Blog Love Omega Glee: Firework Follies (15 July 2012)

Monique the cat sits in Jake's dad's lap as they watch Kitty O'Couscous get interviewed on television. Surprisingly, she's moved above Dick to second place in the presidential race polls.

A loud bang comes from outside. Monique panics and uses Dad's lap as a launching pad. With her back claws, she scratches his bare legs underneath his shorts as she leaps halfway across the living room and runs away. "Ow!" he cries, standing up, "Is that idiot down the street still shooting off fireworks? The 4th was almost two weeks ago!"

Mom looks up from her crossword and says, "Calm down, Fred. You almost got in a fistfight last week when you went down there. It's not worth it. Besides, it's a bad economy. How much more money can he afford to almost literally burn away?"

Grumbling, Dad sits back down and continues to watch television.

Later, after they go to bed, he lies awake thinking. He remembers some old bottle rockets one of Jake's friends gave him years ago. He gets out of bed quietly and tiptoes downstairs. He puts on some gloves and rummages through some boxes in the basement and finds them. He tears off the plastic wrapping on the package and throws it away. He takes a bottle rocket out of the package, and, listening for any sounds, notes that it's all quiet. He slips outside using the side door.

Outside, aside from some insects chirping, the neighborhood is silent. A car drives past on the street, but otherwise there's no movement. Dad looks around. He gets out the ladder from the garage and climbs up on the roof of the garage. A clear night, the stars look very bright. He curses the stars for their brightness and lies on his belly. He looks around at the neighboring houses. They're all dark, except for one house across the street, where an upstairs room is lit up. "It's 3 a.m.; Go to bed, idiot!" he thinks about the neighbor across the street, and fails to note the irony.

He looks at the house across the street. He doesn't see anybody in the window. The person's probably asleep but forgot to turn the light off. They don't believe in saving energy apparently, Dad decides.

Dad aims the big bottle rocket at the neighbor two doors down on his side of the street. "He likes fireworks, huh? Let's see how much he likes this! I hope the shithead's sleeping and this wakes him up! This is for all those damn fireworks disturbing me for the past month!" he thinks.

Dad realizes he's forgotten a lighter. "Dammit!"

He slides across the roof of his garage on his belly back to the ladder. He crawls down the ladder, wincing at each step's soft creak. He goes back inside the house. "Where's the damn lighter?" he mumbles to himself, opening drawers in the kitchen.

He finds some matches and settles for them. Back outside, it's still quiet and quite still. After climbing the ladder, he lies in the dark on the garage for a while to make sure no one's watching.

He falls asleep clutching the bottle rocket.

An hour later, a feathery alarm clock wakes him up. "Damn early bird! I ought to shoot the worm right out of your mouth with this bottle rocket!"

It's still dark, but lightening gradually. He looks around. He doesn't see anyone. "I'm going to get a bang out of this," he chuckles to himself.

"Good morning, fuckhole," he thinks as he lights the bottle rocket and aims it at the neighbor's house.

It whines as it streaks upward. "Yes!"

Instead of exploding near the house though, it hits a second story window and explodes. The glass breaks and the rocket seems to land in the room. Flames appear and smoke starts to pour out the window. Cringing, Dad sneaks off the roof, lamenting the fact that he didn't throw those bottle rockets away years ago.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.