She came into the store looking like a Baptist Beauty Queen, except there was a tear in her hose and a tear in her eye.

During the interview, she seemed distant though needy; distracted. When asked, she replied, “Oh, no … nothing; it’s silly really.”

We didn’t hire her. That was the day that the trash dumpster disappeared. “Damned college kids,” Kevin said, “who steals a dumpster?”

The second time she came in for the job, I sent one of the managers out to ask her a few questions and get rid of her. This time I noticed she had on torn shoes, with a stains that looked like blood.

She was pretty, affable – but, fear lurked behind her eyes. The interview only took thirty minutes or so, but in that time her car disappeared. She didn’t seem too surprised. Sad, afraid, but not surprised. She said she’d parked by the dumpster.

It was three weeks later when she again appeared in the restaurant. Gosh, she was pretty – but I just didn’t know if she was Taco Bell material.

I said, “I’ll handle this,” and went out to talk with her.

We were about twenty minutes into the interview when I noticed the cut on her left hand. Quickly, my mind raced …

(Okay. She’d had an issue with her hosiery. Then her shoes. The car disappearing by the disappearing dumpster … now this. What’s up?)

She said, “Danny Drebber.”

“Excuse me?”

She said, “Danny Drebber. You asked me what was up with the clothes, the car, the wound.”

“No I didn’t.”

Her face changed. It was not possible, here in the middle of the Taco Bell in Boone, North Carolina – but, believe me, it happened.

(I was a little boy again, lost in the woods – probably only three hundred yards from my home – when, at dusk’s light, I swear I saw someone. Something. Some …)

“Agghhhhh!”

“Are you okay,” she asked.

“What?” I realized that I had sort of dazed into a dream. “Yeah. Sorry. Where were we?”

She said, “We were in the forest, behind your house, and you’d thrown your G.I. Joe high into the air. You thought it’d stuck in a tree … until you heard footsteps, walking at dusk’s light. At first, for some reason, you thought it was your little action figure. As you drew near, it, whatever it was – retreated. You imagined you’d encountered a monster.”

Somewhere from beneath my Adam’s apple I heard myself splurt: “WHO ARE YOU?”

“Well, I’m not G.I. Joe,” she replied.

————————-

Writing Prompt: “Retell a story that you know, but this time add monsters.”

Image Source