LJ Idol, Season 10 Second Chance, Week 2: Front Porch
The front porch faced north, overlooking a medium-sized, well manicured lawn. Cleaving the lawn was a concrete path that led from the porch to the sidewalk. On the porch itself sat the two rocking chairs that Jim and his wife Mabel bought for themselves when Jim retired a few years back. One of the chairs was meant to be for Mabel, but Jim's friend Bill had more or less taken up residence in it since his wife, Irene, passed away. Mabel didn't mind-it gave her more time to work on her crossword puzzles.
And so Jim and Bill settled in after dinnertime for another evening of watching the universe go by.
“Yep,” said Bill.
“Yep,” agreed Jim.
They didn't say much, but they didn't have much to say, and neither of them had a problem with that.
About an hour after the sun went down, the silence was busted up by the sound of rubber slapping against cement.
Bill craned his neck to find the source of the noise. “I would have thought all the joggers would have gone home by now.”
“Yep,” agreed Jim.
From the west sprinted a girl no older than sixteen, wearing a garish sweater vest. The gray that streaked her otherwise black hair, cut boyishly short, glinted in the porch light.
As she faded from sight in the east, Bill observed, “There goes that Torres girl.”
“Yep,” agreed Jim.
Also running from west to east was a creature, over six feet tall, covered in gray-brown fur and sporting a vicious snout.
After it was gone, Jim asked, “Did you get a look at that?”
“Yep,” Bill replied. “It looked like some kind of wolf.”
“Don't be ridiculous, Bill. That thing was on two legs. Wolves don't walk on two legs. That there was a bear.”
“That was not a bear, Jim.”
“Why not?” Jim insisted. “Bears walk on two legs.”
“Only sometimes,” Bill countered. “Like when they're mad.”
“He looked plenty mad to me.”
“I see your point, Jim, but bears don't walk so fast when they're on two legs. Our friend there was moving along at a pretty good clip. He's gonna catch up to her before too long. Mark my words.”
“Yep,” agreed Jim.
They fell silent again, until the sound of tennis shoes on concrete filled up the night once more. Again it was the Torres girl, coming from the east this time, slowing down only to look over her shoulder. She clearly didn't like what she saw, so she sped up. Following, closer this time, was the creature that defied classification.
Jim and Bill exchanged looks before returning their attention to the street straight ahead.
Bill said, “That Rafaela is a strange one.”
Jim shrugged. “Maybe she's a little weird, but she's always been nothing but kind to me and Mabel. Remember how Mabel broke her hip last year?”
Bill nodded.
Jim continued, “Rafaela brought over a casserole every week until Mabel was well enough to cook herself. And she reads Mabel her fortune with those funny cards. It's all mumbo-jumbo of course, but it tickles Mabel pink.”
Bill leaned over conspiratorially. “Well you know what I heard? I heard she spent several years in the looney bin.”
“What for?” Jim asked.
“Beats me,” Bill replied. “But she's a certified cuckoo clock, so you better watch her around Mabel. You never know what she's gonna do.”
She came back, down the sidewalk from the west, and just before she passed Bill and Jim, she lost her balance and tumbled to the ground.
“Dang,” said Jim, “I'm sure that hurt.”
The creature caught up and towered over her body.
“Well,” Jim declared, “I'm not just gonna sit and watch this. Wait here a minute, Bill.”
“Yep.”
Jim slipped inside, leaving Bill to witness what was going to happen next. The creature raised its arms to strike. She pointed her palms at it, almost as if she were shielding herself, and shouted some gibberish. And then, out of nowhere came this gust of wind. It was mostly blocked by Jim's garage, but even so it almost knocked Bill over in his chair. He saw the effect it had on the creature, which was slammed backward and off-balance. While it flailed, dazed, she rolled onto her feet and escaped down the street.
Jim returned to the porch, wielding a pump-action shotgun. “Did he hurt the poor girl yet?”
Bill responded, “It was the darnedest thing, Jim...”
But Jim wasn't paying attention to him. He was watching the creature, which was now crouched on all fours, sniffing the lawn. “Would you look at that?” He sat down.
The creature followed its nose over to the driveway, where it found a large, green, wheeled trash bin.
“And now he's found the garbage,” remarked Jim.
The creature stood up and tipped it over.
“And now he's gone and spilled it,” Jim sighed.
“That's kind of a dog-like behavior there,” Bill pointed out as the creature sorted through the refuse with its snout. “Kind of like a wolf.”
Jim snorted. “Have you ever seen what a bear will do to a campsite if you don't hide your garbage? I maintain that this is a bear.”
The creature got bored with the trash and padded its way over to Jim's sedan.
“Now what's it doing?” Bill asked.
It buried its claws in a tire and dragged them down.
Jim stood up, racked a shell in the shotgun, and yelled, “That's it!”
The creature looked up at the source of the sound, then charged it.
A shotgun blast echoed through the neighborhood.
The teenaged Rafaela appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, wide-eyed and desperate. “What did you do?”
“I was defending myself from a wild animal,” Jim replied over the ringing in his ears.
“That was a human being!” she insisted.
“Like no human being I ever saw,” Jim told her.
“Look again,” she ordered.
He did, and what he saw was a naked man with a hole in his stomach. “Well I'll be darned,” he whispered.
She held the naked man's hand while fumbling through her pockets until she found a phone, which she used to call 911.
Jim was never charged with anything-he was defending himself, after all. The naked man made it to the hospital, where he was successfully patched up, checking out in time for the next full moon. Rafaela vowed to stay away from situations that were too much for her to handle, and then she broke that vow within a week.