I nodded in agreement and pushed aside the wispy white drapes at the large bay window in the living room. Outside a wide expanse of closely clipped green lawn swept to the top of a low cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. I could see my brother Cory already outside walking along the edge of the bluff in the early morning sunlight, trying to find the quickest path to the beach below. “Is somebody going to get shoved off the cliff?” I asked innocently.

“Nope,” dad answered as he stepped through the open front door carrying two overstuffed suitcases. “I think that’s too obvious. We need something more…sinister, more…”

A smile crossed my face. Having a pair of screenwriters for parents was never dull. They get asked to write all different types of movies which gets them sent all over the world for ‘inspiration’. My brother and I get to go everywhere with them. Now mom and dad had gotten an offer to come up with a new script for a scary murder mystery, so they simply rented the spookiest home they could find on the coast of Maine and packed

Dad looked at me sternly and held up his hand to quite me as he continued his conversation. “So get this – it’s all done in flashbacks. It begins when the asteroid hits. It splashes down somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of New England, and-”

I stood riveted to the spot, ‘that’s where the gazebo came from,’ she thought with a growing sense of dread.

The following day we explored the shoreline of the beautiful sandy cove at the bottom of the cliff. I even braved the chilly Atlantic to take a brisk swim, while Cory stretched out on the warm sand. At lunchtime mom and dad took a break, and the family had a picnic lunch on the beach. We all fell in love with the area.

“Your dad’s right. We just made up the well,” mom said, the corners of her mouth turning up in a pleasant smile. “We just used our imagination, and I’ll bet that’s what you two are doing too…unless you’re trying to play a joke on us.”

Cory rolled his eyes at me as if to say oh brother…writers!

“I should have seen it,” Cory muttered. “I know I would have.”

“Don’t forget to check the front door,” mom called quietly to dad from the other room.

Some topics in this essay:
Ocean Cory, Atlantic Cory, Atlantic Ocean, England It’s, , Mount Everest”, mom dad, dark shadow, atlantic ocean, “come on”, cory exclaimed, “it dark, sheen polished marble, wet giving sheen, mom called, lunch cory, cory’s hand, whatever searching, shadow faint glimmer, faint glimmer wet, giving sheen polished,