I just finished self-reviewing my supernatural thriller “An angel On Her Shoulder”. Tomorrow it goes off to the editor. Stay tuned to see it’s official release date! At 100,980 words (almost 370 pages) it’s a whopper. Let’s hope it’s a GOOD whopper. (I think so.)
A half dozen volunteer firemen happened to be in the winery’s tasting room. A moment ago they were customers. Now they raced outside to assist. A quiet morning at a hillside winery had turned into chaos.
“Oh my god, oh my god!” Onlookers heard as they rushed to the windows. Screams came …from the parking lot. “Oh my god, look at all the blood!”
“We need an ambulance! Tell them to hurry!” the man’s voice shouted.
“There’s a girl pinned under the van!” another man called out.
“Oh my god, I’ve never seen such a thing,” a woman whispered. “That car hit her and she flew right up in the air!”
The winery patrons moved like a wave to the windows and door. Among them was Michele, in a near panic. She had just said goodbye to her daughter and husband. They had left to go get the little girl something to eat from the car.
“We’ll have a little picnic on the side of our van,” he has said. “It’s nice out. Maybe we’ll open the van doors and watch a DVD.”
Then a moment later, a crash. And then the shouting.
“How many people were hit?” somebody asked.
Michele could not make her way through the crowd. Everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion… All the customers had bunched up around the two small windows and the doorway, to see what was happening outside. They jammed the hallway to the front door. She could not get past.
She tried to peer out one of the small windows into the parking lot. She strained, on tiptoe, looking over shoulders and between bobbing heads. No one knew who had been hit by the car. She began to get nervous.
“Okay, I’ll go feed Savvy her lunch. You come out when you’re finished. We’ll have a little picnic on the side of our van…”
“I can’t tell how many were hit. A few.”
“My god, that girl is pinned under that van,”
That caught Michele’s attention. The rest of the onlookers had rushed to the door and packed the hallway. Michele tried to push past them, desperately trying to find her family and make sure they were safe. Over the crowd noise, she could hear the summations of those who had seen it happen.
“That girl is going to die,” a hushed voice said in disbelief. “That car just hit her and knocked her right up into the air.”
“The car just plowed right into them! It didn’t even slow down!”
The hallway to the exit was packed. People trying to help were mobbed by people trying to see. All of them tried to get through the door at the same time, so nobody could. Michele was frantic.
“I don’t know how you could survive that.”
“My god, the blood…”
Michele’s heart was pounding. Her head began to buzz. Surely they couldn’t be talking about her daughter. They had just gone to the car – the rental van – to get her some lunch. A picnic. By the side of the van. As Michele pushed her way down the hallway, she caught a glimpse of the scene.
A worker’s truck had somehow wrecked into cars parked in the lot. Her car. The rental van. It was all smashed up.
“We need some towels for them! Get me some towels!”
She could not see her husband or daughter anywhere. Inside, too many people blocked her view. Outside, too many helpers crowded out what could be seen of the victims. She craned her neck to catch a glimpse of anything. There were tire marks showing the path the truck took, right into her rental van. Panic rose up in her throat. She fought her way past the window and through the crowd towards the door.
Where is my baby? Where’s Dan?
The next window gave fewer answers. The volunteers had gathered around the victims. They had rolled one victim over, but there were too many people in the way to see who it was. The others worked to get the girl out from under the van. Her van.
Then Michele saw some of the blood splattered clothing. She saw blood on the dress of the victim pinned under the van. She gasped. It was the same color as her daughter’s dress.
Now she began to panic. She had to get down the hallway. She had to get outside. Onlookers blocked her way. She wedged and pushed them , with tears in her eyes, until she almost reached the door. In desperation, she whispered a prayer and reached for the doorknob.
“Please God, don’t let this be happening to my family.”
Please spare my baby and my husband.
Please…
Just last week, as she came down the stairs from her home office, Michele observed her husband and daughter at breakfast. As always, Dan had taken the chair directly across from their daughter, so Savvy could watch TV. It was a bad habit, but it had started back when they were grasping at straws to get her to eat, and a cartoon served as a useful distraction. Savvy would watch TV and open her mouth at the right time, when somebody sitting next to her held a spoonful of puree up to her mouth; everybody was happy.
That was when she was a baby. Now she practically wouldn’t eat unless a cartoon was on.
But she was only three; plenty of time to work through that. Eating was the priority right now. And this got her to eat.
So he sat across from her, to supervise and instruct as she fed herself. If he didn’t supervise, she would skip out on the vegetables – or try to; if he didn’t instruct, she might not eat at all. After a while, the seating arrangement was pretty much permanent, for all meals. Savvy on the corner, Michele next to her, and Dan across from her. Like all parents of young children, it worked best if the kids were surrounded.
Dan was strict but playful. From her office upstairs, Michele could hear their frequent lunch or dinner battles as she took a late conference call. Mostly, it was Dan’s raised voice as Savvy stubbornly refused to eat the vegetable of the day. Shouts of “Get some green beans! Green beans!” Echoed up the stairs. “Not chicken. Put that down. Put it down! Get the green beans! Green beans!”
Just as often, though, she would catch them playing at the table while she cooked. Simple things that don’t matter and wouldn’t be remembered, but which still warm a wife and mother’s heart. Like now.
From her vantage point by the stairs, Michele had stood, clutching her favorite coffee mug, watching them play at the table, waiting for her. Every birthday, Christmas, anniversary, mother’s day, Dan would order a big ceramic coffee mug with a picture of Michele and Savvy on it. By now she had quite a collection: a photo of them at the zoo, another one from an event by the river, another from when they were picking flowers in the yard. Each photo became its own big coffee mug. It was a ceramic photo album. They were all cute, but the Christmas mug was her favorite. It was an impromptu photo, taken one day when Dan walked in after Michele had just popped a Santa hat onto Savvy’s head. Savvy was only about nine months old at the time. She didn’t have anything but peach fuzz for hair yet, but she had the big eyes and the dimples, so the Santa hat looked especially cute. Michele was holding her, so both of his girls were in the picture. It made a cute mug.
As Michele stood in the dark by the stairs, she held the mug as she watched her husband play with their young daughter. The wars over green beans were certain to happen later, but at the moment the warring vegetable factions were allies. Savvy watched a cartoon while working on her pancakes; Dan worked on his computer.
But Dan noticed that Savvy’s chair was a bit too far away from the table. Food that she dropped would fall onto her dress – it was always a dress these days, even at breakfast; and the frillier, the better. But those princess dresses don’t clean up as easily as a t-shirt and shorts.
Reaching under the table with his foot, Dan hooked the bottom of Savvy’s chair and slowly pulled it closer to the table. The wooden chair legs made a loud noise as they dragged over the tile. Savvy looked around in wonderment. Dan continued to stare at his computer.
“Is that you doing that?” Savvy asked her father.
“Hmm?” he replied, not taking his eyes off the computer screen. Michele watched silently from the steps. She could barely hear them over the TV noise.
Savvy looked down at the legs of the chair. His foot was already gone. “What is doing that?” she asked.
“What’s doing what, honey?” Dan asked with extra curiosity.
“What was making my chair move?” she asked him again.
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders in a cartoonish fashion. “I don’t know!”
She smiled back. “Is it magic?”
“Could be!”
“Daddy!” she exclaimed, pointing a pink plastic fork at him. “It’s you!”
“It’s magic!” he protested as she leapt off her chair to attack his feet.
From then on, whenever the chair would move at meal time, Savvy would ask if it was magic. Dan would always respond, “Could be!” Even better, as her own legs got longer, Savvy could slide down in her seat and push back Dan’s empty chair. The loud noise of the chair’s wooden legs sliding across the tile floor always got everyone’s attention.
Savvy would always offer the same happy explanation: “Look, it’s magic!”
– a sample from the upcoming novel “An Angel On Her Shoulder” based on true events. You’ll hear about it here first, fans!
.
.
To check out my not-so-scary stories, and some other interesting stuff, click on over to my Amazon page http://www.amazon.com/Dan-Alatorre/e/B00EUX7HEU/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1425128559&sr=1-1
or find me on Facebook under “Savvy Stories By Dan Alatorre”
