Write, Wrote, Written

Sunday Scribblings # 84

Steve rushed toward her, a knife in his hand.

“Hey!”  he yelled, “Put that thing down before you kill yourself!”

“Seriously,” Adam pleaded, “I don’t want to have to take you to the hospital.”

For a moment, she just stood there with her mouth hanging open.  All she had done was pick up the can opener. “What?” she asked finally, “I was just going to open the tomatoes.  I don’t see you trying to help, Adam.  And what exactly warranted coming at me with a knife there, Steve?

“Well, Adam’s not helping because Adam burns water when he tries to cook,”  Steve replied, “and I have a knife because I was chopping garlic.”

“And waving it indiscriminately around your very tiny apartment kitchen is less dangerous than my using a can opener how, exactly?”

“It’s a right-handed can opener, Lefty McSouthpaw.”

With that the two of them burst out laughing.  She felt the warmth rise up in her cheeks.  On any other night she would have let it go, but for some reason, she didn’t feel like it that night.

“You know, left-handed people have been proven to be smarter.”

“She said to the college professor,” Adam retorted.

“And they have an advantage in most one-on-one sports,”

“She said to the black belt in kenjutsu,” Steve returned.

“Kenjutsu.  Isn’t that the little martial arts dance thing you do with that sword?”

Steve’s smile faded.  “It’s a katana.  It’s not a dance.  And after everything we’ve all been through, you know that it’s not just ’something I do.’”

She thought briefly about apologizing at that point, because he did have a point, but she decided not to.  She wanted to be angry with them some more.  So she picked up a stick, and she poked the bear.

“I could do that, too,” she said.

“Actually, no you couldn’t.”

“What do you mean, no I couldn’t?  I have just as much discipline as you do, and last time I checked, my 10K running time beats your 10K running time.”

“It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about?”

Steve went into the living room where the katana was hanging on the wall.  He brought it back into the kitchen where he adroitly swung it in several circles before pointing the blade at her.

“Look at the cutting edge.  It’s asymmetrical.  It’s designed for a right-handed person, and they don’t make them for lefties.”

The rest of the evening was awkward.  Adam made a valiant effort, but they had both heard all of his Henry VIII jokes before.

She didn’t return either of their calls for several days.  Part of her was still upset.  Part of her was embarrassed by how she acted.  She was the newest member of their little club, and she still sometimes felt like the outsider.  The rest of the time, she just hoped to wake up from the bad dream she was having.  She could still remember every detail about the night that Steve and Adam explained to her that there really were monsters under the bed, that not only did vampires exist, but werewolves and witches, as well.  Supposedly, the witches were mostly good, though.

One night almost a week later, her cellphone rang.  It was Adam.  She let it go to voice mail.  After a few minutes, she picked up the phone to listen to the message.

“Abigail,”  Adam said, “It’s about 8:10, and I was wondering if you could maybe come help us seeing as how we’re being attacked by four bloodsuckers about a block north of Union Station.  For what it’s worth, I’m sorry Steve was mean to you.”

She rushed out the door, but not before retrieving a bag from her bedroom closet.  When she finally found them fighting in a little patch of green that passed for a park, two of the things had already been dispatched, and Adam was ready to finish a third one off, having doused it good in Holy Water, but Steve was lying on the ground out of reach of his sword.  The last one was standing over him.  Adam wouldn’t be able to make it in time.

Seconds later, the thing was lying on the ground with a wooden bolt through its chest.  Steve looked up at her as she walked toward him.

“See this?” she asked, holding up the crossbow in her hand, “It’s ambidextrous.”