ADAM UNLUCKY

A short story by Dan Jire

“Get your shoes on already.”

“I am!” He was.

“Then why aren’t you in the car already?” the boy’s mother asked.

“Because I’m getting my shoes. I haven’t gotten them. Sheesh.”

“Don’t sheesh me. Get your shoes on and get in the car. Pronto. Chop. Chop.”

The boy’s name was Adam Clover. He wore a yellow shirt with a big four-leaf clover on it. His shorts were jeans and his shoes were, well, they weren’t the shoes his mother wanted him to wear. They were a cracked, frayed, and torn pair of Converse. The laces were stained with grass and mud. And the soles had dried dirt caked between the treads. He was going to turn eleven in another month and a half.

With shoes tied, he stomped through the mudroom, leaving little clumps of dirt. His mother had already opened the garage door. She was still loading up the back of the car with towels in a plastic basket. She had Adam’s swimming goggles in her mouth. She plopped them on top of the towels and then slammed the trunk shut.

For a moment, at least in Adam’s mind, it appeared the trunk tried to pop back open. That something was inside that almost leapt out and ripped his mother’s face off. He eyed the trunk carefully as he circled around the car. He kept preparing for the trunk to make a noise or spring open. It didn’t.

“Can I ride up front?” Adam asked.

Typically, the front passenger seat seated his mother’s purse, old mail, old receipts, things that needed to be returned to the store, a jacket that seemed to never move, and if groceries were freshly bought—like a carton of eggs or a loaf of bread. Groceries were not freshly bought on this day, but still his mother looked at the stuff on the passenger seat and cringed. The effort of moving the stuff and then moving it back again seemed insurmountable to her, maybe even sacrilegious.

“Honey, baby. You haven’t quite reached the height requirement yet. I would be devastated if we got into an accident and the air bags deployed and . . . and I just don’t want to think about it. You’re freaking me out. Can you please sit in your seat in the back? Please?”

Adam opened the back door. He mumbled something or other about what his dad let him do.

“Thank you.” His mother wiped her brow as if she’d labored greatly, then slid into the driver seat and started the engine.

Adam buckled himself in—careful not to put his back against the seat. He felt positive that something was going to push back.

The seat belt pinched his tummy, but he thought he could live with that. Just so long as whatever was in the trunk didn’t know he was right there for the grabbing. Would it wind its fingers between the cushions or leap over the head rest?

Adam leaned slightly forward for the duration of leaving their neighborhood. His mother’s heavy foot planted his back against the seat as soon as they hit an actual road. But Adam thought he was quick enough when he jerked forward and grabbed onto the back of his mother’s seat that the thing might not have noticed.

“Do not grab my seat while I drive! What the heck is wrong with you?”

Adam relinquished his grip. “You brake too hard.”

“Oh, you’re one to judge. And how long have you had your driver’s license, mister?” His mother asked. “God, I can’t wait for you to be able to drive yourself to these pool parties. I hope you respect the amount of time I take out of my weekend so you can go splish-splash with your buddies.”

“She’s not my buddy.”

“Well, your other buddies are going to be there right?”

His mother watched him in the rearview mirror as he nodded.

“So, there you have it. You’re going to see your buddies. Not my buddies. Yours. Do you have a stomach cramp or something? Why are you leaning forward? Sit back, you’re making me nervous.”

She eyed him in the mirror. Their gazes matched like wits across a chessboard. His mother gave up. Shaking her head—mainly because she needed to pay attention to the traffic on the road. But she kept checking and kept shaking her head every time she saw her son slumped over his knees. A mother’s mind can worry, depending on what article or news report she recently read or saw, was it the one about the rise of scoliosis that bothered her then?

Adam glanced behind himself too. Watching the cushions of the backseat, honestly expecting to see something pushing through from the other side—testing the thickness and strength of the material. A flickering shadow almost gave the illusion, but even Adam could see through it as a trick of the light—for now.

His mother struck a speed hump as they turned into his classmate’s neighborhood. Metal scraped sharply and the whole car jerked up and down. Everything in the trunk tumbled. Adam smacked his head against his mother’s headrest.

“Jesus!” his mother cursed. “Since when is there a speed hump there?”

Metal continued to scrape as they drove on. It seemed like the first thing that annoyed his mother that wasn’t him.

“And you—you sit back. Those front teeth of yours are permanent and I can’t afford new ones if you knock them out on the back of my seat. Sit back.” Then his mother said some choice curse words about the scraping metal. It was the kind of sound that probably had sparks flying out. She ended her tirade with a shook head and a single remark.

“This day,” she said.

Adam bet his current savings of twenty-three dollars and fifty-six cents that the thing in the trunk hated that noise too. And it was going to lose its mind and burst right out of the trunk right then and there. Adam thought of jumping out of the car. It was a residential area so he knew his mother wasn’t going super-fast. He thought he could do a stunt roll and be fine.

He’d fallen off his bike going what he presumed was much faster—it wasn’t—and that had only scraped his knees and banged up his elbow. He’d healed. He’d gotten back on that bike again. If he didn’t do something then and there, he was going to be eaten by whatever was in the trunk.

He grabbed the door handle it moved, but gave that sharp denial of a thing he learned of called ‘child safety locks.’ The handle slapped back into place and Adam crossed his arms, trying to think of another way to survive. He tried to roll down the window, but again the safety lock feature denied him.

His mother made just one more turn, this time into the parking lot of the neighborhood pool. Parking was limited. She had to go all the way to the end of the parking lot. The metal calling eyes from everyone already in the pool—even the lifeguards up in their stands behind their shades of authority.

Adam wasn’t nearly as ashamed as his mother was—he thought, maybe the lifeguards would help. Maybe they would save him.

His mother parked. The sun beat down right in that empty spot, an obvious reason for why it had been left available.

“I bet that is going to cost a fortune. Won’t your dad be happy about that?” she said, getting out of the car and inspecting the undercarriage, but not before Adam’s door swung open and almost clocked her.

“Watch it, bub.”

Adam slung the door closed and got a few cars away before his dash turned to a skip and then a strut, looking back at the car.

“Get back here and help me carry in our stuff!”

Adam hesitated, bobbing forward and then back.

“Now, Adam.”

Slowly, Adam crept back over. As his mother bent complete over and looked at the dangling muffler. She cursed through gritted teeth, and then sprung upright.

She hit the button on her keys and the trunk clicked open.

Adam jumped back—having not considered his mother’s involvement in the trunk’s opening. Then he almost screamed as his mother leaned in and grabbed the plastic basket of towels and things. She turned, quite perturbed to see the distance Adam had kept from the car.

“You take this and the present. They said we needed to bring our own chairs, so I’ve got the chairs and cooler.”

Adam stretched forward until he was forced to take a few more steps to retrieve the plastic basket and the present for his classmate. It was gift wrapped in pink since the classmate was a girl. Adam could’ve cared less for what was inside. His mother had picked it out because he just wanted to come for the pizza and the pool.

In fact, if he had his druthers, he’d feed that classmate to whatever was in the trunk. She’d signed something rude in his yearbook at the end of school last year. She’d called him Adam The Unlucky. He was almost disappointed that it did seem empty the way his mother tucked in and pulled things out without any repercussions.

For a moment, a daydream began to form where he’d be able to defeat the monster with moves he’d learned playing hours and hours of video games—and almost all of his classmates were at the pool and they’d witness his heroics first hand.

Adam got a bit curious. One might say, too curious.

And so, he meandered closer to the trunk and used his tippy toes to peer down into the back. The bottom board of the trunk jumped up. Just a little.

Just enough.

“You’re still in there,” gasped Adam. He backed away. “Mom!” he moaned trying to get her attention.

“I’m coming, I’m coming. It’s not like we’re late.” She raised her wrist to report the exact time.

Adam saw something move beneath the car, just a shifting of light, nothing he could be sure of.

“Five minutes. We’re five minutes early. You’re welcome. Relax. They might not even be allowed to admit guests yet. I swear you get your impatience from your dad. Now there’s an impatient man.” She let that hang in the air like the tag line for a new television series one full of strange reveals that one would not believe but all the while find totally relatable.

“Mom. I saw something beneath the car.”

“You mean the muffler.”

“No. Like a thing.”

“Like a critter? Like a cat? Dog? It’s probably someone’s pet desperate for shade. I hate summer.”

She said all of this not paying attention to Adam shaking his head no as she walked up beside him. Then she froze, and whispered through the side of her teeth, “I didn’t run over it, did I?”

Adam grabbed her arm. “It is not a pet and I don’t think it is dead.’

“You’re really strung out today? Maybe it’s time to stop eating those sugary cereals every morning. That’s probably what’s stunting your growth.”

Adam kept his eye on the bottom of the car as he walked along with his mother. They weaved through rows of parked cars where if felt as if the creature had stalked them, remaining low beneath the cars.

Adam was grateful to reach the wooden deck boards that carried them across a drainage ditch and into the pool entrance.

A ten feet high chain link fence surrounded the pool, and the gate was wide, but had a lock that Adam thought of using. But as his mother informed the lifeguards at the gate of who they were and who there where there to see, something shook the decorative grass.

Adam watched as the grass stilled and made no further disturbance.

His mother tugged at his arm, so he followed, rounding the pool to where two tables with umbrellas open had been pushed together and seemed to be accepting gifts.

As he passed, he spotted two friends already swimming, playing the game Sharks and Minnows. Normally, Adam would’ve done everything in his power not to miss another second of that game, but he wearily followed, and kept looking over his back like some former Mafioso under witness protection visiting his mother’s grave in Flushing.

The chain link fence rattled.

A little kid was the culprit, gleefully pretending it was an electric fence. He let out a death curling cry. His babysitter swatted his behind.

Someone dove off the diving boor. The spring shook meanly and the splash sounded like a belly flop that would permanently tattoo the diver.

“Once you set the present down you can go swim.” Those were the last coherent words Adam Clover’s mother said to him.

Screams filled the air.

The creature had vaulted itself over the fence. It’s body flat but long, like one of those throw rugs that still had the animal’s head and limbs attached. It took delight. It had closed the gate and locked it somehow while no one was looking.

Adam dove into the pool, thinking the creature might not have had swimming lessons. He would be correct to some degree, as the flatness of the creature’s form did not favor deep dives, however it allowed the creature to walk across water like one of the bugs that weigh less than the air.

The creature clawed and bit its way across the pool. Jumping from victim to victim.

It pulled limbs off like string cheese.

Tore the flesh like it was wrapping paper on Christmas morning.

And if it had any desire to eat, it was saving that for the end. No, this creature just wanted to massacre.

Adam watched from the bottom of the pool as a redness clouded his view. Eventually Adam had to come up for air. Real quick, he thought, and he shot up and went right back down, hands flapping at his sides until his butt hit the bottom of the pool.

He got one good view of the scene, although Adam would not have reported it as ‘good.’ Few would.

The pool was a bloodbath. Below the water the screams were muffled and as pleasant as any carnival.

But it seemed, his racing heart took his breath away quicker. He had to go back up all too soon.

He tried to take a breath and go back under again, but this time the claw of the creature ripped through the water, and hooked him like a fish.

It flung him high into the air. Adam screamed as plummeted back down toward pool. But he missed the more absorbing nature of the water, and landed hard on the concrete, blood busted through his throat and painted his face red.

As Adam wretched up blood in his dying gasp, he was at least grateful that no one at school would know it was his fault that this unearthly creature came to the pool party and ripped everyone to shreds. He couldn’t stand to think of his entire class calling him Adam Unlucky for the rest of his life.

THE END.