A terrible situation

"Who or what were they?" The doctor asked. "Where did they come from?"

Mr. Noland didn't feel like talking, even though he'd know what to answer the man.

They stood in a curtained-off section of the emergency room, surrounded by the sounds of medical machines beeping, the murmur of voices, and the squeaks of gurneys rolling along the hallway. A child cried in the distance. Everything smelled of ammonia and disinfectant. It was all extremely depressing. Mr. Noland stared down at his son lying on the bed, eyes closed. Every inch of the boy's body looked red and puffy, pockmarked with plenty of black spots. Lorena and Mom cried in a corner, clutching themselves. Mr. Noland felt his heart had broken into two pieces and was slowly sinking into his stomach.

Tom has always been a lucky kid. Mr. Noland had time to consider Tom's natural talent. When Tom was three years old, Mr. Noland took a science fair project trip with him. He wanted his son to love what he loved. Mr. Noland could say he was proud of making his son a sci-fi lover, but Tom always thought he'd grown up like that without knowing the secret recipe. Mr. Noland on that fateful day of taking his son to one of his science fair projects. He pulled over next to a grocery store in order to get some snacks for the outing. Baby Thomas would cry his head out if he stayed hungry, and also his mother would not be happy with him, so he wouldn't want any of those to happen. As soon as Mr. Noland stowed into the grocery store to get those things, he forgot to pull the hand brake after parking his car, though he considered that Tom didn't have much weight as a baby, forgetting that the car sat on a steep. After shopping for what he needed, he came out and looked up. His heart shot up to his mouth as soon as he saw his car rolling backwards freely, and the worst part of it all was that his son was in the car. Even as Mr. Noland sprinted to save his boy, he watched in utter horror as a huge truck blared its horn and screeched its brakes, seemingly hitting the car. Mr. Noland wouldn't forget the scream that erupted from his throat at that moment, an alien sound that still haunted his dreams sometimes. But when it hit the back of the car with a force that could send a driver to the hospital, Mr. Noland rushed and checked the car. Tom sat still in his seat, unmoved, though he didn't have a seat belt on. It had been nothing short of a miracle.

Then, a few years later, the family went on a Christmas trip to Hawaii, enjoying the chilly white flakes of falling snow on the outskirts of the iced ground while skating and dancing. Tom, showing off his newly discovered ice skating talent, had been swept away into the dangerous, thin part of the ice, which had already started cracking as soon as he was in it. Mr. Noland and his wife barely had time to register the shock and terror of what was happening before they saw Tom sitting on a crashed ice man with snow all over his face, waving with a huge smile on his face.

Or the time he fell off the big waterslide tower at Water World Park, only to land on a slip 'n' slide tube left by a family eating lunch.

The stories went on and on. They never talked about it. Mr. Noland was afraid to jinx the whole thing, and he had no idea if Tom even realized something out of the ordinary was happening. Kids rarely do—life is life, and they know nothing different until much later.

But despite having seen Tom's narrow escape, Mr. Noland couldn't help but feel the panic rising in his chest. Had Tom's streak of luck finally run out? Would he survive this?

.   

"What happened?" the doctor repeated.

"I'm not sure," Mr. Noland mumbled. "A bunch of somethings attacked him. I threw him into the bathtub and shooed the things away with a towel. They were strange and moved out the door quickly and disappeared to nowhere. "

The doctor looked at Mr. Noland, his expression full of doubt and concern, eyebrows raised. "You shooed them away?"

"Yes, I did." Mr. Noland guessed the man's concern before he said it.

"But you..."

"I know, doctor, I know." He paused. "I wasn't attacked, not a single sting or hurt."

                                         ~

Tom could think of a million things he'd rather do than get lasered all over his body by evil space gnomes that popped out of a space ship, which he had already fantasized was a demon spaceship at that. He wished he could take it back. Two days after the attack, he'd returned home from the hospital feeling and looking much better, but the experience remained vivid in his head, playing over and over again. Without any doubt, he knew that the space ship and the evil gnomes were the worst things that had ever happened to him and included the time his friends, "the bullies," broke his leg after pushing him down from the hall stairs.

Despite the lingering horror he felt, Tom was madly curious to know where the space ship came from and who Tomikins was. Also, where did the space ship and the gnomes go? With all of these strange events he had experienced lately, he knew he couldn't see the world the same way again, and the knowledge made him feel sick, fascinated, and scared, all at the same time.

The doctors had probed him over and over, not bothering to hide their suspicion that serious child abuse had occurred. Finding a lot of black spots and scares just like a wound from a burning cigarette, coupled with the fact that Mr. Noland and his wife had a clean life before moving into Sweville, quickly dissolved the distrust of the doctors towards them.

Despite the fact that they said it a hundred times, the unknown flies or whatever they were, targeted Tom and no one else. The situation was a hard one to digest, but the doctors eventually let the matter drop and sent Tom home.