Keeping this one pretty short. This may or may not eventually be part of a series about a guy named Wayne Ellsworth who’s a “weirdness magnet.”<\/i><\/p>\n
It stood a little over seven feet tall, with skin the mottled gray of New Hampshire granite. Its eyes were set inhumanly low and far apart; its snub nose was black and appeared to have four nostrils. Its mouth had a divided upper lip that vaguely resembled a cat’s, but its blue-gray teeth didn’t look catlike at all \u2013 or like anything else I’d ever seen before. It wore a baggy sweatshirt that failed to hide the fact that its shoulders were structured wrong. The four-fingered hand that was still hovering near the doorbell had far too many joints, and was at the end of an arm with three elbows.<\/p>\n
\u201cHi,\u201d it said, in a voice that was obviously not human. It had a slight lisp and the faintest trace of a Brooklyn accent. \u201cI’m Fred Smith, from Number Nine, down the block. I was wondering if you could do me a favor.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUh,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I know. I look pretty strange.\u201d It glanced over its misshapen shoulder and asked, \u201cCould I come in?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUh,\u201d I said again.<\/p>\n
Its mouth did something I really can\u2019t describe that I guess was a grimace, and it said, \u201cMaybe this was a bad idea, but honestly, I didn\u2019t know where else to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t ready to invite it in for tea, but despite its appearance and the weird voice, it sounded so normal that my brain finally started to slip into gear. \u201cWhat kind of a favor?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cCould you make a phone call for me? Maybe tell a little white lie or two?\u201d It looked around uneasily. \u201cAnd if you could let me in, out of sight, I\u2019d really appreciate it. I don\u2019t want to start any trouble, and I\u2019m pretty nervous out here in the open.\u201d<\/p>\n
That made perfect sense. I couldn\u2019t help taking a quick look at its hands and teeth, but I didn\u2019t see any claws or fangs \u2013 in fact, it didn\u2019t appear to have fingernails at all.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome on in,\u201d I said, stepping aside, \u201cand tell me about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It ducked its head to fit through the door, then straightened up again once it was inside, and looked around.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a lovely home,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d I replied automatically.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Keeping this one pretty short. This may or may not eventually be part of a series about a guy named Wayne Ellsworth who’s a “weirdness magnet.” It stood a little over seven feet tall, with skin the mottled gray of New Hampshire granite. Its eyes were set inhumanly low and far apart; its snub nose… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","category-work-in-progress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":709,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.watt-evans.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}