Dinner is Ready
His fingers unwillingly gripped the edge of the table, as if he had magnets in his fingertips. With every bone in his body, he tugged and pulled and screamed for help as the knife came closer, sharper, closer, sharper. One last big push with his feet sent him away, tumbling, falling, and eventually crashing into the ceiling.
He opened his eyes, woozy. The ceiling fan blades whipped past, just centimeters below his face. The bed, his teddy bear, his mother's favorite rug, all remained glued to the floor above - with a bright light shining ever brighter from under the bed. He rolled away and hobbled to his feet, with a sprained ankle that he couldn't begin to cry about now.
The sharpening of steel still pinging in his ears, he hurdled over the archways of doors and dodged flickering ceiling lamps to find his parents. "Oh, Kevin. What are you up to now?" He heard, words his mom said all the time, but now in the most unnatural, programmatic tone. She looked down at him from the kitchen floor, washing a perfectly clean dish with a dry sponge. "Come now, honey. Dinner's ready. Your father's waiting."
He tripped from walking backwards, hitting his head on the living room ceiling. Adrenaline surging, he picked himself up and ran towards the front door, hanging above him like a portal to nowhere. As he jumped for the doorknob, just barely out of his reach, tears began to stream down his face. Was that really his dad under the bed? He looked almost like him...
Noticing the smoke detector to his left, he stepped on it and pushed off with everything he had, setting it off in the process. A deafening siren trilled through the house, almost drowning out the scraping of the knives. He climbed out onto the awning of the porch, landing with a hard thud on the support beams, and crawled to the edge.
From the doorway, he saw his mother caked in red and black skin. Her eyes were ice blue. She held her thumb down on an electric whisk, cradling a mixing bowl. Like her, nothing was inside.
"Where are you going? Dinner's ready."
Kevin stepped into the night sky, so full of stars.
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