Getty Street/Chapter 1

Hello Rabid Reader! I am so excited to share the first chapter of a hopefully long-running serial about people living on a quaint suburban street in Phoenix, Arizona. The air is dry. The people are friendly . . . if they want to be. Cacti and Palo Verde trees dot the landscape. It's a street as familiar as the back of your hand. What's not familiar is the secrets lurking behind those closed doors (or perhaps for you secrets are familiar), or the strange lights overhead as your bedside clock nears midnight. And it's there we begin this story as lights flicker from above in the violet star-flecked night: 

"Go outside, Pierre, and take a piss," the middle-aged man says to his fluff of a dog, a real best-in-show Pomeranian. Pierre lands on all fours, looks back with a flicker of betrayal, and saunters off to do his business in the dying grass. His owners haven't watered it for most of November and the Bermuda grass has begun its winter slumber anyway. Lifting his leg, Pierre sniffs the air, taking note of the familiar smells: his brother Sage's urine, the shit from the chicken he forces himself not to maul daily . . . flowers, bushes, cow manure from nearby dairy farms, lingering smells of dinners cooked by the families surrounding the man-couple who care for him . . . all smells known and loved by Pierre.

            But something is new . . . there's a new smell to the world. One he's completely unfamiliar with . . . it has a faint metallic odor, something both spicy and mellow. It repels him. He whimpers a bit, longing to go back to the porch door. His instincts bark loudly within him, telling him he is exposed, vulnerable. Pushing these feelings aside, Pierre follows his nose--it's his backyard after all--to the front gate on the side of this typical suburban house. He looks under the gate, nose flexing, at the empty street. Cars and trucks are parked up and down Getty Street. Not knowing the street's name--he's a dog let's remember--he still knows the sounds of what's common and what's not. Routine is a language he knows perfectly well. And there are soft footfalls on that street that are very uncommon. Barks erupt out of him before he can think better of it.

            The footfalls stop. Shift. Turn in his direction. They run at him.

            His nose pops out from under the fence. He darts backwards, falling back onto his butt, flipping upside down, paws slapping the hard gravel. Yelping, he sprints towards the porch door. A light as bright as the noon sun opens above him. It's close, a few feet above him. It has no heat, and dazzles him, stops him cold just five feet from the door. A pulse of green light comes down with it, mixed in the bright white. Green and then purple and then green again. Enveloped by the light he barks. And again, he barks, as his paws lift from the ground . . .

    Opening the porch door, the middle-age man says: "Pierre! You're gonna wake the neighbors. Get your booty inside. It's time for bed."

Stepping outside, shifting from foot to foot on the chilly concrete of the porch, the middle-aged man named Sam looks around, calls for Pierre again and sees only the empty backyard, its familiar shapes in the gloom. The red heating lamp inside the chicken coop tucked in the corner of the yard does its duty. Valerie, their single chicken, sits at the doorway, unbothered and no doubt dozing. Sam steps out on to         the gravel, winces at the pain their sharp corners cause the pads of his feet, and calls for Pierre again. There's no answer, no rush of little feet and an eager, happy leap at his legs to be picked up.

            Above Sam, an arch of light zooms across the sky over Getty Street. As he heads back inside, upset and worried, Sam thinks of the light's odd colors, like no shooting star he'd ever seen: alternating flashes of green and purple mixed in a bright white.