Keith got woken up at exactly midnight by some sound or another in his bedroom and he was immediately up, standing next to the bed, the baseball bat he kept underneath already in his hands.
“Don’t be afraid!” said a voice. “For I am the ghost-”
Keith swung the baseball bat in the direction of the voice and made contact with something hard. It was an aluminum bat, so the sound was incredibly satisfying.
“What?” said the voice.
But Keith was already in the hallway, running. It was a shitty neighborhood, so he’d had this plan ever since he’d moved in. He’d even practiced getting the bat out from the under the bed. One point six three seconds was his record for going from under the covers to ready to swing. He was sure he’d been slower tonight but he’d never actually practiced from dead asleep.
Anyway, Keith was no fighter. He wasn’t even fit. He never started anything because he knew he wouldn’t be the one to finish it. So the plan for an intruder was swing the bat at their head, and then when they were distracted by the fact that they had just taken an aluminum bat to the temple, fucking run.
“Wait, I’m trying-”
Keith swung the bat again at the shape talking at him in the dark. He knew there might be others. He was ready. His bat connected again and the shape went down in a groaning heap.
“Motherfucker,” he muttered under his breath, and then he was moving.
It was fucking freezing outside. Christmas Eve. You’d never get a white Christmas in Houston but you could get a bastard of a cold front. He was still in his shorts and nothing else. His feet slapped on the cold ground. He only had to cross the parking lot to get to Teddy’s place.
“You need to stop!”
There hadn’t been someone standing in front of him before, had there? No, no, Keith was on high fucking alert, he would have noticed. And he definitely would have noticed a cat like this one. Wearing some sort of old-timey clothes, all white and lace and baby-faced. Sheesh, should this kid even be out this late?
All of these thoughts were going through Keiths brain at the same time his adrenaline-snorting lizard brain screamed SWING SWING SWING and then the little Victorian child took the bat to the face again.
I should stop, said Keith’s brain.
TRAP! the lizard brain screamed, and Keith kept running. The sound of kid’s wails followed him, but he had no remorse.
Kids shouldn’t be out this late in this neighborhood, shit.
“Fine!” The kid screamed, threatening to wake up the whole block. “I was just trying to do something nice, but screw you then! I’m calling the others to cancel!”
Teddy let him in after almost a minute of pounding, and then Keith fell onto the ratty couch, dropping the bat on the floor.
“Someone finally break into your place?” Teddy asked, standing over him and scratching his stomach.
“Uh huh,” Keith said. “Some Victorian ghost thingy. I think they were trying to Scrooge me.”
“Scrooge you? Man, why, you don’t do shit.”
Keith held his hands out. “That’s what I’m saying!”
“Fuck that. Lay low here, at least until past three. That’s when the last one is supposed to come. Can’t drag you around if they can’t find you.”
“Teddy?” Linda Lee called from the bedroom. “What’s going on?”
“Keith is going to sleep on the couch. Some ghosts just tried to Scrooge him.”
“Ain’t they got some rich asshole to bother?”
“These rich assholes just pay one of their ‘staff’ to deal with it,” Keith said. “Thanks for the couch, man.”
“Don’t fucking worry about it, man. We’ll do eggs in the morning. Fucking ghosts, thinking they can just wake a man up in the middle of the night…”
Still muttering to himself, Teddy went back to bad. Keith knew Linda Lee kept a spare blanket and pillow in the compartment in the ottoman and helped himself. He was asleep in under five minutes, and when the sun rose on Christmas day it found Keith a well-rested man.
High Urban Fantasy Jazz 