A Short-Short Story

  

 

 

It was early spring, but plenty cold, frost on the ground, and I was running to the outhouse, jeans unzipped unsnapped unbuckled, holding them up with my hands, running to be first, when I saw it. Perched on top of the outhouse, it was huge, like a giant bat, dark and furred, with long fangs and its breath fogging around its forked tongue.

I stopped like I’d hit a wall and my jeans fell around my feet and I peed on them as I fell over, flat on my face on the cold ground. Then I heard hollering as Juner came out of the house behind me and saw it, too, and the dogs took to barking.

I managed to roll over and sit up as Pa came busting out from the barn carrying an ax, yelling and looking for something to chop, and Ma slammed out the door with the shotgun looking for something to shoot. But both were looking down, expecting wolves or mountain lions or something, not looking up where the beast had lifted from the outhouse, circled once and then vanished up up up.

Juner was sitting flat on his butt with his mouth hanging open, and the dogs had stopped barking and were whining with their ears back and their tails down. I somehow managed to get myself out of the pile of steaming jeans and Juner got himself up on his feet. We were both looking up so Ma and Pa looked up too, into the pale empty sky.

Then we all looked at the outhouse which was tipping to the west, where it usually tipped east. Things got even more confusing after that, as Juner swore he’d seen a green-scaled dragon with fire in its mouth and I swore it was a giant bat with fangs and a forked tongue and the dogs shared no opinions other than “big and scary.”

Thing is, though, we all took it serious, and I know that because not once, that day or ever, did I get switched or scolded or teased for standing in the yard butt-naked, peeing on my pants. Juner never said so, but I’m betting, like me, he wishes it would come back, just once, so we could see it again.

*** 

 

[So, I was working on my daily poem (prompt: unexpected). I wrote a poem, but it was boring. Then, as I was falling asleep, this came to me, complete. It needs a title.]