Image by Jiří Rotrekl from Pixabay
“Vertran, I'm telling you – Dad was just a blur of speed down this trail – I don't know what it is all about, but it was amazing to see!”
Nine-year-old Milton Trent was gushing to his nine-year-old first cousin Vertran Stepforth.
Vertran, because of a recent experience in his home, knew that something was wrong.
“Any idea why?” he said.
“Don't know,” Milton said. “Hold on – let me ask – Gracie, you were closer to him, so any reason why Dad ran home?”
“Oh, he was just amazed at your solution to getting that stain out – bleach with Pine-Sol to soak until we got back,” Gracie said, with no understanding of why Mrs. Thalia Ludlow was standing and fanning her mother while she sat and just shook her head.
“Oh, that must be it – anyway, Vertran, you know how bleach smells, so, just before I left my pants in the washer with the bleach and headed out for the hike, I put a cup of Pine-Sol in there to give it more strength and fix that smell up! I don't know why more people don't do that!”
“I do,” Vertran said. “I've learned a lot over here since Tom [his 16-year-old brother] tried to deep-fry a frozen chicken whole and burned down our kitchen. See, if you put bleach and Pine-Sol together, you make mustard gas.”
“Wait … so that's where the smell of mustard comes from, or do bottles of mustard react to it by passing wind?”
“Uh … hold on … Dad, does mustard gas actually smell like mustard?”
“Who the HECK are you talking to who gave you that idea, Vertran?”
“I'm talking to Milton, who made some trying to get a stain out of his pants with bleach and Pine-Sol.”
“Get your Uncle Vincent on the phone!”
“Oh, he already knows!” Milton said. “Gracie said he's gone to see my handiwork!”
“He's gone to – never mind, let me call him!”
“Anyway, Milton,” Vertran said, “there are a couple of things you need to think about, right now. The first is, get some paper from Velma and write out your will. The second thing, if you don't want to do that, is figure out where you want to live in the world after you escape, because Pop-Pop already has Tom at his house.”
“You mean the process I invented is going to be that popular and put all these laundromats out of business? I mean, even Pop-Pop [their billionaire grandfather, Thomas Stepforth Sr.] isn't that rich and doesn't need that much security!”
“I mean that you're not going to have a pair of pants and you may not have a body to put them on, because mustard gas is a chemical weapon.”
“I've invented a whole new weapon!”
“Old World War I weapon, Milton. The problem is, you've just gassed your whole house.”
“Oh,” Milton said, and then sat down like his mother as his sister Gracie started fanning him. “The way Dad runs, I'm toast on escaping, so, I kinda need you to walk me through that will stuff, Vertran.”
Poor Milton, he was so proud of his invention. I mixed them one time, I had to get out of the room that I was cleaning, I could not breathe.
Milton has a hard day, but because he was leaving the house anyway, the day is not as hard for him as it could have been...