First Brush with Evil

When I first heard the commotion outside, I had no clue what was going on.  My friend Tyler and I were playing computer games inside when we heard Ty’s four yorkies going nuts outside, yapping and howling and growling in their tiny little useless lapdog way.  Ty screamed “POSSUMS!”, grabbed a baseball bat that was kept by the back door, apparently for just this purpose, and raced outside with a stupid grin on his face.  Intrigued, I followed.

A family of possums crouched on the back privacy fence, taunting the dogs.  There was a big mean daddy looking one, a slightly smaller mama with only three legs, and two babies, who might have been cute if it weren’t for their snarling, drooling, hissing, red-eyed faces, which they apparently inherited from their parents.  The yorkies clustered below, bouncing and yapping madly.  With no pause for explanation or warning, Ty gripped the bat like a pool cue, lined up his shot, and knocked the daddy possum backward off the wall POP!, into the backyard of our neighbors, who had no children or pets and rarely spent any time in said backyard.  Frightened or startled or both, the babies followed their father over the wall.  

The mother was made of sterner stuff, though, and reared up on her back legs, looking for all the world like a rabid little demon threatening to rain destruction on our heads for our transgression.  She swiped at Ty with her stump, drooling wildly.  Ty danced back, looked at me while holding out the bat, and asked, “Wanna take the shot?”

Of course I did.

Of course, I also thought I could improve on Ty’s hitting style.  These things were scary!, and surely called for more than an “8-ball to the corner pocket” approach.  Wielding the bat like the Babe himself, I called my shot by pointing to deep centerfield, assumed the stance, and reared back.  As I swung, I heard Ty shouting, strangely slow and drawn out, what sounded like “NOOOOOoooooooooo!  Not liiiiiiiiike thaaaaaaaaaat!”, but it was too late.  I’d already committed to knocking this little monster out of the park.

The bat connected with the mama possum with a resounding, meaty SMACK! and she disappeared.  For half a second I thought I’d destroyed the stupid thing, and my jaw dropped in awestruck horror at what I’d done.  I looked at Ty, seeking confirmation or consolation or maybe congratulations.  He stared back at me, white faced and speechless, and gestured at the bat, which I still clutched in my hands. It was oddly heavy and unbalanced.

Creeping realization swept across my brain as I turned my head, again in slow motion, to see the mama possum wrapped around the end of the bat.  Her teeth and claws were slowly shredding it.  Her tail squeezed the bat like a python with its prey.  Green, rotten-smelling gunk leaked from her mouth.  Later on I learned that the green gunk was a by-product of her “play dead” reflex, but at the time I thought she was vomiting forth pure stinky evil.  And those demonic red eyes shone bright in the moonlight, pinning me in their gaze like some sort of modern day medusa.  I was paralyzed with fear, and dumbly held the bat, wondering what to do.  Shaking only seemed to piss the thing off and make it grip the bat even tighter, and smacking it against the privacy fence might not dislodge it, and even if it did, that would simply move the possum from the bat to the ground where the yorkies congregated, eager to throw themselves headlong into their own destruction.  I was still pondering the solution to my situation when the mama slowly, purposefully began moving up the bat toward me.  My painful death shone from those blazing red eyes, implacable and unavoidable.

I’d like to say I reacted calmly in the face of danger.  I’d really like to say that.  But Ty was there and saw it all so why lie?  I screamed like a little girl and flung the bat, possum and all, over the fence.  As I was making sure I hadn’t pissed myself, I heard the possums regrouping on the other side.  The sound of Ty’s hysterical laughter slowly penetrated my awareness.

“Home Run!” he shrieked, in between gasping breaths.  “That’s the ballgame!”

Our neighbors returned what was left of the bat to us the next day.  Ty kept one piece.  I still have the other, a grim reminder of my first brush with evil…