Microstory 1589: The Bear Ate My Tail

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Prompt

My son came home crying after spending the weekend at his mother’s, but he wouldn’t tell me why.

Botner

He was never very clear about what happened to him there. He hated to talk about it, so I had to pry it out of him. “Mom, there was a bear,” he said. A bear? “Mom, it ripped me apart and ate my tail, and the bear was a monster!”

Something was different. My mind kept clicking back to the bear, and I realized my son had a horror story to tell. “Sylar?”

I tried to listen to him, but there was something in his tone of voice that told me he didn’t want to tell me. “The bear ate my tail off. It went down the throat and ripped through the skin. There’s nothing there anymore, Mom. It’s not my tail anymore. It’s no longer me. There’s nothing.”

I stared at him, wanting to believe him. But I knew better. I picked him up and held him. “But I just saw you that day. You’ve got your tail, baby. I saw it.”

He smiled at me and squeezed me. “Mom, don’t you believe me? It’s just a story that people tell so they can scare kids and get their money.” A kid shivering in the woods, not knowing what happened to him, unable to tell me anything about it? I wondered if his mother had made him write that story. That was the only reason a six-year-old boy would lie to his mom. He wasn’t telling the truth.

Conclusion

My ex-wife and I have a pretty decent relationship on the whole, but things get a little competitive when it comes to our son. It’s like she wants to throw me off my game, and make it hard for me to get him to be honest with me when it’s my time with him. We have a complicated schedule. I have him in my tree for the five weekdays, and then she gets him for the weekend, and then we do it again, except I hold onto him for that next weekend, and she ends up with the weekdays after that. I don’t know why we came up with that. Or ya know what, I think I do. This is just another way for her to control where he is, and what he does. As squirrels, we have to be really careful about how we raise our children, or we really will get eaten by bears. I guess she thought I would be scared he was telling the truth, and he truly was attacked by a bear. I have to get her back somehow, as petty as that sounds. Perhaps I’ll steal her winter nuts.

Microstory 1570: Vatutotew

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Prompt

Some tiny little creature has been living in my utility room, and I know it’s not a mouse. I got a good look at it once, and I saw intelligence behind its eyes.

Botner

I think I’m scared to look at it again, because I don’t want to see just another grisly rat corpse on my kitchen floor. Or to know what it is that has been chewing up my animal crackers. The rats in the basement have been a constant thing. I’ve bought things that deter rodents, and I put small amounts of poison in the walls and floors. It’s always the same: for three weeks, they are gone. Three weeks. Then they come back. The wads of mouse poop in the utility room? I’ve never seen that before. I know I haven't been in the basement for a while. There are doors in the walls leading into the house, I think to keep me from getting killed. I think I should have all of my meals in the kitchen. Not so much for convenience’s sake, but because there are mice. I can’t find my glasses. I have one set, and one set that I am pretty sure they aren’t in. I’m pretty sure that they are in the damn utility room. And, you know what? I know my husband bought another pair of glasses, and I...

Conclusion

...have to wait until my birthday before he’ll give them to me. He probably hid them in the utility room too, which means, if I want to get a better look at the weird creature living in there, I’ll have to go in there first to retrieve the glasses. Even though I won’t be able to see very well, I can still protect myself, with a long-sleeve shirt, and elbow and knee pads. I look like an idiot, but I’m not taking any chances. If it turns out to be a mouse, then fine. If it’s a rat, then not as fine, but I’ll still probably survive. If it’s an evil alien bent on the destruction of the human race, then...then I don’t know, but I’m not going in there unprepared. I have a bat. I slowly crack the door, but then throw it open. It’s easier to see tiny animals when they move, so I would rather it scurry away fast than sneak behind me so I can’t even tell it’s there. Nothing. I see no movement. I lift the laundry basket, nothing moves. I open all of the cabinets, and shine a flashlight in them. Not there either. I open the dryer, but it’s insane to think something that small would exert enough force to get inside. I bend down to check the washer too, confident in the same assessment. It’s in there, staring at me, not like it’s scared, but confused as to why I’m in what it must think is its territory. It looks like a little furry human, gray, with a tail. It turns its head slightly, and looks at me more with one eye, which is something a person would do when sizing somebody up. It is as smart as I thought, or maybe even smarter. Finally, it extends an arm. “My name is Vatutotew,” it says politely. “Have I misidentified this room as abandoned?”