Up in Smoke

“You have to let go!”

Abner squinted through the smoke, his own voice dying in the roar of the blaze, but a faint cry came back to him.

“No!”

Lurching forward, Abner dodged a falling beam, covering his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his shirt and childish hope. “Yule!” he called. “We have to go!”

“Eat a dick!”

“It’s not worth it!”

“Eat a bag of dicks!”

Shouldering through a scalding door, Abner found him, still clinging to his damn fool construction, dangling from where the attic floor fell through. “Damnit, Yule, you’re gonna get crushed!” Abner coughed, eyes streaming. “Just let go!”

Above him, Yule defended his territory with ineffectual kicks. “You let go!”

“That doesn’t make any sense!”

“Fuck you!”

There was a shrieking creak and crack as the lintel broke free of the wall, first one side, then the other, hitting the ground hard enough to stick. “This whole place is about to come down!” Abner shouted. “Let go, damn it, you can ‘find’ another one!”

“I heard those air quotes!” Yule swung back and forth from his hand hold, betrayed by a core that had never been worked out. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about! Even you can’t—” The rest of his protest was lost in a fit of hacking coughs.

Breathing the hot air trapped behind his sleeve, Abner called up, “You know it’s not the flames that kill you!”

“Shut!” Cough. “Up!”

“It’s the smoke!” Abner squinted up at the dangling shoes. “You have to get under the smoke, Yule! All that black gunk mucking up your lungs! You think that’s what she wanted for you?”

Yule sucked in a breath, but no words were discernable from the coughing fit that followed. Abner looked around for a ladder, a stick, anything that might knock the stubborn cling-on loose. “You…suck,” Yule managed. “Low…blow.”

“You know I’m right,” Abner insisted. “She’d want you to live, and to hell with that thing!”

The ceiling beams, already under pressure, sagged a little bit lower, bringing Yule just inches out of reach. Abner jumped for him, but Yule jerked and wriggled away. “You don’t understand!”

“So, tell me all about it!” Abner insisted. “When we’re both outside! This is stupid; that thing can be replaced!”

“No, it can’t!”

“It’s not real, Yule!”

“Yes, it is!”

“Yule!” Abner shouted. “I built that thing with Mom seven years ago!”

The dangling limbs went slack. “You’re lying!”

Abner shook his head. “We built it together, she made me promise not to tell! It’s just make-believe, a fairy tale! There are no aliens! There never were!”

Yule looked up at the thing he was clinging to. The smooth, shiny surface was elegantly curved, aerodynamically engineered, and big enough for a passenger to sit inside. It was like nothing he’d seen before, polished as a river stone, his own warped reflection wreathed in flame as he grasped the only handle. Though the heat was intense, the smooth surface was still cool. “What’s it made of, then?”

“Damn it, Yule! We got the thing out of an Ikea catalogue!”

“I don’t believe you!”

“Let it go!” Abner shrieked, stomping his foot. “I knew it! I knew I never should have left! She should have known better! She never should have filled your head with stupid ideas! Mom is dead, Yule, and if you don’t drop that thing right now, you will be, too!”

Yule held on with both hands. “No, you don’t understand! She’s coming back!”

“She’s never coming back!”

“Yes, she is, too!” Yule shouted. “This is how she does it! This is the only way for her to come home!”

There was a crash as the window blew out, and Abner made another desperate, futile reach. “Yule, please!” he cried. “Don’t do this to me!”

The attic floor groaned, creaked, and gave out. The polished pod broke free of the supporting beams, crashing down onto the floor below. Yule was thrown from his grip, skidding into the peeling wallpaper, his heart leaping into his chest as he turned to see the damage. Abner was trapped beneath the pod, a streak of red splashed across the silver ovum, his sleeve ripped open on a smoldering board.

Yule crawled forward, eyes stinging, and shook his brother’s arm. “Abner?” Scalding droplets spattered onto his hand. “Ab?”

Throwing desperate eyes around the room, Yule seized the lintel, burning his palms on the hot plate. He pulled his sleeves over his hands and pried the lintel out of its wedge in the floorboards, turning the hot, sharp edge onto the immaculate egg, throwing his weight against the ungainly lever, teeth gritted against the pain. The hot rubber of his tennis shoes slid and skidded on the warped timbers, knuckles white as he rammed the bludgeon again and again against the smooth silver surface until it pitted and splintered, pushed back inch by inch as the curvature fractured and cracked at his attack. Smashing the ram across the glossy pod, Yule knelt by his brother’s crumpled body, coughing as he dragged Abner’s arm across his back.

At first, the glare of the flames washed out the soft white light pouring from the opening pod. The seemingly seamless shell slowly lifted, irresistible brightness flooding the smoke-filled room. His vision blurry behind streaming tears, Yule pushed the heel of his burned hand against his soot-streaked face, unable to stand the sight of the unearthly brilliance. He clung to Abner, blinking ferociously, and daring to believe he saw the figure of a woman.

Abner woke suddenly, turned over, and hacked up a ball of black snot on the dew-drenched grass. The flashing red lights of the fire trucks were surrounding the house, turning their hoses onto the half-collapsed frame, streams of pressurized water glowing white under the moonlight. Abner panicked, then caught sight of Yule, hugging his knees as he watched the blaze from the wet grass. “What happened?”

Yule didn’t look at him, only rested his chin on his knees, shining eyes watching the suffocating flames. “What do you think?”

Crawling over to sit beside his brother, Abner shivered as he put an arm around the boy’s hunched shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Yule. Listen, I…I’m sorry.”

Yule leaned against him. “It doesn’t matter anymore."