It was 3:00 AM, and Maggie had spent a restless night in bed, sleep eluding her. The nocturnal sounds—every creak and groan and knock that an old house makes at night—startled her and she’d sit up, straining her ears and wondering if the sound she’d heard was made by the creature. She threw off her covers, got out of bed, and slid her feet into slippers. It’s hopeless, I’ll never sleep tonight.
She shuffled to the living room and turned on the television. Sitting with her arm extended, pointing the remote at the TV, she surfed through the channels, not staying on any one of them for more than a few minutes. Infomercials peddling overpriced kitchen gadgets, or herbal supplements, or zirconia jewelry. Reruns of TV series dating from her childhood. A low-budget 1950s sci fi movie with people screaming and running from gigantic atomic mutant insects—Oh God, not this! Mexican soap operas. Oily televangelists. Jesus, more channels than I can count, and they’re all crap. She turned the television off, leaned back on the sofa, closed her eyes, and sighed.
Her eyes snapped open at the sound of her tea mug shattering on the tile floor in the kitchen. She ran to the kitchen and switched on the light. The creature stood on the counter, staring at her. It had grown to the size of a squirrel.
Maggie stood frozen for a moment, then slowly advanced and took hold of a nearby frying pan. She inched forward until she was an arms length from the creature, then swung the pan. It clanged like a bell against the countertop. The creature stood on the window sill, several feet away. Oh my God … I didn’t even see it move. It stared at her for a moment, then turned and darted through the open window, tearing through the screen as if it were a cobweb. She ran to the window and saw it shoot into the garden.
“God damn you!” she shouted.
Flinging the frying pan to the floor, she ran out her kitchen door, through her yard to the garage. She had lost her left slipper so she kicked the right one off, and was now barefoot and clad only in a flimsy cotton nightgown.
In the garage, she picked up a five gallon gasoline can that she kept for fueling the lawnmower. She shook it, listening to the liquid slosh inside and thought, this won’t be enough. She took the lighter fluid and matches used for the barbecue, and before she walked out the door, she grabbed a gallon of paint thinner and a bottle of fuel used for the tiki lamps.
She splashed all of the liquids on the garden, covering every inch of it, then struck a match and tossed it into the middle. The entire garden ignited instantly in a blast. A ball of boiling flame and black smoke rose, enveloping the overhead power lines, and the wires’ insulation caught fire and fell in burning sheds.
The explosion had knocked her off her feet, and singed her eyebrows and hair. When she came to her senses, she saw the hem of her nightgown was burning. She swatted the burning nightgown and finally extinguished it, but half of it was gone. Crawling away to a safer distance from the garden, she stood and watched the fire, smiling.
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