keeping my eyes on the bears

“You’re standing there wrong,” a man said to me. I had never seen him before in my entire life. He walked right up to me at the art museum and said that. “You’re standing there wrong,” he repeated when I did not reply, this time with a little more mustard in his voice. “Excuse me, have I done something inappropriate?” I asked him, still quite unsure as to what the problem could be.

The man sighed. That is when I noticed that this man was not a man at all, but several bears all baring their teeth at me in synchronized unison. I was getting ready for the roundhouse kick when I heard a voice call out from behind me.

It said, “Do not roundhouse kick those bears, it will not work out the way you want it to.”

Keeping my eyes on the bears, I called back, “Well I’m not just gonna stand here and let them eat me now, am I?”

“Those bears are vegetarians and communists, they have no power over you unless you let them,” and I knew she was right. I exited my fighting stance and looked the lead bear, the one with the nose ring and the blue hair, in the eye and said, “David Bowie wasn’t gay at all, you know, he was as straight as they come,” and all of the bears stood on their hind legs and started shrieking in agony, tears pouring down their tattooed faces and soaking their hemp-derived shirts with organic grocery store logos on them.

Victorious, I turned away to look for the voice, but I could only see empty space.