The lawyer’s office smelled like orange peels, and it made Todd’s mouth water. It was sick, wanting to eat at a will-reading. He was sure that he was some kind of freakishly horrible person to be thinking about eating now.
The palaple greed around him didn’t even take his appetite away. Damn, he wanted an orange! They wanted to feed on the carrion of Uncle Ralph’s life, and he wanted a goddamn orange. His mom gave him a nasty look, so he took off his headphones. He let the rest of the room sample his Perfect Circle CD for a few seconds before he hit stop on his MP3 player. The lawyer shuffled his papers and cleared his throat.
Silence crashed over the room; Todd was sure that a mental chant of “I want” caused it. The lawyer sipped from a glass of water and began. Todd closed his eyes and tried to stop thinking about oranges. The monotone droning of the lawyer’s voice lulled him nearly to sleep. His mind drifted, and he was standing in a grove of orange trees in sunny Florida. He laughed, in his mind, and spun around.
He jumped up and snatched an orange from its branch. Todd tore off the peel and took an enormous bite out of it. The taste was perfect, and the juice filled his mouth with happiness. Here was a good place; the kind of place where Uncle Ralph had to have gone.
At that thought, thunder boomed in the distance. Clouds were gathering in an all-too-familiar spiral pattern. Something squirmed wetly in Todd’s hand, and he reflexively dropped the rotting, worm-ridden orange.
The winds began to howl through the rows of orange trees. Unreasoning terror bubbled in Todd’s heart, sending him at a dead run away from the storn. The wind blew harder and harder, pulling down rotted orange after rotted orange. A shadow blanketed everything; the spinning and churning clouds thickened and drew together. The wind was whistling fast and hard in Todd’s ears as he fled, reminding him of the eerie, haunting sounds of the calliope. Lightning crashed, thunder hammered at his ears, and the rain began to fall. Sheets of it pounded him and turned the dirt to mud. Todd slipped on the peel of an orange and slid headfirst into the Florida mud.
The storm was after him. It wanted to consume him. Somehow he knew that it had consumed Uncle Ralph, and was coming for him, now. He tried to scramble back to his feet, but the mud sucked at him, drawing him down. He struggled, sinking more and more. The storm closed in, and the earth itself kept him prisoner, holding him until he was consumed. There was a sharp pain in his side, and he was suddenly falling.
He hit the floor of the lawyer’s office with a thud and a yelp. The smell of oranges had soured. Everyone was staring at him, and his mother was giving him a death-glare. “Honestly, Todd. The least you could do is stay awake.” He blushed purple and climbed back into his seat. The lawyer cleared his throat and continued.
“To my great-nephew Todd, I leave my house, and every posession in it.” Gasps and shocked curses were whispered from all around. “In the event that I pass on before Todd turns eighteen, it shall remain in trust to him. Arrangements for upkeep of the house and yard have already been made. It is my sincerest wish that Todd explore the house fully, and do with my belongings as his heart leads him. I also ask that his parents not stand in the way of this. Todd has my trust, and will not do wrong by it.”