tesla waves chapter 4

seconds. everything on the bus happened in a space of about twenty seconds max.

later, i replayed the assault in my head and broke down my reactions as follows:

first, i became completely detached from the situation. i went in to absolute denial. i thought for an instant that maybe if i closed my eyes he would go away. i would open them again and he would be sitting calmly in his seat, not lumbering towards me screaming and flailing. maybe he would not be there at all. i seem to have already hallucinated twice today. maybe he was just part of an ongoing trend. maybe if i breathe deeply and concentrate, i can disbelieve him away.

that didn't work. he was real enough to give me a swollen left ear and turn both of my forearms in to one big contusion.

the denial part of my response-to-crisis lasted maybe a half second. the next half second was spent having a deep existential conversation with the universe-something along the lines of "why me? am i not a good person? did i screw up in a previous life?"

a half second later and the universe had yet to reply, but the part of my brain given to self preservation was saying a lot. i raised my arms in front of my face to take the first salvo of punches. the pain in my arms turned to numbness with amazing speed. then he wasn't punching anymore but instead was trying to pry apart my upraised arms, probably trying to get to my throat or my eyes. 

i was trapped in a bus seat designed for one small person, not two large guys. i got both of my feet off of the floor and up to the seat. i used my legs to launch me sideways into the seat behind mine. i ended up crumpled into a sort of fetal shape with my legs in the air and my head on the seat and in no better of a position to fight, but at least he is not right over me.

when a wave person goes mayhem, they lose all of their higher brain functions and become creatures of pure rage. they have the psychotic energy and overwhelming  desire to kill, but, fortunately for the rest of us, the effect does not increase their coordination or reaction time. the wave stands there, unable to comprehend how i could be in front of him one instant and gone the next. an attacker with just a little more awareness would simply slide over and continue his attack, but this is beyond him-for now. i need to get out of the seat and in to the aisle, where i will at least have a little more room to maneuver.

luck seems to be with me, as the driver is now on his feet shouting profanity laced threats. the still detached part of my brain hopes that he remembered to stop the bus. the more present part of my brain moves me in to the aisle. just as i have my feet under me and am beginning to stand, the wave whips around and throws a fist like a stone at my head, i duck, but my left ear takes the blow full on. i see stars....

and like that i go blank. if the stress of everyday life can send me in to a fugue state, just how long did i think i could fight without going blank?

that should have been the end. blanked out and helpless, the wave should have pounded my skull in or crushed my larynx or driven rib bones in to my heart and lungs.

but it wasn't my day (to die). when i blank, usually that's it. lights out. this was different. this episode had.... substance.

i was in a darkness that wasn't true darkness, but something more like an energy without room for light. there was a voice.

"what's shaking there, bobby?"

the darkness parts like frost being wiped from a car window. the mayhem wave is standing over me, screaming, but at the same time he is not there. he is at the other end of a long tunnel.

the voice again : "oh dear. can't have that now, can we?"

i wake up, not knowing if i have been out ten seconds or ten days. at the other end of the otherwise empty capmetro bus, the wave is clubbing the driver to the floor with one brutal punch after another. the driver has maybe two seconds before something irreversible happens to him. i stand there on rubber legs, trying to shake traces of the blank effect from my head. i know i should be saving the drivers life, but i don't know the how of this.  hear the rear door slide open behind me, and this almost makes me laugh. how drunk or stoned would someone have to be to board a bus not noticing a murder in progress?

"excuse me please." someone crowds past me in the narrow aisle and i register a glimpse of short blond hair and wire rimmed glasses and realize that it has to be the snotty college kid who had been studying me like a bug under a microscope.

the wave is standing with his legs parted slightly for balance. he doesn't notice the kid standing behind him until the kid launches a kick between mayhem boys' legs with such brutality that i swear it can be felt standing almost ten feet away. my hands move reflexively to cover my own privates.

any man not wearing a titanium jock strap would have been permanently disabled by a kick like that. the wave is still on his feet, though. before he can turn all the way around, the kid slides his right arm behind his neck and and curls his left arm in front of the neck. the kid is seriously outweighed by the wave, but using this choke hold he has the wave on his knees and then on the ground, out cold, maybe dead for all i can tell. u. t. must be offering courses in submission fighting 101.

college boy looks at the two limp bodies at his feet, not even bothering to check the drivers' pulse. he walks up to me and grabs my i.d badge hanging from my throat. he begins reading my name and vital information out loud, like he is relaying information to an unseen partner. i realize that his glasses probably double as a bluetooth.

i wonder if he is an undercover agent or just a teenage martial arts freak. he glares at me, and with a snarl in his voice, says:

" great. first anger, then violence. your damn lucky you only fought a defensive battle. they ought to send you back to the ..."

"let me guess" i interrupt "back to the chalkboard?"

he laughs. "you wish."

he sighs, his shoulders sag. he looks at the bodies.

"fulton, you have had a long day. get your sorry ass home before the cops get here."

to be continued.

tesla waves chapter 3

i don't want to think about chalkboards or anything else. i have a borderline migraine and the mounting sense of space and time dislocation that usually comes shortly before my going blank for an hour or two. i don't need the damn bus driver testing my mental health.

"excuse me?" i say to the driver. he doesn't say anything in reply and just looks straight ahead, making me believe that i may have only imagined that he spoke to me.

my wave badge serves as a bus pass, entitling me to yet another free ride. i board the bus and find a seat as far to the rear as possible. most of the other passengers appear to be u.t. students heading to evening classes.

some of these college kids notice my badge and are sneaking glances at me as i sit down. one guy, cant be more than nineteen or twenty, is staring at me through wire rimmed glasses while typing on his blackberry.

probably a psyche major, taking field notes on me like a zoologist in a rain forest.

i would like to tell him that it is always, always, rude to stare, that i hope i wouldn't behave like him if our positions were reversed.

but i can't work up any real anger towards him because right now i am too worried about going blank. fortunately, i have just enough presence of mind to remember the meditation techniques they taught me in the hospital after i was diagnosed. i start counting my breaths while concentrating on the back of the seat in front of me.

after a few minutes, my headache recedes. when i look up, reality is in it's rightful place. the bus has stopped at the far western edge of campus and the students are all gone. 

as the bus pulls back in to traffic, i hear a voice behind me.

"don't tell me."

i look. the voice belongs to a heavyset young man with a ragged beard and a mountain of dark curly hair covering his forehead almost to his eyes. what gets my attention mostly is that he has a wave badge safety pinned to his flannel shirt.

but he is not being friendly. he is not making polite conversation with a fellow wave person.

"don't tell me. don't tell me. don't.... tell... me..!"

he is yelling and squeezing his eyes shut, a line of spittle running down his chin. in a wave person, this can only mean one thing : mayhem effect. when his eyes open, he will become homicidal to the person closest to him.

his eyes open, and he sees me looking at him, only two seats away. he stands, and i realize how big he is just as he lunges toward me, fists swinging at my head.

to be continued

tesla waves chapter 2

all i am doing is waiting for the bus when a motorcycle cop notices me and pulls to the curb. he talks to me without lifting his face shield.

"feeling okay tonight?"

no. in fact, i hate life right now. but what business is that of his?

"feeling fine, officer."  i force myself to smile.

his question isn't friendly, and he has not picked me at random. wave people have to carry visible identification. it's the law. most of us wear a laminated badge hanging from a neck cord. i also wear an old school med alert bracelet, just in case.

it's the law because approximately thirty percent of wave people become randomly violent. so many of the screamers got shot that the badges were mandated as a way of persuading the cops to use non lethal force.

the cop has a microtaser on the back of his right hand. his fingers are drumming on the handlebars, excited at the possibility of suddenly extending his right arm in my direction and scrambling my neural impulses even worse than they already are. i wonder if i should explain to him that i was diagnosed with the blank effect, not the mayhem effect. that won't matter, though, if he really wants to hurt me.

"yeah, had some problems today. just wanted to see how you were doing. what happened to your head?

what happened to your head, dude, i mean, to make you want to be a cop? i don't dare say that though.

"oh, man. i walked in to a door... shit....!"

act goofy 'cause that's what he expects. he nods and pulls away from the curb, his electric bike humming quietly, leaving nothing behind but the smell of ozone.

the real reason i have a one inch gash on my forehead is that i had what you might call an "episode" at work today.

one second, and i am about to get in to a fight with an asshole waiter (i'm a superior life form because i work in the kitchen).

the next second, and the dumpster next to us begins asking me questions. i had a split second to ponder this phenomena, and it's implications regarding my overall stability. i mean, it's never a good thing when inanimate objects start talking, right?

then the viewmaster changes scenes again and i am on my side, gravel sticking to my cheek, staring at the waiters shoes. i think he must have sucker punched me.

but when i look up he is shaking and talking rapidly.

"dude, dude, it's gonna be okay. they're calling an ambulance right now. just stay still man. they're calling an ambulance." he repeats himself.

i try to say something like: could you please explain to me what happened, and how i came to be in this position?

but all that comes out of my mouth is "whaaaa?"

"dude, you had a seizure or something, they're calling an ambulance" he says for the third time.

that gets my attention. please god, not an ambulance. if i go to a county emergency room, they will call my counselor. my counselor would probably review my case. she might decide that i shouldn't be working, or worse, living in my own apartment. at the very least, she would probably put me on some meds. the kind that will leave me less of a person than i already am.

you have to think about these things when you're a ward of the state.

i sit up. "uhuhuhuh. no fucking ambulance"

"dude, you're bleeding!" and i am. blood is running in to my eyes.

the nameless girl, i think she used to be a waitress but now she's a manager, appears suddenly at my side, hugging me while toweling blood off of my forehead.

"ohhh bobby." she says, exasperated, but with a catch in her throat like she might cry.

i like it when people say my name out loud. it jogs my memory without me having to look at my i.d. card- (fulton, robert daniel, a.k.a. "bobby". d.o.b. 3-8-1988 FWB (federal wave benefits) number... same as my social security number, which i never could remember anyway)-

the ambulance hums to a stop a few feet away. at least they didn't come down the alley with lights and sirens.

the paramedics are all grins and beer guts as they swagger up to me. "what's happening there player?"

i don't know what i'm supposed to say to that. i really just want them to go away.

"he a wave? did he fall out, all of a sudden like?"

my coworkers both nod.

"got a lot of this going around town. some moron put in the wrong feed on the lakeway tower. caused a big ol' surge."

the girl is still hugging my shoulders. "so... what's that have to do with bobby here?"

"look honey, they make anything that uses electricity with a buffer coil these days. folks like your friend here? they don't got one of those."

they seem just then to notice i'm bleeding. they ask if i have hemmo fever.

"are you serious, since when do we have that in austin? he's a wave. he doesn't have the plague."-the girl again. they ask if i can walk to the ambulance. i don't move.

"i'm not going with you. " i finally yelp.

they both look disgusted. one of them mutters something about fucking shockheads.

"you know, he is a person, and you fine people are treating him like a broke down car. what's wrong with you?"

now they're mad at both of us. the waiter steps forward. 

"have you guys had dinner? just fix him up and forget to document. i can get you anything you want, on the house."

the thought of free enchiladas seems to work for the paramedics. they spray the blood away, sanitize the gash, and staple my head. all in less than five minutes.

at least the dumpster kept quiet through all of this.

......

i finally remembered that the manager girls name was haley. haley wanted to pay for a cab to get me home, but i felt like i had caused her enough problems for one day. she asked me three times if i was sure i was okay to take the bus. i finally got away from her.

the bus is approaching. i see that it's not smart, it still has a living, breathing driver. the few remaining capital metro drivers are almost all near retirement age and practice surliness as an art form. they speak only when spoken to, and never look at your face.

the bus pulls up. the door slides open. the driver turns to me, grins and says;

"well how's my favorite chalkboard doing this evening?"

to be continued

tesla waves

i remember having a viewmaster when i was a kid. this was a plastic binocular looking thing that showed 3d images on little cardboard disks that you had to manually turn to view the next images. i had a whole shoebox of these disks. my favorite was the one that told the story of the apollo moon landing.

moon landing. a rocket with spacemen went to the moon and came back in 1969, almost 60 years ago.

i add the moon mission to the list of things i know. when i'm scared or depressed (i'm both right now), i start making a list of all the things i know. sometimes i remember something i don't remember knowing about, like my viewmaster and the moon missions. i picture the three dimensional scene of the return capsule burning with fire as it approached the earth, which was a white and blue half disk in the lower right side of the scene. i was scared to death of the fire and confused about how the astronauts could have splashed down safely after this.

my third grade teacher explained the concept of re-entry to me, something about how the speed of something coming out of space into earths atmosphere produces fire., and that this is what makes shooting stars, which are small meteors burning up when they hit the atmosphere.

sonofabitch! something else i didn't know i knew. i guess the spaceship must have been fireproof.

i would be happy about remembering so many things in one day, but i am confused and scared because the viewmaster with it's manual scene shifter was the first thing i remembered when my day shifted from work to whole foods without any memory of how i got from there to here.

 i must have cried out because people in the store were looking at me and then not looking at me like they were embarrassed for me.

my cell phone buzzed and i fumbled to answer it.

i know the managers name is adam. "hey dude, uh, you left the kitchen without clocking out or saying goodbye and you left a pot of soup on the stove. was this intentional?"

i'm beyond embarrassed. i'm mortified. i start stammering out an apology.

adam just seems tired.. "dude it's okay. nobody is mad at you. do you want to go on home or come back to work?"

i need to go back to work. i need to complete tasks.

adam says to relax. that he will come and get me. he reminds me that my new phone has the memory cue app.. he suggests i study it while i wait.

i go the store's outside cafe and find a table away from other people.

i activate the memory cue and review a series of wikipedia articles which explain to me, for probably the umpteenth time, about how the last major energy crisis was solved when a team of scientists funded by a texas billionaire studied the notes of a genius named tesla who thought that electricity should flow through the air from the source to the user, not through wires. he also thought that the planet was covered with some kind of naturally occurring electrical grid that could be tapped into for free.

well, not exactly free. it took a multi billionaire funding thousands of brilliant minds about twelve years, but they finally cracked the code. figured out where tesla had got it wrong when he came so close to getting it right. the electricity was everywhere and needed only a special magnet to pull it out of thin air.

these articles have been customized for a reader like me. which is a polite way of saying they were dumbed down. i had a problem understanding science even before my brain got fried.

shockhead. frybrain. the current politicly correct term for people like me is "wave people".

i hate that. call me a frybrain 'cause that's what i am.

everything has a price. people like me were the price of free energy. after the squat, black pyramids housing the e-receivers began appearing just about everywhere, people like me started acting funny. some of us were vague, detached from reality. some of us went completely crazy, even became violent. some of us heard voices.

and there were a lot of people, like me, who might remember how to tie their left shoe but not their right.

a car honks and i look up. it's actually two cars, one with adam and one with his wife. i put the phone away and stand up.

adam smiles weakly. "hey dude, my shift is over, so i'm just going to put you in my car, i'll pick it up tomorrow."

he gestures towards the passenger door of his car and walks to the other car.

wtf! he knows i can't drive with my condition. oh yeah. smart car. i get in the passenger seat and fasten the seat belt.

the car leaves the parking lot and merges in to traffic. a computerized female voice says "arriving at seraphim diner in...fifteen...minutes."

exactly fifteen minutes later the car parks itself behind the diner. i walk in the back door and in to the prep kitchen. people look at me. some have names, some don't. some like me, some don't. i wash my hands, find a cutting board and a knife, then realize i have no idea what i'm supposed to be doing.

a girl without a name walks up to me. "hey, i'm glad you came back. we need california rolls for dinner and maybe some ziti. then you can stock the kitchen and go home." she gives me an artificial smile.

all of this takes me about ninety minutes. every so often i glance up from my tasks. here and there government mandated signs are posted on the walls. safe food temperatures, basic first aid, federal minimum wage.

the one i keep looking at details the employment rights of "wave people". the feds consider me disabled. since my employer gets most of my salary rebated by the i.r.s, i have a right to demand customized video memory cues and memstim programs.

i don't make these demands. it means a lot to me to remember how to do something. my california rolls have all seven ingredients. i stock almost everything on the proper shelves the first time.

as i throw my trash in the dumpster, i smell pot. the nameless girl and a nameless guy are smoking just around the corner. they didn't look to see who was throwing out the trash.

"....wave people. just stops what he's doing around two o clock and walks out without a word, adam has to go drag him back."

"why did he bother?"

"well. he's not so bad some days. plus we get a lot of his salary back from the feds."

"have they thought about just not paying him? not like he would remember."

i round the corner and walk into a cloud of smoke and laughter. they both look at me, startled and then frightened. the guy hands a pipe to me like some kind of peace offering.

"can't. my memory is already fucked. remember?"

it seems like i am trying for sarcasm, but i don't know what that word means.

i form my hands into fists.

the dumpster clears it's throat.

to say that this changes everything..... gross understatement.

i look at the dumpster. it is still an industrial sized metallic trash container . green paint giving way to rust in spots, Central Texas Refuse stenciled on the side facing me. but it has suddenly acquired sentience. and it is talking to me.

"you didn't pay for anger, so i'm not allowing that indulgence. are you ready to be a chalkboard again?"

to be continued

r.i.p. lux interior, frontman for the cramps. b. 1947-d. 2009.

it's a pretty fair assumption that anyone who would read my blog has heard the cramps. they were punk before there was punk. i mean, some people date punk from about 1976 when the ramones, heartbreakers, blondie, television, et. all began playing c.b.g.b.'s in new york.

1976. the cramps formed in 1972. a band out of time if there ever was one.

his passing comes only about a month after the death of ron asheton, founding guitarist of the stooges, the original proto punk band. also this week, i heard on the radio that this is the fiftieth anniversary of the plane crash that took the life of buddy holly, a music pioneer so original that he could only be labeled in the context of what came AFTER him.

so rock music is at least half a century old. that's a hard number for me to wrap my head around.

almost as hard of a number as sixty two, the stated age of lux interior.

recorded media seems to cause a sort of time displacement. elizabeth taylor will always be the liz taylor of Suddenly Last Summer or Cleopatra. we don't have to think about her being in her eighties if we choose not to. 

this same time displacement effect hits me when i think of someone from a band like the cramps or the stooges hitting their sixth decade. recordable media of all kinds hold these people suspended in time, wild, crazy, maybe bare chested and drug fueled. rocking like there is no tomorrow, no future, only NOW. RIGHT NOW.

that these people dare to age, dare to live in the same time stream as us regular folks, seems almost deceitful. that our stars dare to have the same mundane problems as us, that they would die ordinary deaths in a hospital or while watching t.v. at home, seems to betray the idea of rock stars needing to die before they get old.

it is almost like there are two parallel time streams that cross over meet only to inform us that someone is not the person you remember from a decades old album cover or some concert back in 19-whenever.

i will remember lux interior by playing the cramps rockinandreeelininauklandnewzealand c.d. really loud tonight. 

 condolences to his wife and family.

blast wave

a bizarre coda to the previous posting....... a little before 8 this evening i heard a KA-THUWMP noise followed immediately by the back of my house shuddering violently. this was way to powerful to be my friend the raccoon. what freaked me out mostly was that it sounded a bit like someone slamming the back door.

the problem with this is that my place is a very old (c. 1923) shotgun cottage that was divided down the middle and added on to to make a ramshackle duplex. my longtime neighbor moved in october, so the building has been unusually quiet. this noise sounded like an angry person slamming the back door of the unoccupied apartment. not cool. i would know if anyone was moving in.

the noise also sounded like a large, dead limb might have fallen from the tree overhanging the house. said tree presumably being how the aforementioned raccoon gets on the roof. 

so once again here i am walking around the house with a flashlight. i shined the light into the windows of the empty apartment and onto the roof of the building. nothing.

so i went back inside. soon, i heard sirens, lots of them . they were coming from somewhere to the northeast of my block, the rear of my place facing east-northeast. the sirens went on for a real long time.

i began checking the internet. about an hour later the austin-american statesman website reported that there had been a gas explosion at an address maybe a 5-10 minute walk from me.

apparently, a house exploded right as firefighters were arriving to investigate a gas smell. one firefighter was taken to the hospital with a knee injury.. three occupants of the house, a mother and two daughters, were taken to st. davids suffering from gas inhalation.

these are early reports, so i hope that this is as bad as it gets. i hope the mother and daughters haven't been too traumatized and get back on their feet soon.

for me to feel the blast at my place, houses on either side of this house probably suffered structural damage, at least had windows blown out. people inside would have been scared half to death.

that's all. it's a strange world sometimes. take care of yourselves.

bad places, real and imaginary

we heard gunshots from time to time.  there would be a brief pause in whatever task we were occupied with - typically me loading a bong and kyle tuning or re-stringing his bass - and one of us would ask:

"wattaya think?"

and the other would venture his opinion:

"hmm... four or five rapid shots, kind of a flat, hollow crack .... i'm gonna guess a low caliber auto, .22 or .25"

the other person would nod his head. but sometimes there were disagreements.

"check out that boom. i'm guessing a .357"

"dude, you don't know what you're talking about. that was a shotgun."

i still can't believe i was that nonchalant about how some of our neighbors frequently shot at each other over (most likely) crack deals gone bad. i'm older now. these days, if i heard gunshots that close to my house, i would hit the floor, call 911, and make plans to move. like, immediately.

but i haven't heard gunshots in a real long time. the above story was a typical scene when i lived near downtown houston in the late 1980's. i lived in a bad neighborhood for a variety of reasons, most of which i tend to cringe at now.

why did i want to live there? i grew up in a suburb of houston, miles and miles of urban sprawl between me and anything that might excite or interest me. there was no culture, high or low, where i grew up. no museums or art galleries, but also no live music venues, no eccentric or colorful characters, no independent media. i might have been nineteen before i bought a book or record at anyplace other than baybrook mall.

in my late teens, i began tagging along with friends when they would go to punk shows in houston. sometimes we would go during the daytime to check out a neighborhood called montrose. this part of town was known to most people as "the place where all the homosexuals lived". that didn't matter to me. i have always thought of myself as an outcast, so i  kind of liked the idea of a group of people marginalized by society-at-large taking over a part of town and creating their own little enclave. i was never uncomfortable seeing men with large mustaches or women walking arm in arm.

where you have a gay community, you tend to also have cool things like record stores where purple hared salesclerks could tell you off the top of their heads when the new nick cave album was due out or when black flag was coming to town. that was real important to me at the time. so was wanting to find the kind of place where i could be myself.

so i got the idea that i should move to oz rather than trying to bum rides there on the weekends. a couple of years later and i was living as an urban pioneer surrounded by hostile crackheads. i had seriously romanticized life in inner loop houston. yeah, there were a lot of cool things, but there was also drugs. lots of drugs. and prostitutes. and aids. and people partying their way through dead end lives, just like i was doing at the time. oh, and thanks to crack there was crime. lots of crime. i got mugged and assaulted once walking home from work. once the initial shock had worn off, i took a certain perverse pride in living in such a dangerous place.

but i never really became all that tough or street smart. that i never got hurt really bad was probably due more to dumb luck than anything else. after the mugging, i began seeing my neighborhood and my lifestyle as not being so much exciting or "bohemian", but rather just dirty and sleazy.

***********

nineteen years later and life is much more laid back. the dangerous places i lived in in houston have mostly been plowed under and turned in to condominiums. the last time i visited, i saw no obvious hookers or drug dealers. that is undoubtedly a good thing. i am realistic enough these days to know that the seamier side of life contains much misery and early death.

but i couldn't help myself, i felt a little let down that things were so clean and safe looking. i think my problem in my twenties was that i confused proximity to danger with the level of meaning in my life. what's life without risk?

i thought of living with danger and risk just before christmas. it was about midnight. i was getting ready for bed. mostly undressed. i had just turned the television off, leaving the house eerily silent, when suddenly there was a very loud, kind of scraping noise at the back of the house. this was followed by a loud thump coming from the roof. then there came what sounded like footsteps on my roof, someone walking the length of the house and back again. i wondered if i was imagining all of this, but i looked over at my cats. both of them were staring raptly at the ceiling.

someone is on my roof? all i could think was that it must be some idiot playing a joke who had gotten the wrong house. but i was also reminded of my years in h-town, when someone sneaking around your house was rarely a good thing. the steps were continuing as if the person was stomping in a circle. the house was actually shaking a little.

i thought about calling the cops, but i still have a macho streak in me. i wanted to confront this jerk and scare the hell out of him. i frantically threw on some jeans and work boots. as i was doing this, a loud scraping noise came from the front of the house, followed by an enormous thump on my front porch just feet from my door. it sounded like my unwelcome visitor had swung down off the roof by way of the front awning.

i grabbed a huge maglite flashlight, the kind police often use-in addition to being very bright, it's also heavy enough to hurt someone. my plan was that i would momentarily blind the perp with the light and tell him in no uncertain terms to leave and never come back. if he tried anything, i would hit him upside the head and then call the cops.

heart pounding and adrenaline coursing through me, i turned the locks and threw open the door, maglite at the ready.

there on my porch was the biggest damn raccoon i have ever seen. really, he was as big as a medium sized dog. he looked at me. i looked at him. i closed the door and went to bed.