Douglas stumbled into the hallway and noticed an unfamiliar noise. It sounded light and fluttery, a bit like two leather gloves slapping together; it was one of those noises that invited you to look about anxiously, wondering if you really wanted to find its source. Up in the corner of the hallway ceiling, approximately seven feet from Douglas's pillow-sculpted hair, was a god-damned bat. It was only the size of a Russian nesting doll, but Douglas shrieked like a prepubescent girl and ran back into his room, slamming the door behind him.
What's the protocol for bats? Is there something that I should do? Someone I should call? Don't these things live in caves? Panic and confusion directed Douglas's thoughts to an illogical conclusion: Maybe I can tame it. This explosion of brilliance was immediately followed by perhaps the worst idea that Douglas would ever have: Maybe I should talk with Lawrence about this.
People unfortunate enough to have met Lawrence described him in the kindest of terms as a "troublesome boy," but often resorted to the kind of language that would offend sailors and bruise fruit. Simply put, Lawrence had a preternatural talent for making good situations very bad and turning an already-bad situation into a minor apocalypse. He possessed an inverse-competency that allowed him to escalate the purchase of a hot dog from a street vendor into a full-scale civil war. Knowing all of this, Douglas had willingly agreed to live with Lawrence and was now preparing involve him in the Bat Situation.
Douglas inched open his door as slowly as was physically possible and stole a look at the ceiling--it appeared to be bat-free. He crept into the hallway as one might approach a minefield, half-expecting to be accosted by the winged embodiment of all hell's wrath and preparing to respond with violence. After several tense minutes, Douglas crossed the four feet of hallway between his room and Lawrence's room and rapped on the door.
There was the sound of aluminum foil being rolled up and the shuffling of a deck of cards and the door opened to reveal a short-ish man in a full tuxedo holding a zip-lock bag. His smug expression suggested that he'd either stolen a lot of money or was about to, and either way, the day was off to a good start.
"Lawrence. There's a bat in the house," Douglas hissed, as though the bat might hear him and decide to strike.
"You realize what you've got to do, don't you?" the words wandered out of Lawrence's mouth with easy confidence, as though they were headed to nowhere in particular, "You've got to fight it."
Well, this is about what I'd expected, Douglas mused, That would be one of the worse ways to handle the situation. It was at this moment that Douglas began to inspect the Zip-lock bag that Lawrence was holding: it contained a mixture of vegetable matter that was trying very hard to look like marijuana.
"Um, Lawrence, what's in that bag?"
"Oregano, grass clippings, and a pinch of some of the worst weed I could find. I'm heading back to the party to sell it to a really drunk guy."
Douglas allowed the fact that Lawrence was about to return to a party at 8 am, to sail over his head, and pursued the more immediate problem: the 'marijuana' in the bag. Well, it is green, and it is most certainly 'grass,' although not the kind that any potential buyer may be interested in. Douglas doubted very much that there was enough alcohol in the county to achieve the level of inebriation required to make purchasing this bag a good idea.
"Anyway, " Lawrence continued, "there's a broom in the closet; you're going to take care of the bat, hey?"
Douglas frowned, lost in a world of terrible inevitability and potential rabies shots and resigned himself to his fate. He inched his way to the broom closet and brandished his newfound weapon with all the menace that one can muster when holding janitorial equipment. Then he heard it: the noise. And it was coming from his room.
The next ten minutes were the most harrowing of Douglas's life; the bat had grown to the size of lawn chair and was holding a ceramic knife in its left foot. From the way that it fought, Douglas suspected that the bat had had military training. Virtue triumphed in the end though, and Doulas managed to skewer the animal through the middle with the broom handle. It screeched and flapped madly, hacking frantically at the broom handle with it's ceramic knife as it slowly expired, finally going limp and slumping against Lawrence's door.
At this unpleasant moment, Lawrence decided to open his door. Douglas looked around embarrassed, and tried very hard to pretend that there wasn't a bat kabob on the floor in front of his friend's room.
"I see you found Mister Tickles. I had been hoping that you wouldn't notice him until I'd finished training him.
More ceramic knives and ceramic knife-related stories please
Based on several real events. Names and personalities have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.
I hear that bats also like to hide in mashed potatoes.
I appreciate the realism with which the paralyzing fear of bats is described.