Dinner and Brimstone

A loud thud sounded at the front door followed by several more. Aaron and Cassandra Tanner glanced at one another from across their circular dinner table while their mother, Barbara, anxiously twiddled her thumbs and their father, Michael, gleefully prepared food in the tiny kitchen that sat to the side off of the dining room. Neither child moved.
The thud sounded again and Aaron finally pushed himself up from his chair. “Fine, I’ll check the door.” He grinned back at his older sister as he began gingerly walking to the front of their home. “But you have to feed Brett and Tim!”
“What!” Cassandra slammed her palm against the table and shouted after her little brother as his slow walk turned into a sprint. “H--- no!” she yelled after him. “It’s your job to feed Brett, and Tim weirds me out!”
“Too late!” Aaron shouted across the house. “I’m already at the front door!”
Barbara Tanner gave her daughter a pleading look. “ Cassandra, could you please bring food to Brett and Tim Millet?”
“But Moooommm, last time I went into Brett’s room he vomited on me and I had to throw out my entire outfit, and it’s dangerous up on the roof with Tim.”
“Please Sweetie, I’ve been working all day and your Father is still cooking dinner.”
“Why can’t Aaron do it? It’s his job!”
“Because, Cassy, I asked you to do it.” Her mother spoke to her in a commanding tone of voice that always enraged Cassandra.
Cassandra rolled her eyes and groaned before getting up from the table and walking to the kitchen with her head thrown back.
Meanwhile, Aaron braced himself against the door and peeked out the tiny glass eye hole. “Yep. It’s ghouls again. Tim must’ve fallen asleep on the job for the third time this week. Why do we even let that lazy old sack stay here?”
Barbara shouted back at Aaron. “We let Mr. Millet stay here because his house was burnt down by a jet of h------- and it’s the neighborly thing to do.” She was already annoyed by her argument with Cassandra and Aaron could hear it in her voice.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Aaron grumbled quietly to himself. “You're not the one who has to sleep on the couch because there’s a dirty old man in your bed.” Aaron started searching through the umbrella basket. It had been raining a lot lately and most of them were stained red with blood and were damaged with tiny little scorched holes from the falling brimstone. Aaron stopped searching and grinned with excitement as he pulled the large hatchet he had gotten for his fifteenth birthday from the umbrella bucket. “Don’t worry Mom. I’ll take care of it.”
“Alright Aaron.”
His father, Michael, called to him from the kitchen. “Be careful Aaron!”
Aaron nodded and pulled on a baseball cap over his matted brown hair before opening the door and heading out onto the front lawn to deal with the bothersome undead.
In the kitchen Cassandra’s father handed her a small plastic plate with a couple fried locusts, half of a carrot, and a fish stick that someone had sucked all the bread off of. They used to give Brett porcelain plates and silverware but they switched to plastic after he broke the plates and carved satanic symbols into his bedroom walls with his fork and the broken shards of plate.
Cassandra slowly ascended the stairs leading to their bedrooms with the plate in hand. Brett’s door had the name “B-R-E-T-T” spelled out on it in big colorful foam letters that had been hung crookedly on purpose to make it seem more childish. She remembered hanging them on Brett’s door back before the end of the world. Cassandra slowly creaked open the door leading into Brett’s bedroom with his food in her free hand.
“Helloooo? Is anyone in here?” She peeked around the pitch black room and saw no movement and then reluctantly opened the door. She gently set his plate down on the hardwood floor before whispering, “Dinner time Brett...” anxiously into the darkness.
Suddenly Brett dashed from the darkness into the light cast into the room from the open doorway. He quickly shoveled a few of the locusts into his mouth along with the breadless fishstick before looking up at his older sister and grinning. Cassandra scowled down at him because he was completely nude and partially chewed food spilled from his half open smiling mouth.
“WanNa pLAy A GaMe BIG siS!” Brett hissed and snickered in a strange broken english as his head slowly begin to rotate three hundred sixty degrees around on his shoulders.
“Ewww... No. Put some clothes on you little freak. And turn on a light for god's sake, you’re starting to look really pale.” She reached over and flipped on the light before turning around and leaving the room.
Brett screeched. “iT BurNS!!! IT bUrnS!!!” as she closed the door behind her. For the most part she had gotten used to Brett’s demonic state. The whole family pretty much accepted it now. Three years ago on Brett’s seventh birthday he had been possessed by a demon that was controlling his birthday clown, and he had been demonic ever since. They tried to ask one of the priests left after the rapture for help but when he showed up Brett had bitten off the priest’s left pinky finger and the priest fled for his life.
She pushed the memories of Brett’s birthday to the back of her mind and headed down stairs again. Aaron was already back inside and sitting at the table with a c***y smile on his face.
“Cassy,” her father called to her “come get Mr. Millet’s dinner.”
“Oh my god Dad. I just fed Brett! Can’t Aaron do it?” She was reluctant to go back up to see Tim since last time she had been on the roof with him a mighty earthquake shook her house and destroyed half of the city. She fell off the roof and nearly broke her neck while Tim kept his fat butt comfortably in the lawn chair he had nailed to their roof.
“Don’t argue with me Cassy. Just do it.”
Her mother caught her attention for a moment. “Oh and please tell Tim that he doesn’t have to keep sleeping out there. He can use Aaron’s bed whenever he wants.” Aaron grimaced at the thought of the filthy and wrinkly old man rolling around in his sheets while he had to sleep on the couch.
She rolled her eyes and groaned again before walking back into the kitchen.
Her father handed her an olive and tuna fish sandwich on Wonder Bread with the crust cut off and then literally shoved her out the front door against her will. Cassandra eyed the sickening abomination that their neighbor Tim called “dinner” before muttering to herself angrily and storming off behind her home to find the ladder onto the roof. On her way she passed several dead ghouls that had been thoroughly hatcheted by her younger brother but paid them no attention. She climbed up the ladder with the plastic bag containing Tim’s abomination clenched tightly between her teeth. When she reached the roof the old man was sleeping peacefully in a lawn chair with his trusty rifle in his hands. He was sitting beneath a small tin roof he had fashioned out of the remains of his shack which had managed to survive the end of the world while his house and numerous cats had not.
“Mr. Millet? I have your dinner,” she called out to him but he remained completely motionless. “Mr. Millet?” This time she called to him with a hint of alarm in her voice. When he gave no response she reached out slowly and poked his slightly bulbous nose. His hands clenched causing his rifle to fire off into the distance. His eyes shot open and he dropped his rifle before throwing his arms up into the air “Ghouls! Ghouls!” he began to shout in a senile hysteria.
“Calm down, Mr. Millet, it’s just me. I brought you your dinner.”
His wrinkly old hands reached and out and snatched the bag from her. “Ooo, my favorite!” He gave a toothless smile before opening the bag.
“Alright well enjoy it, Mr. Millet. My mom says you should come in soon and take a break.”
She began to walk towards the ladder when he called out to her. “Usually your brother sits up here and talks with me, you know?”
She turned and looked at him. She knew he wanted her to stay but being around the lazy old fart made her uncomfortable. She nodded and said, “I’m sure he does,” before descending off the roof and retreating into the comfort of her home.
Dinner was disappointing and mostly involved Aaron and Casandra mocking one another and their parents getting involved and shouting angrily whenever one of them used an inappropriate word during a family meal.
After their meal of roasted chicken and crunched locust soup, the Tanner family parted ways. Cassandra began texting and headed upstairs to her bedroom to talk with her best friend Tammy over the phone in private, Barbara and Michael retired to their bedroom, and Aaron went into the living room to sleep on the couch that he now called home.
Aaron walked into the living room to see that the TV was on and a two foot high, baby sized, demon with long red horns and a forked tail was sitting in his father’s recliner and drinking beer while watching sitcom reruns on a low budget cable channel, just like always. Aaron crept in and sat on the couch beside the recliner. He looked at the demon sitting a few feet away and started laughing at the comical size difference between the demon and the massive recliner he was sitting on. Not to mention the fact that the tiny h------- was drinking a beer that was half as tall as he was.
Aaron chuckled to himself before looking back at the TV. “What are you watching, Jerry?”
Jerry took a swig of his over sized beer and in a high pitched voice he said, “Oh you know...” He shrugged. “Some stereotypical garbage. I think this one is called ‘Four-is-a-Family’ or something along those lines”
“Oh yeah!” Aaron sank back into the couch “Is this the episode where they take a trip to New York?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” Jerry took another swig of his lukewarm beverage.
The show had become fairly popular shortly after the apocalypse started and it followed the comical lives of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and their wacky misadventures across the globe.
Aaron let out a heavy sigh “I miss New York...”
Eventually the tiny demon passed out and began snoring in a high pitched way that made it sound more as though he were whistling to himself rather than sleeping. Aaron sighed and clicked off their television. He rolled up in his sheets and laid down on the couch. He thought about the events of the last several years, how much he missed his dog Sparky, which had been devoured by his undead cousin the month before, and eventually fell soundly asleep.