“No more wine for you, Bucko!” Andy replied.  We thought you were dead!”  “Huh?” Feeling sluggish, weak, and more than a little confused, Eddie did manage a lopsided grin.  Then he fell asleep.

Waking, Eddie looked around him, searching for a clock.  He was now laying in bed, a soft, female scented comfort that he did not want to leave.  Dozing again he was awakened by the barking of dogs and cursing of the women.

Buddy came barreling in, closely followed by Aggie holding a broken piece of chain.  “That big, dumb son-of-a-bitch broke this chain to come see you!”  Of course by now Buddy had leaped onto the bed,  licking and slobbering all over the protesting patient.

“AAAGGGHHH!”  “That’s enough already, Buddy,” he managed. “No!”  That did it, Buddy lay down with his head on Eddie’s chest, whimpering his greetings. (okay?)  “Yeah, I’m okay, Bud.”   (listen kammi) “Huh?” Then, forgetting who else was in the room, he asked, “Want me to talk to Kammi, eh?”  “What’s your mom got to say that you can’t tell me?”

He caught Buddy’s sideways look and remembered Aggie, who had come to stand by the side of the bed after opening the curtains of the room’s only window.  She had a puzzled look on her face and appeared to be about to say something when her two sisters came in, followed by the dogs.

They had his clothes, apparently cleaned, and a tray of food that made his mouth water.  “Uh, before I eat, I really gotta,,,, Arabelle blushed, but the other two merely set down their loads and sat down in the various chairs scattered around the room.

It was at this point that the urgency to piss almost overwhelmed him which certainly would have been embarrassing in the company of others but he had known the sisters for many years in many different circumstances.  It didn’t bother him at all to skip naked to the bathroom to perform his duty.

Upon returning, feeling much better but way hungrier, he slipped into his jeans and flannel shirt and began chowing down.  The women were looking at him in shocked disbelief as he polished off a breakfast big enough for all of them.  Nobody had said a word, either.  Apparently all were waiting for him to say something around mouthfuls of sausage and eggs.

From the dogs he got just a little tickle, a feel good tickle. A kind of ‘We’re glad you’re back‘ thought, not words.  Which made him finally ask, ” So, what’s up?”  Their  stares of open-mouthed astonishment confused him for a second as he looked back and forth between them. “Well?”

Andy was the first to put words to her conflicting emotions, “Why you ungrateful son-of-a-bitch, you were dead!”  Then she got up and rushed over to him, sobbing,” Eddie, you had no pulse!”  “No heartbeat I could find!”  Then almost accusingly, “The dogs were just as bad!”  “What happened to you?”

“Uh”,,,,,”Well, it was kinda like”,,,.(tell shes) and a feeling of warmth and security swept over him. (tell shes, now) “Uh, Okay Kammi” he mumbled.  “Why can’t you tell them?”  This got a perplexed look from the girls. (listen man, no listen kammi)  “You mean they can’t hear you?” (yes)  “Oh, wow.”

Andy, who had moved back to her chair, returned and put a hand on his forehead, “Are you sure you’re all right?”  If looks could talk what he got from the other two would have said the same thing, “Are you nuts?”   He grinned and said, ” First of all, what happened while I was out of it?”  “It seemed like only a couple of hours to me.”

Now they were all tripping all over each other trying to hold him and talk and fend off the dogs at the same time.  “You fell asleep right after I talked with you and in about ten minutes you stiffened up like a board.”  Andy continued, “After about a half hour or so, I realized something was wrong and got up to check.”

“That’s when we came in,” piped up Arabelle.  “You were stiff and so were the dogs, we thought it was maybe something to do with the Chinese attack on the west coast, you know, like a nerve gas or something.”  “Huh?” “Attack!” began Eddie.

“Now don’t get ahead of the story, ‘Belle.”  Aggie was winding up with her two cent’s worth, ” You were like that for three days, Eddie, no heartbeat, no breath, but your pupils were spinning around like crazy!”  Things were starting to click when Eddie asked, “So what made you try to wake me up?” “You were shaking the shit out of me!”

“That wasn’t us, Eddie,” began Arabelle.  Then Andy took over again, “We thought we might have to evacuate, the earthquake was that bad.”  “Look at the ceiling” and she pointed to three or four long, zig-zagging cracks in the painted drywall.  “It felt like the end of the world!”  “Even with all the heavy engineering put into this place by Dad, it was still shaking apart.”

Their father had been an internationally renowned engineer and architect who had made a bundle designing earthquake-proof buildings all over the world.  “That bad, eh?”

“Yes it was!”  Andy was almost shouting now, “And then Aggie noticed the dogs were moving a little and sure enough, so were you.”  “I had tried an IV drip to get some kind of fluid into you, but the quake ripped it out of your arm, and the ceiling was falling in,,,then it stopped, all of a sudden , just stopped.”

“We hauled the dogs outside to the backyard and when we came back you were thrashing around , your ears were bleeding again and we didn’t know what to do, but you woke up!”  “Yeah and then he went right back to sleep!” This was from Aggie who was sitting next to Kammi, her pet and the first Labrador in the area, found wandering,  starving and lost, out by the old highway.

“Jeeez, no wonder I had to pee so bad!”  This brought a gale of laughter  from the assembled people and the dogs looked like they understood too.

“So tell us what happened to you, do you remember?”  Eddie looked at Aggie and in a small voice said, “It was something impossible to forget” he paused  then continued, “from what I could gather, I think I was shown the history of humankind!”

The silence in the room was thick with expectancy. “But what was really cool was, I found out the secret of our creation!” They were on the edges of their seats now.  “What we are here for, and what the dogs are here for.”  “I talked with GOD!”

© 2010, woodco. All rights reserved.

Tags: 2012, Be prepared, Disaster Survival, earthquake

Posted in 2012,Survival and Society 41 Comments