Travis Flatt

My wife and son appear through my crusty, sleep-booger-blurred vision, standing in the bedroom doorway, leaning together, grinning, and say, “We got scorpions!”

I leap out of bed, blow between them, and take off down the hall. My feet slip on this one perpetually slick spot of hardwood, but I manage to stay vertical, slide through the living room, yank open the front door, and scramble off the porch; I’m high-tailing it down the sidewalk for parts unknown, knees pumping and arms rigid L’s, hands chopping, Terminator 2 running. At the corner of Spring and Willow, one block from the house, my ankle monitor goes off—the new kind that blasts a siren sound—and I putter to a stop.