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Adventures In Living With The Mythical |
| This little adventure didn’t start with lawn gnomes lining the streets, with enchanted people dragging me out of my home kicking and screaming. It started with a near miss car accident. My poor Topaz almost ate it. I was coming to a stop at a busy intersection in a nearby town when I began to ease my foot on the break. The break felt like a sponge. I yanked on the parking brake as I watched the traffic ahead of me zip along through the intersection their greenlight bright and steady. I was near a Wal-Mart which was connected to a major highway. The kind of highway that people regularly go fifteen over without question and the cops don’t bother checking unless they want to write more speeding tickets that month. I felt like a baby turtle trying to get across the interstate in the middle of summer. The parking brake was ratcheted to its max, but it did nothing to slow me down. “Shit, shit, shit, shit,” I grumbled, as I yanked the wheel off the road, and began sliding the gear shift on my transmission down through the gears, trying to get the engine to help brake. Fifteen, Ten, Three miles and hour. My car rolled over the white line, the bumper easing into the divided highway, and rolled to a stop. I stared at twin semi-trucks as they approached. But thankfully they came to a soft stop for the red light which had begun shining bright for them. I feathered the throttle in first gear, easing it across the road towards the shoulder on the far side of the intersection, my hazards blinking. Thankfully it wasn’t a steep hill so I didn’t have to worry about it rolling backwards, but I still turned the wheels towards the side so if the car did roll, it would just roll into the ditch. Two thoughts ran through my mind. Neither is fit to print here. Then the third thought was of one ceramic little demon. A certain smiley pointed hat jerk hell-bent on world domination had officially made a serious attempt at murder. The game was afoot as someone once said. Thankfully, I had towing and rental on my car insurance. It took a couple of hours, but I got the car towed home and dropped in front of our garage. The parking brake had been disconnected. The brake hoses themselves had micro cuts. It was enough that brake fluid would weep through the hose, so a short trip into town would be fine, but the trip through would be deadly. One of those nicks had worn through just enough to bleed out. Either that, or that crazy pointed hatted psycho had a gnome waiting inside the car to cut the brake line as soon as I neared an intersection. Either could have been possible. The trip back to the house had been surreal. Gnomes of blue hats were on properties to the south side of our small town. Hiding in bushes, or pretending to water gardens. Each with a smile on their face. The gnomes with the red hats approached from the north and east. There was a lot more of them. Everyone of the red hatted gnomes wore a snarl and a pair of sunglasses. They were forming a battle ground with our eclectic home at the center. Each property seemed to be pushing in towards us in what I could only imagine was military maneuvers. It felt like we were sitting in the middle of a real-life game of Age of Empires, only this time there would be no save states or redos. Our home was the prize and combatants were gearing up to win at any cost. When I got home, Crash was finally awake. He hadn’t shifted into his night form yet. I’ve seen him stay werewolf days at a time when it got busy, just to avoid having to go back and forth. In his words “it starts to hurt after a while. Hurt a lot,” he told me one day when I asked why he was still more wolf than man. That was some time ago, though, with snow still on the ground and a different kind of mischief in the woods. That afternoon, he greeted me with a yawn, and a full coffee cup. “More investigations,” he grumbled. “Got some strange activity south of the county.” “Exactly opposite this house,” I said. “Convenient.” “Yeah,” Crash replied, then yawned and stretched. “Larry should swing by for some checks tonight.” “By checks you mean crapping on the front lawn again and then not paying attention to the lawn gnomes everywhere?” I was very annoyed at Larry. The only ‘assistance’ that stone dragon’s given me since we met Khied was to bomb the front yard doggie style, then leave. It wasn’t even keeping the gnomes away; it was just getting annoying dealing with his rock-hard chocolate logs everywhere. Crash growled for a moment, then looked out the window to the yard. “I’ve talked to him about that. He says he’s got his claws full with some other stuff. Our land is at the bottom of the list, but it’s on it. He said he’d do what he could, but it would be better to ‘either give the human to the lawn gnomes or just start smashing them.’” “Dragons can be jerks,” I said, looking out the window. A red hatted lawn gnome had appeared near the garage and was mooning me. “I’ve advised the guys,” Crash started, a half yawn escaping him that turned into a full body stretch complete with a reach to the ceiling. “I’ve already advised the guys to stay inside. I’m telling you the same thing. Don’t go out. Just lock the door and let this play out. Larry will be by eventually to end things.” I rolled my eyes. “So, dial 9-1-1 and wait for the cops to come by while the little ceramic murderers attempt to murder us all in our sleep?” “You’re at the bottom of the list, but you’re still on it,” Crash said. “I got more of this ogre thing to deal with.” He did explain to me what the ogre thing was. There’s not a way I can dress the story up enough to make it fit to put here. Crash’s job at times is more dangerous than others, and in this case a community was at stake. If you remember the adventure I printed a while back about Crash fighting that minotaur who’d gone crazy, that’s a Sesame Street episode compared to the Ogre thing. It’d make Clive Barker turn green. “Zack’s at work, Sean and Kris are both at work and I’m the only here today,” I said. Crash nodded. “Yeah, none of them were happy. But things should be safe until nightfall. By then everyone will be inside playing video games or something.” I yawned. His dang yawns were becoming contagious. “I’ll escort them home if need be, but I don’t think they’ll want me to.” “Might work, but you know Zack,” he said. “I’ll try to twist his arm, give him the old ‘werewolf’s orders’ and all that, but you know he hates that sort of thing.” He poured himself a bowl of Reese’s Puffs, and sat down. “Ah, more dog food,” I smirked. He grinned, “careful, or I will swap it for real dogfood and not tell you.” “But,” I said, “I thought it was dogfood! I mean, you’re eating it, right?” We went back and forth like that over his cereal while Crash fired off a few texts to the other guys. Zack was angry, but said he’d text me when he got off. Sean and Kris said they’d watch each other and to not worry, that they’d go somewhere else that night. Don’t worry. Right. Zack was an hour late for texting me. Sean and Kris weren’t texting me, but I wasn’t worried about them. They were more than likely staying the night at a friend’s place, I didn’t have to go searching for them, now did I? Zack was the missing one after all. The one that I hadn’t heard from yet. After the second hour I called his work, but they said his shift had left over an hour ago and that Zack had left with them. “No sign of’em sorry,” the harried shift manager told me right before hanging up. My heart in my throat, I went to my room and grabbed my pistol. Two full magazines, and one in the pistol. That left me with about 45 rounds. There was already more than double that of lawn gnomes in the neighborhood. But hopefully it wouldn’t come to that. No car, no way to search other than rubberized troop movers, my own two feet in other words, I slid my pistol into my holster, and headed for the door, but never made it outside. Two ceramic statues were on the front step, Sean and Kris. Both looked very pissed at me. “Shit,” I growled, “sorry guys, but you can’t come in.” And I slammed the door shut. Zack was out there somewhere. Crash was on the opposite side of the county. And here I was, trapped in my own home, with two friends now statues looking very pissed at me. Crash doesn’t carry a phone with him in wolf form. Many times, there’d be no where for him to hold it, his claw would go through the screen anyway, and the phone isn’t designed with werewolves in mind, so he’d either be able to listen, or talk, but not both at the same time. So, I called his work and left a message. “Wait for Larry”, they said. Right. Where was Zack? There was a thump at the front door. I swallowed hard and slid a chair beneath it. Another thump at the front then one at the back. A tap on the glass near my bedroom window. I was trapped inside my own house. Whichever faction had gotten to the house first, red or blue, it didn’t matter. It wanted me outside. It wanted me ceramic. It wanted me dead. |
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