An abnormal something floated out from behind my house.  The dim orange glow of the streetlights briefly flirted with it, but soon yielded to the hug of shadow as this peculiar thing continued on towards me.

    “What is that?” I asked myself.  I observed its faint bulk jostling the darkness for a moment, and then I pondered, “What’s fuzzy, black with a white stripe down its back, and is coming this way?  Hmm…wait, I’ve been smelling skunk the past few mornings.” 

    The lack of luminescence failed to conceal the truth any longer: that vile beast seemingly gliding over the blades of grass was a skunk, its mouth profuding human entrails, intending to viciously maul and then consume any life in its path, in which I happened to be.  This supreme predator, bearing its razor-sharp teeth that looked to be extraordinarily proficient at blood sucking, growled thunderously and charged me, plunging the world into a horrendously violent series of tremors.

    My rational side pondered my predicament: “How are we going to get on the bus without getting skunkified?”

    “I wouldn’t worry about that,” my…special…side gasped as I frantically ran to the other side of the yard, away from the skunk. “I’m more concerned about how we’re going to get on the school bus without this skunk’s jaws pulverizing our entire body!”

    I reached the garden and hobbled to a stop; fleeing to safety with a book bag wasn’t easy on the skeleton.

    “Maybe a bone-scratching shriek will kill it with obscenely high-pitched agony,” the special aspect commented.  “Or a large thwacking-pole of might!”

    “Or maybe it will walk away.”

    The skunk hauled its mass onto the driveway, its nose to the ground and its eyes averted from the streetlight above.  It carefully prowled about where I had been standing for a moment, quietly thinking skunk thoughts.

    As this transpired, the voices loudly thought their peculiar thoughts: “Terrific; it’s going to track us down by scent and maim us!”

    “Skunks don’t maim you, they spray you.”

    “Oh, so you’re wearing a magic suit that will prevent the skunkification from boiling your flesh away?”

    “It won’t boil your flesh away, and we don’t need to worry about that even if it did because it is not going to spray us.  It’s probably going to walk away.  See!  It just did!”

    “It didn’t walk away, it went behind the tree!  It’s probably getting ready to leap out as soon as we set foot back on the driveway, or maybe it’s setting a trap for us!”

    “That is absurd.”

    “So you’re going to go wait for the bus right where that thing was sniffing?”

    “…No…I’m…going to…walk the other way around the house and wait down in the ditch.”

    “So you admit that if we go to wait for the bus on the driveway, we may very well end up convulsing on the ground having our stomach gnawed on?”

    “No, actually I think I will go wait on the driveway.”

    “WHAT?  The school bus is our way to school, and if that skunk tackles us and begins to tear the flesh from our bones, we’re not going to be able to board the bus, and thus we’re not going to be able to arrive at school!”

    “So, around the house it is?”

    “Unless the superintendent declares a district-wide skunk infestation and cancels school, stepping foot on the driveway could cause us to miss the bus and be absent, and I don’t want to mar our flawless attendance.”

    “We could run to the bus when it comes.”

    “No, don’t do that!  We might have to trudge through our classes with a black and white and reddening adornment about our throat!  That’s a terrible idea.  We’ll just go around the house like you said.”

    The spoken-of yellow vehicle rumbled at the opposite end of the street, pausing at the stop sign to await the sulky ascension into its interior of the somnambulating neighbors, who were not currently besieged by Ohio’s most violent natural terror—the odorous beast of doom was too busy besieging me to afford anyone else any of the joy.

    I dashed on jolting legs through the dim shadows of my yard, completely sure that I was completely unsure of exactly what I knew to be before me.  Practically no light shone under the trees, stripping familiarity away and replacing it with ominous unfamiliarity, the type that contorts and mutilates the mind.

    “Yes, this idea of yours is good.  No writhing on the driveway this morning…hey, where do skunks live?”

    “Don’t know, busy trying to run without breaking my back.  Why?”

    I had to stop for a moment to squirm in the arm straps of my book bag.  The leaves above in the blackness were rustling in the breeze.

    “I’m thinking these minions of doom build their nests in trees and are right above us right now, ready to pounce out of their skunk-nests to dislocate our skull!”

    “That’s…”—a strong guest of wind sent the leaves into tumult—“a very good point!” the rationality yelped, I bounding down the ditch to wave the attention of the bus driver, darting my eyes about to sooth my quaking adrenal glands with proof that none of the beasts had pursued me from the trees.

    I jumped into the bus as quickly as I could, quivering from my ordeal and ghastly pale.

    “I didn’t see you on your driveway; why were you standing out here?” the bus driver inquired.

   “There…was…a skunk there…and…”

    I daringly thrust myself from the bus, bent on conquering the enemy.  I stood statuesque on the extreme tip of the driveway, hotly hunting visual confirmation of my pursuer, which was now facilitated by the vertical glow of the sun.

    “I told you it would have left by now.  We’re never going to see that skunk again, so there’s nothing to worry about,” the rationality stated, slightly displeased that it would be unable to prove the inanity of the morning’s encounter to its counterpart.

    “That cruel beast!  It is using its invisible skunk powers!  That’s cheating!”

    “Idiot.”

    “Don’t move!  It probably has a trip wire across the driveway, and when you trip it, all sorts of doom will ensue!”

    “Idiot.”

    I took a brief but jittery stroll though the yard, assuring myself that the skunk had indeed departed, and then sighed deeply, relieved to be able to traverse the perils of my yard without being mauled by a skunk.

    “Do you see, idiot, how safe this is?  The skunk is gone.”

    “It’s just invisible!”

    “Oh, it is not.  Now, this morning was totally unacceptable.  I think you should resolve to control yourself better from now on.”

    “Me?  You were screaming too!”

    “Oh, I was not.  It was a mere skunk, nothing dangerous or scary, idiot.”

    A leaf then blew across the yard before me.  I saw it and recognized the scraping sound it made as the wind dragged it.  I fully acknowledged this with a hearty “It’s the skunk!” and found myself some minutes later whimpering on my bed.

    “You wimp,” I told myself.  “You’re fifteen, more than capable of rational thought.  You’re making a scene in the middle of the afternoon about some silly little animal that meandered into your field of vision nine hours ago.  Since you’ve thoroughly obliterated your sense of safety in your own yard, you better find a good read.”

    “But…but…”

    “Idiot.”

    “But…I…it…sharp, pointy teeth!”

    “I feel ashamed to be part of this.”

    “I’m sorry I made such a scene…”

    “Sorry?  SORRY?  How can you be sorry that you had the good sense to dread that abomination?  It would have brutally destroyed us!”

    “Oh.  I feel like some ice cream.”

    “Sounds swell.”

    I had some ice cream.

    I had some nightmares as well, but those only lasted a few months.

    I smelled something foul lurking on the breeze this morning.