This morning, I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I heard a blood curdling scream.  I dropped the pot I was rinsing and tore around the corner.  At the same time, Tom rushed down the steps from our room.

“What is it?” I asked Maggie.  Her breathing was quickened and her eyes showed pure terror.

“I think there’s some kind of monster or animal under the sink!”  She was pointing at the bathroom vanity.

I felt a quickening in my stomach.  Two years ago, Tom remodeled our bathroom.  He left a giant hole in the back of the wall so he could have access to the pipes.  I have always been leery of that hole because I have always thought it was an entry point into our house for bugs and animals.  I felt nervous.  If she had seen something, somehow, an animal had gotten into our house.  What could it be:  A mouse?  A rat?  A squirrel?

“Tom, take care of it!”  I insisted.

He went into the bathroom and gingerly opened the door.  He bent down and peered in, and then he stood and shut the door quickly.

“She’s not kidding,” he said seriously.  “There’s something in there.”

Panic came over me.  “It’s going to bite us all and we are all going to get rabies!” I thought.

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“I don’t know.  I’m thinking.”  He rested his hands on the sink and thought for a moment.  He leaned down and opened the other vanity door and grabbed the toilet brush.  He had a weapon.  “Okay, I will take care of this,” he said with conviction.  He got down on his knees, held the brush in an attack kind of way, and reopened the door.  “It hasn’t moved,” he whispered.  He jabbed at it.  It moved.  He startled.   He then got a closer look.  “What the….”

“Be careful,” I said as he reached his hand into the vanity.

He pulled out the monster and threw it at me.  I screamed bloody murder, until I realized it was plastic.

“What is it?  Where was it?” I asked gaining composure.

“It’s one of those toys they get out of the crane game.  She wasn’t wrong, it was in the wall,” he said smiling.

“Who would have put it there?  That’s awful,  scaring us all,” I said.

‘Yeah, ummm, I did that about six months ago.”

“Then why were you scared?  Were you acting?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and crinkled his nose.  “Nope.  I guess I kind of forgot I did it.  I thought it would be funny to scare someone.”

“Well, your plan worked!”