Submission to The Write Practice’s 2020 Fall Writing Contest
Theme – Boundless: When your characters are limitless, what will they do?
“Dinner’s at six. Be home then.” The front door slammed shut.
Mark took a seat on the front step and began flicking a column of ants, one by one, as they crawled from the dusty grass to the screen door. If he wasn’t allowed inside, neither were they.
“Stop that.” Leon, his younger brother, crouched over his shoulder, surveying the carnage. “Those are just ants.”
“What do you care about a couple of ants?” Mark asked, dragging a finger across a particularly dense section. “They don’t have brains, you know.”
Leon hated arguments like these. He was pretty sure ants had brains, but how could he really know? They’d done insects with Miss Julie last year, in first grade, but Mark might have learned more with Mr. Sanjay. He changed the subject. “What’re we gonna do today?”
His older brother scrunched his eyebrows together. “I’m not riding bikes, Leon.”
“Why?”
“It’s boring, that’s why.” Their cul-de-sac was the length of two city blocks – three if you included the S-shaped driveway – and the boys had covered every inch of it twice that summer.
Leon turned towards the strip of trees that separated their house from the Kowalski’s. “We could work in the mine.”
“That thing kicked weeks ago,” Mark said, looking up from the ants. “When was the last time you saw any gold dust, anyway?” He laid back on the sun faded doormat. “We need to think bigger.”
Leon laid down next to his brother. He was right – they did need to think bigger. It was August, and school was starting again soon. “We could hunt hawks, you know.”
Mark sat up. “Hunt hawks? My bow’s still broken, stupid! I need a tight string to have any hope of hitting one. Besides, you just scare them away.”
After a few minutes of silence, Leon spoke up again. “What about Daisy?” He was referring to the Kowalski’s dog, a big Newfoundland. “We could trap her, and train her to give us rides.”
Mark reached over and grabbed Leon’s shirt, pulling him in close. “Now you’re talking!” The day was starting to show some promise. “Let’s go set some traps.”
The boys spent the rest of the morning in preparation. They took the blue tarp off their dad’s firewood pile, and set aside a few bricks from the extras in the garage. Leon climbed into the big freezer and dug out a couple of burger patties, which they set on the driveway to defrost, and Mark found an old length of rope in the garden.
Once the supplies were collected and the trap set, the boys stopped to eat the sandwiches their mom had put out on the back porch.
“Ugh,” Leon wailed, peeling back the bread on his dry sandwich. “Ham again!”
Mark bit off a chunk of his own, took two big gulps of water and wiped the sweat from his brow. “Focus, Leon! We need energy for today. This isn’t any old plan… this is huge!”
Leon hesitated, then took a big bite himself. Daisy weighed nearly 200 pounds and wouldn’t be caught without a fight. He stuffed some pretzels in his pocket for later.
When the sandwiches were gone, Leon asked a question that had been nagging him. “We aren’t going to hurt Daisy, are we?” He’d never questioned one of his brother’s capers before, but the dog was their biggest prey yet. Things could get ugly.
“Hurt her?” Mark’s jaw dropped. “We couldn’t hurt that thing if we tried!” He stuck his hand in one of his mother’s flower pots, and began rubbing the dirt all over his face. “Now come on, put on your camouflage. The Kowalski’s can’t see us coming.”
The final step was calibrating their watches. “Remember,” Mark said, “the whole thing can’t take more than ten minutes.” He set his watch to 2:20pm, and Leon did the same. “If we don’t have her by two thirty, we’re doomed. Diane will bring Daisy back inside and we’ll miss our chance.”
Leon nodded, scratching the spot where his rope rubbed against his dirt-covered chest. He was ready to go.
They set off together, crouching as they ran through the trees at the edge of their property, past the tarp-covered mine opening and into the Kowalski’s yard.
“Daisy! Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
“We have burgers, Daisy!”
“Juicy, juicy burgers, Daisy!”
Mark pulled a patty out of his bulging shorts pocket and tossed it towards the back door, where Daisy slept.
A giant black head popped into view, followed by a thunderous bark.
“There she is!” Leon could hardly speak, the adrenaline was so great. “Throw another burger!”
The second burger landed a few feet in front of its target, and Daisy began running across the yard.
The plan was backfiring. “She’s not eating the burgers, Mark!” Daisy was supposed to come slowly, lured to the trap by the raw meat. Now she was just coming straight for the boys.
“What should we do?” Leon stood frozen in place.
Mark grabbed Leon’s arm and turned towards the woods. “Run!”
“She’s gonna eat us, Mark!”
“Don’t be crazy,” he said, gasping for breath. “We’re almost there.” The boys could see the blue tarp up ahead, stretched across the mouth of the large hole they had dug all summer.
Mark grabbed Leon’s hand as they neared the opening. “We’re gonna have to jump over it!”
Leon looked back and saw that Daisy was barely ten feet behind them, her tongue drooping hungrily from her mouth.
Mark pulled him forward. “Jump!” The boys leapt over the hole and crashed to the ground on the other side.
“You ok?”
“Yea, I’m fine.”
Mark sat up and started shaking his brother. “Leon, look.” He pointed towards the tarp, which had been dragged down into the hole. “It worked!”
Leon’s face lit up. “We got her!” He crawled towards the edge and peered over. “What the…?”
“What?”
“She’s not in there.”
“What do you mean she’s not in there?” Mark crawled over next to Leon. “Holy crap, you’re right! She’s not in there!”
“What did I tell you?”
“Where did she go?”
A deep bark echoed throughout the woods behind them.
“That sounded like Daisy, Mark.”
“I know it sounded like Daisy!”
They both turned around, and saw the big dog bounding towards them.
Mark groaned. “Aw, man.”
“What the heck!” Leon started to panic. “Now what do we do?”
Mark thought for a second, then stood up at the edge of the hole. “Jump in!”
Mark jumped.
Leon watched as his brother landed in the hole and disappeared. He blinked a few times and looked again. Mark wasn’t there.
He wanted to scream, but Daisy’s hungry bark brought him back to reality. Wherever Mark had gone, it was better than here. He pulled himself over the lip and rolled into the mine.
When he landed, he felt his brother breathing beside him.
“Where are we?” Above them, the sky poked out between the trees.
“I don’t know.” He sat up. “This hole is deeper than our mine.” He grabbed the edge and hauled himself up, then turned and gave Leon a hand.
Once out of the hole, they realized they were in the woods behind their house. “Look, Leon,” Mark said, pointing to where a big black Newfoundland stood pacing by the edge of their mine. Somehow, they had ended up in a different hole, a hundred yards away from the one they’d jumped into.
Mark’s voice came out as an excited whisper. “Do you know what this means?” He put an arm around Leon’s shoulders. “Do you have any idea what this means?” His whisper was becoming frantic. “We just discovered tele-sportation.”
Leon hung on to the word for a moment, while they watched Daisy run back towards her owners. “Tele… sportation? What’s that?”
“What do you mean, what’s that? It’s what we just did, stupid! We jumped in that hole over there, and appeared in this hole over here.”
“We should tell Mom.”
“Tell Mom? Are you nuts?” The boys had stood up, and were brushing the dirt from their bodies. “She’d never believe us! She’d think we’re crazy.”
Leon looked down at the hole, then towards their house. He didn’t understand how they could have possibly traveled as far as they did so quickly. “Maybe we are crazy,” he muttered.
Mark smiled at his brother. “Crazy? I’ll show you crazy.” He put his hand on Leon’s chest and pushed, knocking him back into the hole.
When Leon opened his eyes, Mark was standing over him, blocking the sun.
“Come on Leon, get up.” He reached down into the hole and offered his hand. “It’s getting dark, and we’re gonna be late for dinner.”
Leon took his hand and climbed out into the trees in their backyard. The tele-sportation had worked.
Again Mark put an arm around his brother’s shoulders, and they began to climb the hill to the back door. “Can you believe it, Leon?” Mark asked. “We’re gonna be rich.”