Chapter 10
I WISH THAT I didn’t sometimes, but of course I remember everything about that cursed, unspeakably horrible night back in Kansas.
I was three years old, playing in the basement of our home, building the Seven Wonders of the World out of Play-Doh. Yeah, this power-to-create-whatever-I-imagine thing kicked in way early, during my childhood development process.
Upstairs, I heard a horribly deep and strangled voice.
“The List! The List! Where is it?”
That heinous creature known as The Prayer (still Number 1 on The List of Alien Outlaws on Terra Firma) was upstairs attacking my parents. Later, the foul beast would come after me, and I will never forget what it looked like: a six-and-a-half-foot-tall praying mantis with a stalklike neck and stringy red dreadlocks hanging down between its antennae.
Upstairs, I heard my mother sobbing, and my father pleading calmly: “Wait, hold on…. Lower the gun, my friend. I’ll get The List for you. I have it nearby.”
“The List is here?” the deep voice boomed once again.
“Yes,” said my father. “Now, if you’ll just lower the—”
The next thing I heard was a string of deafening explosions. Shooting. I realized, in a flash of instantaneous knowledge, that the weapon being deployed was an Opus 24/24.
Guess you understand now why I totally hate the fiendish things.
I know the pain they can inflict, what they can destroy.
My whole world.