UNCLE TOM

UNCLE TOM

July fourth, 1999. I still remember that day like it was yesterday, and I will never forget it. I was twelve years old at the time. My little brother, Sam, was ten. The two of us had been out all day raisin' hell – blasting the neighbor kids with Roman Candles, shooting bottle rockets at old ladies as they were sittin' on their porches, and blowin' up bugs, toads, and stray cats with M80's we'd nabbed after discovering the old man's secret stash (which he thought was out of reach on the top shelf) in the garage.

By the time we came home late that afternoon we was covered with soot and smelled like spent gunpowder. We warshed up and came out for dinner packing the appetite of hungry hogs.

It was the annual Fourth of July barbecue, and everyone was there. Me and Sam was too busy scoping out the grub to bother conversating. Dad was hard at work grilling up his trademark burgers. Uncle Mike and Aunt Katy brought a gigantic watermelon they picked up at the farmer's market. Grandpa brought his custom-made baked beans, with two spoonfuls of brown sugar. But the star of the show was always Granny’s famous chocolate cake, with the double thick frosting. This year she brought it in a patriotic red, white, blue tin. The only thing missing was the tater salad Uncle Tom usually whipped up (or at least he said he did), but we all knew the truth, he bought it at the store last minute and dumped it into a dish from home), and no one missed it either.

When the burgers came up, everyone dug in. For a while it was all quiet save for the clanking of forks and the distant reports of fireworks all across town. Pretty soon the typical, superficial compliments about the food began making their way back and forth and around the table. Then Grandpa started in on politics and wouldn't shut up. And grandma kept insisting, to whomever would listen, that perhaps she had taken the cake out of the oven a minute too soon. Meanwhile Mother and Aunt Katy were busy discussing the summer's latest fashion trends.

But there was something odd about Uncle Tom. He was being awfully quiet. In fact, I hadn't recalled him saying a single word to anyone as yet. Maybe, I thought, it was because he was shoveling hot dogs into his mouth one after another. The rate he was stuffing them things down he was lookin' to set a new weenie eating record real quick.

All the while our dog, Tucker, was watching Uncle Tom with intense curiosity. His head was going back and forth like a yo-yo as he watched Uncle Tom chow down. He'd been whining persistently, louder and louder, and now he had started up growling. At first I thought it was cause Uncle Tom wasn't sharing none of his wieners with Tucker.

Now Tucker wasn't the type of dog to bite folks. That's why I was surprised when, out of nowhere, Tucker bit Uncle Tom on the leg. Right in the meat of the left calf, where it's really tender. Immediately Uncle Tom began shrieking out in pain, placing both hands over the spot where Tucker'd bit him. It was the weirdest sound I'd ever heard Tom make. Sounded like some sort of wild bird calling out in distress.

Then Tucker jumped up onto Uncle Tom's lap and bit him on the face. Now Tom was really shrieking. Dad got up and tried to snag Tucker, but stumbled over the beer cooler and did a belly flop.

By this time Tucker had managed to knock Uncle Tom out of his lawn chair and had him on his back. As Tucker continued to sink his teeth into Uncle Tom's face, I noticed this strange green stuff was oozing out. Looked like that green slime people put in their bicycle tires to keep from getting flats, except that it almost seemed to glow.

Then it went from bad to worse when Tucker ripped off Uncle Tom's face. Came right off, like some kind of cheap, glue-on Halloween mask. At this stage of the game everybody was freakin' out. Even Brave little Tucker whimpered and stepped back. Uncle Tom's new face was green and slimy. It was covered with reptilian-like scales. Something resembling gills pulsed in and out rapidly from the sides of his face, just below the cheek bones. Whiskers jutted out from above his mouth like a catfish. His eyes – correct me, “its eyes” - were reddish orange. All together it was the ugliest thing I'd ever seen, real or imagined.

Aunt Katy dropped the glass of tea she was holding and it shattered into a thousand pieces when it met the cement, just like reality tends to do sometimes. Grandpa placed both hands over his heart and took a knee. Granny fainted face first into her chocolate cake. Everyone else was scrambling for a phone to call 911.

Meanwhile the Uncle Tom-thing had made it up to its feet. It looked frantically around the patio for a moment before taking off through the backyard, still shrieking and leaving behind a trail of green slime as it went. When we had gathered our composure, me, Dad, and Tucker started up following that trail of slime. We followed it all the way to an abandoned junk yard on the outskirts of our neighborhood. The lot had a high chain link fence around it, and I noticed there were splotches of green slime up and down it.

Dad was just starting up the fence when the ground began to tremble and shake like an earthquake. The ole man was flung right off that fence, landing smack dab on his tush. Then we were blinded by an intense light, as the spacecraft rose slowly up into the sky. It hovered there for a moment, as we watched in awe. Then, with a final blast, it was gone. Out of this world and on to the next.

The next day they found the real Uncle Tom. They found him down by the creek, not far from the junkyard. He'd been skinned to the bone, and his clothes were nowhere to be found.