Two nights ago Shirley told him about a raccoon she’d seen in the backyard rummaging through trash. A raccoon, she’d explained, didn’t come out in daylight and bare its teeth unless it was rabid. A raccoon can easily rip open an aluminum can with its claws. In an attack, a raccoon goes straight for the eyes.
She could have simply said, “I think the raccoon in the backyard has rabies,” and left it there. No, she had to provide an encyclopedia of information on raccoon behavior.
He slapped at the mosquito buzzing around his ear. His right leg started shaking. A long time he stood there thinking about that damned rabid raccoon.
Squinting, he looked right to left and saw nothing but darkness. A mosquito bit him on the exposed flesh where his silk shirt had been torn.
Another noise, like claws sharpened against a rock, sounded directly behind him. He whirled around and the noise stopped.
He could feel it watching him, waiting for him to move again so it could match his footsteps… and then it would jump on his back and sink its rabid fangs into his neck and scratch his eyes out with its aluminum-can-ripping claws.
Scriccccccccck!
“Damn this!” and took flight. Just as he was approaching cruising speed, his left foot touched down on a loose rock and he went sliding down the trail, face first.
“Eric,” a woman said, “don’t run. It’s me.”
He lay perfectly still on the ground.
“Eric?” The voice came closer: “Eric, I can’t see you. Where are you?”
He placed the voice. “Here… here I am!”
A dark figure approached and knelt beside him. “Eric, are you all right?”
“I’m all right.” He rubbed his knee. “I slipped. Mrs. Harris, what you doing out here?” She smelled of vinegar.
She took a while to respond. “The same thing you’re doing.”
“Body-surfing down rocks?”
She laughed, a pretentious chuckle. “Take my hand, I’ll help you up.”
He couldn’t see it. “Here,” she said. “Right in front of you.”
He yelped, snatching his hand back. “Shit!” Something she was holding, something sharp. Flexing his hand he felt a thick liquid…
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry, my ass! I’m bleeding like a stuck pig! What you got in your hand?”
“A knife.”
“A knife? What you need with a…?”
He experienced the same bone-chilling fear as when the rabid raccoon started tracking him.
“Give me your belt,” she said, casual tone, as if she were asking him to pass the salt and pepper.
He started to say, “I don’t need a tourniquet,” but was struck with another epiphany, this one telling him to run and to run fast. Squeezing his wrist, stanching the blood flow, he tried to get up.
“Don’t!” she said. “You move I’ll cut your throat.”
A bullfrog croaked. Farther away an owl hooted. Death calls, Eric thought. He could take her. He would have to take her. She’d flipped her lid, blew it a mile high. One kick, he thought, one kick to her head.
“Give me your belt,” she repeated.
“I don’t have a belt. Don’t worry, I’ll wrap the sleeve of my shirt around it… if you let me get up.”
“Then give me your socks.”
Her head was right there; he couldn’t quite see it but from where her voice came it was definitely within kicking range.
“You got the wrong idea. Give me your socks. I’m not asking you, I’m telling you.”
“You want the socks, you can have the damn socks.” He bent forward and fumbled with the string on his tennis shoe.
“Hurry up, please.”
“Damn! I’m working with one hand here. Maybe if I could get a little help.” The smell of vinegar grew stronger, and he kicked out as hard as he could. By the feel of it, he’d planted one to her stomach. He sprang to his feet and hurried to the figure on the ground gasping for air.
“Who got the wrong idea now?” Two more kicks. “Here are my socks! Shoes, too!” Another kick, this one with the ball of his foot, and she yelled in pain. “Cut me, will ya!” She started crawling away. “You running now, ain’t ya?”
He let her get away a bit before starting after her. No need to hurry, he now had the upper hand.
Later he would kick himself for not running away. He most certainly could have.
She was hurt, sucking air, retreating. One more kick; he just had to deliver one more kick to let her know he wasn’t someone to be played with.
His right leg reared back, posed to punt her ass at least ten yards, he heard an explosion and saw a bluish- white flame shoot straight up. He didn’t need an epiphany to tell him what it was.
She got to her feet, wheezing and coughing.
“You still want my socks? You can have em!”
“Get… heh heh heh… on… heh heh heh… the… heh heh heh… ground!”
Eric sat down where he stood. “Is this regarding the ten I owe you? I swear I’ll pay you when I get it. I don’t have it now. I didn’t forget I owe you.” She didn’t respond. “Why you doing this to me? We’re almost family, you know, sort of. I’ve always considered you as family. Really!”
“The socks, please!”
Eric took off his shoes and socks and threw the socks at her.
“The pants and underwear, please!”
“What? What for? Why? Hell no! I’m not out here naked. You crazy!”
“Give them to me or die with them on!” Her tone finally shifted, enraged and impatient.
He wriggled out of his Levis and Fruit of the Loom and tossed them to her. Should he scream?
“Lie on your stomach,” she ordered, “and spread your arms out!”
“Shut up! Do what I tell you and you might live.”
Might, he thought, as he lay face down on the ground and spread his arms.
She stepped near. “Don’t be a fool!” A shoe poked his kidney. “One hand at a time, put your hands behind your back.” He felt something hard and cold at his neck. “Do you understand?”
Covering his head with both hands: “Uh-huh.”
“Not your head! On your back!” He moved his hands to his back and felt a knee weighting his fingers. “Don’t you dare move!”
With his socks or underwear, he couldn’t tell which, she wrapped his wrists together. Just then, to make matters worse, he felt something crawling in his pubic. She tied his feet together with his pants, he figured, by the thickness of the material.
Semi-naked, hand lacerated, hog-tied with his own clothes, his favorite silk shirt almost torn to shreds, a nutty witch with a gun and her knee on his fingers and a poisonous bug hatching poisonous baby bugs in his privacy, Eric started crying, hysterically.
