Shadow of the Mothaship | Page 6

of arm's reach from my neighbour
Linus's rose trellis. I shake the trellis until it falls, missing my foot,
which I jerk away and swear at.

#
The fibre cleaves with a single stroke. The gas line takes twenty or
more, each stroke clanging off the ceramic and sending the blade back
alarmingly at my face. Finally it gives, and the sides splinter and a
great jet of gas whooshes out, then stops.
I could kick myself for an asshole. Praise the bugouts for civil
engineers who made self-sealing pipes. I eye the water line warily and
flip open my comm, dial into the city, and touch-tone my way through
a near-sexy woman reading menus until I find out that the water, too,
self-seals.
Whang, whang, whang, and I'm soaked and blinded by the water that
bursts free, and *I could kick myself for an asshole!*
The house, now truly untethered, catches a gust of wind and lifts itself
a few metres off the ground, body-checking me on my ass. I do a
basketball jump and catch the solvent-melted corner, drag it down to
earth, long-arm for the fix bath and slop it where the corner meets the
driveway, bonding it there until phase four is ready.
#
I bond one end of monofilament to the front right corner of the house,
then let it unwind, covered in eraser-pink safety goop, until I'm
standing in my deserted Chestnut Ave. I spray a dent in the middle of
the road with my solvent, plunk the reel into it, bond it, then rush back
to the house and unbond that last one corner.
I hit the suck button on the reel and the house slowly drags its way to
the street, leaving a gap like a broken tooth in the carefully groomed
smile of my Chestnut Ave.
The wind fluffs at the house, making it settle/unsettle like a nervous
hen and so I give it line by teasing the spit button on the reel until it's a
hundred metres away. Then I reel it in and out, timing it with the gusts
until, in a sudden magnificent second, it catches and sails

up-and-up-and-up and I'm a fricken genius.
#
It's nearly four and my beautiful kite is a dancing bird in the sky before
the good little kiddies of my Chestnut Ave start to trickle home from
their days of denial, playing at normalcy in the face of Judgment.
Linus is the first one home, and he nearly decapitates himself on the
taut line as he cruises past on his bicycle. He slews to a stop and stares
unbelieving at me, at the airborne house, at the gap where he had a
neighbour.
"Maxes Fuentes Shumacher! What is this?"
"Flying a kite, Linus. Just flyin' a kite. Nice day for it, yeah?"
"This," he says, then sputters. Linus is a big devotee of Dad's Process
for Lasting Happiness, and I can actually watch him try to come up
with some scripture to cover the situation while he gulps back
mouthsful of bile. "This is an Irresponsible Wrong, Maxes. You are
being a Feckless Filthy. This is an abuse of property, a Lashing Out at a
Figure in Absentia. You are endangering others, endangering aircraft
and people and property below that. I insist that you Right-Make this
now, this instant."
"Yeah, uh-huh, yeah." And I squint up at my kite, the sun coming down
behind it now, and it's just a dot in the big orange fire. The wind's more
biting than friendly. I pull the foam sweater a little closer, and do up
one of the buttons in the middle.
"Maxes!" Linus shouts, his happiness dissipating. "You have thirty
seconds to get that down here, or I will Right-Make it myself."
I didn't live with my dad for twenty years without picking up some
Process-speak. "You seem to be Ego-Squeezing here, Lin. This
Blame-Saying is a Barrier to Joy, bud, and the mark of a Weekend
Happyman. Why don't you go watch some TV or something?"

He ignores me and makes a big show of flipping open his comm and
starting a timer running on it.
Man, my kite is a work of art. Megafun.
"Time's up, Feckless Filthy," Linus says, and snakes out and punches
the suck button on my monofilament reel. It whizzes and line starts
disappearing into its guts.
"You can't bring down a kite *that* way, frickface. It'll crash." Which
it does, losing all its airworthiness in one hot second and plummeting
like a house.
It tears up some trees down Chestnut, and I hear a Rice Crispies bowl
of snap-crackle-pops from further away. I use a shear to clip the line
and it zaps away, like a hyperactive snake.
"Moron," I say to Linus. The good kiddies of Chestnut Ave