Thunder: A Nap Lapkin Story (part 6 of 6)

It wasn’t, but at this point I thought I might mention that Madonna was feeling a mix of emotions. She wasn’t exactly jealous, she knew what she was getting into when she first became involved with Nap Lapkin, nor was it a sense of possessiveness, she had always been a free spirit and respected that trait in others. Nor was it insecurity or anything as simple as being territorial.

No wait, it was all of those things.

Now back to the not good.

There was a single word uttered. Not by any man, but by a presence in the sky. As loud as any hurricane, thunderous. As if uttered through trumpets. Windows shattered and the ground shook. And that word?

“Foooooooooooooooooore!”

And with that the enormous disembodied hand plucked the giant black sphere from the sky and hurled it down towards the pin.

“I don’t want to diminish how impressive this all is, top notch end of the world stuff, I mean… bravo, but isn’t fore a golf term?” Nap asked Madonna.

“I thought so too” she was forced to admit.

“I guess that rules out that hand belonging to any all-knowing being.” Nap tried his best to smile nonchalantly.

Madonna mulled it over for a second and concluded “A small comfort I guess.” She had been in some surreal moments in her life, but this one was near the top of list.

The ball came crashing down on the pin and sent it flying. The sound was similar to what Nap heard in the bowling alley the prior day, just magnified a million times. It also gave him a craving for nachos, proving again that you always want what you can’t have. When you consider that the pin is roughly a thousand feet high and it ended up clear across town, it was a pretty bad scene. Not Cabin in the Woods bad, but fairly horrible. Every building from where the pin once stood to the spot it finally came to rest, right smack dab in the middle of the Manhattan Project National Historical Park, was completely leveled.

And if you think that was bad, just you wait.

At first there was silence, but eventually everyone started to regain their senses. There were the obligatory cries from the wounded and sirens started to be heard wailing in the distance.

But then something happened that was almost beyond the ability of those on the ground to comprehend. (and most definitely beyond my ability to describe)

From the clouds there came a pinsetter the likes of which nobody has ever seen. A mile across or more. (in order to help you picture it I should add a pinsetter is an automated mechanical device that sets bowling pins back in their original positions)

The gigantic pinsetter came down, scooped the pin up and brought it back up into the clouds. (that’s all I can say about that. It’s either the most amazing image you’ve ever created for yourself or it’s a complete bust, this one is on you)

Soon after the festivities, probably a poor choice of words, started to wind down Nap made his way through the smoke and debris and approached Madonna. “Just got off the phone with the man behind the desk in the unnecessarily shadowy office.”

“What did he have to say about all this?”

Nap laughed. “Said there was nothing we could have done. Just said to make sure that I didn’t learn anything from it. Not sure what he meant by that.”

It was Madonna’s turn to laugh. “I don’t think he has anything to worry about. Listen Nap, I’m sorry about Samantha. I feel bad that I punched her. I’m sure she was a good person.”

Neither of them felt much like laughing after that.

And Madonna was right. Agent Samantha Brook, who died from injuries sustained by flying shrapnel, was a good person. I didn’t have the heart to go too much into her background, knowing that it would only make the ache you’re feeling right now that much worse. The hardships she had endured growing up, the obstacles she overcame to graduate top of her class at Quantico.

And now all you have left of her is the image of her getting plowed in a car by Nap Lapkin.

But maybe, just maybe, you learned something from all this.

Maybe you learned not to jump to conclusions about characters surviving narratives because of something you read earlier in a story.

You’re welcome.