She no longer had to wear a mask, and that made Cheryl happy. She did not have a hard time wearing a mask but seeing others did make life difficult.

Cheryl suffered from childhood with ommetaphobia, a fear of eyes. Even the act of looking in a mirror with a mask on caused nausea, tremors, and sweat.

Someone discovered this fear and decided to torture her. Cheryl found a pair of eyes drawn in chalk on her front porch.

Not only did they trigger the usual symptoms in her, but the idea of the act also brought on severe anger. Cheryl even set up a security camera, but somehow whoever was responsible had evaded being seen.

Then last night, she heard a noise at her front door. Cheryl quickly opened it and found another pair of eyes drawn on her porch.

This time, and because the chalk used was still rolling across the cement, she rushed outside, hoping to catch the person. In her haste, she stepped on one of the eyes.

Without warning, she was dragged from her where she stood. Seconds before she slammed into the planet’s surface, Cheryl recognized her greatest fear in the Eye of Jupiter.

To call it anything other than horrifying would be an understatement. I tried calling it cruelty, even neglect, but neither word seems to fit the situation.

It is where nightmares come alive, adding to those that already haunt the short hours of unrestful sleep.

As I walked into the woman’s yard, I saw the live capture cage in the grass near the sprinkler head. The water was on, spraying directly into the metal enclosure.

Unfortunately, the cage had a squirrel trapped inside it. The poor animal was dead, drown.

It had put up a violent struggle to save its life. Its claws were still gripping tight to the grating of the cage, its lips a pallid waxy gray, eyelids tightly closed but puffy, body stiff.

I can’t imagine dying in such a manner, but my night terrors will resolve this.

As she struggled, her yellow dress, already short, was now over her hips. She was not wearing underwear.

Still haunted by the memory of what had happened in Iraq, he smiled at the thing in his bed, “I’m gonna fuck you till you scream with pleasure.”

Already naked himself, Nick stuffed his erectness into the woman, and she screamed so forcefully that the bedroom windows rattled. Within a couple of minutes, he released into her, and again she reacted with the same effect.

But Nick wasn’t done. He remained stiff and continued to pound away at her.

Fifteen minutes later, Nick felt her stiffen up. Then she bucked at him, bending in an arch that lifted him from the bed.

Still in her and balancing on her hips, he continued to thrust and thrust. Together, they came in a violent spasm that went finished she collapsed and he on her.

“I must have been dreaming,” Nick said as he climbed from the tangle of sheets.

Weak in the knees and his thighs sore, he walked into the bathroom. As he stood to pee in the toilet, Nick knew he had not been dreaming after all.

A panic set in, and he raced to the full-length mirrors of his closet only to see a woman standing in his place. His fear ebbed as his eyes began to glow red, and the smiling woman in him grew hungry for her next victim.

My Cousin Elmo says, “I’m on the tequila diet, and so far I’ve lost three days.”

Once inside and with the door securely locked behind him, Nick relaxed a little. As he prepared for bed, he looked out his window at the street and where the woman had been.

He felt himself jump as he looked down on her, and she stood still, staring up at his window. Nick picked up his cellphone and prepared to call the police, but when he looked back, she was gone.

With his 9mm Berreta and phone on his nightstand, Nick turned out the light and settled in to get some sleep. Suddenly, his phone rang, and he picked it up.

“Hi,” was all the text read.

“Who is this?” he texted back.

“The woman under your covers.”

Nick reached over and turned on the lamp. Then he tossed back the blanket and sheet that covered him.

There was the woman in the yellow dress, eye aglow with red and growling. She sprang at him, and he twisted out from under her.

Now on top, Nick held her down at her biceps and refused to release her. Though possessed like a demon, she was no match for the Marine, who had maintained his physical strength since his days in the Corps.

The odd walk, the goofy grin, and the overpowering sense of danger were nothing new to him. He had seen it once before while on duty at a checkpoint outside Baghdad nearly 16 years before.

Back then, he was in the Marine Corps.

The night of the incident at the checkpoint remained burned in his memory. A woman, covered head-to-toe in a yellow burka, came out of the darkness and refused to halt before fired upon and killed.

Now he was watching a Black woman dance and pirouette along the sidewalk across the street. She also had the strange smile that the long-dead Iraqi woman had when her veil was finally removed.

Strangely, they had spent most of the last year and a half wearing face masks because of COVID-19. Nick wondered if the woman across the street was suffering some odd effect of wearing a mask for too long.

Still, he kept walking, his mental alertness at its peak and his folding lock-blade knife in his right hand. As he made the corner, he realized the woman was now behind him on the same sidewalk about 75 yards away.

He picked up his pace. Home and a sense of security were only a couple of hundred feet away.

A gunman held up a U.S. postal carrier in the early evening hours of June 7, along Kipling Drive in Dayton, Nevada.

Investigators with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) describe the suspect as a Black male, about 20 years old, five feet, seven or eight inches tall, last seen wearing a red hoodie, black shorts, and gold-colored shoes. The USPIS is offering $20,000 to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest and conviction of the robber.

While there were no injuries during the robbery, the irony is that the U.S. Postal Service is advertising to hire another Dayton-area mail carrier.

Part of Center Street in Reno, between UNR and the railroad tracks at Commercial Row, was renamed University Avenue in 1920. Then in 1957, Reno renamed Center Street from Virginia Street north to the University as University Avenue.

Both times, Reno changed the name back to Center Street.

Now, in time for its 2024 sesquicentennial, UNR wants Reno to rename nine blocks between the Truckee River Bridge and the University gates along Center Street to University Way.

“The potential renaming provides a powerful testament to how important the University’s position as the doorstep to downtown Reno truly is,” said UNR President Brian Sandoval.

My Cousin Elmo says, “Dogs may drool, but people suck.”

Perhaps I’ve been slow in recognizing that people love to argue, win at all costs, and for no reason at all. Worse yet, we battle over unimportant stuff.

For example, I like to post historic photographs. I don’t post them without first vetting their background.

In the recent past, I’ve posted stuff without checking first, and some of my posts have come back to bite me in the ass. So I am careful.

Yesterday, a friend forwarded me a picture of a 16-mule team pulling two empty wagons up Geiger Grade in the 1870s. After researching it, I posted the photograph.

Within 24 hours, someone claimed that the photo was of “a 20-mule team returning empty from Daggett up the grade 1895.” Daggett is in the Death Valley area of California.

After following the link they provided, it was the same picture I’d posted. But once again, it is a 16-mule team and not a 20-mule team.

The person also claimed to know that the grade up the hill was “never that steep.” I wasn’t alive to know how steep Geiger Grade was in the mid-to-late 1800s, so I cannot argue that point.

But the clincher for me: They ended their argument with, “I got my information from an official government website.”

“There’s your problem, never trust the federal governement,” I wanted to argue but didn’t, and that makes them the winner.