The Silverlake Coyote
It was the most horrific-looking creature Robert had ever seen in person. Totally gnarly. Like a diabolically cursed animal from some ancient fairy tale.
Robert was used to seeing coyotes in this hip east side neighborhood of Los Angeles called Silverlake, where he had lived for the last five years. But he had never seen one like this before.
It looked almost deformed in so many ways – the oddly long hind legs, the u-shaped curvature of its back, the mangy-looking, practically hairless skin – and then there were those eyes. Instead of the dark pupils of most mammals, this thing had dirty grey clouds in its eye sockets. It looked blind. It didn’t move like it was, though. It glided through the dark night. Like a shadow.
Monster’s Ball in Bel Air
Ryan looked like a werewolf straight out of hell.
His tall, six-foot-five body was covered with long, coarse, dark brown hair from head to toe. His mouth protruded like the snout of an actual wolf. His eyes were glowing red with dirty yellow pupils. His sharp teeth, particularly his canines, jutted out like fangs on either side of his long panting tongue.
Holy shit, thought Ryan, this is freakin’ insane.
Well, that’s Hollywood magic at its finest.
The Hollywood Sign Situation
Zach Rosenberg, successful Hollywood writer and producer in his mid-40s, stood next to the famous Hollywood sign in the middle of the night, gazing emptily at the vast city of Los Angeles down below. What a dramatic view. And he knew good drama. He loved a good drama. It was his love for dramatic storytelling that brought him to Los Angeles, a city that thrived on drama. He squinted slightly to study the city lights in the distance, glittering like little groups of restless fireflies. Los Angeles. The City of Angels. The City of Dreams. Or to some, The City of Broken Dreams and Shattered Lives.
Zach gripped the gun tightly in his hand and raised it to his head.
Should I give it a few more minutes? he pondered.
The Ominous Squirrels of Burbank
“Those squirrels will kill you, man!” screamed the old, disheveled homeless guy.
The last thing Adrian needed to hear right now, at the end of a long work day, was some looney “enlightening” him about psychopathic squirrels.
Even if these squirrels had the same culinary interest as Hannibal Lector, thought Adrian, why would they be right here at Johnny Carson Park in suburban freakin’ Burbank of all places? Right across from NBC studios? Perhaps Jay Leno should have done a segment on ‘Local Vermin Gone Wild’ before his retirement.
Adrian halted his musings.
The Incident at Beachwood Canyon
“What?…A man bit a chunk out of another man?” said fifty-five-year-old veteran cop Darrell J. Cook, as he sat behind the wheel of his police car. He then took a massive chunk out of his cheeseburger and blurted out, “Animals!”
Lauren Jacobs, a young female rookie cop sitting in the passenger seat, didn’t say anything to her uber macho senior partner. This was her first time going on patrol.
They just received a message from their dispatch regarding a 911 call about a party gone wild in the Beachwood Canyon area where apparently a man was literally biting chunks of meat from another man.
It was 2 a.m. on a warm summer night in Los Angeles and their police car was parked next to Tommy’s Original World Famous Burger, on the corner of Bronson Avenue and Hollywood Boulevard. This usually bustling boulevard looked naked at this hour of the night without its sea of urban denizens.
“Shouldn’t we call for backup?” asked Lauren, glancing at her watch. It was almost time for their shift to end. “I mean people eating people sounds kinda violent…”