As usual.
It blinded Eric.
As usual.
Mike picked him up but paused almost immediately.
"Uh oh. Looks like you peed all over the place."
"I don't pee. I leak!"
"Whatever. Let me get you a diaper and clean this up."
"What? I don't need a diaper!"
Mike ignored the protests. Not finding what he wanted, he wrapped Eric's nether regions in plastic wrap, held on loosely with a large rubber band.
Settling Eric on the counter a moment,. Mike wet a dish cloth and cleaned the shelf. Picking Eric up, he poured some milk into his coffee, then returned Eric to the fridge. "Well, Mr. Mooden, I hope you weren't abused too badly in your past. I assume that's why you lost control. I'm so sorry."
Eric seethed. "I was not abused! I choose to leak these things, you pompous..."
But the door had closed, the dark returned. He was alone again.
Naturally.
He went back to sleep, disgruntled. Leaking into a "diaper" was pointless. And Mike had wasted his recent leak-- a day's work down the drain with a rinsed dish cloth. A single tear, which Mike would have thought mere condensation, slid slowly down Eric's face.
Mike tasted his coffee and sighed happily, then turned back to the sink. Dirty dishes called.
But something caught his eye, motion on the periphery of his vision. Something dark out the window. On the back porch, much too big to be Gizmo, the neighborhood cat. Much too dark to be one of the deer that occasionally came up on the porch to nibble the plants.
Drying his hands he stepped outside to investigate. He kept one hand on his Glock, snug in its concealed holster. he could find nothing amiss.
Again something tugged at his peripheral vision, this time from inside the house. A light went out, a light that should not have been on. A light from the fridge. A hint-- just a hint-- of darkness fled the kitchen.
Glock in hand, Mike moved quietly back inside. As he reached the back of the house, he heard a familiar voice. Eric Mooden sreamed. "Nooo! I..." It faded quickly, eerily, as if Eric had fallen asleep mid-scream.
The front door shut.
Mike darted to the front window and eased the blinds aside a smidgen with the Glock. Two men in black, one holding a black bag, both holding black guns, each wrapped a black rope around an arm and a leg. Before he could react, they darted skyward.
Rushing outside Mike caught sight of feet disappearing over his house. A muffled sound like a large fan nagged at his hearing. He darted into the yard, dropped and rolled, ending on his knees, pistol aimed high, turning to look over his roof...
A black helicopter-- one of the blackest things he had ever seen-- was disappearing quickly beyond the tree line. Two men disappeared into a nondescript blackness in its side.
It was gone, nothing but the scent of jet exhaust marking its passing.
Taking no chances Mike methodically searched the house, ready to shoot anything black, anything that moved. But there was no one there, no trace anyone had been there.
Deep in thought, he wandered back to the kitchen. He eased the refrigerator door open, Glock ready. He laughed. Was he expecting a spook inside? Nevertheless he kept the pistol in hand, finger near the trigger.
There was no milk. Carton, diaper, and all, Eric Mooden and all his terrible secrets were gone.
It was a relief, really. Eric (and the secrets) were no longer his responsibility. He hadn't examined the leaks closely, having neither a security clearance nor the desire to know. "What you don't know can't be subpoenaed," he had reminded himself only moments ago.
He holstered the Glock.
For a moment Mike felt guilty. After all, the milk carton, a guest in his home, was now in federal custody. And not just any federal custody, but Eric was in the hands of a black ops team.
His knees nearly buckled. His heart, which had finally slowed to normal speed, returned to Formula One mode. A black ops team! In his house! In his kitchen! In his fridge! And they had Mooden and his milk!
And Mike had pulled a gun on them.
He needed to sit down.
The sink. He stared at it. "What's wrong? Something's wrong. What are you trying to tell me?"
Oh. The dish cloth was gone, too. They had the dish cloth he had used to clean up the leaks. His head pounded in time to his heart.
Mike called in sick, staggered to his room, and fell into his waterbed's warm embrace. Despite the coffee, sleep came quickly.
In his dreams, Mooden appeared alternately as Neo and Kevin Anderson, sometimes watching suspicious messages on an ancient computer terminal, sometimes futilely attempting to flee men in black.
Nobody showed up to save him.
Sunlight registered somewhere in Mike's brain. After blinking for a few minutes he got up. The guilt was gone; Mooden should have told him exactly what was going on. Mike knew Eric had secrets but had no idea of their magnitude. Mooden had brought this on himself.
But still... Black helicopters. Spooks. His milk and dish cloth whisked off to some federal facility that might as well not exist. He walked into the bathroom and stared in the mirror."Well, what do I do now? Go on as if nothing happened? Run?" Seeing his expression, he finally laughed.
"You watch too many movies. This isn't the Matrix or Jason Bourne's world. Chill out."
Smiling for the first time since finding Mooden's leak, he sat at his computer and typed his password. His desktop appeared, then disappeared. "Great. Now my computer is crashing." He waited for a restart message.
Instead, green letters began to appear on the black background, noisily as if he were typing on an old school terminal. They appeared a few at a time. He froze, unable to breathe.
YOU CAN RUN BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE.
He heard a noise, a distant, muffled fan, at the threshold of hearing. The roof creaked. He refused to look at the windows or the bedroom doorway. He most definitely didn't reach for the Glock. A suggestion of a breeze wafted past. Something like a mosquito bit his neck. Everything faded.
The light came on without warning.
As usual.
It blinded Mike.
As usual.
Someone started to lift his head but paused almost immediately.
"Uh oh. Looks like you peed all over the place."
"I don't pee. I leak!" He didn't say it, but the thought bounced around in his mind until slipping into darkness.
He waited for the diaper and the inevitable abuse as they demanded to know what Mooden had told him. He understood now what the fuss over waterboarding was about,
Mike had one last, sane thought. "What you don't know can't be subpoenaed, but it can get you disappeared."
Madness beckoned; for the first time in his life, he found her beautiful. He weighed the alternatives, grinned, hugged her tightly and kissed her full on the lips.
When they came up for air, Madness giggled. "I can't wait to see what they make of this!"
Hand in hand, they wandered off into the vibrant chaos.
