A Rock and Family Vacation

[21]

Dinner that evening was actually the least ambitious meal of the day. It consisted of sandwiches made from the remaining meats they got from the Polish market along with the rest of the pizza. Some stray dried and fresh fruit from trip snacks rounded things out.

Brooke expressed a fervent note of heartfelt apology towards her body, but this was a vacation, so her body should’ve realized what it was signing up for. It was taking one for the team. Even if this whole vacation had gone well then there was still no getting around ordained obligation brunch and that was enough to make her wanna drink. She hadn’t touched the bottle yet but considered having one glass with her husband once the kids had all gone to bed.

She emerged from the Jacuzzi with peace and serenity, which was soon broken by Lacy in her swimsuit crying about how Blair hated her. Through an absolute scramble of incoherent words, she apologized for trying to get an expensive meal out of them along with a bunch of other things that Brooke couldn’t decipher. But the most bewildering notion was her firm and vehement declaration that she wanted to put on a dress. Even more than the idle imagining about Clare earlier, Brooke was convinced that some nefarious fairy had spirited away her actual child. But this sure seemed to be Lacy.

Cautiously, she led Lacy back to the master bedroom and sifted through what meager vacation offerings she could loan her. Most of them she had put aside because the girl wasn’t even willing to meet her part of the way without a lot of complaints. Now, nothing was off the table. When Brooke presented the free-flowing blue dress she’d worn a handful of times but really only packed in as a spare, Lacy practically ripped it from her hands and then stripped naked without the barrier of the borrowed robe. Brooke vaguely entertained the possibility that in her relaxed state she actually slipped into a parallel universe where Lacy wanted to be a girl. Sounded like one of Eliot‘s plot proposals.

Some of the familiar Lacy returned when she assessed herself in the mirror and looked absolutely mortified at the feminine qualities of the outfit. That didn’t stop her from bolting off though. It didn’t take long before whatever rift was patched up and the thick thieves were excited to play video games together. Brooke shrugged. She was becoming desensitized to the whole teenager thing. Chaos rained and the weather changed by the moment.

Clare appeared like she’d been crying recently but excitedly hugged her and recounted the myth and legend of the superhero magical castle and its destruction on the beach. Eliot flashed her look. If she wanted a boring life then she would’ve stopped with Blair.

She could’ve stopped with him, no matter what input her father gave her about her body. He relished digging in that she probably would’ve had a “pointless” little girl instead of a strong man if it wasn’t for him in the genetic line. It wasn’t entirely spite that motivated her second child, but it was a big part. If it had been a girl, perhaps she would’ve stopped there. Balance and all that. But the old man just wouldn’t quit.

Somehow, he actually seemed happy with his third grandchild. Like with the other two, he often liked to bring them in for free physicals and to see if there was anything about them that was genetically rare or, more likely, profitable. The hair thing was the closest that he got.

At the same time, upstairs, Blair and Lacy were seated around Lacy‘s laptop with a bountiful cornucopia of all the games she’d saved for offline play. Lacy was most excited to play Hades, even though it didn’t technically have multiplayer without a mod, but she wanted to play it together.

Blair casually reminded her that she’d actually finished the game a while ago. That was no complication or concern for Lacy, as she noted that it was a rogue-like game and therefore you could still do plenty of things even after getting to the ending. Blair shrugged and left the actual game choice up to her. She did enjoy video games, but more often little puzzlers and bite-size experiences that could sit comfortably on her phone screen. At least her phone was comfortably charging its way back to 100% to survive tomorrow.

The actual plot of Hades intrigued her and made her think that mom might find some catharsis in it as well. Their mother had a few game-like things on her phone which she indulged in but often limited because of one summer when she tweaked a nerve in her wrist and had trouble typing for weeks. Blair did not look forward to reaching the decrepit age of forty.

After a Hades run, Lacy settled on a game that allowed them to share different sides of the keyboard and battle and cooperate for dungeon rewards. It really wasn’t Blair’s particular cup of tea, but playing a game with her sister was worth it. And she was able to best her in the competitive element time after time to Lacy’s exasperation and questioning that Blair had never played this before.

Evening stretched slowly into night, as though the sky were as reticent as Lacy had been to change. Her nervousness returned with the prospect of showering. Casually, Blair joked about the fact that the shower had a detachable, adjustable wand. Lacy didn’t quite grasp her meaning and Blair decided that she didn’t want to elaborate.

Despite her reticence to remain undressed for long, Blair noticed that Lacy spent longer than usual at her shower, certainly longer than last night before bed when they were first figuring out all the buttons and water pressure. When she emerged, she was buried with all sorts of towels barely concealing a red-hot blush on her cheek. Blair didn’t wanna know, she absolutely did not want to know. She was just happy that her sister seemed in good spirits.

As they wound down for sleep, Blair noticed that her sister was lingering on her bed while poking around supplementary game materials and generally browsing before shutting off the laptop. Once the laptop was put away though, out came the question she was expecting.

“Can I… Can I share your bed tonight? It’s just been a crazy day with a lot of stuff and it would help a lot to know you’re nearby. I know that I did a lot of stupid stuff today and there’s like a lot of ways you could say no, but I just I don’t know I just…” She stumbled around her words without any clear sense of what she was supposed to say next.

With a sigh, Blair tapped the bed and shrugged. With Blair’s shower, she found it immediately conspicuous that the shower wand was detached and dangling. She didn’t spend a whole lot of time in there but did hang up the wand when she was finished. It was a very pleasant shower.

For bedclothes, she just grabbed something in her old size since nothing had yet been altered by her silly rock request. The collar was too wide, and the drawstring needed to be especially tied, but it would work for sleep.

Clare had already gone to bed, and their parents put on a particularly serious drama while splitting a glass of the gift wine. They would only be up a little bit longer since brunch applied to them as well.

It took mere moments before Lacy was snoozing when Blair returned to their room. The snoring right by her ear didn’t help, but she was tired enough that it felt easy to just drift off. Lacy didn’t try to cuddle her like a giant teddy bear, but she did lean towards her sister rather than leaning away, compared to all the previous times they’d shared a bed. I started to remind Blair of a story one of the seniors told her about their Academic Decathlon trip but, before she could fully recall it, she drifted off to sleep and it was sometime later.

She decided it was still the middle of the night judging by the dim, silvery light passing through the windows on the other side of the room. The waves below added a slow, conspicuous shimmer that danced against the shades. Without turning her head, Blair quickly scanned the room. It was darker than expected and it only took her a moment to realize why. A looming, dark, humanoid figure stood not far from the foot of the bed.

She couldn’t pick out any features. Focusing on the wall made her feel like the figure went blurry and focusing on the figure made it exist in blank isolation. At the same time, it was exceptionally difficult for her to keep her eyes open to even see that much. The figure moved, with one hand reaching out. Blair was glad that Clare wasn’t around to see this, and Lacy was asleep. But her heart raced like mad, beating and clamoring against her ears to wake her up and get her to do something about this. The figure silently approached.

It stuck to Lacy’s side of the bed. Blair wanted to snarl and command it to go away, but it felt like her mouth had been completely anesthetized to the point it wasn’t even there. The strongest words she could expel felt like the smallest puff of breath, despite putting all her energy behind them. The figure paused and turned towards her. It wasn’t completely black, like in the creepy stories she and her brother had been reading in the morning before their mom showed up with Clare. Rather, it seemed more like a no-signal-screen gray, not chaotic and shifting like the old static their parents liked to reference, but like a single stark screenshot wrapped around an anonymous NPC.

Her eyes dipped closed for a split second and it felt like an eternity had passed in the dreamscape, as the figure was about to graphically probe and surely dismember her sister. She could do nothing but soundlessly scream in her skull.

“Blair?” A voice to her left. It was mom. The door to the hallway cracked ever so slightly to allow the faintest trickle of light. Looking back the other way, there was no darkened figure and no sign it had run. Another jolt of awakening, like trying to start her brain with a pull cord, brought her up and over to mom.

She assured Blair that she was just checking in on them and hoped they got plenty of rest for their busy morning. Blair just responded that they were fine. Mom soon left. The distant sounds of water running through the walls told her that her dad was probably taking a shower. It wasn’t that late, certainly not late enough for a spooky happening like a 3 AM apparition.

Questioning her own brain, Blair carefully poked around the room with her camera flashlight. She opened her closet and discovered once again that not even the least sock had been disturbed. The bundle with the rock was exactly the same as when she checked it earlier. The only question was whether the door had been closed all the way, as she left it, or slightly ajar. It was impossible for her to say for sure.

The room didn’t feel distinctively cold or warm, just normal. One notion did linger with her though. Her panicked and flustered feelings vanished when she jumped out of bed. It was like shutting off all those sharp sensations as swiftly as flipping a switch. Not much to go on. Instead of dwelling on the fear and uncertainty to the point it woke up her sister and required explanation, Blair went over to the bathroom and splashed her face a few times with her eyes nervously checking the long mirror just to make sure nothing creepy decided to appear in the reflection.

Back in bed, she wavered between the commanding, self-imposed order that she absolutely needed to sleep now so that she could wake up at the right hour, and a sinking tiredness that refused to let her go. As in so many things, tiredness eventually won out. 

[I have a question at the end of the chapter again to help with suggestions for where the story should go. I'm a couple chapters ahead but I love seeding ideas from people as much as possible. Feel free to add an idea which doesn't show up in the options. Thank you for reading!]

Poll below