The last few beams of sunlight glistened and reflected off the river, although the moon was already starting to push and grab its way above the horizon and the first few drops of rain were falling. A very lovely evening for such a horrible day. Victoria hurried across the sidewalk, a baguette and cup of coffee—joe, as her grandfather would’ve called it—in one hand and a book titled Monstrous Folklore of the 16th Century in the other. The clock tower began to chime eight bells. A car swerved out of its lane and corrected itself. Victoria stepped on a newspaper floating through a puddle, the headline reading Bear attacks on the rise—don’t go outside tonight!
Lovely.
The rain picked up. Victoria wished she had a hood.
The bear attacks weren’t anything new, and everyone who was paying attention knew it was not bears. The attacks were too strategic, too poised. Some people hypothesized it to be some grotesque horror. Imagine that. Victoria passed a neighbor on his front porch playing the ukulele. He nodded at her, and she gave him a curious look. Who plays their ukulele in the rain? Only one person had survived it, the bear attacks, two Fridays ago. Their identity had not been disclosed, but it was rumored to be a child who disappeared from school on the same day. However, there were also rumors that it was not a bear but a loose penguin from the zoo, so Victoria took everything she heard lately with a grain of salt.
However, escaped zoo animals weren’t so hard to believe, considering she was feeding 14 stray cats in her backyard and her neighbors still didn’t know.
Maybe the cats were the bear.
Hmm.
Victoria’s door heaved open with an unsatisfying creeeaaak. She tossed her book on the table in the hallway. Her boots went tap tap tap on the wood floors, taking up space in the silence, as she put her baguette—the packaging now a bit wet—on the counter.
She sighed and flopped down onto her recliner chair, exhaling and inhaling and absorbing the white noise of her quiet home, the hum of the lightbulbs, the pitter patter of the rain outside, the occasional car splashing through puddles. Then she grabbed the TV remote and turned it on.
“—An anonymous source claims the attacks are, in fact, from a bear, but certainly not a typical one. The monster is described as a four legged creature with four blue, glowing eyes. It can walk on all fours or bipedally. The mayor is considering enforcing a curfew for all citizens until it is caught. Multiple sightings—”
Victoria sighed, turned off the TV and went upstairs, tossing and turning in bed for hours after.
☁︎
The morning was nicer, if you can call cloudy but unbearably humid an improvement. She hadn’t gotten much sleep, but the morning was nice. Refreshing.
Victoria was in the kitchen, reheating a frozen waffle, thinking about life (or maybe death) when her phone buzzed. It was her mother, again. They hadn’t spoken to each other since she’d inherited the house, packed up her things and left.
She took her waffle and her fresh hot tea into the living room, leaving her phone on the counter to buzz until her mother gave up. Condensation bloomed on the window panes when she turned on the AC. The birds outside were loud.
When she was finished with breakfast, she grabbed her backpack and her phone and got in the car. Her neighbor’s ukulele was still sitting on the front porch deserted, looking waterlogged and sad, and she resisted the urge to dry it off and tune it. She would be late for work if she did that. She pressed harder on the gas pedal.
…to be continued.
Artwork by Maddie