Writer Highlight Featuring Jonathan T R Franklin:

Eddie & Norma

Eddie Ray thought he hit the jackpot. He watched the Jones’ place for a week from his rust silver truck with plywood in the passenger window. He watched the comings a goings of the two story Victorian style home in the suburbs of Louisiana. He watched them and thought he had roughly two hours between 7:30 and 9:45 am to get in and grab some quick cash and goodies before the soccer mom got home. Eddie Ray broke into the Jones’ at 7:45. He began staking his criminal gains and was tearing paintings off the walls of the living area for a safe. That was when he heard a scuffing on the floor behind him. ‘A dog?’ he thought. ‘I hadn’t seen them walking a dog?’ Eddie Ray turned and in the open patio door stood a twenty foot long crocodile. He was wet from coming out of the pool behind him and his wide mouth was open. The croc bellowed his guttural roar and headed full force after the boney crook. Eddie Ray ran, pillow case of goods in hand down a hall and into the one open door way. It was a guest bathroom and he hopped into a claw foot tub. The titan croc stomped in after Eddie Ray. It hissed and roared and snapped its jaws whenever Eddie Ray peeped or lifted a finger to the rim of the tub. He lay curled up inside the ub until soccer mom Jones came home. She heard the croc bellow from the bathroom. When she saw the scrawny petrified Eddie Ray in the tub with the croc watching him, she smiled and pulled out her cell. “Good work Norma Jean,” Soccer mom Jones said as she dialed 911.