Dark Waves

***

Tuesday, 3:15pm

“Mommy, why won’t Telly blink?”

Madison stops brushing Robert’s curly black hair and looks onto where her five-year old son is staring. Telly, his 10-inch corn snake foster pet, lays still on his favorite stick under the lamp in his tank.

“Telly,” she thinks to herself. After all, and according to Robert, he got his name from staring what he called ‘intently’ at the TV, or as he called it a year ago, the ‘telly.’ “Well honey, Telly doesn’t have eyelids like you and I.”

Puzzled at first, then with a sudden stare of enlightenment, Robert looks up, “Oh, I see.” Confused, again, “But wait, he has eyes like us, so why doesn’t he have EYE – lids?”

“Well—” Saved by the phone, Madison pats her son and stands to pick up her cell phone from the shelf. The caller ID reads: Francisco. “Hey hun. Someone’s out early?”

“Hello Mrs. Garcia. This is David, Francisco’s manager,” then, a pause. Madison’s smile turns into a serious face as she waits. Robert nudges her knee waiting for his turn to talk to dad. She holds out a finger to signal to wait.

David continues, “I’m calling to let you know that. Ugh, well…Francisco. – Gosh, I’m really sorry. Francisco had a medical emergency and was rushed to the hospital…”

Madison, drops Robert’s hair brush, not realizing it causes a splatter of Oreos to fly out of the plate below.

“What happened? What hospital is he at?” She looks around, knowing where she needs to go to in the house to gather the possible things they’ll need at the hospital.

“I really don’t know mam. The hospital hasn’t called us back but we know he’s stable. He was in the sound investigation room with the other seismologists when he suddenly had a seizure. – Please let us know if you need anything. Larry is there with him right now.”

***

Tuesday 4:30pm [Hospital]

“Ma-Madison”

“Francisco! I’m here. Take it easy,” Madison grabs his shaky hand and presses the button to call for the nurse. Tracing his face with her fingers and then whipping away tears, “What happened honey?”

Francisco looks down as his mind recollects the last memories from work. “After an odd reading with the seismogram, a technician checked the sound recording from this morning to see if there was any correlation. – You know, that old project Dr. Dumbarton had started some time back for his research –” Francisco coughs and gasps.

“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me the details right now.” Madison caresses his forehead.

He clears his throat and resumes, “Before the technician concluded a misreading, they asked us to listen to it and match the sound wave readings. I used the usual program to adjust the sound, and placed the headphones back on. – That’s the last thing I remember. Just that high-pitched sound morphed by the cracking static.” His blood pressure rose as he manages to wheeze the last part.

Realizing no nurse has come in yet, Madison presses the button for the third time. “That’s fine, we can talk later. Please rest.” Impatiently looking at the room’s door, “Why aren’t they coming?” Kissing Francisco’s forehead, “Let me see if there’s someone outside.”

As she walks towards the door, she thinks she sees someone crouched over run across the narrow window. She opens it and hears a faint high-pitched sound coming from down the right side of the hallway. Looking to the left, where the person ran off to, she catches sight of someone’s shadow turning the hall. Dismissing it, Madison looks to the right. “Hello, the patient is awake. Is someone there?”

When Madison takes a few steps out of the doorway, the lights flicker and the high-pitched noise increases in volume. The door to Francisco’s room is just two inches from fully closing when Francisco screams in pain.

“We need help, someone, please help!” Madison shouts down the hall as she hurries back.

“It’s back. The noise is back! Make it stop! Make it stop!” Francisco screams in pain with one hand holding his head and another onto the side bar of the bed.

The electricity flickers in the room, and from the window, Madison notices the entire city is blinking. “I’m here honey. I’m here,” she hugs her husband, looking out across the strange skyline as it becomes darker and darker.

Suddenly, a sharp pain strikes the back of her head, forcing her hands to cocoon her skull. After a minute, and little disoriented, she becomes aware of a vibration on the bed. “Fran-Francisco?” Reaching in the darkness to her husband, she notices he is violently shaking again. “Francisco!” Madison hugs her husband and suddenly loses consciousness.

It felt like she was dreaming, but it was one of those dreams where you couldn’t move or see yourself. She hears screams and the ground shakes. Is this real? Is she in a comma? Wake up Madison. Wake up.

“Mommy! Mommy!” Robert’s voice trails in her ears. Hadn’t he gone out for ice cream with Uncle Larry? How long had it been since they left? Is he safe?

“Rob, baby is that you,” Madison mumbles. She reaches out and feels his silky curls. Yes, this is my son

“Mommy, why aren’t you blinking? Get up mommy. Are you ok?”

Madison stops running her hands through his hair. She suddenly realizes that the only reason she could reach him so easily is because she is laying on the ground. She wasn’t with Francisco anymore. What is going on? “Honey, what do you mean? I can’t see because it’s dark, but of course I’m blinking. Feel my eyes.”

“Bu—”

Interrupting Robert, Larry calmly says, “Robert, be a good sport and sit over there while I talk with mommy.”

“Ok uncle,” Robert says.

Still concerned and unsure of what was before him, Robert walks towards the chair in the corner. Larry is a family friend and he trusts him, but Robert couldn’t help to look back at his mom, laying there, wide-eyed, staring upwards without blinking. One final glance at mommy reassures him that it is her. She looks like mommy and has her same necklace; The rose gold, heart shaped locket that contains a picture of his two-year old self and daddy. In his young mind, he knows something is wrong. With a side wink from Uncle Larry, he gives back a small smile and hops onto the chair.

In a hushed voice to not scare her son more, “Larry, what’s going on. What’s Robert talking about? Is Francisco ok?”

***

15 years later

Robert awakens with a dream of his mother again. The sound of her soft voice fades into the reality of the noisy room around him. In the dream, she sang to him while putting thick white sunscreen on him. As she did this, he watched her brown curls shine threads of tan against the sun. Reaching for them, he sang along and stared up at the seagulls gliding in the rich blue sky. He hadn’t dreamt in color for a while and almost forgot how beautiful the sky’s natural blue could be. The transition from this vibrant dream to the reality of complete darkness wasn’t scary anymore. Instead, it had almost become rather comforting to help him tell apart dreams from reality. His dreams offer an oasis of color and memories of natural sight. He lets out a deep sigh before forcing himself out of bed.

“Still tired huh,” Murphie teases from the bunk across. Robert feels the ground slightly vibrate when Murphie jumps off and hears him pop his back. – Murphie’s usual stretching ritual.

“Hey, who isn’t,” Tray responds. He always has Robert’s back when Murphie tries to mess with him.

Robert smiles and quickly turns on his vision lenses. They weren’t the latest model, but at least they could see, in infrared at least, to carry out their work. The lenses also protect them from bacteria that could enter their eyes due to the lack of eyelid closure ability. They aren’t necessarily fashion worthy, but they work.

A scream from afar lets them know who is the last one to turn them on this morning. Some bunks away Robert hears Mikie growl, “Darn it! I hate this!”

“Aww c’mon Mikie, don’t be like that.”

Tray laughs and holds up seven fingers to Robert. Whispering, he says, “That was his seventh time getting pinched. I told you it would be Mikie to earn the streak! You owe me now!”

In a surprised defeat, Robert raises his hands and laughs, “Alright, alright. You got lucky this time.”

As they quickly finish dressing and making their beds, Robert reaches under his pillow. The necklace’s rose-gold appearance had long tainted into an infrared array of colors in his eyes, which he imagines is probably now a brass-like smudged color. No matter the color change, he treasures it as his mom had. He gently opens it, as he does each morning, revealing the smudged photos of his family. There they were; the three of them together, tucked next to each other, eternally smiling in color. Using one of Uncle Larry’s photos, they had somehow worked their paper Photoshop magic with limited supplies. Mom’s picture was carefully cut out and squeezed near his baby photo inside the locket.

After tucking the necklace into his left chest pocket, he lightly pats it, and turns back to Tray, “So tell me, which of my meals are you going to take this time?”

“Man, who said anything about food? I want to trade you on your assignment for a day as my prize.”

“We’ll have to ask the boss about that.”

“Excuses, excuses.”

The doors to their camp open. As their unit walks to the cafeteria to prepare for the day’s orders, Robert looks out to the horizon. Sky blue, I still remember how blue the sky naturally looks like. Patting his left pocket, he smiles and looks back at his friends. Murphie begins to talk about pranking Mikey at the cafeteria. Laughing, he shakes his head and trots a bit to catch up. He knows the boss needs him in Quadrant 3 today to investigate some new potential signals detected. If he and Tray are going to swap, he needs to warm up to him to be on his good side today.

Robert has a plan on how the boss would agree. Hopefully Murphie’s mischievous agenda will not interfere with his idea. Robert hopes to take Tray’s shift today as he is scheduled to the research lab. He likes working with the reptiles there, but he is also hoping to get a look at the new equipment Dr. Miranda Brown mentioned about last time. It's still amusing to recall how he caught her attention after telling her how Telly got his name. So dumb, you could have told her something else.

“No way! Look at Robert’s face!”

“Man Mikie, you don’t know anything,” Murphie steps in.

Tray covers his mouth to hold back laughter as he points at Robert from behind Murphie. A ‘you’re-doing it again’ look was all Robert needs to know that he is getting made fun of for having a mystery crush.

“You have to get over that ‘oh, I’m thinking about her’ look dude. It’s a killer for your rep,” Tray whispers as he slides to his seat.

The smell of warm cinnamon and oats overpowers the cafeteria today. Although the vision lenses give them some sight, their sense of smell has definitely heightened.

As Robert takes a large spoonful of the colorful sweet mush before him, he looks up at the oddly-colored silhouettes eating and chatting away. An unexpected cheerful sigh overcomes him. It will be a good day Robert, you’ll see.