Watch Where You Stick That Vacuum Cleaner Hose! (500 words)

 

This week, my prompt was "The vacuum chokes on something, and when you clean it out, you look in surprise at the thing that really shouldn’t be there."

From https://moreoddsthanends.home.blog/2020/03/25/week-13-of-odd-prompts/ 

Sorry, this weekend has been difficult. I twisted my back or something early Saturday, and have mostly been not doing things this weekend as a result. However, along the way, I did come up with this fragment... incomplete, and I'm not quite sure where I would go with it.

Watch Where You Stick That Vacuum Cleaner Hose! (500 words)

By Mike Barker

He knew he shouldn’t just stick the vacuum hose under the refrigerator and suck whatever was under there up in it, but... sweeping it out and sorting things out was so icky! So, since no one was watching, he stuck it under, and listened to the thumps and whooshes as he moved the hose tip around. Then the vacuum coughed, and he could feel the whole thing shudder. What the heck had he sucked up?

He turned the vacuum off, and dragged the hose and the vacuum out under the bright fluorescent lights. Drat. Okay, start with the easy part.

He opened the vacuum, and pulled out the dust bag that collected all the trash. It was full of dust bunnies and just plain dust. That stick... oh, someone’s pen. But nothing that looked as if it was blocking. He put it back together, and pulled the hose free. Then he turned the vacuum on for a moment. Whoosh! Okay, it was pulling fine without the hose. So whatever it was, it was somewhere in the hose.

He sighed, then picked up the dusty pen and poked at the vacuum end of the hose. Nothing there, of course. So, the far end. Hum, there was something in there. He could almost see it. Maybe...

He pushed the vacuum end of the hose up to the exhaust of the vacuum, and turned the switch on. The hose trembled, and... a ball or something popped out. Along with a spray of dusty crud.

He turned off the vacuum and dropped the hose. Then he looked at the ball that had come out. It was black and brown, kind of glistening in the lights. He had seen a golf ball without its cover once, the wrapped center. This looked kind of like that.

He grabbed a knife out of the silverware drawer, and poked at the ball. He heard a small snap, as if he had cut a tight rubber band. Suddenly, the ball quivered, and kind of bounced. Then...

It unrolled. There was no other way to describe it, although it bounced and quivered as it did it. It left a strange layer behind it, almost as if it was turning into a flattened hose or something. Then, as the ball disappeared, the layer quivered.

And it unfolded. The whole thing, flopping layers right and left. As they spread out, some of them split, and suddenly there was an outline of a man on the floor. Dressed in a strange costume, like you would see in a sideshow or something.

The eyes of the figure blinked. They were flat, and couldn’t move like that, but they did.

And then, as the figure’s mouth opened and he took a breath, his whole body started to swell up. It looked almost as if someone had pulled the air out of a balloon, leaving it flattened and wrinkled, and now somehow, the air was seeping back in and that balloon was slowly returning to its normal shape.

The man that had been in the vacuum sat up. He glanced at the knife and chuckled.

“Oh, you don’t need that. I am so glad that you released me from that curse! What can I do for you?”