4 months ago. November 13th.
Edwin Faser used to like to go to birthday parties. He'd always liked going to other people's birthday parties. They were always fun for the leopard to go to when he was younger. But this particular birthday party was a miserable experience for him. There was a competitive rival named Wilson June who had to be better at everything that he did. When Edwin tried doing one thing, Wilson would do that thing better than him. For example, Edwin had recently got a twenty speed bike. Wilson had a dirt bike that was much faster than Edwin's bike was.
They competed in a race to see who would win the race, Edwin or Wilson. Wilson won the race. He always won everything, which infuriated the leopard to no end. He and Wilson fought for the attention of a girl named Mia Morales, a twelve year old beautiful lioness for whom Edwin and Wilson had overt affections for. Wilson was constantly one-upping the leopard any chance he got. It drove Edwin crazy that he was forced to compete with Wilson. Things came to a head with Mia Morales's 13th birthday party. That's when Edwin Faser's life changed forever. It would be the day in which the 12 year old leopard would learn how to fly, soon becoming the very first mammal to ever fly up into the sky.
It all started with a game of Twister at Mia Morales's house during her thirteenth birthday party. Twister, for those of you who have never played it, is an insanely popular party game where the player has to bend and contort their bodies in weird ways to land on one of either four rows of colored circles. A person would have to put their hands or feet on the corresponding colored dots. Twister was a lot of fun to play.
Edwin played Twister with his rival, Wilson. Wilson June was a panther who was a year younger than Edwin Faser, at the age of eleven. Wilson wanted to impress Mia at her birthday party. Edwin put his right hand on red. Wilson put his right foot on yellow. The leopard then had to put his left foot on a blue dot. He had to reach his leg over his friend's head in order to reach the nearest blue dot. He suddenly felt a sharp pain hit his thigh. Three kids had their legs draped over Edwin's paw. The pressure of those legs on his arm caused his arm to start to sag to the ground. The spinner spun again. A guy named Joe Furst was at the spinner. Right foot yellow.
Edwin frantically searched for a yellow dot to put his right foot on. He spotted the nearest yellow dot, which was far from his reach. The leopard hoisted his leg over a beast's head to try and reach his right foot on the nearest yellow dot. He suddenly felt his pants rip. He was immediately shocked and embarassed by his pants ripping in front of everyone at the party. Edwin's boxers were showing. Everyone then started laughing at the leopard, including Mia and Wilson. Edwin felt extremely embarassed at having his pants being ripped in front of everyone at the party and then for them to laugh at him.
Edwin decided to leave the party. He didn't want to be around Wilson anymore. He hated the fact that everybody was laughing at him for ripping his pants during a game of Twister. He felt totally humiliated. He didn't wish to stay at Mia's party any longer. Mia caught up with Edwin and blocked the door.
"Please don't go! I want you to stay." Mia pleaded with the leopard. Edwin thought about staying at Mia's party for a moment. He'd just gotten embarassed by everybody at the party because he accidentally ripped his pants open while playing Twister. The last thing he needed was to be humiliated further. The leopard figured that since Mia was his girlfriend, and he didn't really want to disappoint her, he had no choice but to continue being at her party. Mia gave Edwin one of her brother's shorts. Next, it was time to open up Mia's birthday presents.
Edwin couldn't wait for Mia to open up the present he'd gotten for her: a CD album of her favorite band Purple Rose. She liked her gift. Wilson suddenly gave the lioness an envelope. She opened the envelope to find two tickets to see Purple Rose live. Edwin was upset that the panther had upstaged him yet again. The twelve year old leopard couldn't handle Wilson's rivalness anymore. He wanted to leave the party.
"I want to go. I need to get out of here." Edwin told Mia. "It has been a pleasure being at the party with you."
"Why do you want to leave? I thought you were having so much fun?" Mia asked Edwin. She was a bit disappointed that he would just want to leave her party so suddenly.
"I can't stand Wilson one upping me all the time! I've had enough! I wish he didn't freaking exist!" Edwin said to the lioness before running out the door and down the front steps of Mia's porch. He wanted to get away from Mia and Wilson. Every time he tries to do something to impress Mia, Wilson impressed her with something better each and every time. Wilson's competitiveness drove the leopard crazy. The leopard continued running down the street as Mia along with several party goers were chasing after him. Edwin needed somewhere to hide from them. He couldn't let them drag him back to the party to be further humiliated by Wilson June. Edwin wished he never attended Mia's birthday party in the first place.
Edwin continued to run. He ran past a bunch of beachfront houses. He was at the beach. A few people were laying on the ground sunbathing with a towel on their backs, trying to get a suntan. There weren't a whole lot of people around on the beach. It was late afternoon. People usually didn't come to the beach at this time of year, being it was autumn. The leopard stopped running after a while to catch his breath. His heart was beating fast. He could feel the pounding rhythm of his heartbeat in his chest. He looked back to see if Mia, Wilson or any of the other party-goers were following him. He could hear some of them shout out his name in the distance. Eventually, the leopard wasn't able to hear their shouts anymore. Edwin took a moment to look at his surroundings.
He peered up and down the stretch of beach. Staring at house after house. They sprawled out on the high part of the beachfront, with steps that led down to the sand. Lights from the houses washed over the sand, making the beach bright and silvery. The leopard looked for somewhere for him to hide from the party-goers. Suddenly, an idea flashed in his mind. There was an abandoned house that was located further down the strip of beach house that was abandoned. The abandoned Dorsey house. Edwin could hide from the party-goers there. The Dorsey house used to be one of the most beautiful beach houses in Malibu. But no one had lived in it in years. It was just a big, old wreck now. A great place for him to hide from Mia and the party-goers!
"Eddie! Where are you?" Mia's voice floated over the fence.
Edwin realized that he had better hurry before they catch up to him. The leopard ran down the beach, past houses with swimming pools and tennis courts. He ran and ran-and finally, he came to the Dorsey house. Edwin stopped and stared at the abandoned wreck of a house. What a wreck! The wide, two-story house once had a long awning that stretched all along the deck. But the awning had fallen from its poles. The torn canvas lay heaped on the deck, flapping in the ocean breeze. Edwin stepped up toward the house carefully. Several boards were missing from the deck. Others were cracked and broken, not to mention rotten. He leaped over a hole and made his way to the front door. The leopard turned the knob. The wooden door had swollen from the constant wetness. Edwin had to ram his shoulder against it to get it to open. He ducked inside the house.
Edwin quietly closed the door behind him. An aroma of rotting wood and sour mold greeted him. The leopard squinted in the darkness, trying to figure out what room of the house he was in. He stood in the entranceway. Beyond it, in front of him, was a living room. Two chairs with ripped seat cushions stood against one wall. The back wall of the room was completely made of glass. Outside, the leopard could see the dark ocean waves crashing against the shore. To the left was a kitchen with lots of appliances that looked like they hadn't been used in years. To the right, there was a long hall. That's where the bedrooms probably are, Edwin thought, as he made hi way slowly toward them, leaning one hand on the damp wall.
" Eddie! Eddie!" His friends' shouts drifted through the closed windows of the house. But they were fading now. Their sounds were distant. The young leopard walked into a bedroom. It was empty-except for a bare mattress on the floor that the Dorsey family had left behind. Back in the hall, Edwin groped the walls, trying to find his way through the house in the dark. He wished he had a flashlight on him.
Edwin stumbled forward and tripped over something big. It landed on the floor with a loud crash that resonated throughout the house. Eddie jumped back in fear. Then he leaned over to see what it was that crashed to the floor. It was just an old surfboard, he realized. The leopard let out a long sigh of relief. He moved back into the entranceway. Into the kitchen. The wooden floor creaked beneath his feet. A shaft of moonlight filtered in through the grimy windows. Some broken mugs lay on one of the counters. A child's sand pail and shovel rested in a corner on the floor. Eddie stood in the shaft of moonlight. He could hear the ocean waves pound against the shoreline. The wind began to howl outside. It whipped through the weathered boards of the old house. The wood creaked and groaned.
Edwin peered out the kitchen window and saw the clump of fallen awning shivering in the wind, like a ghost getting ready to rise. Something scampered across his feet, causing Edwin let out a startled cry. Was it a mouse or a rat? Or was it something bigger than that? The leopard's entire body shuddered at the thought of a rat scurrying about the house. This place was really creepy at night. Eddie figured that it was safe to leave the house now, the leopard told myself. There were no more voices of his friends shouting out at him. They were gone. They were probably all back at Mia's house, eating birthday cake and playing more party games. He bet Wilson was on his third piece of cake, he thought with disgust. He couldn't stand to think about how the panther was giving Mia more expensive gifts for her party.
He couldn't wait to get home-to his nice, dry house with his mother and father and his older sister. He walked slowly through the darkened kitchen across the sagging, rotting floor. The planks groaned with each step the leopard took. The front door came into view. Edwin was almost there. Almost out of the cold, creepy house. He took another step-and the floor broke away beneath his feet. The wooden planks crashed someplace below as he plunged down into the gaping hole on the living room floor. The leopard's paws grabbed onto a jagged piece of floorboard. His legs dangled beneath him in the air.
" Help!" Edwin screamed. But no one could hear his screams. He tried to pull himself up out of the hole. The wooden planks under his paws creaked as the leopard struggled to hoist himself up. And then the planks suddenly splintered and broke. Edwin dropped through the hole fast. He fell straight down into the basement. The leopard landed hard on his hands and knees. Pain shot throughout his entire body. Then the pain quickly faded from his furry body. Luckily for him, the floor was soft and spongy from all the dampness, so he wasn't really hurt all that bad. He probably had a few scrapes and bruises on his fur.
Edwin took a deep breath and choked on the bitter smell of mildew that permeated throughout the basement. The leopard could even taste it on his tongue. This was all Wilson's fault! If Wilson hadn't been at the party and hadn't have humiliated Edwin in front of Mia and her friends, he wouldn't have to run away from the party and ran through the beachfront to hide in an old abandoned house. Eddie wanted to forget thinking about Wilson and wanted to focus on trying to leave the abandoned Dorsey house. The leopard slowly stood up and searched for stairs, a door, or a window he could use to help him get out of the basement. But Edwin couldn't see a thing, for it was too dark in the basement for him to see anything clearly. It was as if a heavy black blanket had been thrown over everything. His sneakers sank into the decaying floor as he made his way blindly through the room. His knee bumped into something hard. Was it a chair? He reached down and ran his paws over it. Yes, it was definitely a chair. Good, he thought. If there's a chair down here, maybe he could stand on it to climb out of the hole, climb back up into the kitchen. Or use it to climb out a basement window, if there was any windows in the basement at all.
The leopard moved slowly through the room. His feet sloshed through a deep puddle. The cold water seeped through his sneakers. I'm going to get you for this, Wilson. Eddie thought. He wanted to get Wilson for this if he managed to find a way out of the basement of the abandoned house. Edwin tripped over a table and heard something crash to the floor. He heard the sound of glass shattering. And then he heard a splash that made his heart skip a beat. Was it another animal? Edwin wondered. Another mouse or a rat? He didn't want to think about it. His temples began to pound. How was he going to get out of here? Should he try to scream for help? Who would hear the leopard down here in the basement of an old abandoned house? Nobody would be able to hear Edwin scream out for help inside the basement of an abandoned beachfront house.
On trembling legs, Edwin moved through the room with his paws out in front of him groping around in the dark. He stumbled into another table. The leopard ran his paws over it. It wasn't a table. It felt more like a bench to him. A workbench. His paws brushed across the top of it. He felt a hammer, a screwdriver, and a candle. His fingers scrambled over the workbench, searching for a match to light the candle. He groped his way across the entire workbench. He couldn't find any matches. The leopard slowly backed away from the bench and his sneaker rolled over something round. Something round, like a flashlight! He picked it up. Yes! It was a flashlight! He was thankful that he had managed to find a flashlight in the middle of the basement. Edwin wondered if the flashlight still worked. He's hate to find out that the flashlight he found didn't work. Edwin's fingers shook as he fumbled for the switch. Please work. Please work. Please work. The leopard thought desperately, hoping to God that the flashlight he had found still worked after all this time. He flicked the flashlight on. A pale yellow beam of light reached weakly into the gloom. The flashlight was dim-but he could finally see what was in the basement!
"I'm out of here!" Eddie cheered triumphantly. He swept the weak beam of light in front of him. It was there that he noticed that he had fallen into a small room. Thick cobwebs draped the peeling walls of the basement. A rusty washing machine and clothes dryer sat in one corner. A small, wooden table and a smashed lamp lay on the floor in front of the washer and dryer. Edwin moved the light closer and saw a battered camp trunk. The leopard ran his paw over the lid. It was covered with a thick layer of damp, smelly mold and dust. The trunk's rusted hinges creaked as he top lifted up the top. He pointed my flashlight beam inside. There was nothing in the trunk except for an old weathered book. The young leopard read the title of the book out loud:"Flying Lessons." Edwin flipped through the yellowed pages, searching for pictures of airplanes. He loved airplanes. He often imagined flying an airplane himself. He always wanted to be a pilot like Howard Hughes, Amelia Earhart or Charles Lindbergh.
Unfortunately for him, there wasn't a single image of a plane inside the book. The pages of the book were filled with old-fashioned drawings of beasts flying through the air like Superman or a bird. People of all ages: men with white beards, women in long dresses, children in funny, old clothing-all soaring through the sky like a bird. What a strange, old book, Edwin thought. He flipped through more of the pages-until he heard another splash behind him. Edwin Faser swept the flashlight over the floor-and gasped.
"Ohhhhh. Nooooo." A low wail escaped his lips.
He moved the pale light back and forth, hoping he wasn't seeing what he thought he was seeing. But even in the dim light, he could see the dark bodies, the tiny eyes glowing red, the open-toothed jaws. It was a horde of rats! There were dozens of rats scuttling across the floor of the basement, moving in on the leopard. Edwin leaped back and gaped in horror as they closed in on him. Sharp toenails clicked against the floor. Scraggly tails swished through wet puddles as the rats scurried forward toward the terrified leopard.
It was like a gray sea of rats. Edwin froze in terror, unable to move. He gripped the flashlight tightly in his paw to stop it from shaking. The rats snapped their jaws at him as they began to hiss. The ugly sound echoed off the damp walls of the small room. Dozens of tiny red eyes glowed up at the twelve year old leopard. The hissing of the rats grew louder and louder. Their jaws snapped. Their tails swished back and forth. The creatures scuttled over one another, eager to get to Edwin. Suddenly, a big fat rat darted out to the front of the pack. It glared up at the leopard hungrily with glowing red eyes as it bared sharp fangs. Edwin tried to back away from the sea of rats. But his body hit the wall. There was nowhere for him to run. The rat uttered a shrill cry as it pulled back on its hind legs and sprang forward toward him.
" Noooo!" The leopard screamed out in terror as he tried to dodge out of the way. The rat clawed at the bottom of his shorts. The rat held on for a second, gnashing its teeth. Then it lost its hold and slid to the floor with a wet plop. Another rat leaped to attack him. Edwin thrashed my leg wildly and kicked the rat across the room. The red eyes glowed up at me. Their hissing grew to a shrill siren. The leopard batted rats away with the old book as he swept his flashlight across the room, frantically searching for a way out.
Suddenly, he noticed a narrow staircase located across the room! He sprinted toward it, stepping into the sea of rats. He stomped his feet hard on them-flattening their scraggly tails. One of the rats jumped out to try and bite on his tail. The rat's claws scraped against his bare legs as he ran. Two rats managed to cling to my sneakers as he charged up the stairs. He kicked the rats off of his clothes as he heard their bodies thumping wetly onto the basement floor. Then Edwin staggered the rest of the way up the stairs. The leopard hurtled out the door and out into the fresh air. The leopard was gasping for air. His heart was pounding. Edwin sucked in breath after breath of salty, ocean air. Edwin ran through the strip of beachfront houses all the way home. He didn't stop running until he came to his own house. Panting hard, the leopard collapsed on the front lawn.
A female teenage leopard sat on the front steps of the house, scrolling through her iPhone. She looked over her phone to see her brother slowly rise up from the ground. The female leopard looked at her brother in surprise. He was covered from head to toe in dirt, mildew and wetness. She wondered where the hell Edwin went for him to be this dirty. She noticed that he was holding a book in his paws. She wondered where he got the book from. The teenage female leopard wanted to know how Mia's party went.
"How was Mia's party? Did you play any fun games?" The female asked her brother, wanting to know how Mia's birthday party was for Edwin.
"It was fucking horrible! Wilson June was there and he publicly humiliated me in front of Mia and her friends. I really wanted to leave the party, but Mia begged me to stay behind. First, my shorts ripped while I was playing Twister, then Mia opened my present I got for her, which was a CD of her favorite band, Purple Rose. Then Wilson had the nerve to get her two tickets to see Purple Rose live in concert! That was when I had enough of Wilson's shit and I ran out of her house." Edwin explained to his sister. The female teenage leopard had cracked up laughing upon hearing that Edwin's pants had ripped open at Mia's party while playing Twister.
" Your pants ripped while playing Twister?" Edwin's sister asked him, finding hard to believe that his pants would split down the middle while at a girl's birthday party during a game of Twister.
"Yes, Kimberly. My rants ripped while I was at Mia's party in the middle of playing Twister in front of everyone there. It was freaking embarrassing! It was liked that one episode of SpongeBob, except it wasn't funny." Edwin explained to his older sister Kimberly Faser. Kimberly Faser was seventeen and a half years old. She had long wavy brown colored hair with gorgeous hazel eyes that sparkled whenever you looked at them. Kimberly was a junior at her high school. The teenage female leopard was currently wearing a blue long sleeved shirt with black leggings and had sandals on her feet despite the fact that it was in the middle of November.
"Sounds like Mia's party was pretty miserable for you, huh Eddie?" Kimberly said to her brother.
"You can say that again." Edwin said. "Where's mom and dad?"
"They're out in the living room, watching TV." said Kimberly. Then she noticed the smell of mildew on the younger male leopard's body. "Is that mildew I smell? Where'd you go after you ran away from Mia's party?" "I ran all the way to the abandoned Dorsey house to try and get away from Wilson, Mia and the rest of the party-goers." Edwin said to his sister.
"Did you find anything interesting there?" The female teenage leopard asked her brother.
"Not really. I did manage to find this book down there." Edwin said before showing the old book he had found in the basement of the Dorsey house. He handed the book to Kimberly who looked through the book. She was surprised by what she saw in the pages of the book. It showed a history of mammal flight along with detailed illustrations of various beasts flying through the air.
"This is a pretty interesting book you got there." Kimberly said to Edwin before handing the book back to him.
"Yeah. I found it inside of a chest in the basement. A bunch of rats then appeared and I ran out of there like a bat out of hell." Edwin said, which made Kimberly laugh. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go out in the backyard and do some things."
Edwin stared into the living-room window. The lamps glowed through the sheer white drapes. He could see his mother and father inside. Eddie started to go inside the house, when he realized that he still clutched the book.
Uh-oh. Edwin thought. He knew that his mother and father would be upset if they knew that he took something that didn't belong to him. Worse than that, they'd start asking me a thousand questions. Questions like: Where did you get the book? What were you doing in that abandoned house? Why weren't you at the party?
Edwin decided that he couldn't let them see him holding an old book that he had found inside of an old abandoned house. The leopard's damp sneakers squeaked across the lawn as he made his way around back to the garage. Edwin stepped carefully inside the garage. His family had a reputation for having the most cluttered garage in town. His dad liked to collect things. Lots of things, usually antique items like grandfather clocks and things like that. It got to the point where they couldn't put their car inside the garage anymore. They couldn't even close the garage door anymore because of the amount of junk his family had stored there. Edwin made his way around a dentist's spit-sink and the aluminum steps to Mrs. Green's old swimming pool. He decided to hide the book inside of a torn mattress, then went inside the house.
"Eddie, is that you?" His mother called out to him from the kitchen.
"Uh-huh," Edwin answered, jogging upstairs before she saw him. The last thing he wanted was to explain how he got his wet, muddy shorts. Shorts that weren't even his!
"How was the party?" Edwin's mother called out.
"Um. Okay," The leopard called back to his mother nervously. "I left a little early." Then, the twelve year old leopard boy proceeded to take a long, hot shower to wash off the dust and mildew off of his body.