…continued from MTO Jack Marr.

Sam approached the scene on the sidewalk warily, not quite believing his eyes. A bizarre metallic craft hovered a few inches over the ground. Lucy sniffed it, licked her chops, and drooled. Tiny green people barely bigger than his pinky were having an argument. One of them wasn’t green and was hurt. It looked like…

“Jack? Is that you? What happened?” Sam crouched so he could see better.

“I think I broke my arm,” Jack did his best to answer through gritted teeth.

Sam went to tweeze him to get a better look.

“Nooooooo, Sam! You’ll make it worse. Go get some peroxide. I need to make Lucy throw up.”

“Throw up? No. That’s terrible. Why would you do that to poor Lucy?”

The little green men talked among themselves. One kept waving and pointing a laser Sam’s way, but the guy was so tiny, Sam wasn’t afraid. But Jack was tiny, too. How’d he get that way? Sam shrugged. A Buggati Chiron went by just then, pulling Sam’s attention like a tractor beam. “Woah…you see that?” he breathed.

“Who cares about your stupid cars right now,” Jack snapped. Actually, he squeaked. His throat was the size of a charging wire, after all.

“Or maybe it was a Buggati Centodieci, I’m not sure.” Sam wished he had a phone for moments like these. If he could’ve taken a picture, he could find out for sure which Buggati had just passed his house. Lots of doctors lived in his subdivision because it was close to the hospital. Sam wasn’t sure about fixing people or curing diseases, but the doctors’ cars made him think medical school could be in his fu–

“SAM.” Jack yanked him out of his reverie. “Lucy ate one of them. Now go get the peroxide, or I’m going to tell Mom about the white bread.”

Sam narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

Sam stalked off toward the house. Lucy tried to follow, but Sam waved her back, grumbling. If Jack told Mom about him eating an entire loaf of white bread, he’d be in for it. Processed foods were taboo in the Marr house. Nutrition was basically a superpower, and junk food was kryptonite. Still, Sam had to know what white bread tasted like–and he had to eat the whole loaf to get rid of the evidence. But he couldn’t get rid of his brother, Jack, who’d caught him doing it.

Or could he?

He thought of Jack, barely bigger than a mouse and with a broken arm. No, he could never allow harm to come to his big brother. They were pals. If Jack said Lucy had to throw up, Sam trusted it was the best course of action because Jack loved Lucy, too. From the cabinet, Sam swiped the peroxide, ran back, and got a hold of Lucy’s collar.

“How much?” he asked his brother.

“Just start squirting.”

Would Sam have the strength to hold Lucy still and pour peroxide down her throat? With a quick prayer that the superpower of nutrition would be enough and that God would allow the swallowed alien to somehow be like Jonah, whole and angry at the inconvenience of being put into a mammal’s stomach, he wrenched Lucy’s maw open and poured.

#

Both boys sat in determined silence the entire way home from the emergency room. Jack’s arm was in a cast.

“Tell me again why you made Lucy throw up,” Mom twisted in her seat and gave the boys the Judge Judy Stare Down. “We’re not going into the house until I get a straight answer.”

“I told you,” Jack said. “She ate something bad.”

“What?”

“I…I’m not sure, exactly.”

“And you broke your arm trying to make her throw up–you fell on it trying to get the peroxide down? I know she’s a strong dog, but I gotta tell you, Jack, this story doesn’t add up. Dad and I together could barely get Lucy to drink peroxide if she didn’t want to.”

Sam beamed. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and Sam’s prayer had been answered. He got Lucy to puke the alien, who was indeed furious. And slimy. The aliens got back into their saucer and took off without so much as a thank you or a goodbye, but at least they made Jack big again. The thing about stories too crazy to be true was that you had to keep them to yourself until you could write them as “fiction” for Mrs. Griffiths’ writing class.

True: Sam loves exotic cars. I had to take some creative license with the white bread because I don’t think Sam would EVER do anything bad that his big brother could hold over his head. And I believe that, if the boys saw aliens on the sidewalk, they’d tell the truth no matter how unbelievable it sounded. What fun it was to create MTO Horror for a younger crowd.

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