Quacks- Robert Mackey

Bio: Robert Mackey resides in northeast Washington near the hovel filled hamlet of Addy. Robert wiles away the hours poking an index finger at his keyboard. His Intent? Produce something which will make people think. This poor sap needs to seek a mental health practitioner.

“Harvey…Harvey…HARVEY!”

Harvey mumbled to himself, “Dammit woman.” He screamed over his shoulder toward the living room, “What?”

Agnes waddled into the kitchen. “The people at NASA said there’s now ten meteors. Nine more just seemed to appear out of nowhere and one is going to hit right here in Littleton in the next fifteen minutes or so! They say they’re as big as a house!”

Harvey tonged ears of corn out of a pot, placing them in a big bowl,

             unresponsive.

Agnes, arms waving over her head, cried, “Well aren’t you going to do something?”

“What would you have me do?”

Completing her third lap around the kitchen table, arms still waving overhead, “Grab the dog! Get some clothes! Get in the car! Get out of here!

“If a house sized meteor lands within fifty miles of us we’re toast. If there’s ten of ‘em, trust me, it’s the end of the world.”

Agnes stopped. “So you’re just going to eat corn?”

“Yup. If you want some, I’ll be on the deck. May as well have a front row seat.”

“Shouldn’t we hide in the basement?”

“If a meteor that big hits here we won’t have a basement.”

“What do you mean if? The people at NASA said…”

“The people at NASA are a bunch of quacks.”

Harvey calmly opened the patio slider. Placing his bowl of butter smothered corn on the patio table, he sat down. Agnes paced back and forth nervously watching the sky.

Harvey picked up an ear, smiled at the dripping butter, leaned forward, and before he could sink his teeth into the juicy, yellow kernels, a gigantic egg landed in the middle of the high school football field right behind Harvey and Agnes’s house with a thud. Agnes fell silent for the first time in years.

“I told you they’re quacks. Can’t even tell an egg from a meteor.”

A thundering crack rattled the windows of the house. The halves of the shell shot out in opposite directions. Harvey and Agnes looked up nearly falling backward as the head of a duck rose skyward. The duck stood, shook its head and tail furiously. Looking  down at the couple, it emitted a singular quack.

Agnes’s head slowly tuned toward Harvey. Her eyes remained on the spectacle taking up the entire football field. “It’s a giant duck!”

“Nothing gets by you Agnes,” said Harvey, through a mouthful of corn.

“It’s got an extremely skinny neck for a duck that size,” said Agnes.

Reaching over the chain link fence the duck snapped up Agnes, threw its head back and swallowed Agnes whole.

Harvey said, pointing at the duck with an ear of corn, “Thank you for that. Would you like to wash her down with some juicy, sweet corn?”

The duck reached down and delicately took the corn from Harvey’s outstretched hand.

Mrs. Ornstein, one of Harvey’s least favorite neighbors, rounded the corner of the house into Harvey’s back yard. “Oh my! That’s one big duck! It has an awfully

ski . . .”

“Don’t tell it it has a . . . ”

The duck reached down and plucked the woman from the lawn, sending her to join Agnes.

“. . . skinny neck.”

Harvey smiled up at the duck. “Wow my friend, you’re batting a thousand.”

Harvey placed his bowl of corn out on the lawn. “I’ll be right back.” Harvey darted into the garage, grabbed a thousand foot roll of construction grade string line, a Stanley knife, and his compound bow.

Harvey stepped out on the deck, asking the duck, “You mind if I put a string around your most regal neck?”

The duck quacked.

I’ll take that as a yes. Harvey unraveled a couple hundred feet of string, tied one end to an arrow and the other end to his index finger. He shot the arrow straight up into the air. The arrow reached the end of its tether and fell to earth just on the other side of the duck’s head as it plucked another ear of corn from the bowl. Harvey ducked under the ducks outstretched neck, slipped the string off his finger, made a loop on both ends, poked one end through the other, tying the free end to his wrist. The duck lifted its head cinching the string around its neck.

Harvey smiled, nodding his satisfaction of how things were going. “Heel Timothy. You don’t mind if I call you Timothy do you?”

The duck let out another quack.

“Well, shall we go find your friends?”

Another quack.

Harvey headed around the side of his house. The duck took a shortcut, flattening Harvey’s house as he followed. Harvey looked up at Timothy. “You couldn’t have used the neighbor’s house as a walkway?”

Timothy cocked his head to one side as a response.

“No matter.”

People lined the sidewalks conversing about the loud thud, the crack, the giant duck they saw over Harvey’s place which was now being led down the street by Harvey himself. Harvey walked by, eye’s forward, not acknowledging one of them. He stopped in front of one of his neighbor’s houses, one whose yard was home to several defunct vehicles and weeds and grasses nearly covering them. Harvey asked the man standing out front, “What do you think of my duck?”

“That’s one big duck!”

“What do you think of his neck?”

“I can’t believe that skinny thing can hold up its head!”

With that, Timothy swallowed up the slob.

Harvey smiled to himself as he headed off up the street. “This is going to be fun.”

“Quack.”

---

Setu, May 2020 :: Flash Fiction 2020