Once there was a boy named Ted he lived on the outskirts of a mining town out in rural Idaho. His house was on a dirt road. There was one other house on the road and it was abandoned.
His house was across the street from the abandoned house and often he would ride his bike up and down the dirt street and wonder what the family was like who lived in there,
back when the town was in it's heyday, and the mines weren't dry.
He was riding his bike one sunny afternoon and noticed a small figure run into the building and he sound tof breaking glass. TED lunchtime! He heard his mother calling himand he returned to
his cozy home on the dirt street.
Ted entered the kitchen and sat to enjoy the meal his mother had set out for him. Lunch was a pb & j, applesauce, and a glass of raw milk. Ted's mom was in the other room getting ready
for work. She was a cashier at the dollar store in town. Town wasn't too big, a couple restraunts, the dollar store his mom worked at, and a post office.
"How's the bike honey?" Mom asked.
"Good" Ted replied.
Ted had salvaged together parts for his bike from the junkyard a short distance from his house. Mr. McGee who ran the junkyard was too nice to have a junkyard. Even his dog
wasn too soft to be a junkyard dog. It was a shih-tzu.Anyways he let Ted take 2 new tires and a bike seat to fix up his old bike that was run over by a car.
"I gotta go to work, I'll be back at 10pm, make sure your homework is done and you're ready for bed before I get back."
"Yes, mother" Ted replied, his mind still fixated on what went into the abandoned house across the street. SlaM the frontdoor shut as his mother hurried to her closing shift.
It was bigger than a cat. He thought. But whatever it was was scurring on all fours like a rodent.
Ted went to the computer room and typed "bigger than cat rodent" on google. A picture of a capybara showed up.
"That's not it." Ted said to himself.
Ted went back to the kitchen, chugged his milk and applesauce, then hopped onto his bike.
He rode his bike over to the school library. The librarian greeted him when he entered but he did not hear her. When Ted is focused on something he gets extremely locked-in.
The librarian thought he was autistic or something and continued to read her book.
Ted hustled to the encyclopedias, took a couple, and went to the biology aisle for two books on mammals and reptiles, and then he grabbed a mythological creatures book from the fiction section.
Ted brought his chosen texts to a corner library table and started consuming the pages of content. As he skimmed, he learned all kinds of fun facts about animals. Bison have four stomachs.
Snakes can unhinge their jaw in a way where they can eat something way bigger than their head. If a human did that he can swallow a watermelon. The mandarin characters for penguins
read "business goose" and the male emperor penguins sit on the eggs.
Next thing Ted knew, the lights went out. The librarian left him and turned the lights out! She must have forgotten he was in there. Ted looked at the clock it said 9:00pm.
"Shoot I gotta get home before my mom!" Ted exclaimed, resenting the librarian for her absent-mindedness.
Just then he heard a clanging in the ventilation shaft above him. The cover came off and what oozed out of it was a humanoid type shape with pale-blue flesh and long extended fingers. The
dark pits where it's eyes should be stared deep into Ted's soul. Ted was gripped with fear, then he took out his glock-19 and shot the demon from the vents until it died. About
14 shots.
Ted sighed "whew close one", Then he left a three dollar tip on the counter for the librarian and dove out of the library window, somersaulting onto the grass outside.
He rode his bike home and was in bed before his mom got back.
The next day the remains of the creature were found in the library.
The End
Pictured below is a capybara
