They Come Out at Night to Feed

It was late one night in the suburban neighborhood of 38th and Trenton in Denver, Colorado. Local residents were home watching TV, and turning out all of their lights on their way to bed. Leaving Larry’s Bar and Lounge, Jerry Collins was waltzing along the street. There was no sidewalk on this, the west side of the street – only a streaming path of grass. A half-empty beer botte loosely dangled from his hand. He quickly clung to the bottle to take another swig.

Jerry Collins, a 25-year-old student attending college classes at COU had grown up in a small town in Arkansas. He had been an exceptional student, majoring in computer sciences. His only fault in life was his obsession with alcohol and his faithful public drunkeness.

Something was creeping out. He stammered to a parked Jeep Cherokee, pulled down his fly, and started to let loose a stream of steaming urine on the side of the rusting vehicle. He eyeballed one end of the street to the other, watching for onlookers. It was then when Jerry Collins spotted it.

He could only make a vague silhouette of something dark moving. A street light was shining down, obscuring this dark moving objection in its own shadow. As he focused, Jerry Collins faintly made out the details and digits of a hand. It was reached out from the depths of a storm drain on the bald side of the street. Jerry noticed this dark and mysterious unknown was feeling around. It patted the ground and grabbed handfuls of grass.

Jerry watched in a suspended stuper as the hand found the wide-open box of a unfinished and discarded McDonald’s Big Mac, and slithered back underground. Not stopping to zip up, Jerry took off like an Olympic sprinter. He shoved the metal gate to a duplex open in a metallic squeal, dashed up a flight of stairs, and disappeared inside his apartment.