She shook her head. "The just were always beneath my radar."
Donald leaned forward at the waist, so his gaze transferred from Jasmine to a blank spot on the table. "You will give us all of your radar readings and your machinery now."
"I don't have... it's a figure of speech."
Donald unbent himself and looked at her. He torn a piece of plastic bag free and began chewing it, his mouth remaining opened and only his bottom jaw moving.
"You did not see anything last night," Erikson insisted.
"I didn't," Jasmine said.
"You took a photogram of what you did not see last night. You will give this to me now," Donald said, the plastic bag still in his mouth. He turned his head sharply, up, down, side to side, and then back to her.
"Jasmine Woods, you can not hide your thoughts from us. We are the center of your planet. You did not see anything last night. You will come with us in our transport vehicle and you will show us where it was," Erikson said, reaching for her. Jasmine pulled away and Erikson moved back into position. He picked a coin up from the table and held it to her. Then he closed his hand around it and opened it a moment later, empty. "Just as this coin is no longer in this dimension, your heart... will not... be if... you... tell... an... y... one ab... out this. Discharging! Discharging! We need to speak to your sister! Ka ka ka ka ka."
Both men rose and, with their awkward gait, hobbled out of the house again without another word or sound. Jasmine looked out the window and saw another man in a black suit standing at the far door of the car, staring back at her. He was easily seven feet tall, but the suit seemed tailored for someone a foot shorter. They all entered the car at once and it sped off.
When she was sure they were gone, she called Chrys's cell phone and, when that failed, called Kathleen and told her to come pick her up immediately.
"What's wrong?" Kathleen asked.
"Nothing. I don't know. Can you drive me to New Paltz?" Jasmine asked.
"Um, sure, I guess. When is good?"
Jasmine looked down at her watch, startled that her interaction with these men had taken so long. "Three. I just need to get some stuff ready."
There was a pause on the other end. "AM?"
"What? No."
"I don't understand, you want to go to New Paltz tomorrow?"
"No, in like fifteen minutes."
Again, the pause. "So, five o'clock, then?"
Jasmine looked down at her watch, then to the clock on the mantle for confirmation. Then she looked out the window at the sunlight. "One second," Jasmine said. She turned the television onto the Weather Channel, which stated the time as 4:45. All the air seemed to go out of her. "Yeah, five, then."
Pine Bush is a serialized novel being written by Xen. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
He is syndicated throughout the internet and will write for you if you pay him.
