Timmy was looking up at her, his eyes wide and watering. The boy wasn’t deaf… he had heard the stories, he had heard the sirens. He wasn’t blind… he had seen the worried faces of the neighborhood men as they gathered in the cul-de-sac beneath the slow summer twilight, sitting on the hoods of their cars and making plans… drawing strategies. And the boy wasn’t dumb… but at nine he was still young enough to be fooled. And that’s why Mama pulled him close and kissed his forehead and lied to his face.
“No, baby, she isn’t real.”
Neither of them spoke as she held her son close to her chest. Anna, the baby, gurgled and cooed in her high chair, and outside the wind chimes jangled in the still wind.
The soothing sound was drowned out by the violent screech of a cat. It came from the backyard, an inhuman howl that sent shivers up Timmy’s spine. “Pepper!”
The tortured squealing continued, streaming in the kitchen through the screen door, Mama wincing at the sound. And then, suddenly, there was silence.
“Papa!” He stuck his head in the door before Mama had finished calling his name. He was wearing his camouflage hat and carrying his shotgun. His well-groomed mustache was twitching on his upper lip.
“I heard it.”
He grabbed five pounds of hamburger meat from the fridge and opened the back door, listening.
There was no sound.
Papa waved Mama away, and she lifted Anna, leading Timmy into the den.
Papa stepped out onto the backyard, and there beside the kiddie’s pool was Pepper’s skin and bones. She’d been eaten alive, and there was no meat left to speak of. “Poor bitch,” said Papa, shaking his head.
He leaned his gun against his shoulder and popped the plastic wrap bubble 'round the hamburger. He took a hunk of chuck and formed it into a grapefruit-size ball, holding it out as he stepped toward the bushes.
“Here, Kirstie, Kirstie…” He knew she could smell it, knew she was crouched behind the shrubs, and he held the-
Kirstie Alley pounced from beneath the porch, going for the meat, gulping it down in one massive bite of her jaws that took Papa’s right hand along with it.
She was chewing, her highlighted hair filthy and matted, wearing only a massive housecoat and nothing underneath. Her stout legs were hairy and her feet encrusted in brown dirt. Her nostrils were flared and her enormous frame shook as she lapped up the chop meat.
Papa looked down at the bloody stump at the end of his arm and snapped. He started running in place, his knees reaching high, and as he fumbled for his gun he fired accidentally into the air. Kirstie didn’t like this.
She ran at Papa with all her might, knocking him to the ground and cracking his spine against the cement-grounded tether pole. This had a two-prong effect on Papa: it paralyzed him from the waist down and killed him instantly.
Mama held Anna and Timmy close behind the sofa, afraid to take a breath or make a sound. They knew Papa was gone but now they had to save themselves. That was when they heard Kirstie in the kitchen.
She had made her way into the house and gained access to the refrigerator. She stood with the door open, her head inside and devouring every item she could get in her mouth: moldy pizza, jars of pickle juice, an entire carton of expired sour cream. She gobbled pasta salad and deviled eggs, heads of cabbage and mystery beef. The beast let out with a bellow that shook the house to its very foundation.
Kirstie kept eating. It seemed like fifteen minutes had passed and the sounds of her gnawing and swallowing hadn’t stopped: The girl gobbled good.
Mama couldn’t wait any longer- she decided to make her move. She jumped up from behind the couch and grabbed the spray bottle of bleach, running into the kitchen, hoping to surprise the creature. Kirstie slammed the refrigerator door shut, a stick of butter in her mouth, and turned to face Mama just as Mama sprayed. She spritzed seven straight blasts of bleach into Kirstie’s eyes, which went red and teared up.
Mama grabbed the phone to call 911, but that’s when Kirstie dislocated her own jaw and bit off Mama’s head in a single, noisy chomp. The cordless fell to the floor but Mama’s headless torso didn’t go down right away… she danced like a lunatic, spinning around the kitchen with her arms flailing… she picked up a rag and wiped the crumbs off the counter. Kirstie watched her, popping open a jug of extra-virgin olive oil.
“Cheers,” she said, raising the bottle to her lips and chugging. Headless Mama- through humiliating herself- finally collapsed to the linoleum in a heap.
When Kirstie had relieved her thirst she squeezed through the door frame and made her way into the den, where Anna sat on the sofa, smiling sweetly and sucking her fist, completely unaware of the bloodbath before her. Kirstie spotted the pudgy infant and licked her lips. Dessert…
She advanced on the oblivious newborn, lifting her up and smiling. “There is nothing like the smell of fresh-baked ba-”
“Leave her alone, you bitch.” Timmy stood in the doorway behind her, his late Father’s shotgun trained on the obese behemoth. Kirstie laughed, all five of her chins jiggling in rhythm to the menacing cackle. She squinted at the boy, her lips snarled.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Timmy fired, putting two bullets into her immense backside and nearly sending himself to the ground from the force of the blast. Kirstie dropped Anna to the sofa and roared in agony, running off through the front door and across the driveway, back into the wild and toward Los Angeles. She left a pile of droppings behind her as she went, and the entire neighborhood could hear her wounded, guttural moan.
Timmy raced to check on Anna, but the baby was unharmed. He picked up the phone and dialed 911, reloading Papa’s shotgun just in case the mammoth returned.
“I’d like to report a Kirstie Alley attack.”
