Caedes

23 | not her

Thursday, 5:33 P.M.

Lights flashing and sirens howling, two patrol cars flew past the Jeep. The coyote jumped on top of a park bench and then clean over what had to be a ten-foot chain link fence. One of the cop cars continued down the road while the other stopped next to the bench with screeching tires. Two cops got out and emptied the clips of their handguns in the direction the animal had disappeared.

Someone screamed.

People started poking their heads out of the nearby stores, but no one made a move to help the injured woman still sitting in the middle of the intersection. Blood had started to pool beneath her shaking form. Too much blood. Her time was running out.

Cris reached for the door handle. If an ambulance hadn't nearly crashed into the woman's car right then, she would have jumped out there and helped that woman. The frustration and fear on her face were slowly replaced by relief as she watched the paramedics treat the woman. Only when they wheeled her into the back, did Cris take her eyes off the scene.

"They weren't kidding..." she mumbled, rolling the window up again. "I... I thought those bears were some freak anomaly or something, but that—that thing was the size of a full-grown wolf."

Stalker barked.

Cris flinched. "You're the perfect size," she said, leaning forward to scratch him behind one of his ears, most likely for her own comfort. "And you probably wouldn't take my arm off with a single bite, would you?"

The little fox purred and curled into a ball on my lap once more.

"Guess that's a yes." She laughed, but it sounded forced. "Let's get outta here before that thing comes back."

With the ambulance now gone, the street felt quiet, deserted even. Most of the bystanders had shuffled out of the stores and left the sidewalks either in cars or on foot, and the traffic jam had dissolved. The man in the car behind us was still blaring his horn until Cris hit the accelerator and we left him in the dust. Literally. Now that we were on the outskirts of town, the familiar reddish-brown dirt was back.

"I'm guessing it's not just something in the water that makes them grow like that," I said.

Cris shook her head. "I'm still trying to wrap my head around what I just saw. I just...can't comprehend it. Ask me about that coyote in a couple hours and I probably wouldn't believe myself anymore. It's funny how that works, huh?" She was rambling now. "You're supposed to believe what you see, right? But that doesn't work when your brain keeps telling you that what you're seeing is impossible."

"If it makes you feel any better, I saw it too."

And it wasn't the strangest thing I'd seen today. How would she react if I told her about my visions? I'd probably be hitchhiking the rest of the way. Maybe I should tell her about the oversized roadrunners instead. That sure made me laugh.

"I'm not sure it does..." She unscrewed a small plastic bottle with one hand and took a huge sip of water. "Accepting that my eyes played tricks on me somehow sounds like the better option. I mean, that was only a coyote. Can you imagine how huge that bear in Yosemite must have been?"

"He sure made that tent he was shredding look small."

"Right." She took a deep breath. "Seeing is one thing. Comprehending this is actually truly happening... That's just a tiny bit frightening."

Fair point. If you thought about it like that, she was one of the lucky few. Trying to convince a normal person of any of this would be near impossible. Humans relied so much on their senses, yet when it came down to it, if something seemed illogical, they were so quick to dismiss it. Like it couldn't possibly have happened. Hey, there's a seven-foot bear running right at me, I must be tripping.