Racoons

Sal woke up to racoons on his chest. One chunky animal, ears erect, snout facing Sal’s own nose, and behind that animal Sal felt a couple more heavy ringtails on his waist and legs.

“Get off!” he tried to yell but it came out as a giant snort.

The truth was he couldn’t move, although his eyes jumped open, flickering. He’d put a chest of drawers in front of the cat door last night. How did these beasts get here? This couldn’t be real.

He tried to breathe in. The racoon weight pressed harder, he made an extreme effort to exhale. A line of slobber dripped from the first racoon’s snout. It bent its head and licked a paw, the tongue flashed purple as a radish. Sal tried moving his arms and legs. Nothing. Paralyzed. He’d had these spells a couple of times in the last week. During the last one he awakened from a nightmare. The nightmare featured his cat Cuddles sitting on his chest, pushing down with his paws, just like the raccoon. The room swirled, and above him the ceiling formed a face.

Now, Sal made his eyeballs look up. He viewed the same previous nightmare ceiling face above the weighty racoon. Yellow like the paint up there, yellow teeth dripping with spider webs, no eyes but shadows.

He told his landlady, Louise, about his dizzy spell. Always coming over, that Louise, any excuse for snooping around. Big heavy lady, arms like tied together flesh balloons. This time she brought him blueberries.

“Could be a stroke warning,” she told him, grinning and looking at him sideways with her old face full of wrinkles, much like the yellow painted visage above his head. He felt the weight of the landlady’s raspy, scolding voice as she talked on and on.

“Go to emergency, or you’ll regret it!”

Sal should have told her to get out, he needed his privacy, but he just kept sanding his latest project, a whirligig made of cedar sticks he planned to hang from the porch to keep the animals away.

“Aw, I’ll be fine,” he said.

But now, maybe he should’ve listened.

“A stroke!” the thought crashing through Sal’s head like a raccoon through a cat door.

The yellow ceiling mouth above him widened.

For a moment, he wondered if Louise had even come in, if that was all in his head too.

“Maybe I should check to see if there’s blueberries in the fridge,” he muttered.

But of course, he couldn’t move.

The beast on his chest humped itself a half-length forward, now its nose rested on his throat, and something like sandpaper ran across his skin. No doubt about it. The creature was licking him now!

Sal tried to yell again. “Get off!” but this time he heard himself coughing, breath gasping, felt his heart, pulsing faster.
The licking got faster too, in tandem with the pulse.

How had this disaster happened?

He’d tried to stop the ringtails! Last night he pushed up the chest of drawers to block the flap. The effort exhausted him, and he’d twisted his shoulder, but it was worth it.

Then he heard them banging trying to get through the barricade, so he grabbed the broom and stumbled outside. Didn’t see anything. Turned on the porch light. Nothing. Then he looked up. Three racoons lay spread out facing him along the porch rafters, their human like paws clinging to the slats, six eyes viewing him as he yelled and poked with the broom.

But too high up. They wouldn’t move. He dashed inside to grab a jug of water to throw, when he came out again, they were gone. His heart fibrillated and skipped from the effort, and he dropped down on his knees, grasping the broom with both hands. But a victory! He’d chased off the raccoons, but somehow the persistent invaders had returned!

The heavyweight ringtail kept its nose down, licking Sal’s throat faster now. Above Sal’s eyes, the ceiling dipped, the yellow face’s mouth opened wide. Sal knew if he let himself go, he’d fall right towards that open gap. On the one hand, the raccoons would be gone. But for sure he would be too. He tried breathing in, such an effort. Three raccoons, twelve paws pushing down. He breathed out, feeling his heart rise too. Now he heard a rhythmic pounding as if it came from outside his body, or maybe it was the heartbeats of these creatures stuck to him, in a multi part tachycardia. The pulsing grew louder. Or were those heavy steps moving towards his room?

Again, Sal wondered what was real and what was not.

Yes, there in his blurring vision, Louise the landlady’s huge red fleshy face, where the yellow ceiling form was before. Sal knew it! Those was her features up there all along! She was spying on him again! Invading his privacy, just like these beastly raccoons. But this time, maybe she would rescue him! He heard her big feet stomping around. Then the ceiling face opened wide as she screamed! Her face came down on him, mouth first, a heavy blanket of fat and skin.

He felt a nip, then a bite, then a humungous deep piercing penetration, fangs sinking through his throat. He couldn’t inhale, in fact, he hadn’t inhaled for quite some time.

Then a lightness, a heavy body leaving from his chest, and he was rising, moving up through the gap in the ceiling, where Louise’s face used to be. Such a freedom to have lost that terrible weight! And he didn’t have to breathe now, he was free from that, free from those twisted raccoons.

He looked down at Louise, or was that a raccoon, stooped over his face. The creature raised its head to the ceiling where his mind floated, and Sal saw her teeth, so pointy and red. And she screamed again, just a mouth now, and a radish-red tongue, as her body faded before his vision, and disappeared.

Sal caught a glimpse of his own inert, bleeding body below, still covered under blankets up to the bottom of its exposed throat. That was the last he saw. The final thing he felt was his consciousness dissipating through the face gap in the ceiling, to the void beyond, the weight of his flesh and bone and the heaviness of anything else no longer his concern.

∼ Harrison Kim