Come Back, Little Sheba

A black panther sits concealed in the branches of a tree, watching for potential victims.

Game, in herds and small groups, passes below.

The panther is a killing machine, and to catch her eye can mean instant death,

But her feet dangle in empty air,

And her eyes are staring at nothing, unfocused and ditzy.


"Why is the QOTV up in the crab apple tree?" asks Chloe, setting down her Rolling Stone and craning her neck to see out the window of Danny's Coffee Shop.

"She looks stoned or something."


"She's moping," says Denise the waitress. "The Dark Haired Chick is out of town and she can't deal."

"Well, where'd she go? Peru?"

"Pawtucket, I think," says Denise.

The Succubus, sitting nearby wearing dark glasses indoors at ten in the morning, mumbles, "Wasn't it Punxatawney?"

"I heard Port-Au-Prince," says Savanna the resident juvenile delinquent.


Chloe bites her lip, still looking up. Then she strides out the door and the little bell jingles as she hits the sidewalk.

Stopping underneath the tree, she pitches a stale chocolate chip muffin at the Queen Of The Vampires.

Bullseye.

"Snap out of it!" she advises, stamping her foot and giving the QOTV the hairy eyeball.


The QOTV shifts a little on her branch, makes a few annoyed kitty noises, but remains a torpid cartoon of a jungle cat.

"She'll be back!" yells Chloe the serial killer, spreading her arms. Seeing it is hopeless, she goes back inside.

She gives God the waitress a sideways look.

"Seems like you could do something," she snipes.

"Like what?" asks God serenely, while filling the holders with sugar packets.

"Well," says Chloe, crossing her arms, "you could move Pawtucket closer to here!"


"Punxatawney," murmurs the Succubus.


"Port-Au-Prince," corrects Savanna, drawing on the table with her knife.


"Oh for chrissake," groans Chloe, but at a sharp look from God, she adds, "Sorry," then giggles.


Eventually, the Queen of The Vampires does leap down and dispatch a Jehovah's Witness, leaving only a few pamphlets strewn across the sidewalk.

On one of them, is a picture of a lamb in Jesus's arms.


A minute later, the shape-shifted QOTV walks inside of Danny's. "Baaaa," she says, tilting up her black and white lamb face at God.

It is a rare and fine thing when anyone can make God snort.

"Get out of here, you lunatic!" God swipes a foot at the QOTV, who shape-shifts again, back to a panther, and jumps up into one of the booths, which she promptly shreds with her fearsome claws before settling down.


She curls into a ball.


She sighs.


The Dark-Haired Chick cannot get back too soon.

________