Chiropteran (kai-ROP-ter-an):  Any member of the order Chiroptera, the winged mammals more scandalously known as bats.  These critters range from the adorably snack-sized fruit bats to the nightmare-fuel megabats that might make off with your steak if you’re picnicking too close to the equator.

Derived from the Greek works cheir (hand) and pteron (wing), chiropteran describes the bat’s uniquely unsettling wing structure, which, upon closer inspection, can evoke the terrifying realization that you’re essentially staring at a flying skeleton hand.  Congratulations, dear reader, you know have one more trivia fact to ruin cocktail parties with.

The thing about Sheila – the one thing, the starting point, the narrative axis around which all her small-town notoriety would eventually orbit – was that she had, since moving to Fecal Creek, been the sort of upstanding neighbor who inexplicably prompted suspicion.  Not for anything actionable, of course.  Her lawn was mowed (by HOA standards, which is to say: with the frequency and fervor of a contract killer erasing forensic traces), her recycling bin was a Platonic ideal of sustainable virtue, and her invitations to potlucks were legendary in the way only a three-bean salad that doubles as an existential dare could be. 

So when she started walking her neurotic  schnauzer, Milton, at exactly 2:04 a.m. every night – yes, every night, like clockwork, like something out of a pharmaceutical ad for insomnia with a side effect of paranoia – the Fecal Creek gossip-mongers began to stir.  At first, there was mere whispering about the “strange glimmer” of her porch light and how her eyes “caught the moon weirdly, in a way you don’t see much outside Victorian novels.” 

Words like “oddball” and “eccentric” gave way to phrases like “creature of the night.”  Then came the Nextdoor thread.  There were accusations (unsubstantiated, frequently typo-ridden), hashtags (#Batwoman or, bafflingly, #BananaMan), even a poem posted by someone calling themselves “Concerned4Christ.”  It all crescendoed one evening when, as Sheila ambled around the block in sweatpants, rain boots, and a T-shirt that read “I Am Not a Morning Person,” a black blur (local wildlife?  suburban nightmare?) swooped beneath the buttery glow of a streetlamp and right into the whirring blades of suspicion.

That blur – wingspan like patent-leather gloves, little body jerking erratically like a cursed wind-up toy – was, of course, a thoroughly mundane chiropteran, though you’d never know it from what happened next.  Lila Eisenberg, the Creek’s undisputed Czarina of Gossip, shrieked so magnificently that birds in three time zones checked their watches. 

Rumor that Sheila was either harboring – if not actively mothering – nocturnal “familiars” was officially launched, and nothing would ever be the same.  The sheer choreography of horror on the neighbors’ faces whenever she waved good morning (which was never actually morning) from her mailbox was a thing to behold.  When Halloween rolled around, Milton wore a hot-dog costume, Sheila carried a thermos labeled “Definitely Just Coffee,” and not a single kid braved her sidewalk for candy. 

Sheila, knowing exactly what was up and deriving a savage delight from the spectacle, started adding plastic bats to her lawn décor.  All treats, no tricks, yet somehow she became legend – the guardian of Fecal Creek’s midnight, the matron saint of insomnia, and the reason the three-bean salad as, from then on, always left untouched. 

N.P.: “King Volcano” – Bauhaus