The
Octopus in the Oatmeal
by
Wade
Bradford
Copyright
2007
Nathan woke up screaming. This had happened every morning for the past
year and a half. Every night the
eleven-year-old experienced strange, mysterious and ultimately terrifying
visions – bad dreams that he never could never quite remember, nightmares that
startled him into a waking scream at precisely
The
good news was he no longer needed an alarm clock.
He
tried to catch his breath; his scream turned into a gasp, and the gasp melted
into a deep, frustrated sigh. Blinking,
he scanned his bedroom. Movie posters on the wall.
Books on his shelf. Lego pieces scattered across the hardwood
floor. He was home. Safe. Wasn’t he?
Wherever the dream had taken him, he had returned to the real world in
one piece. Where was I this time?
He wondered. He didn’t know. It was as though he had spent the night
flying, fleeing, seeing something, but what?
As with each morning, upon waking, tiny fragments of the dream, like
dewdrops on the grass, evaporated from his mind as the real world, the normal
world, took over.
His cat Sarge,
a fat hairy tabby with one missing ear, stared at him from the end of the
bed. Like most cats, Sarge
expected to be pampered for at least fifteen minutes and then promptly
fed. Unlike most cats, Sarge didn’t purr.
It was believed the old cat lost his purr after getting hit by a car for
the second time. Now, all the cat could
do was huff through his nostrils. Nathan
believed Sarge huffed twice when happy and once when
annoyed. As the cat rubbed against
Nathan’s shoulder, it huffed twice.
“G’morning, Sarge.” Nathan
stroked the cat’s bent tail. It had
become permanently bent as a result of the third car accident. Then, Nathan looked down at his hand. It was shaky, still jittery from the already
forgotten dream. “Must’ve been a bad
one,” he told Sarge who huffed once in disgruntled
agreement, for no cat likes to hear a boy scream early in the morning. “I wonder what I’ll draw today.”
Yes, the dream must have been more
frightening than usual. So frightening,
in fact, that Nathan noticed he was sitting on something soggy. His mattress.
Uh-oh, he thought.
His pajamas were damp. So were
his sheets. Well, at least Aunt
Katrina hasn’t found out, said the part of his mind that always looked on
the bright side. Throughout his cramped
bedroom an unpleasant yet unfortunately familiar smell lingered in the
air. That’s the third time this month,
he scolded himself. You’re pathetic. He looked across the room at the full-length
mirror on the closet door, stared at his messy red hair, and his sleepy-eyed,
freckle-faced reflection who nodded in agreement, as if to say, “Yep, you’re a
loser.”
Nathan took a good long look at
himself. He was eleven
years-and-nine-months old, complete with a thick head of hair, oversized ears,
which he hoped to eventually grow into, and dark-blue eyes which were more
serious and more disappointed than grown-ups were used to seeing in a boy his
age. “Aren’t you a bit too old to be
wetting the bed?” he asked his reflection in the mirror.
Flip-flip-flip-flop-flip.
It was the sound of footsteps walking
down the hallway toward his room. Nathan
quickly bundled up his soiled sheets, looking for a place to hide them. The closet and underneath the bed were too
obvious. He decided to remove a pillow
from its pillowcase and put the embarrassingly wet bedspread in its place.
Aunt Katrina opened the door. As usual, she looked tired. She leaned against the doorway and folded her
skinny arms across her chest. “Good
morning,” she said. “That sounded like a
level four scream.” This was their
routine. Level four was quite bad. Level three was average. Level five was the worst. Fortunately, Nathan hadn’t reached a
level-five wake-up scream in quite sometime.
But for Katrina, being jolted up from a blissful slumber by a level four
scream wasn’t exactly tranquil living.
“Sorry,” Nathan said. Since his aunt had become his legal guardian,
Nathan had apologized no less than 3,821 times.
He had a feeling she was getting sick of apologies. Every time he uttered the words, “I’m sorry,”
she rolled her eyes as if to ask, “Why did I get stuck with this immature
little dork?”
But instead of saying that she replied,
“That’s okay sweetie.” That was another
part of her routine. She turned
away. “I’ll make breakfast, you get
ready for—” She stopped and refolded her arms.
“Did you wet the bed again?”
“Of course not,” Nathan lied in his
most sincere and matter-of-factly voice.
“Then I better call the police.”
This startled the boy. “Huh?”
“Well,” Aunt Katrina went on, “somebody
must have stolen your bed sheets.”
“Fine! I did it!
Here’s your evidence!” He yanked the
sheets out from the pillowcase. “Happy?”
“Ugh, Nathan that’s gross. Take these straight to the wash. Maybe if you’re forced to do your own laundry
this will stop happening.” She left the
doorway and flip-flopped down the hall.
The basement was dank and dark. A single light bulb dangling from a frayed cord
cast long shadows upon the cobwebbed walls.
The corners of the basement were filled with boxes of junk, mostly moldy
old books his father collected and planned to someday showcase in a mahogany
bookshelf he never got around to building.
There was a work bench with dusty tools, trays of random screws, nails,
and other sharp pointy objects, not to mention a beat-up washer and dryer
surrounded by an arsenal of bleach, sprays, detergents and other potentially
deadly chemicals.
It was a terrific place to play.
At least it had been. There was a time not too long ago when Nathan
hadn’t been afraid of the dark, or of monsters lurking behind cupboard doors
and underneath furniture. Only babies
were frightened of those things, or so he told himself. Yet, as he stood in the doorway, peering down
the steps into the gloomy shadows, he couldn’t help but feel as if someone was—
“Meerrrow!”
It was Sarge
the cat. Like his purr, the cat’s
shoddy vocal chords had been damaged, so that when he meowed he sounded like an
underwater police siren.
Nathan gasped and tripped down a few
stairs, saving himself by grabbing onto the railing.
“Sarge!” Nathan blustered.
“You could have killed me!”
Sarge huffed twice, which meant that he was quite
pleased. Normally, he wasn’t such a mean
cat, but this was before breakfast, and even the kindest felines are a
malicious nuisance when dealing with an empty stomach.
Returning his attention to the mission
at hand, Nathan held his breath—mainly because the basement was stinky but partly
because he believed that evil creatures lurking in basements never attacked
children who held their breath. Then, he
dashed downstairs, threw the bed sheets into the wash, jumped out of his still
soggy pajamas, threw them in as well, pulled a new set of clothes off the
hanger and jumped into them. Finally, he
bounded to the top of the stairs and started breathing again.
Gasp!…
Whew! He made it out alive.
Basements were not Nathan’s only
fear. In fact, for months, he had been
keeping something he called “Nathan’s Fear List.” It wasn’t a list he had written down. Rather, it was a list he kept in his head,
sharing it with himself and his best friend Dexter. Lately the list had been growing. Over the past year and a half, ever since his
parents had passed away, he had become increasingly frightened of the
following:
Basements
The Dark
Monsters
Vampires, Werewolves,
Sharks
Swimming Pools (Especially
shark-infested swimming pools)
Spiders
Large Dogs
Big
Skinny nerdy kids who might be big
giant school bullies in disguise
Heights, Depths, and everything in
between…
It was a long list… but it was about to get a new
item: Breakfast Cereal
Nathan sat at the table. He took out a sheet of paper and several
colored pencils. Then, he closed his
eyes and began to scribble. He did this
once or twice a day. Although he could
never clearly remember his nightmares, when he closed his eyes he could almost
catch a glimpse of the mysterious dreamscape of the previous evening.
Darkness. Mountains. A chilling wind. Web
covered forests. Branches like
claws. Pale starlight. A rainbow tinted light surrounded by vast
darkness. A tower…
These were the usual visions, just
sensations really, which flashed through his mind. He was sure about one thing… during each
nightmare, he was only an observer… he was never involved in them… just
watching, feeling, witnessing. And that was scary enough to wake him up with
screams each morning. Wherever or
whatever this dreamland was, he wanted no part of it. He kept his eyes sealed, never looking at the
artwork, if it could be called that. He
assumed that he was simply creating random scribbles, but deep down, he had a
feeling that maybe he was creating something more… important… something vital.
He set down his pencil,
eyes still closed, and slipped the paper into his notebook with the rest of his
unseen illustrations. He had done this
each morning for almost a year. His
notebook overflowed with pages. He had
never looked at a single one. Someday
I will, he told himself. When I
finally muster up the courage to figure out what the heck is wrong with me.
After properly sealing his notebook,
Nathan breathed a sigh of relief. He
always felt better after the scribbling process was over. Whatever terrors and
anxieties had been lurking in his subconscious melted away. Now he could enjoy his breakfast…
Except…
His oatmeal was bubbling.
Was it still boiling hot? He touched the cereal with the tip of his
finger. It wasn’t too hot; in fact, it
felt pleasantly warm. Yet, the oatmeal
was bubbling. It was as though something
was breathing underneath the lumpy, cinnamon-sweet surface. But that idea was crazy.
“Hey, Aunt Katrina,” Nathan stood up
from the table.
“Yeah?” she called from the bathroom
down the hall. She was stinking the
house up with hairspray, something Nathan’s mom never
bothered using.
“There’s something wrong with my—” He
stopped talking. From the corner of his
eye, something was moving out from his oatmeal. That something was long
and slimy, orange and brownish with a sickly green underbelly complete with
suction cups. If Nathan was correct,
there was an octopus tentacle sneaking out of his cereal bowl.
This all took place in an instant, and
it should again be noted that it was all seen through the corner of Nathan’s
eye. Oftentimes we catch a glimpse of
strange things from the corners’ of our eyes, but when we look directly at the
item in question it suddenly disappears or at least changes into some
unsuspecting household object like a mop or a doorstop. However, when Nathan’s eyes shifted and
looked directly at the octopus tentacle, the slithering thing did not
vanish. It was still there. In fact, the tentacle was now touching the
table as though it were feeling around, searching for something.
Nathan let out a short, bewildered
shout.
The tentacle seemed startled. It knocked over a glass of orange juice. Then, it grabbed a blue pencil, shivered with
excitement as though it had somehow triumphed in its mission, and then
slithered back into the oatmeal bowl.
Aunt Katrina rushed into the room. “What’s wrong?”
Nathan could hardly speak. “I saw—I
saw—I saw—“
He wasn’t sure what to say. Why is it, he wondered amid the
stark-raving fear, that when something incredibly astoundingly unbelievable
happens, no one is there to see it?
And certainly no one was going to believe this, least of all his very
practical Aunt Katrina who was always busy with her law books and college
exams.
“I saw something,” he finally managed.
“You made a mess,” she said
matter-of-factly and handed him a roll of paper towels. “What did you see?”
“I’m not even sure if it was real.”
“Did you remember something from your
dreams?” she asked as she picked up his cereal bowl.
“Don’t touch it!” Nathan shouted.
“What?”
Aunt Katrina was startled. “Were you still eating it?
“Uh, no.” Nathan wasn’t sure if he should tell her what he
saw. She would just insist he go back to
see Dr. Brinkley. She would assume he
had gone “coo-coo.” And, he
though to himself, maybe I have!
“I’ll
save this for later.” She put plastic
wrap around the bowl and placed it in the refrigerator.
I
must have been seeing things, Nathan decided. An octopus couldn’t fit in
a bowl of oatmeal. But then again, he
thought, if it was just my imagination, what knocked over the orange juice?
And…
what stole the pencil?
And more importantly… Where did the pencil go?
“Better get moving,” Aunt Katrina said,
and unleashed a few more sprays of hair product onto her auburn curls. “You’ve got crosswalk duty and then another
wonderful day of school.”
Ugh! Nathan thought, frustrated. First a mysterious creature in my cereal
bowl… and now I have to face life in the sixth grade. I’m not sure which is scarier.