A Harrowing Walk Home

A Harrowing Walk Home

Priscilla stepped outside and breathed in the stifling summer heat. She’d finished her shift in the kitchen at Nick’s Diner and looked forward to a relaxing evening at home. Her favorite show was on the telly tonight, and she'd make it there just in time.

Yet something was troubling her as she stood alone in the back alley just behind Nick's.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” she said to no one in particular. “But my resume’ is a bit sparse on the grittier roles. Can we start this over? With a bit more pizzazz?”

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Thunder boomed down the greasy back-alley behind Nick's Diner. The restaurant's back door banged open, and Priscilla hurried through. Pausing beneath the lamp above the door, she dug through her purse for her Lucky Strikes and lighter.

Out here, behind the hundred-year-old greasy spoon, the heat and humidity felt as stifling as the kitchen she’d left behind. Thunder boomed again, closer this time, as a gust of wind rose and swirled around her, carrying with it the rot and stink of three trash dumpsters parked along the opposite wall.

She flicked her Zippo and relished a deep inhale of smoke. Then she reached deeper into her purse and extracted a shiny nickel-plated revolver.

“Hang on a minute!” Priscilla protested as she stuffed the gun back into her purse. “Smoking is okay, but I don’t do guns. That's on my resume'. And what’s with the name Priscilla? Can you come up with something… I dunno… sexier?”

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Drucilla knew that now wasn’t the time to wield the pistol. When the situation demanded it, the gun would be there.

“Drucilla? Seriously? This isn't the Victorian age.”

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Mia took a second drag from her cigarette, then one corner of her mouth quirked up in a half-smile. She set off at a brisk pace, hoping to reach her flat before the sky unleashed its fury. Mia fought against the rising wind as she neared the alley’s mouth at Benson Avenue, when a softball-size hailstone streaked down like a meteor and exploded upon the cobblestones before her.

Icy fragments peppered her shins and left two bloodless nicks on her skin as she skidded to a stop in fear of taking a direct hit from a hailstone the size of a grapefruit. Hands on her hips, she shifted her gaze about impatiently, her right shoe tapping the pavement.

“Can I get home in one piece, please?” Mia said.

-----

Then several incredibly small hailstones, none of them larger than the kernels of sleet that covered Bradenburg in winter, bounced lightly on the cobblestones. Relieved, Mia dropped her arms to her sides and set off once more for home.

She neared Benson Avenue when the ground began to quake. The trash dumpsters behind her rattled and clanked as an immense, looming shape lumbered into view, its thickly furred form silhouetted against the lights beyond.

It was some terrifying creature, perhaps twenty feet tall, with arms thicker than light poles, its bulbous, misshapen head festooned with six randomly placed eyes, each of a different size and blinking at varying intervals, but all of them glowing with a malevolent red light.

Mia paused and crossed her arms as if dismissing the apparition as nothing more than an illusion. How presumptuous of her, to think this danger would simply disappear in the blink of an eye.

But then she recalled the legend – of the Thunder Beast, told since her childhood around campfires and at bedtime – of a creature that once summoned could not be banished by anyone or anything, save the strength of the person in the beast’s own presence. The ghoulish creature always appeared before a violent summer thunderstorm, perhaps shocked from dormancy by the storm's energy.

"Get me outta here! This is bullshit!” Mia shouted, as she looked behind herself for a means of escape. But she was trapped - behind her, the alley ended at a solid brick wall. Also, the door behind Nick's was locked for the night, and only the owner had a key.

Mia shook her head and cursed, then swung back to face a creature that did not kill its victims quickly, but instead subjected them to death by a slow and agonizing process of internal digestion. Some said death could take weeks, a demise filled with unimaginable pain.

With no remaining options, Mia drew the revolver from her purse. It glittered in the lamp light as she prepared to fire. She flicked off the safety, drew a bead on the monster, and fired one shot after another. All six bullets struck the beast dead-on, splattering free a yellow puslike liquid, but the monster’s only reaction was to roar with deafening loudness, the thud of each footfall shaking the ground. One forked bolt of lightning, then another, struck the creature, and its eyes now glowed more brightly.

“Oh come on! Listen – I did you a favor! I emptied the whole goddamn revolver into that thing! Give me a break? I had my hair done yesterday, and I don’t want the heavy rain mussing it up. The storm's only a few minutes away and I have a date tomorr – ”

But this crisis demanded extraordinary grit and determination, and Mia was ready. She summoned her courage for this final task - to spare her own life and reach the safety of home before the storm.

More importantly, she had to vanquish this hulking demon for all the townsfolk she'd known and loved since childhood. They'd suffered far too long from the cruelties of this otherworldly creature. She spun left and right, her heart in her throat, and there it was.

“How could I have missed it?” she said while rolling her eyes. A huge, army-green-colored weapon of some sort lay just five feet to her right. As she lifted and hefted it, she realized it was a rocket launcher, and in pristine condition. The front of the tubular weapon was fitted with a formidable armor piercing RPG4 dash X rocket propelled grenade, indicated by the white markings on its side.

By all appearances, the launcher was straightforward to use and was already primed to fire. She slung the weapon across her right shoulder and took aim through the square plastic bullseye site. The creature continued lumbering forward. It picked up a two-ton dumpster and hurled it down the alley like a toy. It whistled over Mia’s head, missing her by inches, then smashed to pieces and sent rotten trash in all directions.

She carefully retook her aim and squeezed the trigger. With a loud whoosh and a plume of searing flame, the grenade streaked forth and struck the Thunder Beast’s head. The rocket exploded in a furious flash of heat, and a deafening concussion knocked Mia to the pavement. She lay groaning on her back as a peppering of brick fragments and pulverized bone rained down about her. Raising her head, still dizzy from the shockwave, she realized she had slain her foe.

“Holy shit,” she said, gasping. “That was intense!”

Though her face was smudged with soot, her hair was miraculously intact. If one hadn’t known she’d just fired a heavy military-grade weapon at close range, one might have thought she’d just exited a beauty salon. Once back on her feet, she tugged down at the hem of her daringly short skirt, glared in annoyance, and hurried home past the Thunder Beast's enormous headless carcass.

Despite the intense flashes of lightning and roars of thunder, Mia reached the Bradley Building before the sky fell. Back in her flat, Mia viewed herself in the mirror just inside door, admiring the sinuous dragon tattoos along her well-muscled forearms, both glistening with sweat. She beheld herself - more gorgeous, stronger, and tougher than ever.

“Damn straight!" she said. "Oh, by the way, I'd like to work with you again sometime?”

Then her beautiful face softened, and she couldn’t help but think what an exciting evening this had been – filled with lethal danger – from which she had emerged unscathed. It was time for some dinner and a glass or two of fine red wine.

Seconds later, the sky opened up, and cold, heavy drops hammered the window. She walked over to it and gazed out through its many small panes of glass. At long last, she was safe and sound at home, after having slain the dreaded Thunder Beast, the bane of existence for centuries here in the quaint, picturesque town of Bradenburg.