Grandma had an antiquated, mostly yellow umbrella rack, decorated with green eldritch beasts with long tentacles and red eyes. It resided behind her front door and held a lone, but very large looking black umbrella with an even darker, hook-shaped handle.
“You must never, under any circumstance, ever touch that umbrella – even if it is pouring rain, Sheila,” she often warn me.
As child, the rack unnerved me and because I was frightened by it, I never went near it. As an acknowledged tom-boy, I was used to playing in the rain without an umbrella or even a rain slicker, so I never gave the rack a second thought.
That is until the night I was beautifully styled in a long satin gown, my make-up perfect and red hair coiffed in a high bouffant for my senior year prom date with Herbert K. Smithhorne the Third. So, not wishing to get utterly drenched before I made it to his car and without thought to her warning, I grabbed the umbrella, opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch.
As I started down to the first step, I released the mechanism that kept the umbrella from opening and pushed the sliding tube upward. To my surprise the entire umbrella came undone, shooting forward off the handle, landing on the stone walkway a few feet from Herbie’s car and in front of where Herbie was standing.
He laughed at the silly sight and I giggled in embarrassment.
Without warning the black material became thick and hairy and sprang to life as it fully unfolded, then with it’s spindly metal legs, it dashed directly at Herbie. He tried to escape the attack and I screamed in horror.
The thing envelop him head to foot. He made a small squeaking sound that was quickly overpowered by a gigantic slurping and sucking noise and in a matter of seconds, it was over.
The hideous thing jumped to the car’s hood and turned to and fro, checking to see where it was and where it should go next. Then it hopped down into the roadway where a passing automobile ran it over, destroying it.
The Old Blog in the Desert 
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