The Bat

It is time to finally tell the story of the bat.

Ponce a wanna time, when I was about 14, I spent summers living at the lake. My friend Jeryl who lived down the road (there were no streets, just dirt roads at the lake) asked me to stay over for a pajama party. Since there were only two of us girls on the lake that summer, the party was rather small. Just her and me. After doing all the regular things girls do at a pajama party we actually fell asleep. This was my fatal mistake.

Sometime around 4 am I was awakened by a slight flick on the top of my blanket. I sat up in the pitch dark, wondering what it could have been. Jeryl was sound asleep in the bed nearby, so I laid back down. *Flick*, there it was again, I sat up, but in the attic room I could see nothing. By the third time I felt it, I was fully awake. It was only then that I heard the unmistakeable, sickening sound that only a bat on the wing can make.

Immediately I froze. Thoughts ran through and out of my head as sheer fright had overtaken me. I could not move; the room went completely silent other than Jeryl's breathing. Ten minutes passed like ten year. Foraging through my mind for everything I knew about bats, I came up with two facts. They carry rabies. They can crawl into the thinnest of cracks. I began to realize that the silence meant the bat had landed SOMEWHERE IN THE ROOM. Imagining the vampire had made it's way under the covers with me, I could stand it no more. Finally I sat up in the bed and let out a piercing scream which echoed off the other side of the lake. I swear. One split second later, Jeryl consequently sat up and began screaming herself. One split second after that her uncle, who owned the cottage, ran into the room screaming and threw on the light. Unbeknowst to me HE HAD A GLASS EYE. THAT HE HAD REMOVED GOING TO BED.

With everyone screaming in sheer terror now, the bat long forgotten, I lept from the bed and ran off into the night, pj's and all. You have to realize that after dark I am a complete coward, to this very day. But I ran the 1/2 mile home barefoot, over sticks and stones, like a thief in the moonless night. And I never went back there again.

And that is the story of THE BAT.