[William Robbins]

A red pick up truck with the city's fire department logo on the door pulls up next to a fire hydrant and stops. The driver gets out, reaches into the back for the wrench he needs to turn on the hydrant.

He then walks over, stands above the hydrant and let's out a sigh. If there is one chore he hates most about working for the fire department it is pulling duty checking fire hydrants. But somebody has to do it and it is his turn.

Great, this is another one of those stupid hydrants where somebody has painted a face on the front. Apparently the person thought he was being clever. All he knows is that sometimes the paint messes up the threads and makes it a bitch getting the cap off.

As he starts to unscrew the cap he can swear he hears a soft sobbing sound of woman's voice. Stopping, he looks around, but the street is deserted. So he finishes removing the cap and then places the wrench on the nut to release the water. The moment he does there is a muffled scream as if someone is in terrible pain.

His mind can't forget that mournful cry, but he does his best to ignore it while opening the hydrant to release the water. As it flows the voice changes from a scream to an "oooh" as if the thing is having some kind of erotic moment.

The second he's satisfied the hydrant is working properly he turns the nut to stop the water and screws the cap back on. Mercifully whatever was making the sound stopped. And then as he reaches his truck he hears the voice one last time saying "Help me," in a very desperate plea.

Snorting. He gets in his truck and then takes out his cell phone. "Hey Charlie it's me."

"What do you want Eric?"

"Um got a question, anybody ever report something strange about the fire hydrant over at Fifth and Green?"

"Strange? As in how?"

"Oh er I don't know, like it makes um weird sounds when you do things like unscrew the cap? Maybe it's rusty or something."

"Nope, nobody has ever claimed anything like that. You want me to tell them the hydrant is haunted?"

"Oh jeez Charlie you're a lot of help. I can imagine how the Captain would react. He'd have me over seeing a shrink. And the Department would - just forget I said anything."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell you what old buddy how about if you just not making any more pit stops to buy beer while on hydrant detail and I bet they'll stop making noise?"

"Oh shut up!" Eric says as he hits the end button, tosses the cell phone on the seat and then starts the truck. He doesn't care if the next hydrant can sing that is the last time he's going to say anything.

As he drives away, the hydrant reveals a trickle of water coming from the cap. It seeps out in small steady drops more like tears than a leak.

About midnight a black sedan is cruising down Palm street with its lights off. It stops next to a fire hydrant. The driver gets out of the vehicle looking like a chauffeur only he has a big red cross on the back of his coat. He walks towards the car's trunk only his feet never touch the ground.

Standing at the truck he stares at the lock till it mysteriously opens by itself. Reaching inside he removes a small black box the size of a lunch pale.

Then he floats over to the hydrant and hovers above it. Placing the box on top of the hydrant, he presses a little red button on the box. Suddenly the box begins to glow with a blue tint. Soon the illumination engulfs the hydrant. A few seconds later the light stops.

Removing the box from the hydrant, the man stops hovering and lets his feet touch the pavement. He then removes a small silver egg from his coat pocket. "AMEN," he says before returning the egg to his pocket.

Immediately he, the car and box all begin to turn transparent and then vanish. In their absence a man's panicked voice utters from the hydrant, "Help me. Please somebody help me." It is followed by a serious of sobs and moans and then there is silence.

Two teenage boys ride their skateboards down the sidewalk of Plum Street, disregarding any shouts from people they pass. It isn't the first time they have heard such complaints and ignored them just like they have the lectures from the cop who stopped them a couple of weeks ago.

Finally they reach a street corner where the red light keeps them from crossing the street. Stopping the skateboards, they decide to take a break and sit down between the red light and a fire hydrant.

One kid removes a pack of cigarettes from his black leather vest. He takes one for himself and then offers his buddy one. They light up and sit looking at the traffic, figuring that regardless of how boring this is it still beats being in class.

The one nearest the fire hydrant decides to rest his right elbow on the top of it. That is until he feels it vibrating like it has some kind of pulse. He nudges his buddy and asks him to feel it.

"What the -" the second kid says.

"Oh god you don't suppose that dope we scored was bad?"

"I don't know," his partner says.

"Hey what's that?" the other one wonders when hears a moaning coming from the hydrant.

"Beats me, but I ain't hanging around that thing to find out. Let's get out of here man, we don't need to be messing with some stupid fire hydrant making spooky noises."

The first one nods and then they get up and trot across the street against the light. Like so many other noises, they ignore the sound of car horns registering their complaints.

Tracy sits in the coffee shop flipping through the pages of her math textbook. She closes it in frustration like she had done before.

This semester at college has turned out to be one major disappointment. Before it started she expected her Junior year to be a lot better than her first two years. But it hadn't shaped that way. It was more like her life was in a tail spin and only getting worse.

The first thing that happened was having her boyfriend dump her for some cheerleader with a bust size bigger than her IQ. Then the part time job she had at the bookstore was eliminated while she went home on vacation during the summer. So she ended up working at a fast food joint with a boss who thought he was god.

And finally to make things really lousy her classes sucked. The worse was her math class that was taught by Dr. Prick as she preferred to call him. He might have the brains to have earned a PHD, but he had no personality and was an unbearably boring speaker. Just getting through his class was a test of her willingness to survive till graduation.

"Oh no," she groans when she sees this guy wandering around the tables and booths handing out gospel tracks and clinging to a Bible like he was ready to pounce on any sinner.

This was all she needed. It was bad enough she had a headache and was fighting a cold, did she really have to put up with somebody trying to beat her to death with his religion? God knows she had far too much of that crap growing up with fundamentalist parents. Having to deal with their self-righteous hypocrisy had been all the religion she figured she could handle for one life time.

Mercifully the guy simply placed his gospel track on her table before moving on with only a smile. That was a change. At least he didn't have to resort to quoting a bunch of verses and threatening her with hell if she didn't agree with him.

She glanced at her watch and then growled. Darn if she didn't hurry she would be late to work. And with her jerk of a boss he'd figure someway to punish her if she was missed her start time. Right now she was in no mood for any extra grief in her life.

Getting up and hurrying towards the door, she rushed for her car. Then she noticed a strange man standing and leaning against the wall. He gave her a creepy feeling like he was some kind of stalker.

She ran passed him and got to her car. When she got in, she locked the door and breathed easier. At least she felt safe for the moment.

Inserting the key in the igniting she turn it, but nothing happen. Great, this was all she needed. Then she noticed the man had moved away from the wall and was walking towards her. She panicked and tried to open the door, but the handle wouldn't budge. By now the man was standing at the front of her car.

She wanted to scream, but couldn't. Suddenly she felt incredibly sleepy. The man was standing by her car window just as she closed her eyes and the world went black.

"Oooh, my head," Tracy complains when conscious again. She opens her eyes to discover that she is in some kind of room with no windows and only one door. And she is restrained in some easy chair. If this was some dream it wasn't one she wanted.

The door to the room opened and an incredibly tall man stepped in wearing a white suit and having long white hair. He even had white sunglasses.

He marched over to her and stared at her. "Are you saved my child?"

"Oh no, I've been kidnapped by a fundamentalist! God what some people won't do to get converts. Look pal I have no idea who you are or how I got here, but surely you know that the Bible is against breaking the law and kidnapping is against the law?"

"What is a Bible?"

"Are you kidding me? How can you talk about salvation and not know what a Bible is?"

The man removes his sunglasses revealing a pair of silver eyes that have a narrow gold slit instead of pupils. "I must confess that our knowledge of your language is incomplete. We have done the best we can to monitor the transmissions from your leaders who call themselves evangelists, but there is still much we have yet to learn."

"I don't get this how can you abduct people and not have any of them explain to you how those evangelists are not our leaders?"

"Normally those we are trying to help do not return to conscious before we complete the salvation process. In your case apparently my assistant made some kind of error, but that will be corrected soon enough."

"Look I told you those evangelists are not our leaders. So you sure shouldn't listen to them."

"Your leaders warned in their transmissions how people would try to discredit their great work. So we have not allowed ourselves to be tricked or deceived from helping them save the ones they call the chosen. And we have tried to do what we can to help them save these individuals from the end of the world they have accurately predicted. Unfortunately we have had to rely upon our own determination process to decide who are the chosen. However you can be rest assured that we will save you from this crisis."

"You got to listen to me. You got this all wrong. Please trust me you don't need to save anyone."

"Now don't worry the salvation process will be for the most part painless. And eventually when we can perfect our method for transferring your essence into a life form compatible with our planet where will see that you will be permanently saved. For now we will simply see that you are saved from a terrible life of sin by placing your conscious somewhere it can be protected and not come to harm. It has been difficult to select the perfect sanctuaries for such salvation given the fact that it must be something that like the human body has an adequate supply of water, but Praise the Lord as your leaders have said, we have found several places that meet that criteria."

"But you can't -" Tracy starts to protest

Before she can say more, the man waves his hand and Tracy slips back into unconscious. He then leaves he room and returns with a small black box. Taking out a small silver egg he presses it to save Tracy, shouting "AMEN" when he is finished.

[Epsilonist]

Ok, weird.
The mystery of it caught me near the beginning, so it has a good hook to it. I think you could do without the skateboarders; they don't seem to add anything to the narrative and having so many changes of character in a short story gets confusing enough.
The rest of it could use some revision, both for small misspellings and for larger phrasing issues, but I found the dialouge to be pretty realistic, which is hard to do.

All in all, good job, and happy revising

[William Robbins]

Originally Posted by Epsilonist

Ok, weird.
The mystery of it caught me near the beginning, so it has a good hook to it. I think you could do without the skateboarders; they don't seem to add anything to the narrative and having so many changes of character in a short story gets confusing enough.
The rest of it could use some revision, both for small misspellings and for larger phrasing issues, but I found the dialouge to be pretty realistic, which is hard to do.

All in all, good job, and happy revising

Thanks for the review. It is tough it a short story to always keep it focused. I'm glad you found it overall decent.