FanFic Contest "Secret Game" Story 2

[ChazyChaz]

Avril lay back on the grass, her blonde hair streaming across the ground around her head. A shooting star shot through the sky and she grasped Deryck’s hand.
“Look, sweetie, a shooting star. What are you going to wish for?”
She looked over at him and smiled but he didn’t even turn. There was only terror in his eyes as he stared into the sky.
“I’m gonna wish that that star didn’t just change direction mid-course,” he whispered.
Avril’s eyebrows came together and she looked back at the shining stream that she had noticed happily only moments before. He was right. It had changed direction. And it hadn’t just gone the opposite way. It was heading right for them.

Deryck pulled her to her feet, never taking his eyes away from the star that seemed to be coming miles closer by the second.
“What do we do?” Avril had meant to scream, but her voice came out in a hoarse whisper.
“Well,” he said in a strangely calm voice, folding his arms thoughtfully, “I do think now would be a pretty good time to run.”
“Oh you’re just a barrel of laughs, aren’t you?” She grabbed his hand and they nearly galloped through the streets. Every time they looked back the star had changed its course again, and come closer. It was following them diligently.

They stopped to rest, breathing heavily.
“I am so out of shape,” breathed Avril, running her hand across her stomach.
“Are you actually starting your ‘I’m so fat’ rant right now?” Deryck flopped onto the bench she was sitting on, “There’s a psycho shooting star following us, and you’re freaking about your weight?”
She glared at him.
“Alright, one, you’re not fat. Two, you’re not fat. Three, when we start a family, you’re going to be a nightmare. Four…”
“Deryck!”
“Are you going to get pissed at me now? I thought I was doing pretty good…”
Avril grabbed his chin and directed it towards a nearby corner, “Look!”
A dark shadow was passing over the cement. Its shape was unidentifiable, like most clouds.
“It’s a shadow, Avril. You see them everyday.”
“Yeah, but what’s casting it?”
Deryck looked back. The object casting the shadow should have been in the middle of the road. But there was nothing.

“Why are shooting stars and shadows without sources following us?” Avril was now speed walking down their street in Toronto, “Why us?!” She yelled out.
“Shut up!” an old man’s voice screeched from a nearby apartment block, “Dumb drunken kids!”
Deryck glanced at the building angrily then sped up, “Maybe we’re just imagining things. You know, getting paranoid? I told you Hollywood does weird things to the brain.”
Avril rolled her eyes, “Deryck, we’re not that synced up. We both saw all those things, remember? Those shadows? Those TWO shooting stars now?”
Deryck looked at the sky. Indeed there were two stars now following them, “Maybe they’re not shooting stars?”
“What could they be, then?” Avril scoffed, “UFOs?”
“That launch some pretty extreme bombs...” He gaped at the hole where his house used to be.
“When on earth did that happen?”
“I think the key word there is ‘earth’, Av. I don’t think this has ever happened on Earth.”

“My whole life was in there,” Avril sniffed, “My wedding dresses, my photos, my awards, the master copy of my new album…”
“It’ll be OK, Av. You have all the songs on demo tapes at the studio. You can just rerecord them.”
“Yeah, but what about my wedding dresses and my photos? They’re irreplaceable. I can’t just go to Vera Wang and say ‘hey, my wedding dress got destroyed by aliens, can you make me a copy?’ and then go to all of our friends and make them retake every single photo. They’ll think I’m nuts!” She was crying now.
“Av. Av!” Deryck took her face in his hands gently and wiped her tears with his thumbs, “Babe, we have the memories. That’s all we need. We have all our journals at the studios in case we forget anything. We have so much more life left together, so many more photos to take, so many more important outfits to wear,” he smiled as she giggled, “That’s better. Now let’s go check into a hotel, we can buy new wardrobes and rerecord in the morning…”
“Deryck…”
“Everything’s going to be fine.”
“Deryck, we forgot about something.”
“What?”
“The star. It’s huge now. And it’s right above us.”
Deryck slowly looked up. The shooting star was only feet away. And it didn’t look like just a bright ball of gas anymore.

“What do you want from us?” Deryck shouted after they had run down three streets and created no extra distance between them and what they had thought was a star, “What did we do to you?!”
And then Avril screamed. Even as she collapsed to the ground at his side, Deryck couldn’t look away from the stars that were rearranging themselves before his eyes.
“Go look for your journals, little boy.”
Terrified even more now, Deryck scooped his unconscious wife up into his arms, gently resting her head on his shoulder, and ran in the direction of the studio.

Deryck watched the stars as he ran.
Before his eyes, a tiny clump broke off the first star and shot over his head.
Panicked, he shifted all of Avril’s weight onto one arm, ran into a store, and yanked the fire extinguisher off the wall.
A man yelled something at him in Chinese, but he didn’t care, he just kept running.
“It’s going too fast,” he breathed after chasing it for half a block, “I can’t stop it.”
He stopped to think. Strangely, the ball of fire halted mid-course at the same time.
“If it’s alive and wants me to see what it’s going to do… then, maybe…” Deryck gently removed his wife’s shoe, “Sorry, babe, I’ll get you a new pair of red pumps tomorrow.” He chucked the heel at the star.
Bingo. The fire moved towards him to retaliate, but as soon as it got within spraying distance, Deryck let the fire extinguisher loose on the star.
To his surprise, it actually fizzled, and the extreme heat was enough to wake Avril.
“Ow… why did that… Deryck… where’s my shoe?!” she pointed at her bare foot.
“I threw it at the star to distract it.”
“Deryck, it’s a star! It’s not… distract… able… Shut up, I know it’s not a word. Plus, those were my Cole Haan heels. My favourite red pumps. They were custom-made!”
“You need to stop getting one-of-a-kind clothes. Wedding dresses… t-shirts… shoes… jeans… where do you stop? Panties?”
“All of YOUR clothes are one-of-a-kind.”
“Not my socks. Or my SHOES.””
“Your shoes should be one-of-a-kind,” Avril muttered.
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean… maybe you could consider dressing like an actual human being!” Avril bit her lip; she had never attacked him about his questionable style before.
“Ok, just because I threw your shoe into a star—“
“Deryck—“
“I mean, really, we’ve been married for six years and—“
“Baby—“
“Don’t ‘baby’ me…”
Avril tuned him out, he was rambling. She pondered how to make him be quiet for a few moments. Then it came to her.
She clamped her fingers around his jaw and pulled him forward into a kiss. He didn’t resist for a moment, but she had to pull back quickly to fulfill the purpose.
He looked a bit stunned, and she smiled gently, tapped her finger against his lips, and whispered, “Shut up.”
He laughed a little and held up his hands, “You win. The hot one always wins.”
She giggled gently, surprised to feel herself blushing after all these years. Then she looked up and her face fell when she remembered why she had been trying to get his attention.
“Deryck, I’m scared. I’m so scared. Look—“
Everything went black.

Avril gently rubbed the outline of the tube in her arm with one hand and held her husband’s hand in the other.
A tear rolled down her cheek. She had been awake for two days. He had been unconscious for the whole three since the incident.
She still didn’t know what had attacked them that day. Their house was still demolished, but otherwise there was no sign of those stars. Nothing in the news, no other destruction… The doctors had no idea what had happened to them.
She shuddered as a sob nearly overcame her, “Please wake up, Deryck. Please…”
Two of his fingers stretched out in her hand, it was almost as if he was responding to her plea.
“Deryck?”
His eyes slowly opened, then shut again quickly in reaction to the bright light. He squeezed his eyes closed for a few seconds and then they fluttered back open.
She smiled with relief, “You came back for me,” she whispered, “I knew that you would. You always do.” She giggled a little at the corniness of what she had said.
“It’s not over,” he said hoarsely.
“What do you mean, babe?” she patted his hand, her smile fading a little.
“It’s far from over, earth child,” he growled.
“This isn’t funny, Deryck.” Avril said roughly as she folded her arms.
He stared at the ceiling for several minutes. Then suddenly, and for what seemed like hours, he laughed maniacally.

[xx Leila xx]

I really like this one...hurray for scifi.