The chaotic patterns of green swirled together in the orb. It was slightly translucent, but anything seen through the other side merely resembled the original object. Not only did this sphere distort images; it also seemed to distort reality.
Dusty pondered the marble for a moment longer, then tossed it back into its drawer. It had been two weeks since the wicker amphibian had terrorized the apartment, and luckily nothing had happened since. Alex had gotten over his fear of the number 26, even though the frog's notebook was stored in the drawer with the marble. The notebook's pages only contained that feared number, written over and over again in jagged print.
They had just come home from work, and as Dusty closed the drawer, something under the coffee table caught his eye.
An orange had rolled its way under the table sometime ago, and was now more reddish-brown than orange. Dusty, being the fruit-eater of the two, was most likely to blame for the mishap, and opted to dispose of it before Alex caught him.
During the course of the night, one of the few that they didn't eat out, Alex watched television, while Dusty returned a few phone calls, and spent a lot of time taking a dump.
After that turn of events, Alex faked a conversation on the phone with a hazardous waste disposal service, causing Dusty to take a mental note: Alex is in a particularly sarcastic mood tonight - hurt him has much as possible. And with that, he delivered a sharp blow to Alex's shoulder.
The victim's cry of pain was cut short by a loud noise from the kitchen. Alex hung up the phone, rubbed his shoulder, and gazed curiously into the kitchen; Dusty strolled in to see what had happened.
Nothing was visibly out of place, yet almost everything was out of place to begin with, so there was no accurate method of gauging what was wrong and what was right. Dusty made one more cursory glance of the perimeter, then shrugged and headed back into the living room.
He arrived in time to catch Alex making another fake call to 911.
"He's...he's...spontaneously combusted! Send two fire engines, and a dozen packages of hot dogs!"
Dusty grabbed the phone, heard the neutral voice say "If you'd like to make a call..." and hung it up. "Quit bothering the imaginary rescue services."
"Well, quit taking 72-hour dumps." Alex replied. "You'd think you would get asphyxiated after that long."
"Shuuut uuup." Dusty commanded, and flopped down in a chair.
Alex laughed, and turned the volume back up on the TV.
As they drove to work the next morning, the conversation centered on stupid mistakes by the Chiefs front office and the miserable loss to the Saints in preseason. But the griping was interrupted by a thud in the bed of Dusty's '79 yellow Toyota pickup, dubbed "Tweety Twuck."
Alex swallowed his bite of bagel and turned to see what had happened.
"What was that?" Dusty asked, negotiating a turn into the office's parking lot.
"Can't see anything..."
Dusty swung into his parking space, inching closer and closer to Annette's, a co-worker's, red Mustang, hoping to annoy her yet again. "Twas probably a duck of the invisible variety." He stated snobbishly, and shut off the engine.
Alex turned back around, rolled his eyes at Dusty's smug comment, and opened the door.
They vacated the truck, taking briefcase and bagel bag, and crossed the street. The sidewalk leading to the office was fenced in due to construction, so they were forced to walk on the road near the light rail track. They strolled quietly down the street, not able to hear the faint skittering behind them due to the traffic.
Dusty knocked on the window and peeked in to see if Annette and Lisa were paying attention. They merely looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and turned back to their work.
"Am I the only one in a good mood today?" Dusty inquired as he held open the door for his sibling.
"Yes, and it's kind of stomach-wrenching." Alex deadpanned.
Dusty let the door go before Alex was all the way through. "Don't let the door hit you on your way in."
"Funny," The brother said as Dusty re-opened the door for himself. "But looks aren't everything."
Dusty lowered his eyebrows at Alex and went past him into the office. "Hullo!" He said as loud as he could in an office building.
The exclamation muted the sound of the door opening a third time.
Their office was actually two offices, one for Dusty, Dusty's desk, and Dusty's more than comfortable chair, and one for Lisa, Annette, their desks, and the computer. A door connected the two, and each had their own doors leading out into the building.
The disarray of the offices certainly displayed the nonstandard personalities of those that worked in them.
"Hello!" replied Annette, who almost always seemed to be in a good mood.
Lisa was on the phone with a client, and merely shot a look of annoyance in Dusty's direction at the overly enthusiastic greeting.
Alex came in time to catch Lisa's glare, and made a face that said, "Yeah, I know."
"Hi, Alex!" Annette said. "How are the Brothers Rhoades today?"
"The older, yet unwise Brother Rhoades seems to be in a sickeningly cheerful mood today." Alex stated as he walked to a filing cabinet and placed the bagel bag on top.
Annette gave Dusty a skeptical look. "Did you have a mocha?"
Dusty rolled his eyes and turned into his office. "No, I haven't had any coffee today, thank you." He said as he put his briefcase down on his desk.
"Could have fooled me." Alex shot back.
"So, no birds or frogs have tried to take over the world today?" Annette asked in a slightly sarcastic tone.
Alex gave Dusty a half-shocked, half-puzzled look, and he remembered that he didn't tell Alex he had told Annette of their adventures into the unusual. The beginning of his response was cut off by a scream in the lobby.
The three rushed outside to see what had happened, with Lisa saying: "I'm going to have to call you back, there's been some kind of emergency."
As they got outside, they were greeted with a surreally gruesome scene. Someone had fallen over the railing on the second floor into the copying machine. But, as they looked to see what might have happened, they came to the horrible conclusion that the victim had been thrown.
On the railing stood an orange.
A reddish-brown orange.
A reddish-brown orange with a green marble protruding from its top.
A reddish-brown orange that was laughing evilly, despite the fact that most citrus fruits were incapable of making any noise whatsoever.
"Good day, ladies and gentleman, " It declared. "I would like to give you proper notice that I am going to exterminate all lawyers from the face of the earth, which means most of you." The orange cackled again. "That is all."
A panic broke out through the building as people rushed to the exits, shooting back shocked looks at the demented fruit.
Dusty stood stone still in the bedlam, and declared the oath: "Well, shit."
"Where's that good mood now?" Alex asked.
Keeping his eyes locked on the murderous orange, Dusty moved through the evacuees and managed to get up the stairs.
The orange turned, giving Dusty an ever better look at the marble protruding from its top. It was the marble from the wicker frog, the marble that seemed to distort reality.
It no longer just "seemed" to - it was.
"Don't worry, Dusty, " The orange said. "I'm not going to kill anyone from your office. You made me what I am."
"That reassures me so much." Dusty replied through clenched teeth.
It jumped down from the railing and started to walk in the other direction. "Unfortunately, I have to hunt down all of these people now..."
"A sad fact of reality." Dusty walked deliberately after it.
It turned suddenly. "Are you being sarcastic?"
"No, I wouldn't dream of that."
The orange seemed to space out for a moment, then snapped back with hostility dripping from its voice. "The Orb tells me you have a little history of treachery. I would highly recommend that you not try anything on me, buddy." In a demonstration of its power, the orange stared at the railing for a few moments. It snapped.
Dusty swallowed.
The fruit gave Dusty one last warning look, then started walking away. Dusty waited until it was completely out of sight, then headed back downstairs.
"What the hell happened?" Alex asked.
"He's gotten ahold of the marble...don't ask me how."
"Any ideas how we stop him?" Annette inquired.
Dusty shook his head. "I have no idea. With the frog, we were able to just pull the marble out. This orange is too powerful."
Alex pondered the situation. "What kills mold?"
Dusty knew his brother was on the right track, but he couldn't think of anything that would kill mold.
"Bleach can." Annette offered.
"But we don't have any bleach around here." contradicted Lisa.
Dusty started up the stairs. "I think there is some bleach in the kitchenette." He jogged down the hall and found a bottle of bleach under the sink. Finding a spray bottle nearby, he grabbed it and went back downstairs.
"But now we have to find the thing." Alex said as Dusty started to fill up the sprayer.
Dusty nodded toward the back, only taking his eyes off of his work for a moment. "He went into the garden in back, I think. That's pretty much where everyone else escaped to." He tossed the bottle to Annette after he finished filling it. "Your idea, your job." He said. "C'mon."
The four of them ran to the door in the back in time to see the orange corner an intern by the fence. They rushed out, and the citrus turned immediately to face them. "Changed your minds? Now you want to die?"
The intern clambered up and over the wooden fence with the distraction.
"We're all going to die eventually." Dusty said as Annette sprayed the bleach.
The orange tried to run, but the liquid hit it directly in the back, staggering it a bit. It whirled wildly, and made a spectacular vertical leap onto the roof. The four rushed back through the door and out to the street in front of the building, waiting for the fruit to get across.
The bells of the light rail could be heard in the distance, and as Dusty turned to see it lumbering toward them, the orange jumped, knocking Dusty to the ground on top of the rail.
"If I die, you die!" It screamed.
"Spray it again!" Alex bellowed, and Annette did so. The orange toppled off of Dusty, and onto the track. Dusty quickly got up as the light rail blew its warning horn and crushed the orange.
They waited until it passed, and inspected the remains. Sure enough, the fruit was dead, but there was no sign of the marble anywhere.
That night, the four went out for pizza and pool, celebrating the peculiar victory, but also knowing that three of them would be leaving soon; Alex back to Missouri, Dusty to Redding, and Annette to Seattle.
The only advantage they saw to this separation was perhaps these bizarre things would stop happening to them.
Dusty knew better than that, and as he shot the six ball into the corner
pocket, he wondered where the green marble would fall next.