Patrick Griffin's Last Breakfast on Earth (5 page)

He didn't get very far. As he crossed the dining room he was nearly dropped to his knees by a terrifying pain in his chest. He gasped and placed his right hand on his left breast. An image of a trout flopping in the bottom of a rowboat came to him and he did his best not to panic. He needed to stay calm. He needed to think rationally. He needed to slow his pulse and be clearheaded. And especially he needed to avoid having a heart attack while there was a
bear
in his kitchen.

Putting his free hand on the back of the nearest chair, he dropped his head and concentrated on his breathing. Just breathing, like he did for his weekly calisthenics:
In. Hold. Out. Hold. In. Hold. Out.

The tingling in his arms, and the ringing in his ears, began to fade. He raised his head and listened. No sounds were coming from the kitchen. Maybe he'd killed the animal or—better yet—maybe it had fled back outside the way it had come in? Had it entered through an open window? Had Consuela left the back door unlatched?

“A bear,” he whispered to himself. “A
bear
in my kitchen!”

And a strangely colored one at that. It had to have been a black—there were no grizzlies east of the Rockies, thank God. But this one had been grayish brown in color. Perhaps sometimes black bears weren't entirely dark, or maybe their young sometimes were lighter colored.

But it had definitely been a bear. Its legs had been thicker than a dog's, and most dogs didn't have puffy tails. But … did bears have puffy tails?

He drew a deep breath, held it, let it out, and tried letting go of the chair.

He was fine. He could walk. He—

“What kind of greeting was
that
for a world-weary traveler?!”

The servant's door was being held wide by a relatively short furry animal standing on its hind legs.

As Ichabod Coffin's eyes nearly bugged out of his head, the creature craned its antlered head over its shoulder.

“Gah!” it exclaimed as it yanked one of the electrodes from its rump. “These things have
barbs
on them!”

“O-oh-a-o-eh!” replied Ichabod, collapsing back against the dining table, his heart once again flip-flopping in his chest, his lungs aching for breath, and his mind—as he lost consciousness—busy trying to decide if the police sirens he was hearing were real, or figments of his imagination.

 

CHAPTER 10

Second Thoughts

“Mother!” yelled the big-eyed boy named Kempton. “Cut it out. It's okay. This is a
good
thing! It's an
Earth
ling!”

Kempton's mother kept right on screaming. Patrick wondered if, beyond the obviously large eyes, she might have outsized lungs, too.

A big-eyed businessman rushed out of the house, button-down shirt untucked, a white streak of cream cheese or something on his rouged cheek, and a torn edamame pod in his hand.

“Darling, darling!” he yelled as he stumbled down the path, startling the animals into the neighbor's yard. “What's the matter!?”

A dark-haired girl about Patrick's age trailed after the man. She had the same big eyes and was dressed all in black except for some silver rings on her fingers and an Egyptian ankh pendant hanging from her neck. Of everyone there, she had on the least makeup.

Kempton's mother buried her head in her husband's chest and began to sob.

“Is it Kempton? What's he done?!” blurted the man. He gave his wife a one-armed embrace and squinted down the path.

“Kempton Chappaqua Puber! Come here right now and apologize to your mother!”

“But, Father—didn't you see my vid-feed?—it's an
Earth
ling!”

“I'll make you wish
you
were an Earthling if you don't get here in two quints!”

Kempton's mother was blubbering words including
sick
,
inconsiderate
,
imp
,
horrid
,
ungrateful
, and
apologize
at her husband.

“Wait right here,” said Kempton.

“I wouldn't know where else to go,” said Patrick softly, and stuck his hands in his pockets.

Kempton stomped away toward his parents.

The dark-haired girl regarded Patrick from the flagstone walkway. “So, how's your day going?” she asked.

“Um. Okay,” said Patrick, a little flustered. She was quite pretty and he found himself dropping his eyes to the ground, whereupon he noticed her shoes were like gloves—the fronts were indented around her individual toes. He looked up the path and now noticed the same was true of the father's, the mother's, and the boy's, too.

“Just kind of found yourself on our lawn?” she asked.

“Um, yeah,” said Patrick.

She nodded as if this were what she had been expecting him to say. “What's your shirt all about?” she asked.

“Umm,” said Patrick. He was wearing Neil's They Might Be Giants shirt with the giant squid on it—a hand-me-down. He'd slept in it last night because his pajama drawer had been empty. “Umm, they're called They Might Be Giants—they're sort of a rock band,” he said.

“Rock band? What's that?”

“Umm,” said Patrick again, wondering if she was making fun of him. “You know, they play music.”

“Cool,” she said. “I like the lettering.”

Patrick looked down at the shirt again.

“Hey, Earthling!” yelled the boy from up the walkway.

“I'll handle this, Kempton!” said the boy's father, turning and beckoning Patrick with his soybean-holding hand. “Come here, son, I want a word with you.”

“I'm Oma, by the way, Oma Puber.”

“I'm Patrick,” he replied, fascinated as a gust of wind set her crow-black hair whipping about her shoulders, “Patrick Griffin.”

She offered him a Mona-Lisa smile as he turned and headed up the path.

“What on the Minder's green Ith—” said the father as his eyes settled on Patrick's face, and ears.

Patrick stopped at hand-shaking distance and tried to smile.

“Father, there's tofu whip on your cheek,” said Kempton.

The big-eyed man handed his bean pod to his wife and absently wiped at his cheek.

“Allow me, son,” he said, reaching out and gently grabbing both of Patrick's ears.

“They're
real
,” he gasped.

Patrick shrugged.

“See?” said Kempton, offering his father what looked to be a bottle of hand sanitizer. “I told you so.”

The woman tentatively stopped crying.
“Really?”

After wiping his hands, the man waved at a security camera atop a polished aluminum street pole and stumbled back up the path toward the house. “Wait here, everybody. I must have left my binky in the kitchen.”

 

CHAPTER 11

Service Outage

Grunting and gasping like he was getting into a way-too-hot bath, Ichabod Coffin rolled onto his back and immediately wished he hadn't—the back of his head felt like he'd been smacked with a board, and his wrists ached, too. Perhaps he'd tried to stop himself from falling? Perhaps he'd tried to fend off—

The creature with the antlers!

He felt up and down his body and, failing to find any torn fabric or gaping wounds, raised his hands to his face. There didn't seem to be any blood—clearly he hadn't been mauled.

Had he had a stroke or a heart attack? If so, he felt pretty okay. Well, okay other than for questioning his own sanity. Had the creature—whatever it was—actually spoken to him? Had he hallucinated?

He rolled over and sat up. At which point he noticed a water glass and a small card on the floor next to him. He picked up the latter and squinted at the large, handwritten block letters.

FORGIVENESS IS THE CALLING CARD OF THE BRAVE.
–BCP §307¶404

He flipped the card over and—with some difficulty—read,

JOHN ANDERSON PERTOLOPE, ESQ.
a.k.a. Mr. BunBun
Trans-World Consultant and Fomenter

He clucked his tongue in anger. What was going on here? Some sort of prank? It made him furious to consider this, but at the same time, it was some reassurance: clearly he hadn't lost his mind. Obviously it
couldn't
have been a talking bear or a giant antlered rabbit, or really, an animal of any sort. It had been somebody—a person, a criminal—in costume. It made perfect sense. Criminals, of course, often wear disguises.

He replaced the card and looked at the water glass. He was quite thirsty but it obviously had been put there by whoever had left the card and he shouldn't disturb the crime scene. The police could dust it for fibers and fingerprints.

He stood and, steadying himself on a chair, reached for his iPhone. It was clearly time to call 911.

But the smartphone wasn't in the pocket of his robe where it should have been. He let loose a torrent of very bad words as he bent and looked under the dining room table, where it wasn't, either. The hooligan had clearly
taken
it.

Running his hand along the wall for support, he headed back to the den and saw, with some measure of relief, his Macbook Pro still on the coffee table. What
was
missing, however, was the house's cordless phone.

He considered why a burglar would steal a thirty-dollar phone when a three-thousand-dollar lamp and a two-thousand-dollar computer were right there in plain sight. Probably they had taken it precisely to prevent his calling 911.

He shuffled to the kitchen where he found the parquet floor under a half inch of water. Letting loose another torrent of bad words, he kicked off his slippers and splashed to the overflowing sink to shut off the tap. The drowned carcasses of his iPhone and apparently every other phone in the house were at the bottom of the stainless steel basin. Another business card was propped on the windowsill behind the faucet. The message written upon it read,

BINKIES ARE FOR BABIES
–BCP §1401¶17

“What on Earth is
that
supposed to mean?!” he wondered aloud.

The bird clock on the wall said it was almost nine forty-five a.m. He'd assumed it was later. The person had taken the time to write two notes, pour a glass of water, collect and drown all the phones in the house. That alone could have taken twenty minutes, and if he'd only been passed out for ten or fifteen …

Perhaps the malefactor was right now upstairs cracking Mother's jewelry safe, or down in the basement searching for the false panel behind which the Eau Clair silverware was hidden?!

The Taser clearly hadn't worked that well.

“The bear spray!” he said aloud. Wasn't it guaranteed to be powerful enough to stop a seven-hundred-pound bear!? The closest can was stashed in the broom closet by the back door. He quickly sploshed across the kitchen and removed it from the top shelf, breaking off the safety tab and giving enough of a read to the directions to realize they were a silly restatement of common sense (“Use only in case of impending attack,” “Hold can perpendicular to the ground,” “Do not use indoors,” “Do not spray upwind,” etc.). Then he noticed movement through the back door's four-paned window. The costumed burglar was out in his backyard demolishing the bird feeders!

“You good-for-nothing vandal!” the old man screamed as he burst out the back door and stumbled down the brick path. “Look what you've done! Are you
eating
my birdseed?!”

“Oh, I'm so sorry, is it yours?” replied Mr. BunBun, slowly swallowing a last mouthful of seeds as he sized up the angry man. “I assumed since it was out here and otherwise the birds would eat it all up—”

Two things dawned on Mr. Coffin. The first was that animal costumes had come a long way in the dozen years since he'd last opened the door for a trick-or-treater (the mask was so lifelike—the shiny black eyes, the intricately molded teeth, the glistening mouth and snout, the multi-textured fur…), and, second, that no sober burglar would be out in the yard ransacking somebody's birdfeeders.