Division: NFC South (7-9 2nd in the Division)
Head Coach: Bruce Arians
Offensive Coordinator: Byron Leftwich
Defensive Coordinator: Todd Bowles

Intro: Let me Get Something off my Chest

A couple of months ago, I wrote the Buccaneers 32 Teams/32 Days Post. Looking back a it, I’m sticking to my guns on most of my analysis. There’s just…one….little….thing….we need to talk about. Regarding Jameis’s pending free agent status, I said:

There's also the question of QB. Jameis is also a UFA and I'd say there's a...40% chance we re-sign him. So who replaces him, and would an aging veteran QB like Brady or Rivers really be a marked improvement?

[Sneezes in Boston accent]
The answer is yes, Fencing Coach, you fawkin dumbass!
Did you really think that Jameis Winston was a bettah option than Tawm Fawkin’ Brady 6-time supah bowl champion and enemy of Rawjuh Fawkin’ Goodell? You were fawkin’ wrong!
Admit to the good people of Aw/NFL that you wuh just another paht of the fake news media that tried to say Tawm Bwady deflated the footballs and that Bill Belichick used the video cameras for the SpyGates!
And who would have evah guessed that we’d end up with Gronk! What a yeeyah! What an offseason you fawkin’ pessimist! We got the GOAT! Get ya Covid immunity TB12 pills and shove ‘em up yuh asshole!
[Snaps out of it]
Okay, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let’s get serious for a moment. This is the final Hail Mary of the underwhelming Jason Licht era, and aggressive moves were made this offseason, because the excuses have finally run out.
Since taking over the team in 2014, Jason Licht is on his third head coach (to be fair, Lovie Smith was not his choice) and only has a 34-62 (.35) record to show for, 0 playoff appearances, and only one winning season.
Meanwhile, a select list of his GM peers hired since include:

• Brett Veach (Chiefs – Hired 2017): Super Bowl Champions, 3x playoff appearances, 34-14 record.
  
• John Lynch (49ers – Hired 2017): NFC Champions, 23-25 record.
  
• John Robinson (Titans – Hired 2016): 2x Playoff Appearances (Lost divisional in 2019), 36-28 record.
  
• Brandon Beane (Bills – Hired 2017): 2x Playoff Appearances, 25-23 record.
  

Big moves were made this offseason at the Quarterback position, bringing in a certain 6th round pick out of Michigan to compete with the ethereal and legendary Blaine Gabbert. Jameis was shown the door. And the result is about a case of beer’s worth of cap space and little depth across the roster. Buckle your Bucs, this is going to be a helluvah ride.

Top Offseason Stories

The Tompa Bay Gronkeneers: The biggest news of the offseason was giving Tom Brady a 2 yeaar, $50M contract (fully guaranteed). I won’t be blind to the fact that Tom Brady is 43 years old and clearly on the decline. But Tom Brady on the decline doesn’t have to carry the team on his back when he has Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Rob Gronkowski, Cameron Brate, and Oterius Jabari Howard to throw to. Not to mention, people will be sleeping on the Buccaneer defense. They shouldn’t be (more on that later).
Had Jameis Winston cut his 2019 turnovers in half, the Buccaneers would have been a playoff team and he would have been in the MVP discussion. Of course, if my mother had wheels, she’d be a bicycle. The real value of the Brady deal will be in his accuracy and more conservative approach to quarterbacking. Let’s exclude Tom Brady’s rookie year and his 2008 season cut short by injury, and Tom Brady has averaged ~10 interceptions. In five seasons, Jameis averaged ~18 interceptions per season (and dozens more fumbles).
Numbers aside, Brady’s value will come in the swagger he brings to the locker room. The 2019 Bruce Arians signing brought in a coach with a track record of winning. Brady’s window is obviously short…very short. But the ride should be fun while it lasts.
Then of course, there’s Rob Gronkowski, one of football’s most beloved meatheads. One year post retirement, Gronk put the cleats back on and chose to follow Brady to Tampa (in exchange for a 4th and the Patriots’ 7th round pick). With OJ Howard and Cameron Brate already on the roster, the Gronkowski trade was a luxury move, but will give Brady his favorite all-time target in an offense largely unfamiliar to him.
Jason Licht’s approach of building from the outside-in has often worked to his detriment for a team that has always excelled at receiving skill position players…but little else. The Tompa Bay Gronkeneers will be fun to watch. Let’s hope Brady can capture lightning in a bottle.
The Jameis Winston Cult of Personality Ends: When Jameis Winston first entered the league, I declared that his ceiling was Brett Favre and his floor was Jay Cutler. Five seasons in and I feel like he got a quarter of the way past Cutler. So how will I remember Jameis? For those of you who were old enough to watch the Jerry Springer show and see a big reveal that Cletus’s wife was cheating on him with the next door neighbor, it sure was entertaining for everyone watching, except for Cletus himself. For five years, Bucs fans were Cletus. Fans of the NFL marveled at his “eating W’s” meme while many of us cringed in embarrassment. You saw 5,000 yards and 30 TD’s. We saw 30 INT’s and 6 more fumbles.
The worst part of the Jameis Winston era wasn’t the embarrassment on-field, but the divisiveness he generated off the field. Post-game discussion threads on Buccaneers were riddled with personal attacks should anyone have dared mentioned that perhaps we would have won the football game had he not thrown 18,000 picks. But the worst of all? The discussion that came from his third sexual assault allegation (no, this is not a typo. People forget there were two allegations at FSU). Three allegations were not enough to keep a large contingency of the fan base from defending him, justifying his actions, and of course the classic Redditor “she was just in it for the money” trope.
Jameis Winston signed with the Saints this offseason, becoming a division rival’s embarrassment. I still believe he has an on-field future in the league. Perhaps, for now, the comments section will allow for smoother sailing. Perhaps not.

2020 Outlook

Hard to believe that I’m now in Year 6 of writing these offseason reviews for Tampa, and outside of 2017 where I was wildly off on predicting our record, I’ve managed to fall within one victory/loss in each of the other four. The past two seasons, I’ve predicted our exact record. While Covid delays could impact the 2020 season itself, I predict the Tom Brady Bucs will go 10-6, win the wild card, and lose in the Divisional round.

Year	My Prediction	Actual
2015	7-9	6-10
2016	10-6	9-7
2017	10-6	5-11
2018	5-11	5-11
2019	7-9	7-9
2020	10-6	???

Things I Like About the Bucs in 2020

• The Defense: The Bucs finished 2019 with the top ranked run defense, led by beefy Tevita Tuliʻakiʻono Tuipulotu Mosese Vaʻhae Fehoko Faletau Vea. Sack Ferret had a breakout year and led the league in sacks, and Jason Pierre-Paul added 8.5 sacks off the edge despite starting only 8 games. Our ILB unit of Lavonte David and Devin White should be among the best tandems in the league. GM Jason Licht has drafted a fine trio of CB’s in Carlton Davis, Sean Murphy-Bunting, and Jamel Dean, and the addition of Antoine Winfield Jr. will add an instant performer. Suddenly, defense isn’t a concern when it’s been in the past.
  
• People on Offense who Touch the Football Through the Air: If you told me a few months ago that Tom Brady would be throwing footballs in Tampa to Rob Gronkowski, I would have recommended you go see a shrink. But in the year 2020, anything happens. The receiving corps of Mike Evans, Chris Godwin, Rob Gronkowski, Cameron Brate, and OJ Howard is the best in the NFL, and I can’t be convinced otherwise.
  

Things That Scare me About the Bucs in 2020:

• The Kicking Game: Matt Gay was a 77.1% kicker as a rookie and missed big in some clutch situations. The Jason Licht era has brought in names like Roberto Aguayo, Nick Folk, Chandler Catanzaro, Kyle Brindza, and Cairo Santos (to name a few). None have gotten the job done. Kicker simply can’t be a liability. Gay has to get that % up to the high 80’s. Kickers have lost us numerous games in the last few years. We’re becoming the Minnesota Vikings of the NFC South. A team will only be as strong as its weakest link, and the kicking link has been dreadful.
  
• People on Offense who Run the Football: I’m not sold on Ronald Jones, mostly because his blocking is still horrid and his vision is suspect. He also goes down if he gets hit with the force of a butterfly landing on his shoulder. Shady McCoy was brought in at the veteran minimum, but he was old enough to fight in the Revolutionary War. 3rd round pick Ke’Shawn Vaughn’s ceiling seems like a low one to me and he crosses me more as a utility back than a feature one (more on him in the draft analysis section). The running game is far less important in the NFL of the 2020’s, but there isn’t anyone on this roster who I think can carry the load.
  
• People on Offense who are Supposed to Protect Tom Brady from Dying: Donovan Smith improved in 2019 from abysmal to below average, but below average is what people like Cameron Jordan make mincemeat out of. Tristan Wirfs is a rookie, and rookie OT’s are liabilities more often than not. Ali Marpet is still a stud, and Ryan Jensen improved mightily in year 2 in Tampa. Alex Cappa (RG) is a work in progress and it’s too early to dismiss the guy yet, but progress needs to be made there. For Brady’s sake, this unit has to keep him upright. 43 year olds aren’t meant to withstand hits made with the force of an 18-wheeler.
  

2020 Draft Analysis

Round/Pick	Player	Analysis
Round 1, #13 Overall	Tristan Wirfs (RT – Iowa)	Admittedly, I always struggle with evaluating OL positions. I thought Chance Warmack, Robert Gallery, and Jason Smith were generational talents. They were far from that. So take what I have to say with a grain of salt, and listen to people like Barian_Fostate who did an excellent breakdown of Wirfs and Jedrick Wills, with the evaluation noting some glaring flaws in Wirfs’ footwork and hand technique. There’s no denying that Wirfs’ athletic ability is deity level batshit. At 6’5, 320 pounds, he ran a 4.86 forty at the Combine, had a 36.5” vertical, and a 10’1 broad jump. Not to mention, the kid can straight up jump out of a pool and casually hang clean 500 pounds. I wanted to watch how Wirfs performed against some of his incoming peers in the NFL, so I watched his matchup against Pedophilia State University to see how he’d fare against Yetur Gross-Matos, 2nd round pick of the Panthers and future division opponent. The results were…underwhelming. YGM brought constant pressure throughout the game, and seemed to have Wirfs beat from his first step onward, but in the same game, his ability in the run game was eye opening (Example). But then you had cases of sheer lack of awareness on blitzes and also stunts that showed deep areas of weakness for Wirfs. One way or another, this was a necessary pick, and even if he doesn’t pan out at RT, Wirfs’ athleticism and gifted abilities in the run game will make him a long-term key part of the Bucs and a potential Guard candidate.
Round 2, #45 Overall	Antoine Winfield Jr. (S – Minnesota)	Antoine Winfield Jr.’s entrance into the league was a “you’re an old man” moment for us Redditors in our 30’s who grew up watching his “Hall of Very Good” father. This was a pretty pick. While Winfield is of course a safety, the very first thing that stood out to me watching his tape was his pass rush ability. Yes, his pass rush ability. The first couple of clips I put on of Winfield had him perfectly timing a snap from the box and immediately in the backfield by the time the QB had the ball in his hands. The second thing that stood out was his nose for the ball, particularly in clutch situations. As Joe Theismann simply stated: “big players make big plays,” and that couldn’t have been more true of Winfield, who had big time game saving interceptions against both Fresno State and Penn State. Winfield was my favorite pick of the Buccaneers draft class, and what he lacks in size he makes up for in speed and an excellent nose for the ball. Keep an eye out for this one.
Round 3, #76 Overall	Ke’Shawn Vaughn (RB – Vanderbilt)	Ke’Shawn Vaughn was one of the harder players to scout from this Buccaneer class, simply because it looked like he would have been better off with an offensive line of obese, beefy toddlers than whatever Vanderbilt rolled out for him. Nearly every snap I viewed of him, he rarely had a clean hole and was hit in the backfield the moment he touched the ball. Like, seriously, what is this? Vaughn’s biggest strengths to me showed up on tape with designed outside runs. Between the tackles, he showed little elusiveness, and a similar issue I saw with former Buccaneer pick Jeremy McNichol is that Vaughn tended to make multiple cuts before turning upfield. Not a good thing. Unlike a glaring weakness I saw in McNichols’ complete inability to block, it’s an area where Vaughn succeeded with flying colors. This, along with his adequate pass catching abilities (28 receptions for 270 yards in 2019) will make him a valuable 3rd down back in the beginning of his career (assuming RoJo is anointed the feature back). There are some traits in a RB that can’t be coached, like vision. There are other things like running upright with high pad level, a weakness I frequently saw with Vaughn that can be taught. Vaughn crosses me as a valuable utility player who may get looks as a feature back should RoJo continue to struggle. The value was there with his 3rd round selection, but expectations for his upside should be kept in check.
Round 5, #161 Overall	Tyler Johnson (WR – Minnesota)	A lot of the Buccaneers crew is pretty high on the Tyler Johnson pick. Pro Football Focus (PFF) had him top 50 on their big board and a Round 2 grade. I just don’t see it. Not at all, in fact. For a guy who stands at a mere 6’1 and is expected to play slot receiver, his speed and separation stand out as glaring weaknesses on tape. What I do like however, is his footwork coming off the line. Most of the time he’d beat his receivers within the first 5-7 yards off the line, but when it came to the deep ball I didn’t see a lot of “wow” factor. Tyler Johnson, I think, will be a reserve WR, which is exactly what you want from a 5th round pick. But I don’t see him as the massive steal many other fans did.
Round 6, #194 Overall	Khalil Davis (DT – Nebraska)	Played alongside his twin brother Carlos at Nebraska (who went one round later to the Steelers). I watched Davis’s game against Wisconsin and he looked to me like he’d fit best as a backup 5-tech. Not particularly explosive with a slow first step, and there were numerous occasions when he did penetrate the backfield but had terrible angles on the RB. Mind you, he was playing against Jonathan Taylor and a stalwart OL, but you want to see flashes of brilliance, even against good competition. Did not see anything that made me say: “this guy’s going to make our final roster.”
Round 7, #241 Overall	Chapelle Russell (LB – Temple)	I was able to find little tape of Russell, but one area where I do trust Jason Licht is in his ability to scout LB’s. I’m not going to pretend I know anything about Russell. I don’t.
Round 7, #245 Overall	Raymond Calais (RB – Louisiana Lafayette)	Calais’s best shot to make the roster will likely be as a return man, where he excelled at Louisiana Lafayette. Based on the limited tape I saw of him, I saw flashes of Felix Jones for his ability to get big gains off of draw plays in the shotgun. Obviously a longshot to make the roster.

Schedule Predictions

Week	Opponent	Prediction	Analysis
Week 1	@Saints	27-24 Bucs (1-0)	Bucs pass rush finds a way to get to Brees. Fun fact: this will be the oldest matchup of QB’s ever in NFL history…until the Bucs play the Saints again in week 9.
Week 2	Panthers	34-20 Bucs (2-0)	Panthers are no doubt in rebuild mode right now. In the past two matchups, Bucs run game has managed to stifle Christian McAffrey. Keep an eye on rookie Yetur Gross-Matos. I think he’ll have a more immediate impact than even 1st round pick Derrick Brown.
Week 3	@Broncos	37-28 Bucs (3-0)	Always a challenge to play at Mile High on the road, but I think the Bucs defense will manage to shut down a young and budding Broncos offense. On a Broncos note, I’ll never understand Jeudy being the 2nd WR off the board (let alone the 2nd Bama receiver taken). Best route runner I’ve seen enter the league since OBJ.
Week 4	Chargers	28-21 Chargers (3-1)	No, I’m not too high on Justin Herbert, but when the Bucs play a rookie QB, I’m usually prone to pick the other team. For some reason, no matter the Head Coach and/or defensive coordinator, the Bucs crumple into fetal position against rookies.
Week 5	@Bears	31-13 Bucs (4-1)	If Foles’ performance against the Bucs last year is any indication, they have his number. Pray that Mitch Trubisky doesn’t start. In his last outing against Tampa, he threw 6 TD’s. He did that as a rookie, mind you. Remember what I said about Bucs against rookie QB’s?
Week 6	Packers	28-24 Packers (4-2)	Rumors of Aaron Rodgers’ demise are greatly exaggerated. It’s a team that’s just complete enough on both sides of the ball that I find it surprising so many are writing them off.
Week 7	@Raiders	34-31 Bucs (5-2)	Here’s another team that is starting to form well under the cracker Mike Mayock. Raiders will be as good as Carr is in Gruden’s offense, and while he improved somewhat in Chucky’s offense by the end of year 2, this is a team at the tipping point between playoffs and an outright QB replacement.
Week 8	@Giants	37-17 Bucs (6-2)	Though rookie Daniel Jones (sense a trend here?) shredded the Bucs with gusto last year, Bucs run defense should be able to neutralize Saquon, and despite a good rookie showing, I don’t have much faith in the long term prospects of Daniel Jones.
Week 9	Saints	20-17 Saints (6-3)	Can usually count on the Saints and Bucs to split the division series. And once again, the oldest QB matchup ever. Put on some episodes of MASH. Get your Bingo cards ready. It’s geriatric QB time.
Week 10	@Panthers	41-21 Bucs (7-3)	Will there be a season by this point? I don’t know. But I still like the Bucs to sweep the series with the Panthers this season.
Week 11	LA Rams	24-17 Rams (7-4)	Rams offense is all of a sudden looking less like the powerhouse it was from a few years ago, but their defense is still nasty. Aaron Donald will make any QB poop their pants, including Tom Brady. This will be a violent defensive battle and I think the Rams will take the edge.
Week 12	Chiefs	37-27 Chiefs (7-5)	For years on NFL going back to his time at Texas Tech, I told you all to get on board the Mahomes canoe. Love seeing him already building his Madden legacy. I’m just not going to bet against him right now.
Week 13	Bye	N/A	I have no way of confirming this, but I’m fairly certain during the bye week Bruce Arians clears out his office and runs an illegal cockfighting ring with his assistant coaches. You can’t convince me I’m wrong.
Week 14	Vikings	31-28 Bucs (8-5)	Vikings remain a balanced team on offense and defense and the Zim Zamm still can’t be flim flammed. Close game here that will be a defensive battle with a few big time plays on offense sprinkled in.
Week 15	Falcons	34-27 Falcons (8-6)	I’m glad to see Raheem Morris back in a DC position after seeing him work his way back up the coaching ranks. Always one of my favorite Buccaneer coaches despite his (many) flaws. I pick the Falcons in our first matchup because of one man and only one man: Julio Jones. Jones has now played a full 16 games in his career against Tampa, coming up with a staggering 116 catches for 1,841 yards and 11 TD’s. That’s cruelty.
Week 16	Lions	41-14 Bucs (9-6)	I have a feeling by this point in the season, Fat Patricia will be one of the first Head Coaches fired and the Lions will be staffed by Interim Head Coach Darrell Bevell. The Bucs will be playing a team with a wounded ego ready to be put down like Old Yeller.
Week 17	Falcons	28-3 Bucs (10-6)	Bucs fight hard to squeak into the playoffs, their first appearance since 2007.

Final Projection: Bucs win wild card, lose in the Divisional Round

Projected Starting Lineup & Analysis: Offense

QB- Tom Brady: See above analysis. Probably Wrong Projected Stats: 4,438 yards, 67.1% completion percentage, 33 TD’s, 13 INT’s
WR1 – Mike Evans: At only 26 years old, Mike Evans already sits at 128th all-time on the career receiving yards list, and has a chance to pass [checks notes] Michael Crabtree on the all-time list this season. In every season in the league, Evans has surpassed 1,000 yards and has become a hallmark of consistency, even with the suspect supporting cast around him. Having an accurate QB for the first time in his career will be a huge benefits to Evans. Probably Wrong Projected Stats: 70 receptions, 1,213 yards, 6 TD’s
WR2 – Chris Godwin: Godwin had a brilliant breakout last season, earning 2nd Team All-Pro honors (that probably would have been 1st team had his season not been cut short by injury). While Evans might be the bigger threat, Godwin is among the most complete receivers in the league. A fantastic route runner with sure hands—and perhaps his most overlooked quality is his blocking. Find me a WR who does it better right now. You won’t. Probably Wrong Projected Stats: 77 receptions, 1,387 yards, 7 TD’s
RB – Ronald Jones: RB is one of the few positions where fans can reasonably expect instant production from a player when he transitions from the college ranks to the pros. As a rookie, RoJo was a mega dud who could barely find the field in the Koetter era. He took a huge step forward in year 2 (724 yards, 4.2 ypc) but still often disappeared in games and lacked the pass protection skills that are so necessary in Arians’ offense. RoJo will have Vaughn to take off some of his workload, but I still see RoJo as one of the weakest links on an otherwise complete offense. Probably Wrong Projected Stats: 808 Rushing yards (4.2 YPC), 5 TD’s
TE – Rob Gronkowski: See above analysis. Probably Wrong Projected Stats: 41 receptions, 614 yards, 6 TD’s
LT – Donovan Smith: Donovan Smith provides as much protection as Jeffrey Epstein’s guards when he was on suicide watch. While Tom Brady tends to release the ball far faster than Winston, the Arians offense designed for Brady better be getting the ball out fast. 43 year old QB’s aren’t meant to take the kinds of hits Winston did. Let’s hope that Tristan Wirfs is able to prove himself a viable option on the left side. We’ll be able to get out of Donovan Smith’s contract after this season with no cap ramifications. On a side note, there’s a decent change Donovan Smith will opt out of his contract due to Covid concerns. And I wouldn’t blame him one bit.
LG – Ali Marpet: Marpet continues to be the most reliable piece of our OL. Like Lavonte, a continually unheralded player who you can rely on to go toe-to-toe with the league’s best interior DL while manhandling the dregs of the NFL. I thought last season would be Marpet’s shot at a 2nd Team All-Pro, but he was passed over once again. Love Marpet.
C – Ryan Jensen: Jensen’s first year with the team was free agent bust material. He seemed to thrive more in the Arians offense and we saw marked improvement in all facets of his game last year. Overpaid for his value? Definitely. Living up more and more to the contract we gave him? Yup.
RG – Alex Cappa: When Jason Licht rolled the dice on small school Humboldt State product Alex Cappa, he may have been expecting the next Ali Marpet. In his first full season as a starter, there were things to be encouraged by and I’m a little more bullish on Cappa than most of the fan base. Though he allowed 31 pressures on 562 pass snaps (roughly 6% pressure rate), I saw Cappa’s confidence growing as the season went on. His third season will tell us what his true ceiling in this league is. Right now, his floor isn’t Garrett Gilkey, but his ceiling ain’t Earl Grey.
RT – Tristan Wirfs: See above analysis.

Projected Starting Lineup & Analysis: Defense

EDGE – Sack Ferret: The Sack Ferret was brought on a 1 year, $4 million deal last season. I predicted he’d be a 5.5 sack guy and then probably hit free agency again. Just like we all expected, he went off and led the league in sacks with 19.5 (more than his previous five years in the league combined) and earned himself the franchise tag. Barrett has quickly become a fan favorite, and while I don’t see him replicating his majestic 2019 season, I still think he’ll be the same terror he’s been off the edge. Probably wrong projected stats: 12.5 sacks.
0-Tech - Tevita Tuliʻakiʻono Tuipulotu Mosese Vaʻhae Fehoko Faletau Vea: Running on the Buccaneers in 2019 was damn near impossible, so much so that the team only allowed 73.8 rushing yards per game. That success started up front with Vita Vea, who has quickly emerged as the league’s top 0-tech. Unfortunately, like his forefathers in Vince Wilfork and Casey Hampton, he’s likely to spend his career as a valuable defensive cog who receives few to no career accolades due to the “unsexiness” of being a two-gap space eating defender. So NFL, here’s a homework assignment for you. Watch Vea on All-22 if you have some time while on Covid lockdown. You will see one of the most absurdly athletic big men in the league who is your definition of immovable object. His progress last year was a joy to watch and he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite players. Oh, and he’s the best TE on the Bucs. By far. Probably wrong projected stats: 2.5 sacks, 2 receiving TD’s.
5-Tech – Ndamukong Suh: We brought Suh back on another 1 year deal. No, he’s not the player he once was (he’s even refrained from curbstomping genitals in Tampa…so far), but his attitude he sets on the field has been a welcome change compared to the namby-pamby milquetoasts on our DL from the past. Suh’s value will come mostly in the run game. His sack producing days are long gone. Probably wrong projected stats: 3.5 sacks.
EDGE – Jason Pierre-Paul: It’s [checks notes] August, and Jason Pierre-Paul hasn’t had an offseason accident. Praise the football Gods. Despite starting in only 8 games last year due to a serious auto accident, JPP managed 8.5 sacks. At 31, father time hasn’t quite caught up with him yet. Probably wrong projected stats: 9.5 sacks.
ILB – Lavonte David: The good part of Lavonte David bouncing inside last season to Will is that he no longer got grouped in the same bucket as sack-producing 3-4 OLB’s who beat him out for All-Pro nods nearly every year. Even at 30, Lavonte only seems to be getting better, and his instincts and smarts continue to essential to the defense. Though Lavonte is one half of the Mike tandem and has been one of the league’s best LB’s’ for all of 8 seasons, I don’t think he’s going to be the centerpiece stud. Keep Devin White’s name at the forefront of your mind, which leads me to... Probably wrong projected stats: 3.5 sacks, 3 INT’s
ILB – Devin “Get Live 45” White: If you’ve read any of my posts here for the last 5+ years, you would see I don’t take a blind homer approach with player evaluation. Not once have I predicted a Buccaneer would win the MVP award, nor have I predicted a Buccaneer would win DPOY. In fact, only once have I ever predicted we’d be a playoff team. Now that preamble is done, let me say it outright: Devin White is going to win Defensive Player of the Year in Year 2. What? Mikes never win, you say. And you’d be mostly correct. In fact, Vegas odds don’t even have Devin White listed in their top 10. Here’s what I saw from Devin White in the last half of his rookie season: an absolutely insane nose for forcing the fumble, excellent pass rush abilities, and smarts that put him in the backfield often before the RB even had the ball in his hands. I saw enough from him to believe his leap in year 2 is going to be similar to that of Luke Kuechly’s where he won DPOY in his second year in the league. Wherever the ball is, Devin White will be there. You’re going to see one of the league’s dominant defensive enforcers for a long, long time. Probably wrong projected stats: 6.0 sacks, 5 INT’s, 6 FF’s.
FS – Antoine Winfield Jr.: See above analysis. I think we’re also going to see Justin Evans get cut Probably wrong projected stats: 2.0 sacks, 2 INT’s
SS – Jordan Whitehead: Jordan White is the most underrated player on the Buccaneers defense, in my eyes. No, not Lavonte, because people talk about how underrated he is all the time to the point he’s not so underrated anymore. Whitehead’s mistakes went down drastically last year and he has a knack for being where the football is. Really like him and could see some big plays from him this season. Probably wrong projected stats: 1.0 sacks, 3 INT’s
CB – Carlton Davis: Bruce Arians doesn’t give empty praise, but he recently called Carlton Davis a top ten CB in the league, an assessment I’m inclined to agree with. He was battle tested big time in year 2, getting targeted 105 times and only allowing 52.4% of those balls thrown his way to be completed. He was able to shadow the best, and his 18 pass breakups are indicative of a guy with great awareness. And the funny thing is, he’s not even the CB I’m highest on with this roster. Probably wrong projected stats: 4 INT’s
CB – Jamel Dean: For a guy who came in as a 3rd round rookie, Dean exceeded expectations and then some. His first game as a starter came against the Seahawks, there’s no sugarcoating it—he got owned. But what I saw was a guy who stayed stride for stride with his receiver with little help over the top. By the end of his rookie season, he was looking like a shutdown corner. This is the CB I’m most excited for in 2020. Kid’s got a bright future. Probably wrong projected stats: 3 INT’s
CB – Sean Murphy-Bunting: When I’m wrong, I admit I’m helluh wrong, and with Murphy-Bunting, I was helluh wrong. Yes, it’s been only one season and things could still go south, but I was baffled when we passed on Greedy Williams in favor of SMB.

Non-Buccaneer Predictions for the Season

1. My 2018 breakout player prediction was Patrick Mahomes. Last year, it was Joshua Jacobs and Corey Davis (oops). This year, you need to watch J.K. Dobbins (rookie, Baltimore), N’Keal Harry (2nd year, NE). Perhaps not a true breakout, but I think Calvin Ridley will surpass 1,000 yards and become an even bigger complement to Julio Jones.
2. MVP will go to Russ Wilson. DPOY will go to Devin White (and if you’ve been reading these posts long enough you know I don’t usually go the homer approach). OPOY will go to Patrick Mahomes. COTY will go to Cliff Kingsbury.
3. The NFC Championship will be played between the 49ers and the Cowboys. The Cowboys will win. The AFC Championship will be played between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New England Patriots. The Chiefs will win. The Chiefs will repeat in the Super Bowl, defeating the Cowboys.
4. Last year I wrote: “Sam Darnold isn’t going to amount to much as an NFL QB. Not this year, and probably not ever.” I’ll repeat it this year too. But let me add one guy to that list: Tua Tagovailoa.
5. Clyde Edwards-Helaire isn’t the superstar you think he is. I think his career will wind up like Joseph Addai’s: a guy who had a few flash in the pan seasons but never among the top backs. That’s not a bad thing, I would just cool expectations on him.
6. The teams with the highest potential to land a top 5 pick, in no particular order: Lions, Jaguars, the Washington Football team (I feel like an idiot even typing that), Bears, Jets. Dark Horse: Eagles.
7. Coaches who have the hottest seats: Fat Patricia, Dan Quinn, Adam Gase, Doug Marrone, Bill O’Brien (as coach and GM).

Shoutouts

Shoutouts to my fellow mods on Buccaneers and NFL. It's a pleasure working with you all every day and shooting the shit with dank memes. And of course, much love to platypusofdeath who puts an insane amount of work into this series every year. Thank you for all you do.

Hello Friends,
Over in the Fg Discord this season we have put together a game guide each week where each day we look a little deeper into the upcoming matchup. It begins with a short recap of the prior game and moves forward from there. If you are not yet in the discord, please join us! We'd love to have you. We have daily discussions on recruiting, analysis, and most of the time we just hang out and chat Florida Gators.
Discord Invite Link
Without further ado, the Game Guide. Let us know what you think and if you have any ideas or feedback, we'd love to hear it. Special thanks to Chitowngator and Eric-UF for their contributions this week.
Week 1 Recap
Week 4 of Football, Week 1 of SEC play had the Gators kicking off against Ole Miss in the Grove. Your Florida Gators took care of business with a final score of 51-35. Coming into the game Oddsshark, had the line for this game at -13.5, with an estimated scoreline of Florida 41.5 - 23.6 Ole Miss. Turns out that was pretty close, although if you bet on the "over" you'd be a definite winner. This game was nearly a shootout due to "lack of availability" for the Gators on defense for several key players, including an early game ejection of starting safety Shawn Davis. Other notable absences were Stewart and Campbell. Ole Miss came out quick early and Lane Kiffin showed he had a few tricks up his sleeve. Even these tricks were no match for the dueling Kyles of the Gators, who lit up Ole Miss like a Christmas candle. Don't you love fall? The Gators were never in any real danger, however, and played multiple freshmen throughout the game, getting valuable experience on key targets such as Bogle, Whittemore, and more.
The Gators were rewarded for their effort Sunday by a #3 ranking in both the AP and Coaches Poll, seeing Georgia and Oklahoma fall in the poll.
Stat leaders were as follows:
Passing: Kyle Trask - 30/42 - 416 Yards - 9.9 AVG - 6:0 TD:Int - 93.4 QBR Rushing: Kadarius Toney - 2 Carries for 55 Yards - 27.5 AVG - Long of 50, Dameon Pierce - 9 Carries for 54 Yards - 6.0 AVG., Malik Davis - 7 Carries for 49 Yards - 7.0 AVG.
Note: On throws 20+ yards downfield, Kyle Trask went 4 for 5, 126 Yards, and 4 TDs. It was an explosive night for anyone named "Kyle".
Defensively, here's some stats of note:
Ventrell Miller - 15 Tackles (13 solo), 1 Sack, 2 TFL Brenton Cox - 8 Tackles (4 solo), 1 Sack, 2.5 TFL 1 Interception - Gervon Dexter - Forced by Brenton Cox
Team Stats:
3rd Down Efficiency - UF: 6 for 10. Ole Miss: 9 for 14 (0-1 on 4th Down) Penalties - 4 for 40 yards. Time of Possession - 33:29 UF to 26:31 Ole Miss Total Yards: UF - 642, Ole Miss - 613 Total Rushing: 29 Carries for 196 Yards - Good for 6.8 Yards per Rushing Total Passing: 31 for 45 for 446 Yards - Good for 9.9 Yards per Pass.
The FG Discord Mod team has selected a few players from the game as their "Player of the Game". They are as follows:
Zlat: To avoid spoiling the podcast, this selection has been redacted, and will be updated at podcast release Stev: Offensively, my pick has to be Trask. It was always going to be Trask or Pitts but they are two sides of the same coin. Does one have as much success without the other? Defensively, I have to go with Cox. He played up to the expectation of the #1 Jersey to me and my pick reflects it as such. Chitown: "Defense - Ventrell Miller was a dominating force and added a sack as well. He helped anchor down a few of our bigger defensive stops. Most improved player - KT. Seemed to have dedicated himself to learning routes and looked much more complete than his previous plays. Can actually play a vital role in the offense instead of being used in gadget-type plays." Toph:To avoid spoiling the podcast, this selection has been redacted, and will be updated at podcast release
Matchup Preview
This week, the Gators host South Carolina who are coming off a defeat to Tennesee 31-27. Tennessee almost blew a 2-TD lead but Gamecocks weren't able to close it out. Will South Carolina have a rebound, or a slump?
Some stats of note
South Carolina is dealing with a QB situation, much like other teams in the SEC.. They started Colin Hill, a journeyman Senior who was pedestrian at best. He put up a statline of 25 for 39, 290 Yards - 7.4 AVG 1:1 TD-Int ratio and a QBR of 51.1 His rushing stats were far less impressive due to 4 sacks given up.
On the receiving end, though, Senior Shi Smith had himself a night with 10 receptions for 140 yards and a TD. He could have a similar game to Elijah Moore if the UF DB's don't figure out the gameplan quickly.
South Carolina struggled heavily to run the ball against the Tennesee DL. The team only put up 89 rushing yards with a 2.5 AVG and a long of 13. They were able, however, to punch it in from close twice for 2 TDs.
The matchup has opened as high as -22.5 Florida on some sites but has settled down to -19.5 according to Oddsshark. What are your key things to look for in this game? I would watch the Defensive adjustments to see how they handle a lesser offense. There's a good chance Ole Miss was the best offense we'll face all season. Will the younger DBs pickup the scheme? Will we stunt more on the DL?
There's no doubt the offense will continue to fly high and have success with the attention Kyle Pitts commands. What are your predictions? Personally, I'm guessing 41-17.
Today's write-up on players to watch provided by chitowngator USCjr Names to Watch Out For
Offense
QB - Collin Hill (Grad Transfer)* Stephen Garcia Collin Hill is a graduate transfer that arrived at USCjr from Colorado State, following over the Cocks' new Offensive Coordinator, Mike Bobo. Beating out last year's starter, Ryan Hilinski, Hill previously was the starter at CSU, before getting injured 3 games into the 2019 campaign with his 3rd ACL tear. Against Tennessee, he threw for 290 yards with a 64% completion rate, tacking on a touchdown and a tipped pass that resulted in a pick-six.
Look for Hill to stretch the defense North/South and attack the middle of the field, especially after the tape we put against Ole Miss. Against Rocky Top, Hill had 5 completions over 20 yards, including 3 to Shi Smith.
WR - Shi Smith (Senior
To say Shi Smith was USCjr's offense on Saturday is an understatement. Smith caught 13 of the 25 total completed passes for a whopping 140 yards, including a 29 yard touchdown.
After losing Bryan Edwards to the NFL, Smith is the only returning receiver at South Carolina with any meaningful offensive production (43 receptions, 489 yards). Look for Mike Bobo to use Smith's breakaway speed to beat Florida over the top, like Exhibit A(Fade route, man-to-man coverage), Exhibit B(skinny post into double coverage), and Exhibit C(post route)
RB - Kevin Harris (Sophomore)
Following the departures of seniors Rico Dowdle and Tavien Feaster, Harris is stepping in to replace the highly-touted freshman RB Marshawn Lloyd, who suffered a season-ending ACL tear in late August. Harris is a physical runner who won't hesitate to try and bowl over an opponent. Harris received the majority of the carries against Tennessee, rushing for 55 yards on 13 carries, and adding a touchdown.
You can also expect to see additional carries split between Deshaun Fenwick and Zaquandre White, as this running back by committee approach combined for 26 of USC's 31 rushing attempts, amassing 105 yards in the process.
Defense
CB - Israel Mukuamu (Junior)
Mukuamu's breakout moment came last year in USCjr's victory over UGA, where he picked off Jake Fromm 3 times, including this beauty of a pick-six, where Mukuamu made Fromm look like the giant baby that he really is.
Last weekend, Mukuamu experienced a groin injury, forcing him out of the game in the second half against Tennessee. While South Carolina returns a relatively experienced secondary in Jaycee Horn (CB, Jr), RJ Roderick (S, Jr), and Jammie Robinson (CB, So, 2019 SEC All-Freshman), they lack depth as corner Cam Smith (RS-Fr) replaced him.
DT - Kingsley (JJ) Enagbare (Junior)
Enagbare was easily the defensive player of the game against Tennessee. In the contest, he had 9 tackles and 2.5 tackles for loss, including 2 sacks and a forced fumble. As he worked more snaps than any of USC's other defensive tackles, expect him to step up to take the place of 1st round draft pick, Javon Kinlaw. Here's a video of him putting the lockdown on GuantanamoBay last weekend to force the Vols to punt.
You can also expect contributions from Keir Thomas (DT, RS-Sr), Aaron Sterling(DE, Sr), as well as highly ranked 5* underclassmen Zacch Pickens (DT, So), and Jordan Burch (DE, Fr).
Talent/Position Group Comparison
Thanks to our friend Eric-UF, we've gotten a talent comparison (as seen on the sub in prior seasons) of the upcoming matchup for South Carolina. Today, we'll just look at one position group vs. one poisition group. As a recap, the talent ratings are adjusted to account for experience from a freshmen to senior level. The Raw ratings are not.
As many saw and have debated about in length since last week's game, our defense struggled a bit against the Ole Miss up-tempo offense and a scrambling QB. The good news is Collin Hill shouldn't be running on us like Corral did. The bad news is that he's not a terrible quarterback. He's no Drew Lock, though. He's pretty pedestrian but he does have the experience, as he's a senior and has been in college football long enough to be average.
As seen here
Our DBs are at an adjusted 0.861 talent level compared to a 0.908 raw, which means we are very young in the defensive back field. South Carolina's receivers are boasting a 0.901 raw, 0.841 adjusted. Just like us, they have talent receivers who just need a bit more time in college football. We spoke earlier about Shi Smith - He's the dangerous one.
This comes out to be a Draw, or if nothing else a very slight Florida edge for the Florida DB's. This should be a fantastic learning experience against an SEC opponent for our young backfield.

I saw the naked woman for the last time today.
The streets had heavy fog this morning, the kind where houses are vague shadows, even invisible, from the sidewalk. On impulse, I went walking just before dawn. I knew I'd come home dew-sticky and stuffy-nosed, but I hoped—feared—I'd see the naked woman again. So I pulled on tights, shorts, and a sweat shirt, and set out in the chill.
She usually appears only on the very darkest nights. But twice before I'd found her in heavy dawn fog; it seems all that matters is that I can't see her until I'm practically standing beside her. Her skin looks ash-gray in fog, her hair all the colors of tree bark and leaf mold.
She's very beautiful, tall and willowy, but there's nothing erotic about her nakedness, any more than there is to a naked squirrel—or bare stone. Clothes simply don't belong on her. Still, I'd long ago decided to let her take me if she tried; as much as I love my wife, the tall woman has an undeniable magnetism. It's why I keep looking for her, why I don't run away.
Because she terrifies me, too. For one thing, I know she's not real. Not in the sense that I'm real—that a drunk driver could whiz down the street and leave me dangling broken in someone's crepe myrtle like a weird early Halloween decoration. A car could pass right through her; or perhaps I should say she wouldn't notice it.
On the other hand, she's more than real. Now and then, we all have the feeling we're in the presence of something larger than ourselves. I had it at my sister's college graduation, overcome that two hundred kids were about to go out and try to rebuild the world. I had it last summer when the Arkansas River flooded, watching the muddy water spread half a mile through my grandmother's neighborhood, to stop literally at her doorstep. At a Black Lives Matter protest this summer, gathered with hundreds of people, I had it twice over, suddenly knowing two things: We could actually cause change, if enough of us worked together—and a tenth of us could be dead by fall, if the coronavirus kept getting worse.
All by herself, the naked woman gives me that feeling. She's larger than her physical body. She's more than I can see with my eyes, or touch with my hands—if I dared touch her.
She reminds me of nights in the country growing up, looking at thousands and thousands of stars, feeling how immense the space out there is. I never felt small, the way some people say they do; I always knew I was unique, and that even if I didn't matter to my brat brother, I mattered to myself. But the stars and the sky were larger than I was.
So is she.
I'd call her a nature spirit, except that I feel she belongs in the city, amid trees with their low branches neatly pruned, not to stunt the grass with their shade or block the view out the picture windows. She belongs with the crepe myrtles and brick driveways, the jonquil beds and the carefully manicured lawns. Her feet were made to spring from asphalt to grass, her hair to whip in the breeze from passing cars. The only thing that doesn't fit the city is her need for darkness, for concealment.
She's a secret. A mystery of the city.
Dark nights in the country are different from the city. In the country, all the light comes from outside, from the moon and stars; the darkest nights are the cloudy ones, the heavy overcast that brings pounding rain—now and then a tornado. In town, overcast nights are the brightest, the city's glare bottled in and mirrored down. On a cloudy night the orange sky shines bright enough I can read a book in my back yard.
In town, the dark nights are the clearest, most cloudless ones, when a few dim stars—Vega, Antares, the Dippers sometimes—flicker up high, but the city glare is just a faint glow around the horizon. The moon is down; Venus has set with the sun; Jupiter and Saturn are pinpoints illuminating nothing.
Those were the nights I'd first seen the naked woman, when I walked in the cool middle night, when most of the town was in bed and few cars brought their headlights to ruin my night vision. Becky, fearful of cars, bought me a fancy color-changing LED harness to wear, but I always turn it off as soon as I'm out of sight of our house. I like the darkness, hate the colorful aura the harness casts around me.
Walking the midnight streets, making my way from porch light to street light to deep tree-shadow, is the closest I can come to the nights I spent walking country roads by starlight with my dad. Whatever we were doing—hunting, fishing, or just collecting wild mistletoe for Christmas—he always had to set out long before first light. Under clear skies, even moonless nights were bright-lit; by starlight alone, we'd walk easily down the dusty roads and through the ditch-rimmed fields. He carried a flashlight, a little thing with a red lens, but he only pulled it out in thick woods where even moonlight couldn't penetrate.
I don't expect I'll ever go hunting or fishing again; life—work, mostly—has made a city girl of me. And Becky has little interest in the outdoors, beyond watching fireflies and hummingbirds in our back yard.
This morning's fog was as heavy as I've seen in years. It made compact halos around the streetlamps. Shrubs materialized magically only a few steps before me, and evaporated a few steps behind.
The fog had been nearly this thick the first time I saw the naked woman in daylight, two years ago. She was so heartbreakingly lovely that I'd reflexively reached for my phone to take a picture—only to freeze with the phone half-raised. I knew, without the slightest doubt: She'd allowed me see her many times, but if I tried to show her to Becky, she'd destroy us both.
She didn't sprout claws; her mouth didn't open into a wide grin impossibly full of needle teeth; she remained a tall, beautiful, naked woman. But the vague fear she'd caused before crystallized that morning. I knew she would kill me if I offended her.
Yet I continued to watch for her on my night walks. I often wondered if anybody else saw her—but I never dared ask, knowing instinctively I shouldn't speak about her. She liked darkness and concealment; so I also wondered, Why does she let me see her? What's special about me?
Passing the park, I heard a faint ooh, ooh-ooh a block or two away; not an owl, a mourning dove. I stopped to listen more carefully, and could hear the entire call: Ooah ooh, ooh-ooh. I was more used to hearing them in the evening or near midnight; around here, at least, early morning is more for the chuck-will's-widows, their chorus of Ti-yu tu-wip! like a badly-organized call-and-response prayer meeting.
Right now we're about halfway through the fall dove season in Arkansas. I don't know how many people still hunt doves, compared to when I was a kid, but several guys in my office go every year. I won't ever go again, not after the times Dad took me out. We lived in the country, but in the part of it all the town hunters flocked to every season. Any stubble field not surrounded by purple paint and POSTED signs would be lined end-to-end with hunters.
Dad took me three times one season, and it was always the same. Like always, we'd leave while it was still full dark. We'd walk to whichever field he'd chosen, and he'd find us a place to perch about midway down. Because we left so early, he could always find a spot he liked; I'd hear him say, "Hey, Bill," to somebody already in place, but he'd just move thirty yards down and be satisfied. But soon other hunters—city hunters—would start to filter in, parking big growly pickups by the road, hauling sloshing coolers between them, big six-cell flashlights throwing beams clear across the field.
And talking. Yelling, even. "Get that goddam light outta my eyes." "Who's got the 20-gauge shells?" "Whad'you put in this coffee, rabbit shit?" More than once it would be Dad swearing at the light in his eyes, as some footless jackass practically fell into our laps. "Goddam peckerheads," Dad would say. "No manners at all." They wouldn't shut up, even after they got their camp chairs and coolers arranged, even after the sky began to lighten.
And after they got situated, we'd hear the beer cans start to pop. Dad hated drunk hunters more than anything. "Be damn glad they only got shotguns, not rifles," he told me.
Finally, along about sunrise, some poor brain-addled dove would wander into the field. Dad always, I don't know how, knew which way they'd be flying, so they'd cross side-to-side before us. So a dove would appear far to our left, down by the road, and guns would start to go off. Bam! Blam! Bonk! Bam! (At the right distance, with the right echoes, some shotguns go Bonk!) They'd fire from both sides of a field two hundred yards wide, whether the bird was on their side or the other; the city hunters had no idea how far away they could bring down a bird.
The dove would tear down the field, jinking back and forth, up and down, and the guns would keep firing. Soon there'd be bangs alongside us and opposite us, and pellets from hunters across the field would start to patter around me. I knew they were harmless, but I hated that sound.
Then the dove would be past, and more guns would fire, and the dove would disappear out the far end of the field, untouched. All around, I'd hear the clack of double-barrels being reloaded and closed, and the quieter clicking of fresh shells slipping into the pump guns. And more talking.
Five or ten minutes later, here'd come another dove, and the fusillade would start again. Maybe this time, by some miracle, the dove would actually fall, and five or eleven guys would rush into the stubble to argue over which one brought it down; but most times the dove flew from end to end without losing a feather.
Dad never fired a shot, and never let me fire either. "No point in shooting," he said, "when it's pure luck if you hit." The few birds that came near us were so annoyed by the gunfire that they'd hardly fly three feet before changing direction. You can't lead a bird that's likely to turn a right angle before your load gets there.
We went three times, and never stayed more than two hours after sunrise. Dad would get fed up with the pellets falling around us, and the idiots "letting loose at birds a quarter-mile off," and the drinking and endless chatter. "C'mon, Juney," he'd say at last. "Let's go get breakfast." We'd unload our guns, case them, and start walking back along the ditch to the road.
That's when most of the hunters around us would first see I was a girl. I was tall for my age, but I'd still hear a lot of comments like, "That gun's longer than she is!" or "Watch out, girl, that gun'll knock you on your butt!"
I was twelve and still built roughly on the lines of a fence post, but that didn't stop one beery bozo from calling, "Hey, cutie!" Green Remington shells and squashed Miller Lite cans were littered around him; he probably could hardly tell me from the doves. But Dad stopped dead, turned full-face to him, and gave him a freezing glare until his lip began to tremble. "Hey, I di'n't mean nothing."
After the season ended, Dad told me he'd talked to all his friends, and not one of them had brought in a single dove that year. Dad never went after dove again. "Goddam silly thing to hunt," he said by way of excuse; "not enough meat on them to feed a baby." But I know he was just discouraged at how the city hunters had ruined the season.
"Everybody's got a right to go hunting," he said. "But they ought to do it right—be respectful."
A squirrel barked, seemingly in my ear, startling the hell out of me. I finally spotted it several feet over my head, chittering grumpily, probably defaming my ancestry. The fog was playing tricks with my senses.
Fog like this both amplifies and deadens sound, the heavy, dense air carrying noises and speech for blocks, but taking away all sense of direction or distance. Everything sounded either right by my ear or under a pile of quilts. The fog clogged my sinuses, but my ears were sharp; every time I sniffed, I heard a dozen echoes.
The wetness amplifies odors, too. This morning, walking the first few blocks from my house, I smelled things I hadn't noticed in weeks. I felt certain: I could close my eyes and let somebody lead me around, and by smell and sound always know just where I was.
The sour-sweet smell of the Greys' persimmon tree, soft overripe fruit splattered on the street; the fecal reek of that one rental with too many kids in the back and too many dogs fenced in front; the rotted odor of years of boat-like leaves and sour red fruits under the Herreras' huge sprawling magnolia—better than its sickening summer-blooming smell, but still ugly.
The hissing sand in the gutter by the big stone house, washed there when last month's rains from Hurricane Laura interrupted their new landscaping; the unending mutter from Mr. Haney's TV, left on 24/7 since his wife died, turned loud because of his hearing; the skitter of kicked sweet gum balls by the park; the crackle of acorn hulls under my shoes beneath the Hortons' spreading oak.
And, of course, the dogs. I could have found my way in pitch blackness, just by which dog was closest by, slandering my good name.
I'd often noticed how, unlike the dogs, the naked woman moved in complete silence. When I first saw her in fog, I couldn't even hear the dewdrops dripping from her hair.
If I got lost in the fog, I thought, I could always get home by following the stinging odor of the two huge rosemary bushes flanking the front porch next door. I'd always thought of rosemary as an herb; I had no idea it could grow to be a hefty six-foot shrub.
When we first married and moved here, Becky insisted we introduce ourselves to our closest neighbors. We started at the house with the rosemary bushes. I could see, though, that once Becky rang the doorbell her nerve was failing. When a tall, balding man of about forty answered, she faltered, saying, "Hi! I'm Becky, and—and this is my—my wife June." We'd met some hostility here and there, it not being long since Arkansas had to allow us to marry.
The man looked down at us, then called over his shoulder, "Hon, can you come to the door?" He turned back to us. "I'm Dale. And this"—as a stocky man an inch or so taller than me appeared—"is my husband Stuart." After that, I never saw Becky hesitate again.
They'd been married about six months longer than we had, but they'd lived together for eight years. They had a daughter, Olivia, from Dale's first, unsuccessful marriage—unsuccessful enough he'd had little trouble getting full custody. Livvie was a darling, a brilliant singer with plans to sing opera; I thought she was a good kid, but Becky absolutely adored her. She sometimes accompanied me on walks—but never the late-night ones where I saw the naked woman.
I kicked a hickory nut and startled up a rabbit. It darted off into the fog, with a faint rustle of leaves.
Even deep in the city, this neighborhood is lousy with rabbits, possums, coons, skunks—even an armadillo now and then.
It's because of the rabbits, I'm sure, that I saw a coyote slinking between houses last year. Startled, I tried to convince myself it was a stray dog, but there was no mistaking the slinking, rawboned shape, the black-tipped tail.
I thought, At least it wasn't a wolf. Coyotes might pick off the stray house cat or Scottie dog, but they didn't often attack humans. The typical city human didn't have any natural predators—that I knew of.
I was reminded of an October when I was fifteen or sixteen. I still fished, and I liked to shoot, but I'd lost interest in hunting. I hadn't gone all PETA and decided that hunting was vicious and inhuman; I'd simply grown irritated with a sport I lacked time to excel at. But Dad still went to the deer woods every year, and brought home the occasional turkey, bag of squirrels, or brace of rabbits as well.
This day my brother Phil, who'd never wanted to hunt or fish with Dad, said something about deer hunting being cruel and repulsive. Dad didn't get mad. He just went to his car and got a battered magazine he'd been saving for years; I'd seen him show the same magazine to people in the diners where we got breakfast or lunch after our hunting and fishing trips.
The magazine had an article from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, about the necessity of deer hunting. Since wolves and cougars are virtually gone from Arkansas, white-tail deer have few natural predators. The only things keeping them in check are their food supply, human hunters—and cars.
The article had figures about how many white-tails would starve every year if their population grew unchecked, and how much deer would cost Arkansas in crop damage every year, but I never remembered those. What I remembered was the calculation that if deer hunting were banned, within ten years Arkansas would have fifty thousand deer-related car accidents a year. At the time, that was roughly the same as the total number of reported accidents each year.
"What's more cruel?" Dad said. "Hunt a few thousand deer every season, or have thousands starving to death, herds wandering onto I-40 to wreck the truckers, every third car in the state with a bashed-in radiator or windshield?" The deer needed to be hunted, he insisted. We were their only predator.
Phil, stumped, had fallen back on what Dad called "tree-hugger logic." "At least starvation's natural," he said. "That's how things have always been; nature finds its own balance."
Dad threw up his hands. "What's always so damn unnatural about people?" he complained. "We didn't come here from another planet! We grew up here, same as the deer and the birds and the beavers." Seeing Phil stuck again, Dad went on, "I've never seen what's supposed to make a beaver lodge so much more noble than this house you live in. One way or the other, somebody wanted a place to live, and put together whatever he could to make it. Just because we invent things, that doesn't make us unnatural."
Phil, a couple of years younger than me and not all that forthright, stomped off in a huff. Dad turned to me. "Hey, I didn't say a word," I headed him off. "I got nothing against deer hunting."
"Good thing." He flipped through the magazine idly, then said, as if repeating a thought he'd had many times before, "Maybe those Sierra Club tree-huggers wouldn't be so hot on nature if there were still some real predators out there. If something in the wild killed a million or so people a year, I bet Phil would by-God learn to shoot."
"Bet he would."
"Might be good for us, too." He threw the magazine down. "Humans, I mean. I talk big about how our house is as natural as a beaver lodge. But what about those high-rise apartment blocks they're building on the lake close to town? Even I know it ain't natural to cram people together into cells like a damn beehive."
He grabbed the magazine again. Going out to return it to his car, he said, "One of these days, either we're going to go nuts, all crammed together, and start really killing each other off, or nature's going to evolve something meaner than us to thin the herds a bit. And it'll start in the cities, not in the piney woods around here."
About twenty blocks from my house, sunlight still dimmed by the mist, I stopped to look at a brown wriggling in the leaves at the curb. I thought at first it was a big earthworm, fallen into the street, then I saw it was a little brown snake, a common garden snake, maybe eight inches stretched straight. It writhed in the leaves, not seeming to be going anywhere, but also not seeming hurt. I found a stick nearby to slide under its white belly, and flipped it over into the grass.
I watched it wriggle away, then turned back to the street. Three feet away, a pale gleam caught my eye—another little brown snake, dead in the leaf-littered gutter. I nudged it with my toe, noting how stiff it was, wondering at the coincidence of finding two identical snakes, one live, one dead, a yard apart.
Why do dead snakes always turn belly-up? I wondered. Then I looked up, and there she stood.
If she'd been five or six steps further away, she'd have dissolved into the fog, as the house behind her did. She looked ghostly, though the feeling shot through me that the asphalt under my Sauconys was more fragile than her skin. I stood staring, overcome by her loveliness. She had the austerity of a sunlit desert, but the vitality of a leaping squirrel—and the overwhelming strength of the Arkansas River in flood.
She terrified me and exalted me, at the same time.
Now she approached slowly, little sidesteps that took her onto the street, then back onto the lawn, but always a little closer to me. Here in the fog, with every scent intensified, I noticed for the first time that I never smelled her. That surprised me more than her perpetual silence; how could someone so terribly there, so much alive, have no scent at all?
I'd never spoken to her. Even the first time I saw her, when I first thought I'd stumbled onto a rape victim in shock, words died on my tongue. And of course she never made a sound. But this morning I felt she had something to tell me.
I felt her powerful magnetism again, a strong charisma without any taint of sensual allure. It had never been so potent. I wanted her to show me miracles. I wanted her to transform the world.
Instead, she transformed herself. Standing in the grass, topping me by nearly a foot, the naked woman melted into the shape of a buck deer, seven-pointed, standing proud and thick-necked and stupid as a fence post. For a moment I itched to hold Dad's old pump shotgun in my hands; I still have it, though it's hard to find 16-gauge shells any more. But I couldn't have shot the buck—not because it stood on a city lawn, not because I hadn't had a license since I was seventeen, but because I remembered the woman.
Then she was back, as if the clinging fog had swirled her from one shape to another. I saw droplets glistening in her all-colors hair. The morning was brightening; the fog had surely burned off the hilltops by now; in a few more minutes it would begin to burn out of the broad hollow cradling our neighborhood.
She changed again. This time a gray wolf grinned at me from the height of my belly. No slinking scavenger this time; I faced one of nature's cleverest, most patient predators. I didn't breathe, didn't move—didn't dare turn my eyes aside from hers. Her grin widened, showing magnificent teeth; she laughed silently at me, her tail switching slowly.
The woman was back. I've lost count of how often I've seen her in the five years since Becky and I moved here, but this morning I understood for the first time: She appeared as a woman because I was a woman. The coyote would have seen another coyote, or perhaps a friendly wolf. But this morning she showed me what else she could be, what else she'd always been.
She changed again. This time she was no beast I knew, was not entirely a beast at all. She—alien as her appearance was, I knew this creature was female—bulked large enough to fade into the fog between me and the invisible house. I saw great orange eyes sunk into sockets like punch bowls, and long gray fur, and one paw the size of a sofa cushion; I smelled musk. But I saw stone, as well, and thick knotted shapes like heavy tree roots, and I smelled rotted leaves and ripening fruit. This creature was animal, and earth, and forest, all together.
She was a creature of power, a creature of change, a creature of destruction. I saw no mouth, no huge wolf's teeth, but I knew my life hung by a thread, by her merest whim. I couldn't run; I no longer had strength to stand. I sank to my hands and knees, acorn hulls cutting into my palms. I waited—to die, to live, to be forgiven for crimes I didn't understand.
Again the woman came back. She cocked an eyebrow at me, a startlingly human expression, and I understood more: She was warning me. She liked me. Perhaps she sensed the combination of Dad's teachings and my own beliefs: violence in nature, and to nature, is natural; I matter to myself; we grew up here, too; "Be respectful". And a willingness to believe in the naked woman—and the memory of Dad's words: Nature's going to evolve something meaner than us to thin the herds a bit. And it'll start in the cities…
While I knelt in the street, she stepped back into the fog and vanished. Shakily I pushed to my feet, and started toward home through the thinning fog. I wanted to get back to Becky, to see her safe. The naked woman liked me—but I wasn't sure she cared that I love Becky.
She liked me, so she let me glimpse her true self, before she turned it upon others. It wasn't compassion—I know she has none. More likely she was measuring my response to her, getting a feel for her prey.
She's already begun. I really could have followed the smell of rosemary home this morning. I smelled its moist tang from three blocks away, because it wasn't just two large shrubs any more; it was a thicket of rosemary, hundreds of bushes where Dale and Stuart's house used to be. The lot is bare of any house, sidewalk, or driveway. There's nothing but two large maples and two sickly elms, and rosemary bushes tangling around their feet, breathing moist perfume into the warm sunlight.
Becky doesn't remember Dale or Stuart; she doesn't remember that there was a house next door when she went to bed last night. Worse, she doesn't remember Livvie—fourteen-year-old, fiercely talented Olivia, who wanted to sing with the Met when she grew up. I'm sure nobody at the Lutheran school remembers Livvie either; perhaps the choir director wonders vaguely, When will I have a star soloist again?
Maybe tomorrow morning I'll find that Mr. Haney's house is gone, his TV silenced. Or a grove of persimmons will replace the Greys' house. Or the fresh-laid sod at the big stone house will lost in a thicket of honeysuckle and hickories. And Becky won't remember Mr. Haney, or the stone house we often daydreamed about buying when we grew rich and famous, or the persimmon wine that Tina Grey used to make.
The naked woman will digest the nails and plastic and wire and concrete easily; she's animal and plant and earth, but she's bred for the city.
Maybe a few of you have seen her or one of her kind—a naked man, perhaps. Maybe that means you're safe, as I believe I may be safe.
But the rest of you: I'm not telling you this story to warn you. If you haven't seen her, you won't; she's a predator beyond your ability to defend or flee. No warning will protect you when she comes. And if she, or another like her, has already visited your neighborhood, you won't remember the ones she took, and my story won't bring their memory back.
No, I'm telling this story because I may be the only one who can. This is my memorial for Livvie, and Dale and Stuart. There's nothing else I can do for them; I don't believe I'll ever see the naked woman again.
I don't think we're in danger of extinction. That's not her purpose, their purpose, any more than it's the wolf pack's purpose to kill every deer in the forest.
But it's time to thin the herd.
DTS

The streets had heavy fog this morning, the kind where houses are vague shadows, even invisible, from the sidewalk. On impulse, I went walking just before dawn. I knew I'd come home dew-sticky and stuffy-nosed, but I hoped—feared—I'd see the naked woman again. So I pulled on tights, shorts, and a sweat shirt, and set out in the chill.
She usually appears only on the very darkest nights. But twice before I'd found her in heavy dawn fog; it seems all that matters is that I can't see her until I'm practically standing beside her. Her skin looks ash-gray in fog, her hair all the colors of tree bark and leaf mold.
She's very beautiful, tall and willowy, but there's nothing erotic about her nakedness, any more than there is to a naked squirrel—or bare stone. Clothes simply don't belong on her. Still, I'd long ago decided to let her take me if she tried; as much as I love my wife, the tall woman has an undeniable magnetism. It's why I keep looking for her, why I don't run away.
Because she terrifies me, too. For one thing, I know she's not real. Not in the sense that I'm real—that a drunk driver could whiz down the street and leave me dangling broken in someone's crepe myrtle like a weird early Halloween decoration. A car could pass right through her; or perhaps I should say she wouldn't notice it.
On the other hand, she's more than real. Now and then, we all have the feeling we're in the presence of something larger than ourselves. I had it at my sister's college graduation, overcome that two hundred kids were about to go out and try to rebuild the world. I had it last summer when the Arkansas River flooded, watching the muddy water spread half a mile through my grandmother's neighborhood, to stop literally at her doorstep. At a Black Lives Matter protest this summer, gathered with hundreds of people, I had it twice over, suddenly knowing two things: We could actually cause change, if enough of us worked together—and a tenth of us could be dead by fall, if the coronavirus kept getting worse.
All by herself, the naked woman gives me that feeling. She's larger than her physical body. She's more than I can see with my eyes, or touch with my hands—if I dared touch her.
She reminds me of nights in the country growing up, looking at thousands and thousands of stars, feeling how immense the space out there is. I never felt small, the way some people say they do; I always knew I was unique, and that even if I didn't matter to my brat brother, I mattered to myself. But the stars and the sky were larger than I was.
So is she.
I'd call her a nature spirit, except that I feel she belongs in the city, amid trees with their low branches neatly pruned, not to stunt the grass with their shade or block the view out the picture windows. She belongs with the crepe myrtles and brick driveways, the jonquil beds and the carefully manicured lawns. Her feet were made to spring from asphalt to grass, her hair to whip in the breeze from passing cars. The only thing that doesn't fit the city is her need for darkness, for concealment.
She's a secret. A mystery of the city.
Dark nights in the country are different from the city. In the country, all the light comes from outside, from the moon and stars; the darkest nights are the cloudy ones, the heavy overcast that brings pounding rain—now and then a tornado. In town, overcast nights are the brightest, the city's glare bottled in and mirrored down. On a cloudy night the orange sky shines bright enough I can read a book in my back yard.
In town, the dark nights are the clearest, most cloudless ones, when a few dim stars—Vega, Antares, the Dippers sometimes—flicker up high, but the city glare is just a faint glow around the horizon. The moon is down; Venus has set with the sun; Jupiter and Saturn are pinpoints illuminating nothing.
Those were the nights I'd first seen the naked woman, when I walked in the cool middle night, when most of the town was in bed and few cars brought their headlights to ruin my night vision. Becky, fearful of cars, bought me a fancy color-changing LED harness to wear, but I always turn it off as soon as I'm out of sight of our house. I like the darkness, hate the colorful aura the harness casts around me.
Walking the midnight streets, making my way from porch light to street light to deep tree-shadow, is the closest I can come to the nights I spent walking country roads by starlight with my dad. Whatever we were doing—hunting, fishing, or just collecting wild mistletoe for Christmas—he always had to set out long before first light. Under clear skies, even moonless nights were bright-lit; by starlight alone, we'd walk easily down the dusty roads and through the ditch-rimmed fields. He carried a flashlight, a little thing with a red lens, but he only pulled it out in thick woods where even moonlight couldn't penetrate.
I don't expect I'll ever go hunting or fishing again; life—work, mostly—has made a city girl of me. And Becky has little interest in the outdoors, beyond watching fireflies and hummingbirds in our back yard.
This morning's fog was as heavy as I've seen in years. It made compact halos around the streetlamps. Shrubs materialized magically only a few steps before me, and evaporated a few steps behind.
The fog had been nearly this thick the first time I saw the naked woman in daylight, two years ago. She was so heartbreakingly lovely that I'd reflexively reached for my phone to take a picture—only to freeze with the phone half-raised. I knew, without the slightest doubt: She'd allowed me see her many times, but if I tried to show her to Becky, she'd destroy us both.
She didn't sprout claws; her mouth didn't open into a wide grin impossibly full of needle teeth; she remained a tall, beautiful, naked woman. But the vague fear she'd caused before crystallized that morning. I knew she would kill me if I offended her.
Yet I continued to watch for her on my night walks. I often wondered if anybody else saw her—but I never dared ask, knowing instinctively I shouldn't speak about her. She liked darkness and concealment; so I also wondered, Why does she let me see her? What's special about me?
Passing the park, I heard a faint ooh, ooh-ooh a block or two away; not an owl, a mourning dove. I stopped to listen more carefully, and could hear the entire call: Ooah ooh, ooh-ooh. I was more used to hearing them in the evening or near midnight; around here, at least, early morning is more for the chuck-will's-widows, their chorus of Ti-yu tu-wip! like a badly-organized call-and-response prayer meeting.
Right now we're about halfway through the fall dove season in Arkansas. I don't know how many people still hunt doves, compared to when I was a kid, but several guys in my office go every year. I won't ever go again, not after the times Dad took me out. We lived in the country, but in the part of it all the town hunters flocked to every season. Any stubble field not surrounded by purple paint and POSTED signs would be lined end-to-end with hunters.
Dad took me three times one season, and it was always the same. Like always, we'd leave while it was still full dark. We'd walk to whichever field he'd chosen, and he'd find us a place to perch about midway down. Because we left so early, he could always find a spot he liked; I'd hear him say, "Hey, Bill," to somebody already in place, but he'd just move thirty yards down and be satisfied. But soon other hunters—city hunters—would start to filter in, parking big growly pickups by the road, hauling sloshing coolers between them, big six-cell flashlights throwing beams clear across the field.
And talking. Yelling, even. "Get that goddam light outta my eyes." "Who's got the 20-gauge shells?" "Whad'you put in this coffee, rabbit shit?" More than once it would be Dad swearing at the light in his eyes, as some footless jackass practically fell into our laps. "Goddam peckerheads," Dad would say. "No manners at all." They wouldn't shut up, even after they got their camp chairs and coolers arranged, even after the sky began to lighten.
And after they got situated, we'd hear the beer cans start to pop. Dad hated drunk hunters more than anything. "Be damn glad they only got shotguns, not rifles," he told me.
Finally, along about sunrise, some poor brain-addled dove would wander into the field. Dad always, I don't know how, knew which way they'd be flying, so they'd cross side-to-side before us. So a dove would appear far to our left, down by the road, and guns would start to go off. Bam! Blam! Bonk! Bam! (At the right distance, with the right echoes, some shotguns go Bonk!) They'd fire from both sides of a field two hundred yards wide, whether the bird was on their side or the other; the city hunters had no idea how far away they could bring down a bird.
The dove would tear down the field, jinking back and forth, up and down, and the guns would keep firing. Soon there'd be bangs alongside us and opposite us, and pellets from hunters across the field would start to patter around me. I knew they were harmless, but I hated that sound.
Then the dove would be past, and more guns would fire, and the dove would disappear out the far end of the field, untouched. All around, I'd hear the clack of double-barrels being reloaded and closed, and the quieter clicking of fresh shells slipping into the pump guns. And more talking.
Five or ten minutes later, here'd come another dove, and the fusillade would start again. Maybe this time, by some miracle, the dove would actually fall, and five or eleven guys would rush into the stubble to argue over which one brought it down; but most times the dove flew from end to end without losing a feather.
Dad never fired a shot, and never let me fire either. "No point in shooting," he said, "when it's pure luck if you hit." The few birds that came near us were so annoyed by the gunfire that they'd hardly fly three feet before changing direction. You can't lead a bird that's likely to turn a right angle before your load gets there.
We went three times, and never stayed more than two hours after sunrise. Dad would get fed up with the pellets falling around us, and the idiots "letting loose at birds a quarter-mile off," and the drinking and endless chatter. "C'mon, Juney," he'd say at last. "Let's go get breakfast." We'd unload our guns, case them, and start walking back along the ditch to the road.
That's when most of the hunters around us would first see I was a girl. I was tall for my age, but I'd still hear a lot of comments like, "That gun's longer than she is!" or "Watch out, girl, that gun'll knock you on your butt!"
I was twelve and still built roughly on the lines of a fence post, but that didn't stop one beery bozo from calling, "Hey, cutie!" Green Remington shells and squashed Miller Lite cans were littered around him; he probably could hardly tell me from the doves. But Dad stopped dead, turned full-face to him, and gave him a freezing glare until his lip began to tremble. "Hey, I di'n't mean nothing."
After the season ended, Dad told me he'd talked to all his friends, and not one of them had brought in a single dove that year. Dad never went after dove again. "Goddam silly thing to hunt," he said by way of excuse; "not enough meat on them to feed a baby." But I know he was just discouraged at how the city hunters had ruined the season.
"Everybody's got a right to go hunting," he said. "But they ought to do it right—be respectful."
A squirrel barked, seemingly in my ear, startling the hell out of me. I finally spotted it several feet over my head, chittering grumpily, probably defaming my ancestry. The fog was playing tricks with my senses.
Fog like this both amplifies and deadens sound, the heavy, dense air carrying noises and speech for blocks, but taking away all sense of direction or distance. Everything sounded either right by my ear or under a pile of quilts. The fog clogged my sinuses, but my ears were sharp; every time I sniffed, I heard a dozen echoes.
The wetness amplifies odors, too. This morning, walking the first few blocks from my house, I smelled things I hadn't noticed in weeks. I felt certain: I could close my eyes and let somebody lead me around, and by smell and sound always know just where I was.
The sour-sweet smell of the Greys' persimmon tree, soft overripe fruit splattered on the street; the fecal reek of that one rental with too many kids in the back and too many dogs fenced in front; the rotted odor of years of boat-like leaves and sour red fruits under the Herreras' huge sprawling magnolia—better than its sickening summer-blooming smell, but still ugly.
The hissing sand in the gutter by the big stone house, washed there when last month's rains from Hurricane Laura interrupted their new landscaping; the unending mutter from Mr. Haney's TV, left on 24/7 since his wife died, turned loud because of his hearing; the skitter of kicked sweet gum balls by the park; the crackle of acorn hulls under my shoes beneath the Hortons' spreading oak.
And, of course, the dogs. I could have found my way in pitch blackness, just by which dog was closest by, slandering my good name.
I'd often noticed how, unlike the dogs, the naked woman moved in complete silence. When I first saw her in fog, I couldn't even hear the dewdrops dripping from her hair.
If I got lost in the fog, I thought, I could always get home by following the stinging odor of the two huge rosemary bushes flanking the front porch next door. I'd always thought of rosemary as an herb; I had no idea it could grow to be a hefty six-foot shrub.
When we first married and moved here, Becky insisted we introduce ourselves to our closest neighbors. We started at the house with the rosemary bushes. I could see, though, that once Becky rang the doorbell her nerve was failing. When a tall, balding man of about forty answered, she faltered, saying, "Hi! I'm Becky, and—and this is my—my wife June." We'd met some hostility here and there, it not being long since Arkansas had to allow us to marry.
The man looked down at us, then called over his shoulder, "Hon, can you come to the door?" He turned back to us. "I'm Dale. And this"—as a stocky man an inch or so taller than me appeared—"is my husband Stuart." After that, I never saw Becky hesitate again.
They'd been married about six months longer than we had, but they'd lived together for eight years. They had a daughter, Olivia, from Dale's first, unsuccessful marriage—unsuccessful enough he'd had little trouble getting full custody. Livvie was a darling, a brilliant singer with plans to sing opera; I thought she was a good kid, but Becky absolutely adored her. She sometimes accompanied me on walks—but never the late-night ones where I saw the naked woman.
I kicked a hickory nut and startled up a rabbit. It darted off into the fog, with a faint rustle of leaves.
Even deep in the city, this neighborhood is lousy with rabbits, possums, coons, skunks—even an armadillo now and then.
It's because of the rabbits, I'm sure, that I saw a coyote slinking between houses last year. Startled, I tried to convince myself it was a stray dog, but there was no mistaking the slinking, rawboned shape, the black-tipped tail.
I thought, At least it wasn't a wolf. Coyotes might pick off the stray house cat or Scottie dog, but they didn't often attack humans. The typical city human didn't have any natural predators—that I knew of.
I was reminded of an October when I was fifteen or sixteen. I still fished, and I liked to shoot, but I'd lost interest in hunting. I hadn't gone all PETA and decided that hunting was vicious and inhuman; I'd simply grown irritated with a sport I lacked time to excel at. But Dad still went to the deer woods every year, and brought home the occasional turkey, bag of squirrels, or brace of rabbits as well.
This day my brother Phil, who'd never wanted to hunt or fish with Dad, said something about deer hunting being cruel and repulsive. Dad didn't get mad. He just went to his car and got a battered magazine he'd been saving for years; I'd seen him show the same magazine to people in the diners where we got breakfast or lunch after our hunting and fishing trips.
The magazine had an article from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, about the necessity of deer hunting. Since wolves and cougars are virtually gone from Arkansas, white-tail deer have few natural predators. The only things keeping them in check are their food supply, human hunters—and cars.
The article had figures about how many white-tails would starve every year if their population grew unchecked, and how much deer would cost Arkansas in crop damage every year, but I never remembered those. What I remembered was the calculation that if deer hunting were banned, within ten years Arkansas would have fifty thousand deer-related car accidents a year. At the time, that was roughly the same as the total number of reported accidents each year.
"What's more cruel?" Dad said. "Hunt a few thousand deer every season, or have thousands starving to death, herds wandering onto I-40 to wreck the truckers, every third car in the state with a bashed-in radiator or windshield?" The deer needed to be hunted, he insisted. We were their only predator.
Phil, stumped, had fallen back on what Dad called "tree-hugger logic." "At least starvation's natural," he said. "That's how things have always been; nature finds its own balance."
Dad threw up his hands. "What's always so damn unnatural about people?" he complained. "We didn't come here from another planet! We grew up here, same as the deer and the birds and the beavers." Seeing Phil stuck again, Dad went on, "I've never seen what's supposed to make a beaver lodge so much more noble than this house you live in. One way or the other, somebody wanted a place to live, and put together whatever he could to make it. Just because we invent things, that doesn't make us unnatural."
Phil, a couple of years younger than me and not all that forthright, stomped off in a huff. Dad turned to me. "Hey, I didn't say a word," I headed him off. "I got nothing against deer hunting."
"Good thing." He flipped through the magazine idly, then said, as if repeating a thought he'd had many times before, "Maybe those Sierra Club tree-huggers wouldn't be so hot on nature if there were still some real predators out there. If something in the wild killed a million or so people a year, I bet Phil would by-God learn to shoot."
"Bet he would."
"Might be good for us, too." He threw the magazine down. "Humans, I mean. I talk big about how our house is as natural as a beaver lodge. But what about those high-rise apartment blocks they're building on the lake close to town? Even I know it ain't natural to cram people together into cells like a damn beehive."
He grabbed the magazine again. Going out to return it to his car, he said, "One of these days, either we're going to go nuts, all crammed together, and start really killing each other off, or nature's going to evolve something meaner than us to thin the herds a bit. And it'll start in the cities, not in the piney woods around here."
About twenty blocks from my house, sunlight still dimmed by the mist, I stopped to look at a brown wriggling in the leaves at the curb. I thought at first it was a big earthworm, fallen into the street, then I saw it was a little brown snake, a common garden snake, maybe eight inches stretched straight. It writhed in the leaves, not seeming to be going anywhere, but also not seeming hurt. I found a stick nearby to slide under its white belly, and flipped it over into the grass.
I watched it wriggle away, then turned back to the street. Three feet away, a pale gleam caught my eye—another little brown snake, dead in the leaf-littered gutter. I nudged it with my toe, noting how stiff it was, wondering at the coincidence of finding two identical snakes, one live, one dead, a yard apart.
Why do dead snakes always turn belly-up? I wondered. Then I looked up, and there she stood.
If she'd been five or six steps further away, she'd have dissolved into the fog, as the house behind her did. She looked ghostly, though the feeling shot through me that the asphalt under my Sauconys was more fragile than her skin. I stood staring, overcome by her loveliness. She had the austerity of a sunlit desert, but the vitality of a leaping squirrel—and the overwhelming strength of the Arkansas River in flood.
She terrified me and exalted me, at the same time.
Now she approached slowly, little sidesteps that took her onto the street, then back onto the lawn, but always a little closer to me. Here in the fog, with every scent intensified, I noticed for the first time that I never smelled her. That surprised me more than her perpetual silence; how could someone so terribly there, so much alive, have no scent at all?
I'd never spoken to her. Even the first time I saw her, when I first thought I'd stumbled onto a rape victim in shock, words died on my tongue. And of course she never made a sound. But this morning I felt she had something to tell me.
I felt her powerful magnetism again, a strong charisma without any taint of sensual allure. It had never been so potent. I wanted her to show me miracles. I wanted her to transform the world.
Instead, she transformed herself. Standing in the grass, topping me by nearly a foot, the naked woman melted into the shape of a buck deer, seven-pointed, standing proud and thick-necked and stupid as a fence post. For a moment I itched to hold Dad's old pump shotgun in my hands; I still have it, though it's hard to find 16-gauge shells any more. But I couldn't have shot the buck—not because it stood on a city lawn, not because I hadn't had a license since I was seventeen, but because I remembered the woman.
Then she was back, as if the clinging fog had swirled her from one shape to another. I saw droplets glistening in her all-colors hair. The morning was brightening; the fog had surely burned off the hilltops by now; in a few more minutes it would begin to burn out of the broad hollow cradling our neighborhood.
She changed again. This time a gray wolf grinned at me from the height of my belly. No slinking scavenger this time; I faced one of nature's cleverest, most patient predators. I didn't breathe, didn't move—didn't dare turn my eyes aside from hers. Her grin widened, showing magnificent teeth; she laughed silently at me, her tail switching slowly.
The woman was back. I've lost count of how often I've seen her in the five years since Becky and I moved here, but this morning I understood for the first time: She appeared as a woman because I was a woman. The coyote would have seen another coyote, or perhaps a friendly wolf. But this morning she showed me what else she could be, what else she'd always been.
She changed again. This time she was no beast I knew, was not entirely a beast at all. She—alien as her appearance was, I knew this creature was female—bulked large enough to fade into the fog between me and the invisible house. I saw great orange eyes sunk into sockets like punch bowls, and long gray fur, and one paw the size of a sofa cushion; I smelled musk. But I saw stone, as well, and thick knotted shapes like heavy tree roots, and I smelled rotted leaves and ripening fruit. This creature was animal, and earth, and forest, all together.
She was a creature of power, a creature of change, a creature of destruction. I saw no mouth, no huge wolf's teeth, but I knew my life hung by a thread, by her merest whim. I couldn't run; I no longer had strength to stand. I sank to my hands and knees, acorn hulls cutting into my palms. I waited—to die, to live, to be forgiven for crimes I didn't understand.
Again the woman came back. She cocked an eyebrow at me, a startlingly human expression, and I understood more: She was warning me. She liked me. Perhaps she sensed the combination of Dad's teachings and my own beliefs: violence in nature, and to nature, is natural; I matter to myself; we grew up here, too; "Be respectful". And a willingness to believe in the naked woman—and the memory of Dad's words: Nature's going to evolve something meaner than us to thin the herds a bit. And it'll start in the cities…
While I knelt in the street, she stepped back into the fog and vanished. Shakily I pushed to my feet, and started toward home through the thinning fog. I wanted to get back to Becky, to see her safe. The naked woman liked me—but I wasn't sure she cared that I love Becky.
She liked me, so she let me glimpse her true self, before she turned it upon others. It wasn't compassion—I know she has none. More likely she was measuring my response to her, getting a feel for her prey.
She's already begun. I really could have followed the smell of rosemary home this morning. I smelled its moist tang from three blocks away, because it wasn't just two large shrubs any more; it was a thicket of rosemary, hundreds of bushes where Dale and Stuart's house used to be. The lot is bare of any house, sidewalk, or driveway. There's nothing but two large maples and two sickly elms, and rosemary bushes tangling around their feet, breathing moist perfume into the warm sunlight.
Becky doesn't remember Dale or Stuart; she doesn't remember that there was a house next door when she went to bed last night. Worse, she doesn't remember Livvie—fourteen-year-old, fiercely talented Olivia, who wanted to sing with the Met when she grew up. I'm sure nobody at the Lutheran school remembers Livvie either; perhaps the choir director wonders vaguely, When will I have a star soloist again?
Maybe tomorrow morning I'll find that Mr. Haney's house is gone, his TV silenced. Or a grove of persimmons will replace the Greys' house. Or the fresh-laid sod at the big stone house will lost in a thicket of honeysuckle and hickories. And Becky won't remember Mr. Haney, or the stone house we often daydreamed about buying when we grew rich and famous, or the persimmon wine that Tina Grey used to make.
The naked woman will digest the nails and plastic and wire and concrete easily; she's animal and plant and earth, but she's bred for the city.
Maybe a few of you have seen her or one of her kind—a naked man, perhaps. Maybe that means you're safe, as I believe I may be safe.
But the rest of you: I'm not telling you this story to warn you. If you haven't seen her, you won't; she's a predator beyond your ability to defend or flee. No warning will protect you when she comes. And if she, or another like her, has already visited your neighborhood, you won't remember the ones she took, and my story won't bring their memory back.
No, I'm telling this story because I may be the only one who can. This is my memorial for Livvie, and Dale and Stuart. There's nothing else I can do for them; I don't believe I'll ever see the naked woman again.
I don't think we're in danger of extinction. That's not her purpose, their purpose, any more than it's the wolf pack's purpose to kill every deer in the forest.
But it's time to thin the herd.
DTS

Part 2 of 3
Part 3 of 3

Night #1

Thursday October 3, 2019
Things got serious the day I installed surveillance cameras. That night, after I kissed my wife, Deanna, goodnight, I retired to my home office to edit a video for YouTube.
Just after 1 a.m., a high pitch shriek fills the house and jolts me out of my chair. I immediately run to Deanna, toward the scream. As I dash down the hall I'm hoping she is just having night terrors.
Later, when I watched the surveillance video, I saw something different. I saw something pulling her leg. Intently, I watch, waiting for it to happen again.
I see the gentle rise and fall of Deanna's breaths as she sleeps soundly. She tosses and turns a bit, but nothing out of the ordinary. She snuggles into our waterbed with her right leg hooked around the comforter exposing her foot. Suddenly, her leg kicks as if it were yanked. She's startled, but tries to fall back to sleep.
Our surveillance cameras have audio, so I could hear her grumble, "Vince, don't pull my leg. I'm trying to sleep."* I must admit, messing with her is something I regularly do, but not that night.*
Moments later, Deanna is forcibly pulled to the end of the bed. Jarred awake, she clings to the sheets trying to fight it off. It lets go, freeing her to scurry back to the headboard. She gasps and balls her limbs around her body like a child.
Surveillance Footage capture of Deanna pulled to the foot of the bed.
She scans the room attempting to make sense of what just occurred. Gaining a presence of mind, she creeps toward the foot of the bed to investigate. Slowly, she approaches the edge, grasping a fistful of the comforter for safety. She peers over but sees nothing. Relieved, Deanna rubs her face as she reassesses the room. She turns to my side of the bed and gulps, it must be there. Cautiously, she peeks over that edge, but again finds nothing and breathes a sigh of relief.
As she lingers over my side, the bedroom door behind her creaks. She turns and sees the door closing. Quickly, she sits up to glare at it. The door moves again. In a panic, with revved-up breaths, she calls for me. A hushed gasp at first, until she builds up the nerve to scream, "Vince!"
I fly out of my chair, blaze past the dogs and down the hall. Deanna shields her face in fear as I rush in spouting out a million, "What, what, what's!" I kneel at her side and grab for her; she jumps.
Voice cracking, she mutters, "Do you see it?" She drops the covers a bit to peek.
"See what?" I ask.
"There's someone behind the door." Fixated, she whispers, "Its shadow is right there."
I look over my shoulder, but I see nothing. Then, chillingly, Deanna cries, "She's looking right at us!"
Her words cause my hair follicles to rise, even though I still don't see a thing.
I stand up to approach the door. Deanna begs for me not to. I proceed, not knowing what she expects of me instead.
Once at the door, a cold draft flows over my body and I realize the door movement must be from an open window breeze. I look back to Deanna, she exclaims, "Oh my God. She's right behind you!" Frozen, I slowly turn; then with a sudden whoosh, the door slams! Deanna screams.

Introduction

Before I go any further, I should rewind a bit, to a simpler time -- a time before the security cameras were installed, because the story doesn't start or end here.
My name is Vince Rocca. I'm 46 years old. I have hippie shoulder-length, nearly black hair and brown almond shaped eyes. I also rock an awesome goatee. I'm in decent shape, but I could stand to lay off the donuts.
My wife Deanna is six months older than me, but is often mistaken for a much younger age. She has long brown hair and brown eyes. She is tall and leggy, with a slim build, and tries to workout six nights a week.
I'm a reality television editor. I routinely mold piles of mundane footage in to fun entertainment. I can assure you that reality television is not fake. Sure, the story is sometimes guided, but it is definitely real. In general, people naturally do front a hyper-realized version of themselves for the cameras. But even with the best, guided, most sensational character, it can often take 10-hours of footage to produce a good 3-minute segment.
Vince sitting in front of a computer edit desk.
Deanna is a Registered Veterinary Technician at the Los Angeles Zoo. Her duties involve everything from anesthesia to X-rays. She has done it all, from darting tigers to elephant trunk washes. Her favorite task is caring for the hospitalized animals. Be it a harbor seal or a vulture, she prides herself on finding ways to make their stay enjoyable.
Deanna drawing up a syringe in front of a zoo Gorilla enclosure.
We met in the eighth grade. I vividly recall the moment I first saw this stunning brunette. The leaves were turning in the warm autumn sun at our California junior high school. She crossed the quad in a pink Town & Country shirt as her long, tan legs jutted out from under a white miniskirt. I wish I could say I locked this down immediately, but we didn't start dating until two years later at the age of 16. We have since been inseparable and are blessed to celebrate 30 years together, with 21 of those as husband and wife.
I've heard people describe Deanna as shy, reserved, and quiet. However, she's always game to ham it up in the silly videos we post on the Internet. I, on the other hand, am often described as outspoken, boisterous, and loud. You could say opposites attract, but I really think we're the same person.
We live in Southern California in a lovely suburban community adjacent to Northridge, which became famous in 1994 as the epicenter of a 6.7 magnitude earthquake.
In 2009, we purchased an awesome 2700 square foot 3 bedroom 3 bath home that was originally built in 1965. The house was a bank repossession and sat empty for nearly a year as the previous owners had succumbed to the subprime mortgage collapse.
Exterior photo of the house from across the street.
Because of that recession, we were able to afford this huge house that even includes a den/game room. The house sits on a hill, with neighbors on each side and government land behind it. Bordering that land and us is a ravine with the dry Los Angeles River at the bottom. The large property includes a pool and a six-car parking lot, all nestled behind a sixteen-foot tall gate.
We are kidless, sans for the two fur-babies, which probably lends to our low-stress, youthful spirit. At the very least, being without kids definitely gives us the freedom to travel the globe and enjoy our vacations.
Back in 2014, I started editing our vacation videos as if they were reality TV shows and posted them to YouTube. This was before VLOGS were commonplace, but looking back, that's exactly what these were: Travel VLOGS. For those not up on the term, a VLOG is a Video LOG, much like a BLOG is a written weB LOG.
As time went on, we traveled more and uploaded more, shooting everything became routine. I point this out so you understand that it's not unusual for me to always be filming.

1 YEAR before Night #1

Monday October 22, 2018
We started a little home improvement project, a project that would eventually turn out to have dire consequences on our relationship.
The whole front of our house is brick, but under our bedroom window is a weird wood accent. The wood looks like a headboard surrounded by molded wood trim. I assume this exists because a patio door was an option when the house was first built. Today, we're going to exercise that option and install a French door.
The wood accent under the front window.
Deanna enjoys smashing the glass into pieces. She even takes charge of the sledgehammer to blast holes between the studs so we can get our hands in to leverage the drywall out. I happily run the camcorder, as she pounds and sweats.
Deanna swings a hammer into the drywall.
One particular opening catches her eye. She peers into the wall and declares, "There's something in there." She quickly reaches in and pulls out a little wooden box.
I snatch the box from her and hear a rattle inside. There doesn't seem to be a hinge or an opening. It appears to be two pieces of wood magically joined together by triangular teeth. The box measures about two inches square and one inch thick with a religious cross chiseled into the lid.
Closeup of the box.
Deanna immediately identifies it as a puzzle box, then declares, "I think you're supposed to give it a whack." I figure she' joking, so I hand her the box. She takes a moment to inspect it, then with a WHACK she slides the box open.
Deanna whacking the box on her left palm.
Frankly, the box alone blows my mind. There is a metal ball that engages a magnet and binds the box closed. Take a whack at it, and the ball shifts to another magnet allowing you to slide the box open. It's pretty ingenious.
Detail shots of how the box opens.
More exciting than the box, is the contents. Deanna joyfully inspects a shiny silver necklace with an angled cross charm dangling from it. The cross is unlike a normal cross, but it isn't a sinister upside-down cross either. It hangs at a tilt, almost like an italicized lowercase t.
Deanna immediately exclaims, "It's a Portate cross!"
My head rattles, "What the hell is a Portate cross?"
"A Portate Cross is a wooden cross that the accused drags over their shoulder to the crucifixion site. As you watch the accused drag this cross, it is at an angle, or portate."
Deanna holds up the angled Portate cross as Vince VLOGS.
I'm literally taken aback. I don't know why she knows that. I don't know how she knows how to open the box. I look to her for answers. She smiles coyly at my bewilderment and seems pleased with herself.
I take a closer look at the cross. The necklace looks well-made and could possibly be white gold. I wonder aloud if the cross could pay for our renovation. Deanna scoffs at this notion. I roll my eyes; as if she knows everything.
She snatches the treasure out of my hands and walks off with it.
I ended up making two VLOGS out of the renovation. You can see them here:
Replace a window with a French door Part 1 VLOG 118
Replace a window with a French door Part 2 VLOG 119

3 WEEKS before Night #1

Thursday September 12, 2019
Eleven months have passed. The year was good but nothing too remarkable happened. I spent most of my time editing back-to-back TV shows. We did manage to take a quick trip to Florida for a veterinary conference. I was able to eke out a single VLOG from that trip on Gatorland. Over the next few months I cranked out a few more Daily VLOGS and How To videos, but I stalled around May and spent my Summer hanging out with Deanna, floating around our pool.
I came across that wooden box; it had fallen behind some shoes in the back of our closet. I took both the cross and the box to a pawnshop for appraisal. The shop clerk confirmed that Deanna is right, it ain't white gold.
The guy identified the box as an Impossible Dovetail Puzzle Box. Apparently it's a pretty common puzzle, but Deanna has never been the puzzle type, so I still don't know how she knows its secret.
Tonight, while eating dinner, Deanna recounts the events of her day. I look down at her chest and see the Portate cross around her neck. I ask, "What's with that?" sparking a religious debate.
Now might be a good time to mention that we're both atheists, or at least, I thought we both were. I should also clarify -- as there is often judgment when I say I'm an atheist -- I don't worship the devil, and I don't hate God. I just don't believe in either God or the devil for that matter. I also don't believe in ghosts, goblins, spirits -- none of that stuff. I have nothing to fear. I sleep soundly at night.
Have you ever noticed that the devil only attacks the God-fearing folk? I've never heard of an atheist being haunted. I don't have anything against those who subscribe to religion, but if you believe in one, you fear the other; and that fear is what gets you. If you don't believe, there is nothing to hurt you, so you're safe, and you've got nothing to fear.
Anyway, I find it odd that Deanna, whom I've known my entire life, is wearing a trinket that epitomizes religion. Her defense is, "I think it's nice," so I guess what harm could it do?
As the night sets in, I leave Deanna home alone while I venture off to a filmmaking mixer. I go to a couple of these a month. Some are educational events about new technologies; others are just drinks and chats. Tonight's event is the drinking kind.
At tonight's mixer, I meet Christina. She's an attractive 24-year-old Hispanic girl who is a fan of my VLOG and an aspiring Assistant Editor.
Assistant Editor types tend to be introverted, dorky by-the-numbers nerds. Add booze, and they can be very unique. Christina is just that, dorky and tipsy. We immediately hit it off. I mean, she is a fan of my VLOG, and I tend to like people who like me, because obviously they have great taste.
Back at home, Deanna isn't having as much fun. She wakes from a nap on the living room couch to the sounds of whispers coming from the kitchen. Frightened, she flips on her phone camera video light and proceeds to investigate. Slowly, she tiptoes across the dining room, as the whispers increase in volume. She can see through the dark kitchen into the game room on the other side. The dim moonlight illuminates something in the doorway. She can barely make it out, then it becomes clear: on the other side of the kitchen, in our game room, stands the silhouette of a person swaying in the dark. Startled, Deanna flicks on the light, and it disappears.
Unnerved, she turns on all the lights in the house and double checks to ensure the security alarm is set. It is armed and shows no faults. Realizing she has succumbed to an overactive imagination, she makes an attempt to VLOG in the kitchen while she prepares some comfort food. She removes a bowl from the cabinet and turns back toward the camera to pour in cereal. Behind her the cabinet drifts open and a cup falls out, plummets to the ground and shatters.
Deanna jumps while holding cereal box as cup flies out of cabinet.
Our cupboards have magnetic closures because 50-year-old cabinets have weak hinges that tend to drift open. In addition, Deanna often double stacks the coffee cups in an unstable manner. We both assumed this combo led to the broken cup.
But now, when I look back at the footage, it clearly looks like the cabinet door is completely closed with the magnet engaged. The door then pops open on its own, and the cup doesn't fall out, but flies out, almost like it's thrown.
Startled, Deanna laughs off the broken cup. She acknowledges for the VLOG audience that it is probably from double stacking the cups. She sweeps up the shards of ceramic and takes them out back to the trash. She even VLOGS the whole adventure.
As she approaches the trash bins, she freezes and turns toward the pool, straining to listen. She turns back, then to the pool again. Blood drains from her cheeks, out of nowhere with a sudden burst, she runs back to the house. She trips and falls. Her phone camera goes black as it flies through the night air, then slides across the pavement before coming to a dead stop.
The phone picks up her distant whimper as she repeats, "Oh my toe, oh my toe." She comes into view hovering over the camera and reaches down to pick it up. The phone is still recording and shows glimpses of her foot as she limps. Her right big toe is messed up pretty bad.
I mentioned before that Deanna is an animal nurse. Her primary job is at the zoo, but sometimes she is needed in the field for freelance clients. Because of this she has a toolbox of stuff at home, which consists of various drugs, medicine, and needles.
I could have never done this, but Deanna possesses a courage that puts me to shame. She draws up a syringe of Lidocaine and shoots it into her toe to numb it. She even VLOGS the whole thing.
Deanna is about to insert the tip of a three inch needle into her right toe.
She actually films a massive three-inch needle as she stabs it into her foot. Three INCHES! I asked why the needle was so big, she said she had a surplus of them and didn't want to waste a smaller needle in case she needed one for an animal injection. Bless her heart, her toe is mangled, she's in pain, and she still puts the critters before herself.
The video shows Deanna inject herself in three places. She then taps her toe to confirm numbness. Once satisfied, she takes a pair tweezers and gives the nail a gentle pull. It breaks away like the separation of Velcro. She pulls her nail completely off her toe exposing a bloody mess of skin underneath. This is disgusting, and I have no idea how she did it.
What happens next is the icing on the cake. Deanna settles down on the living room couch to VLOG a summary of the evening. She explains to the camera that she's freaked out, but she is just going to watch TV while she waits for me to arrive. She leans forward to grab the television remote off the ottoman. When she falls back into the couch, there's a woman sitting next to her. Deanna screams, jumps to her feet, and staggers away from the couch. She turns toward the woman: nothing is there. Startled, the dogs wander in confusion, trying to figure out what's going on.
Ghost on couch scaring Deanna.
I arrive home to a brightly lit house. She gives me the rundown, illustrating with videos. I laugh incredulously as I watch a video of our game room. She claims a dark figure stood in the doorway. I see nothing. She also claims a ghost sat next to her on the couch. I play the video back and watch her scream like a lunatic for no reason. It's silly.
She's angry that I don't believe her. To placate her, I stifle my laughter, listen, and nod. I don't believe in ghosts. But if you tell me you saw a ghost, I do believe that you believe that you saw a ghost. I just never thought Deanna would be the one telling me she saw a ghost, or how she describes it, "A shadowy figure that glows in a ghostly fashion with steam rising softly from her body."
Friday September 13th, 2019
I regularly journal. The inspiration came from a Robert Rodriguez book, which ultimately led me to write the filmmaking book "Rebel without a Deal." If you're interested, it's available on Amazon, not that this is a sales pitch. The book's subject matter has nothing to do with the events I'm recounting here; I only mention this so you don't judge me as a sissy for keeping a diary.
In celebration of Friday the 13th, I decide to digitally insert a ghost into Deanna's couch video as a fun VLOG treat.
I called Christina from last night's networking event. She lives nearby and I know she is between gigs. She comes over, and I film her on the couch acting like a ghost. I edit her in to Deanna's couch video and I even make her transparent with a ghostly mist.
Detail image showing how the ghost was composited into Deanna's video.
After Deanna gets home from work and settles in, I show her my creation, expecting to get a laugh of approval. I totally misread the situation though.
Deanna is still pissed that I don't believe she saw a ghost. I don't understand why. I mean, there is video footage showing nothing there. She insists that I should believe that there was a shadowy figure of a legless woman sitting right next to her. I chuckle again at the thought of a legless woman, responding with, "She would be easy to run from."
Deanna retaliates and accuses me of something with Christina. This is absurd. So what if Christina is cute? I've been with Deanna for 30 years, and there's no reason not to trust me. Besides, I think Christina might be slow.
As I mentioned before, Assistant Editor's are unique. Some people might define them as being on the autistic spectrum. Well, Christina seems to fit that bill. What I had mistaken for inebriated behavior turns out to be "special" behavior. I'm not sure if Deanna believes me, but in hindsight, she might be thinking that she's been with me for 30 years so there's no reason for me not to believe her.
Saturday September 14, 2019
After 10 years, the ceiling fan in our bedroom finally made its last revolution. Michael came over to help me swap the fan out and film the installation of a new one.
Michael is my best friend. He's been in the VLOG before and regularly does the podcast "GetConVinced" with me. He is a teacher of special needs kids but is best described as a Jesus look-a-like.
Michael helping install fan.
Michael is outside the French door gathering tools when Deanna enters the room. She broke the chain on the Portate cross and asked me to fix it. I tell her to throw the necklace out. This sets her off.
She now claims she isn't an atheist. She says she was always unsure and only identified as one to appease me. I have no clue where this came from. We've been together our whole lives. There has never been any indication that she believed, or that I would judge her for believing.
Michael reenters the room and cuts our conversation short.
YouTube enables you to upload a video today and set the premiere for a later date and time. This allows me to finish a video in the middle of the night and upload the file, but not notify viewers of it at two-thirty in the morning when they are probably asleep.
I set this video to premiere on Sunday, September 22 to start the week, but later I discovered that I mistakenly chose October 22 instead.
How To Replace and Install a Ceiling Fan
I understand if you're asking, What does a ceiling fan have to do with this story? Unfortunately, that will make sense soon.

Pool Party!

Saturday September 21, 2019
The pool is 98 degrees, and it's a warm, sunny California day. So before winter sets in, we're having people over for an end-of-summer BBQ.
To my delight, Deanna's friend Amy brought her 18-year-old daughter Jenna and three of Jenna's girlfriends to the BBQ. These bikini clad hotties frolic around the pool and really bring on the sorority vibe. Not that I'm complaining, as it's a fine sight to see.
Four Bikini girls wave for Vince.
I show a group of our friends the ghost I comped into Deanna's couch footage, and they laugh. Deanna seems to have lightened up and recognizes the humor in the video. I think she might be okay with me using the footage in a VLOG.
My buddy, Marty proposes the idea that we have a seance tonight. He is a hardcore Metal Head and a die-hard Horror movie geek. He even owns a company, PlayItByFear.com that sells horror paraphernalia. So it's no surprise to any of us that he suggests a seance. He assures us it is safe and fun. Deanna recoils at the idea, but Amy is onboard, stifling any objection Deanna might have had.
As the festivities wind down and the younger girls leave, we move the party into the house. I set up four cameras around the living room and have my phone attached to my three-axis gimbal. Everybody seems up for the seance, even Deanna, but Tom is totally against it.
Tom is a stand-up comedian and an actor. In 2003 I cast him in my first movie, Kisses and Caroms. He has been on numerous TV shows and most recently in the Progressive Motaur commercial. Tom loves to joke, so I'm not sure if this anti-seance stance is just a routine.
Also, Tom lost his father a few years ago, and later, when Tom was under anesthesia for an operation, he claimed his dad visited him. So Tom's spiritual beliefs may have fluctuated recently.
Tom Ayers rejecting the seance.
Tom and Amy get into a bit of a back-and-forth debating God, ghosts, and religion. I don't know if I'd call it an argument, but it is a bit heated. Just as Amy is gaining ground on Tom, Deanna shushes everyone. She hears something. I hear it too. It's a whisper.
Being the man of the house, I get up to investigate. I creep down the hall toward the whisper. I can almost make the hushed noise out..."I like your..." is what the words sound like. I realize that everyone else stayed seated in the living room and I have no one backing me up. I'm alone in the hall. My heart is hammering out of my chest. Still, I press on down the dark corridor. The light switch is on the opposite end from me. Even if I could reach it, I don't know if I would turn it on, for fear of seeming like a wimp in front of everyone.
The end of the hall splits in three directions. To the left is another hall that leads to our other bedrooms/home offices. Straight ahead is a guest bath, and to the right is a second doorway to the game room.
I freeze a few feet shy of this junction. The light switch is still a good foot out of reach. I again hear the whisper coming from the left hall. I can make the words out now. It whispers, "I like your dogs." I white knuckle my gimbal. Everyone in the living room is silent. Everything is silent as I listen intently. Then with a sudden, "Boo!", Bill jumps out from the right side and scares the crap out of me.
I ain't gonna lie -- I was frightened and momentarily believed Deanna's story. In retrospect, I feel bad for teasing her, because my mind quickly entered a heightened state, and I was in a house filled by people. I can only imagine how she felt alone in the dark. Still, there turned out to be a logical explanation, and it was Bill.
Bill sitting between Deanna and Amy on the living room couch.
Bill is our neighbor. He's also an actor most famously from Comedy Central's "Workaholics". Those who are fans of the show will be delighted to know that in real life, Bill is very similar to his character on "Workaholics". He's strange, but he also seems to get the joke. Bill is the kind of guy in a horror movie that the girl mistakes as a creep, but turns out to be the nice guy trying to help her.
After scaring the crap out of me, Bill graces us with a story. He claims that one night before we moved in, he heard noises coming from our house. He looked over the wall and saw a bunch of cops. He overheard one officer say that the guy who lived in my house, Jose, shot his wife, Patricia, in the kneecaps, then hung himself.
Bill explains Jose shot her in the knees so her hobble would always remind her of that day, but instead, Patricia bled out and died.
In the moment, I play along with the story. It's fun and it's freaking Deanna out. Tom seems to buy into it too, asking me how I didn't know this when I bought the house. I quickly pass that off by explaining, the house was a bank repossession, and the bank doesn't have to disclose anything; you buy the house as-is.
Truth is, I'm not buying Bill's story at all. For one, how would the police know the reason Patricia was shot in the kneecaps? If they arrived before she died, would that really be her last words? Most likely, Bill is playing off Deanna's ghost video; he was in the mix when I showed it earlier while joking that a legless ghost would be easy to run from.
Bill also couldn't remember the date. That seems like a pretty traumatic thing that would remain etched in your brain. Granted we've been in this house for 10 years, so if this happened, it happened over a decade ago, but these were Bill's nextdoor neighbors that he knew by name. So I'm not buying his story.
Monday September 23, 2019
I finish the vlog of Deanna's couch ghost and upload it. Since this VLOG is in the Halloween spirit, I set the premiere date for October 11th.
Summer Bikini Pool Party Daily Vlog 132
Tuesday September 24, 2019
I decide to prank Deanna for a follow-up video. Over the last few days I've teased her with Bill's story. I've been telling her the ghost of Patricia is haunting our house.
Tonight, I'm going to crank it up a notch. It's one in the morning, and Deanna is sound asleep in our bedroom. I creep in and set up a couple of cameras and a small light. Next, I open the French door. The fall temperature is about 60 degrees outside, which is a good 15 degrees cooler than the house, providing just enough of a chill to be eerie.
I slide into bed and Deanna rolls over toward me, but doesn't open her eyes. I poke her head to wake her up. She groggily asks, "Why'd you open the door?"
"I didn't open the door, did you open the door?"
"No, I was sleeping."
"I was sleeping too. I woke up and the door was open."
Deanna is now at full attention, trying to suss out the situation. I rev-up my breathing into a labored pace. We both gaze at the open door waiting for something to happen then, "Boo!" She jumps, I laugh.
Deanna rolls away mad, but I'm not finished yet. I impersonate a decrepit woman's voice to scare her even more. I groan, "I'm coming for you, Deanna."
Deanna wincing in bed, her back is to Vince and the open French door is behind them.
She winces and begs, "Don't do that voice. It's creepy. Stop."
Slowly, I inch my finger toward her face. I can feel her squirm and twitch. I tap her cheek, and she explodes with a scream.
I antagonize her with a belly laugh, but my celebration is stopped short by a knock at the front door. I'm confused because the driveway gate prevents people from getting to our front door. Deanna sits up, as I quickly lock the French door. My phone is already recording and rather than fumble with its light I grab a flashlight off my end table.
Deanna cowers into the comforter as I proceed toward the foyer. I peek around the corner into the hall. To my shock, the front door is wide open. "Hello?" I muster. "Hello?" No response. My heart tightens at the thought of someone in the house. I don't want to step any further in fear that a person is hiding around the corner in the living room with an axe. I contemplate grabbing Deanna and escaping out the French door. I don't know what to do. The silence is broken by the "thwock" of a ball as it bounces in through the door. I jump back. My throat knots up. Who the hell threw that? What the hell is going on? I'm petrified. I can't take my eyes off the door.
The open front door from Vince's iPhone VLOG camera.
Our dog, Pismo darts in and grabs the ball. I literally feel my throat fall to the floor and I almost collapse, but I regain my composure to put on a confident front for Deanna. Pismo doesn't seem bothered, so there can't be any danger, right? I mean, dogs are supposed to have a sixth sense about this stuff. At least that is what every movie depicts. I push the front door closed, secure the deadbolt and set the alarm.
I figure Pismo got out through the French door, ran around, found her ball, and pushed open the front door. Our front door is 50 years old and never had a traditional latch. Instead, the door uses a ball catch latch, which is a ball bearing that can be easily pushed open or closed.
Front door knob and ball catch.
Wednesday September 25, 2019
I cut together last night's prank video. The addition of some music and sound effects really sweeten it up. I'm able to pitch shift my creepy woman's voice to sell the scare. I think it turns out pretty well.
Changes with YouTube algorithms have caused video views to suffer, so I decide to premiere this one a couple weeks after the last video. That will put this closer to Halloween and give the last one a chance to rack up some eyeballs.
Halloween Prank Daily VLOG 133

Stalker

Friday September 27, 2019
I take the dogs for a walk, and standing in my driveway is Christina. I didn't call her, but I ask how long she's been here? She never breaks focus on the dogs, and responds, "not long." I suppose it's possible she just arrived as I walked out.
Christina squatting on the sidewalk petting Pismo.
Today, her intellect really shows. She riles up the dogs yelling, "Chase me, chase me. Come on," and keeps skipping in front of them. She acts like a child. I feel bad. She's a sweet girl and means no harm but she is odd and annoying too.
Tuesday October 1, 2019
Sixteen security cameras and two DVRs were delivered today. Deanna has been against outfitting the house with cameras. She feels like they will be watching her. I think they'll be great to watch the dogs and capture any spontaneous silliness that might occur to make for a good VLOG video. Plus they're a good way to combat potential stalkers like Christina.

Night #1

Thursday October 3, 2019
Today I finished the security camera install. When Deanna gets home, I show off the cameras to her. She's not pleased. I anticipated this, so I present her with the repaired Portate cross. I came across the broken necklace while I was running wires. One of the chain loops had split so I gave it a quick mend. This turned out to be just what I needed to soften her stance on the cameras.
Later that the night, I pass out on the couch. I'm sound asleep when something slides down my forehead between my eyes and onto my nose. It feels like a feather caressing my skin, but then it settles on the bridge with pressure. It comes into focus. It's a long, dirty, brittle fingernail. The rough frayed edges press harder digging into the bridge. I begin to feel the collapse of my septum. The pressure causes the nail to bow, then snap, the nail breaks off. My eyes pop, I see her hovering over me, I fly off the couch and almost hit the ceiling.
Deanna laughs, "I bet you're glad we have video cameras now!"
I'm disorientated; I expected to see the owner of the dirty nail, but I quickly conclude what transpired. It was Deanna dangling a plastic spider on my face. The finger was a dream.
"Funny. Ha ha," I groggily reply. "You wanna step up the game? It's on now."
Deanna laughs it off as she heads to the bedroom.
This is the night Deanna's leg is first pulled, and the door slammed. I recounted that event at the beginning of this story and see no reason to copy and paste it here.
Surveillance Footage capture of Deanna pulled to the foot of the bed.
After the door slam, I try to explain to Deanna that the wind blew it shut, but she doesn't believe me. She rocks in bed and begins to pray. I've never seen her pray. I know as a kid she attended a private Christian school, but I understood that was because her mom taught at that school. This meant Deanna got to go for free and her mom could watch over her. I didn't realize the prayer had stuck.
I finally set Deanna at ease by getting into bed with her to watch Friends with the lights on. At some point, she nods off. Around 3 a.m. I turn the volume down and close my eyes.
Friday October 4, 2019
Deanna is about to leave for work. Normally, I would sleep later in the morning, but I want to touch base about last night. We briefly chat in the kitchen over coffee. She appears fine and seems to realize that last night was silly. I joke that she needs more Sexy Time. She responds, "Sexy Time tonight?" It's a date.
After Deanna leaves, I pull up the security camera footage on the computer to review last night. I also watch her spider prank. It's pretty good. I fly off the couch like a scaredy-cat. After getting a good laugh at myself, I take off to meet Tom for lunch.
I chat with Tom about his beliefs, and what Deanna might believe. I postulate, can an atheist and a zealot be married? Isn't it like a vegan and a meat-eater? They're too fundamentally different to be together. Tom insists vegans and meat-eaters can be together and I shouldn't compare them. He concludes with the revelation that I'm a knucklehead.
I begin to wonder. Deanna's one of the smartest people I know. She even made the Dean's List in college. Maybe I am wrong? Maybe there is a God. I don't verbalize these notions to Tom, because I think he'll eat them up.
Deanna gets home from work early for date night. We split a pizza and a bottle of Pinot Grigio. She really pounds the wine like water. After dinner, she leads me into our bedroom. I'm able to gauge that she isn't really that drunk. She's just drunk enough to do a bit of a cabaret dance, but not so drunk that she falls over. After her dance, she charges me and tackles me onto our waterbed.
I've got my hands all over her, as we kiss and make out. Suddenly, she loses interest in me and looks to the door like something is there. I try to get her to refocus on me. She's receptive, but a moment later she looses interest again.
I explain it's just the dogs, and regain her attention. A moment later, I hear something too. We both stop and gaze at the door. I can make out a whisper, or possibly a grumble -- noises that can't come from the dogs. I'm about to push Deanna's half-naked body off me to investigate, when CRASH! The ceiling fan tumbles down on us.
Debris falls everywhere as we both scurry out of the way. I'm aghast. I know I securely mounted this thing to the ceiling. How could it fall? Deanna shushes me. "There's something in this room. I can feel it," she insists. Suddenly, she grabs her pillows and declares she is not sleeping in here and storms down the hall.
She spends the night in the spare bedroom, which is also her office. I throw the fan off the waterbed and momentarily consider getting the ladder to inspect the ceiling, but decide I'm too drunk for that. Instead, I fall back into bed and spend the night alone.
I decide to assemble Deanna's leg-pull footage into some previously unused VLOG footage. Some days I start to VLOG and don't finish. Some days, only one interesting thing happens, but it's only a small bit that doesn't end up anywhere. I'm now going back to assemble those stray bits into what I think will be an awesome Halloween VLOG that can end with Deanna's leg pull.
This is creepy! Daily VLOG 134

[F]
Werewolves are Assholes, But Vampires are Worse 1/2
So as you can imagine, at this point things weren't looking so hot for us. We had Little Missy locked up with some kind of supernatural furniture next to Mark in my garage, one of our werewolves is bed-er... toilet ridden, we have a literal hostage situation, our seasoned vampire hunter was nowhere to be found(and I'll definitely be having a talk with that secret keeping bitch about that when I see her again), and yeah... the vampires. I was definitely in way over my head. I mean I ain't gonna leave the little hoodlums to fend for themselves, but you can bet your ass I'll never have to wash a dish or dust a shelf for the rest of my life after this. Oh, and for the people asking about our cannibalistic princess and her name, well she said something about it when she asked me to write this part. She said she wants to do something like in that Brad Pitt movie where the guy telling the story never mentions their name. That girl sure likes her movies... Bless her heart.
So at this point we were still all huddled in the living room trying to figure out what we were going to do next, making our best effort to talk over the dual barrage of obscenities spilling out from the garage. Finally we agreed to close the door for a minute and let them tucker themselves out.
"Ok, Wolf Boy, ideas." I said once I closed the door and walked back into the room with everyone else.
"I... Um... We might be screwed." Milo says in response.
That was followed by a mild uproar from everyone in attendance. Likely not what they wanted to hear from the only one in the room even half familiar with all this nonsense. I managed to get everyone quieted down about the time Jasmine started to pick up another heavy object to bash Milo with again.
"Alright alright! Everyone just calm the hell down!" I hollered over the ruckus. "Listen sugar, you gotta chill. It ain't that boy's fault he's simple." I said to Jasmine while I took the marble elephant statue out of her hands. "And this was expensive. Try to go for something cheap next time."
About that time Trey spoke up. "Ok, so we have to do something. We damn sure can't leave her in there like that." He said, pointing towards the garage where some muffled commotion could still be heard.
"And what the hell is it we're supposed to do?!" Joannah commented back.
Trey started to answer but Dex beat him to it. "What ever we can!" He shouted. "Not to mention that guy's still in there with plugs missing from him all over the place. And I don't know about you but if I have to clean up one more pile of Mark-shit, him or me one is gonna die."
About this time the sun was already up. And about mid argument we all stopped and turned when we heard the stairs creak as Teagan came down.
"What is all these noise and screams?" She said in that darling broken English of hers. She looked an absolute mess. Poor girl looked like death eating a cracker.
"Oh sweetie you don't need to worry about all that right now." I said about the same time Milo said,
"What are you doing down here? You should go rest some more. I'll come up and tell you everything in a little w-" But she cut him off.
"NO! You will tell me now!" She demanded. "Somebody drop the peas."
"Beans." Dex said. "It's spill the beans."
"What?" Teagan asked. "Who has spilled beans?"
"No no, I was just... The expression is to spill the beans." He tried to explain.
"Why did you spill beans? Have you cleaned them? Why would you leave such mess?" She scolded. "You go clean these beans."
Milo was now off in a corner with his face buried in his palms in embarrassment, Dex made his way into the kitchen long enough to fake clean imaginary beans and return to the living room with everyone else. "Ok, fuck all of you for not helping me out with that." He said.
Then we got Teagan up to speed on everything that happened since she went up stairs, down to the little metal thing that just saved all our asses. As you might imagine, she was a tad... distraught.
"WHAT?! YOU HAVE HER LOCKED LIKE SOME ANIMAL?!" She screamed before turning to make for the garage.
"NO NO!" Milo stopped her. "We're trying to let her wear herself out for a while to see if that calms her down a little."
"NO! I must go to help h-" She stopped as long, low, growl roared across the room from Teagan's... stomach. "Oh no!" She groaned before grabbing her gut and dashing up the stairs like lightning. A few seconds later we all heard the bathroom door slam shut.
We all turned to look at Milo again.
"...... Werewolf.... stuff." He said quietly, suddenly forcing us all to recall the phrase that near traumatized us all about a week ago... "Had to poop out my werewolf arm."
"Yeah... What goes up must come down, what goes in... must come out." He explained in his own kinda way. "It's hard on the body to do what she did. Didn't have enough food stored for mass so when she changed it took till there wasn't anything left to take. Now her body is trying to get rid of everything that isn't mostly human, which doesn't leave her with much. That's why she's so bad off right now."
"The poor girl..." Lesley murmured softly.
"She's made it through the worst of it." Milo reassured her.
"So... does the "out" part get worse too when you change all the way?" Dex asked.
"That's disgusting!" Joannah exclaimed. "Why would you ask that?!"
And as you can all imagine, Joannah's revulsion at the question only served to excite Milo's enthusiasm to answer.
"Define worse." Milo said with a grin.
"What do you mean?" Dex questioned.
"Well I mean worse for who? The one doing it... or whoever has to deal with the aftermath?" He smiled even bigger in Joannah's direction causing her to wince. "When we're fully transformed we're also in a lot better shape when we change back, but what comes out, well... you guys ever seen Jurassic Park?"
It took us a second before we collectively groaned "Oh my god!"
"I mean now Teagan, she's a proper lady about it. Usually brings some toilet paper and finds her a secluded spot away from civilization and innocent human beings and takes care of it there." He went on.
"Annnd... what do you do? To ask a question I don't really think I want answered." Trey said.
"Ah, well ya see I like to find the nearest construction site and just unleash hell on some poor, unsuspecting port-a-john. Then I like to hide and wait around for the first person to open the door. One guy actually started crying. It was great." Milo bragged.
And there we were, in the middle of my house, having an in depth conversation about werewolf shit. Somebody stop the merry go round. I want off...
Nobody went back to sleep. We all stayed up and discussed what we was gonna do now, to little success. After a while me, Trey, and Milo went to the kitchen to start making some food for the recovering Teagan upstairs, who Lesley, Dex, Jasmine and Joannah were with. We'd finish making something and one of them would come down long enough to snatch it up and take it to her.
After a while Trey and Milo got to chatting.
"So how'd you and her meet?" Milo asked Trey, inquiring about the rabid shit head on lockdown in the garage.
"Met in college." He answered. "Same economics class. Actually, the first conversation we ever had was her asking me out."
Milo slammed his hand down hard on the table. "WHAT?!!" He yelled.
"Yeah, we even went on a couple of dates way back." Trey laughed. "Once we even... held hands."
"You dated... HER?" Milo asked, pointing towards the garage.
"Well yeah. I mean she's not so bad all the time and she's cute, in an "I might stab you in your sleep" kind of way." Trey replied.
"Oh my god..." Milo said, leaning back in his chair to look around the corner. "You're right. She's... cute. What the hell?"
"But I thought she was-" Milo started.
"A lesbian?" I interrupted. "Well I get how you might think that. She does mostly bat for the away team but I catch her looking at the fellas every now and then. I try not to label them kinds of things. That way nobody feels pressured to stay inside a box. Let people hump whoever they wanna hump I say."
"But you let people call you Gay Jake." Milo says.
"That's cause I'm queer as a three dollar bill sweety. Don't want nothing to do with any vagina. They creep me right ass out. They look like them face things from the alien movie. You ever make eye contact with one? Looks like something's gonna try to jump out and get ya." I explain, likely a little more vividly than entirely necessary.
"Mmkay..." Milo says slowly, somewhat cringing. "What about the others? How'd they all meet?"
"Well Joannah is kinda new to all this. I met her at the mall where she worked and we'd only been dating for about a week before we... met you." Trey answered.
"Yeah, and Dex was already living here when I brought Shit Head in." I added.
"Wait, Dex lived here too? Why?" Milo asked.
"That boy had his problems too. I had a lot troubled kids through here over the years. Dex had him a fondness for opioids which led him to a fondness for heroin. So he ended up here in a similar way. He was cleaned up and getting back on his feet about the time that little hellion came." I said.
"Then what?" Milo asked, scooting forward in his seat.
"Oh she bullied the piss out of the poor boy." I told him. "But that boy stayed and took it all and never complained not the first time. And I'd tell him, I'd say "Why you let her do you like that?" and he'd just smile and say that he could see how much pent up anger she had, and that she was dealing with it the only way she knew how. Bless that boy's heart, he hung in there till the bitter end to where one day she just snapped, and all the guilt of every time she'd smack him or push him or call him some horrible name or break something of his hit her all and once."
"And then what?" Milo asked almost standing up off his chair.
"She did something a hadn't ever seen her do up to that point. She apologized. Hell, after that you'd hardly see them apart really. I don't think she would have recovered as well if he wasn't around like he was. I think they been best friends ever since then." I explained. "I been catching him peeking into the garage on his way back upstairs every time he comes down to get Teagan's food."
After that conversation I'd catch Milo and Dex making their way from the kitchen to the garage to Teagan's room side by side. I mean most of the time it was just long enough to let a pressure wave of obscenities burst through the opening, but they were making the effort just the same. An now let me tell y'all, this next part just 'bout broke my little heart.
Later that night I went to poke my head in the garage real quick and oh my goodness. I found Milo and Dex both sitting on the cold concrete floor. Dex was out like a light lean't up against the wall, but Milo had brought a laptop downstairs and had it open and playing her favorite movies for her. Every now and then he'd catch Mark trying to watch so he'd pick something random off the floor and throw it at him saying "NO! You don't get to watch." Which would cause our predatory princess to crack an evil little giggle each time.
Now don't get me wrong, I still wasn't going to get in range of her chompers, but this was the calmest she'd been so far. I stuck my head in just a little and asked Milo if he needed anything.
"Nah, Teagan passed out from the itus a while ago so I figured I'd hang down here with Jaws and the Fecal Phenom over there and keep her company." He answered.
"Hey... Is that HER laptop?" I asked. "How'd you get into that? She keeps it locked up like Fort Knox."
"Well... at first she said she'd open it for me. But when I tried to hand it to her... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice..." He turned to show me a mouth sized section of his right sleeve missing with what was apparently dried blood around the edges. "So I had to figure it out myself. Wasn't too hard. Turns out it was bobbys idgets. All one word."
"Boy, you gotta tell me, are you an idiot or a genius? I gotta know." I finally broke down and asked him what we was all thinking.
"Exactly." He answered with a wink and turned back to the screen.
That boy makes me tired I swear to god. He's lucky he's cute.
We all gathered back up in the kitchen later the next day to resume our figuring. Like you might expect we didn't get too awful far at all. That is, not until Teagan finally made her way down stairs in relatively better conditon. And that's cause when he saw her, Dex went to say hi and wave to her, which made him drop that gun-shaped knife thing of his. Which THEN thunked tip first right into my hardwood floor.
"Oh damn it boy! Y'all are steady fucking up my whole house!" I barked.
But about that time Milo got this strange look on his face.
"Hey Teag... HEY! HEY!!" He yelled. "Teagan! That guy who made these things!" He said, yanking the cutlery from MY HARDWOOD FLOOR. "Maybe he knows something about what we can do to help her!"
"HOLY SHIT!! BANG RATTLE" Sounded from over near the fridge where Jasmine had been pilfering around for food. "Oh god... Oh god..." She groaned, holding her head as she slowly shuffled over to the table.
"Oh honey... Your poor head. Are you alright?" I tried to ask but she just held a finger up at me.
"Mm. M-mmm..." She mumbled, trying to hold still as much as possible until she was able to take a deep breath and talk again. "Do... Do you think that would work?" She asked Milo.
"It's worth a shot. We should at least try. Teag, do you have any contact info from him or anything? What was his name." He said.
"No. I am sorry, but we did not get it before we leave." She said. "But I am thinking his name was Hephaestus. He says to call him Hep also."
To spare you some boring dialogue, in about 30 seconds that idiot savant had found him on... fucking Facebook. Turns out he's pretty easy to get in touch with through his day job not making vampire fighting equipment. About another 30 seconds later we all gathered around the phone set to speaker as it rang.
The other end clicked and someone on the other side answered, "HELLO! If this is the IRS I already told you to suck my ass."
"That is the strange Tony person." Teagan whispered.
"Um yeah hi. I think I'll take a rain check on the ass sucking." Milo replied, causing everyone else to chuckle. "Any chance we can chat with Hep real quick?"
"Oh shit! Right right!" The Tony man said. "Gimme a second." We then heard him say something with the phone way from his face that sounded like "Here. Run this out to him." Followed by the familiar sound of metal tinking and the sound of some kind of power tool getting louder in the distance.
"Heeeello! You got Hep!" Another voice answered.
"YES HELLO!" Milo said loudly. "Hi yeah, my friend and my wife just left your place a few days ago. You remember?"
"Wait! You two are married?!" Lesley shrieked. "Really?!"
Milo and Teagan both held up their left hands showing off a small black band tattooed around both of their ring fingers that apparently none of us noticed before.
"AWWW! That's adorable!" Jasmine and Lesley both cooed in unison, causing Joannah to groan in disgust.
"We got married in Romania... In Vlad's castle. It was the last thing I used my inheritance money on other than the plane tickets back here." He said with a big, proud grin.
"That is just beautiful." The voice in the phone spoke up, causing us all the jump a little. "Yeah, still here guys." The man said.
"Oh right..." Milo says back into the phone. "Uh, so we kinda have a situation."
"Your buddy went psycho and tried to eat someone?" The voice interjected.
"I... Yeah. How'd you know?" Milo asked him.
"I had a hunch that things might go tits up with your girl in the garage over there. Guess my little friend was helpful after all." The man said, making us all lean back away from the phone.
"How... do you know she's in the gargage?" Milo said, joining the rest of us in looking around the room suspiciously.
"Don't worry about it." The man said, increasing our worry. "Now what do you need from me?"
"Well..." Milo answered, "We were hoping you'd know how to fix her... or something."
"....... I do not. BUT," He continued, "I think if there is a way, I know the people who would know. I'm going to give you their number. Just tell them Hephaestus told you to call. That should get them talking."
Then he gave us the number to call, wished us luck, and hung up. We didn't waste a second dialing the new number. We sat the phone back down on the table and circled around again, listening to the ring.
CLICK "Worst Hotel, front desk! Who the fuck is this?!" A voice shouted through the speaker.
We all looked around at each other, all seemingly collectively thinking that the art of answering the phone has really taken a dive.
"Uh hi, my name is Milo and I was told to call by Hephaestus! Who the fuck is this?!" Milo shouted back.
"Ugh... God damn it. I hate taking these. Jesus what a day... Hello my name is Lezley. How can I help you today?" The man says.
"Oh my god my name's Lesley too!" Lesley chirps excitedly.
"Like O... M... G! Do you like... wanna totally be BFFs and like have sleepovers and talk about all the cute boys on the football team and like do each other's nails and stuff?!" The man on the phone said in the most heavily condescending tone I think any of us ever heard.
"Asshole..." Lesley whispered to herself before walking away from the table.
"What the hell do you people want?" The man asked.
"Our friend is a half vampire, werewolf thing, I think, and she's trying to eat us." Milo says into the phone. "We need to know how to fix her."
"An orichalcum infused weapon to the head or the heart ought to fix her." The man replies, sending Jasmine into a shit fit.
"Uh, no can do good buddy. We're going to need her alive." Milo said once we got Jasmine settled back down.
"UGHHH!! Ok god! You said she's trying to eat people yeah?" He asks.
"Yeah, that's right. She bit a chunk out of our hosta-er... Out of Mark. Ate his finger too." Milo answers.
"Jesus. Have any of you EVER watched a vampire movie? What do vampires need?" The man asks in the same condescending tone.
""Blood?" Milo half answers half asks.
"Yes blood dumbass! And what happens when they don't get what they need for a while? They flip the fuck out! So... how about... and hear me out hear... YOU GET HER SOME GOD DAMN BLOOD!" The man yells at us.
"So... we just go in there and give her some of our blood?" Dex asks. "That's easy enough."
"No you jackass!" The man barks at him. "Not unless you want her to bite a chunk out of your stupid neck! Ok look... You idiots obviously can't be trusted to think this through yourselves, so here it is. Right now you need to find a way to slide her a BIG bucket of FRESH and COMPLETELY HUMAN blood. If she's only half vampire, however the fuck THAT happened, then she'll probably only need a small amount every now and then. Regular food should work most of the time. Pure vampires get their nutrition from liquefying the entire body and sucking that up. If she doesn't have the ostial-dentitions you see on regular ones, and her tongue isn't partially bifurcated, then she's probably get most of her nutrition from regular sourses. And once she's calmed down you'll be able to donate to her directly, but unless you want her to tear you a new asshole, right now you need to find some way to get her the blood while she's all bitey and shit. This is just how she is now. You don't fix werewolf and you don't fix vampire. Deal with it. God I feel like I'm just hear to explain shit to people all the damn time. CLICK"
And with that the guy hung up, leaving us all looking at the black screen in silence. After about 30 seconds of gazing into the touch screen void Jasmine finally broke the quiet.
"I guess we need human blood." She says.
Milo responds, "What a coincidence! I know someone who has some to spare!", grabbing a metal turkey baster syringe and a large tup-a-ware bowl before starting for the garage with a spring in his step.
"WHAT THE FUCK YOU PSYCHOPATH?!" Joannah shrieked at the top of her lungs, stepping in front of Milo with her arms spread, blocking his way.
"What?" Milo questioned with the most bullshit feigned innocent tone possible.
As y'all can imagine, that didn't go well and the rest of us damn near had to break up a fist fight. After we got them two cooled down... about 30 minutes later... we started figuring on how we was supposed to come by a heap of fresh human blood. Long story short, it's pretty obvious a blood bank would have something to do with our solution, but we sat around for hours trying to come up with a heist game plan before that lovable moron Milo said something I still ain't sure was smart or dumb. But I gotta admit, didn't none of us think of it.
"Why don't we just run in, grab it, and run back out?" He asked us all, sitting up from where he had been laying down on the floor.
"What are you talking about?" Trey asked him.
"I was just thinking, how many people try to steal blood from a blood bank? It's not like they keep that shit in a vault with a bunch of armed guards and stuff right?" Milo explained, which actually started making some kinda sense.
So we all decided, we was gonna smash and grab a blood bank. We found one a respectable ways away online first, then we had to decide who was going.
"I'm thinking Milo." Trey said. "I mean if something does go to shit and he gets shot he can heal. We can't."
Everyone seemed to agree, then Teagan spoke up. "Then someone will have to also go with him." She said.
"Why's that honey?" I asked her.
"Teag n-!" Milo started but Teagan said it before he could stop her.
"Because Milo does not know how to do the driving." She said.
"THANK... YOU... TEAGAN! Thank... you..." Milo says loudly.
"HAHAHA! Oh my god you don't know how to drive?!" Joannah cackled mockingly at the poor boy, who's head was now hidden down in his arms.
"HEY! You behave you little shit." I scolded her. "It's ok sugar. We ain't gonna judge you none here." I comforted him, secretly taking out my little note pad and putting a check under the stupid section of the smart/stupid tally I had been keeping of him through the day.
Anyway, I ended up volunteering to drive the little hoodlum cause I had a dummy plate for my Wrangler that weren't nobody looking for and that don't trace back to my house. And once the next day rolled around we were ready to get wild. We figured sooner was better than later to get our situation somewhat stabilized again. Plus we figured the more time we had to think about it the more likely we were to come to our senses and chicken out.