Werifesteria? Wait? What?

 

“Ralph. Hey, Ralph. Do you remember me?” The voice came from overhead. A large tan cat of the Cougar variety was draped over a branch of a very respectable Douglas Fir. "Hiss! Hey!"

Ralph had been stretched out on a fallen log contemplating various air molecules and thinking in between molecules of the vagaries of family life. Oh, Ralph was as happy as he could be, though he was an older first-time father and had been rather settled in his ways. Things had changed a lot lately. Twigg, for instance, was growing fast and could scamper up a leg and clear up onto his head like a, well, like a monkey!

“Ralph, listen, I’m the cat that friend of yours captured twice and brought to you to be a pet. Uncle Bob. That guy! The stoner one.”

Ralph looked up, squinting, to locate the source of the voice.

“Oh, yeah. I remember that!” Ralph giggled. It sounded like someone beating on a 55 gallon drum with a sack of ducks.

“What’s up Catty, ma’am?”

“I’ve been following some chick in a long green dress ever since she ducked into the woods a couple of miles north of here on Highway 9. I think she might be looking for you.” The cat sat up on her branch and looked behind herself into the dark thicket of blackberry and bracken. “Honestly, I think she is in a state of some kind of dippy euphoria. She’s singing and doing little prancy dance dips and dabs. Maybe she is demented, Ralph.

“She has a camera, and she is looking for you! Bet me! She wants proof, dude. Do you understand what I am suggesting here, Ralph?”

Ralph rotates to place his size 22 feet on the forest floor, sits up and scratches his short thick neck back where it’s hard to get at. He grunts happily.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“You’re supposed to be in charge here. King of Snohomish County, ladeedah! Do you realize what it will be like if she gets some clear photos of you and Ramona and Twigg? The forest will be crawling with people like Dave P.

“Maybe you can stand it, but I am meant to be a ghost of the forest! I have no desire to be discovered,” she said, getting just a bit hysterical.

“I have two cubs stashed in a hollow log back there. I don’t want them to even know there is such a thing as some crazy woman flitting through the trees!” She screams piercingly, glaring right at him.

“Yeah, yeah, you’re right,” admits Ralph. “She’s my problem too.”

He stands up reluctantly, stretches. He’s put on some weight recently. He could reach that cat if he wanted to. He’s that tall. When he moves around his essential aroma permeates the area. A mix of musk and something resinous, and maybe a touch of rotted fish.
“Tell ya what Ma Cat, I’ll scare the loopty loos out of the gal. She’ll be back in downtown Milltown before the Tasty Freeze closes for the night. I’ll give her a mystery to remember. She’ll never come out here again!” Ralph sniggers to himself.

Ma Cat heads back to that hollow log silently. Like a ghost you know.

Off to stage left there is heard some girlish warbling song. I won’t embarrass the girl by repeating the words of her song. Suffice it to say that it is very foolish indeed.

Ralph passes to the right and becomes One With The Forest. He pretty much can’t be seen. He fades. He waits happily and confidently. These are his best moments. Well, I mean when he is away from his Ramona and small son Twigg, of course.

“Trala, la la la,” the silly voice drifts closer to center stage. Some staggering steps are heard. Vines are torn, little branches crunch. 

Ralph fills his lungs. His eyes glow dark green in the gloom. He feels his powers build! His mighty chest is full to bursting with the joy of a good terrorizing. 

He lets out a yell like an elephant with kidney stones. His bellows and whoops shake the air! Portals pop open and then clap shut! Fir cones drop out of trees! Birds leave the general area just to be safe… 

Again and again, he brutalizes the forest soundscape! (It’s really rather awful.) He finishes with a fit of wheezing and some cryptid giggles and snorts. 

Ms Greendress experiences a kind of life-changing mental shift. Her goals change rapidly to those involving getting the hell out of the local area as efficiently as possible. In a word she is stampeded. She is perfectly safe, but not aware of that fact. Soon she is safely tucked into her nice little Volvo and purring southward down Highway 9 with a new resolution in her trembling heart. 

Ralph clears his throat and thinks he might be getting a little hungry. So, he strolls on back toward that nice cave and Ramona and Twigg and a good Squatchy dinner. He wonders what she has cooked up for him. His tummy rumbles and he smiles to himself.