The Lost World Next Door

I live in the past. The neat little homes making up my street were built in the early 1920s. My hair, I’m told, puts people in mind of ‘80s pop-rocker Richard Marx.

However badly I long for days past, though, my next-door neighbor has it worse. A dilapidated shack surrounded by a dark forest of trees and tangle of weeds -- it’s like the Cretaceous Period over there.

I heard something tramping about in that primordial wood last night, as I watered my dichondra. Some beast trod heavily in there, crushing leaves beneath huge paws. I swallowed hard, imagining its eyeing me from behind the wall of trees, bushes and asparagus weed separating our two worlds. I felt a bit foolish as actual fear, cold and clearly felt -- as though someone were drawing a piece of ice slowly down my spine -- raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

                “Saber-toothed tiger,” my neighbor on the other side, also watering, yelled. “Jurassic Park.” I leapt a foot into the air as he said it. I was embarrassed, but at least I wasn’t alone.

On a run the night before, I’d heard some smaller animal whimpering. Had a baby pterodactyl fallen from its palm-top nest to the forest floor? Worse, was a neighborhood cat injured, crying for rescue? I wanted to go in, to help, but a paralyzing fear crept from my scalp to my shoes and kept me frozen just outside the thicket.

Then I actually bolted for home.