Is this my nemesis? Despite the attempt at camouflage, you can easily see that he is armed and dangerous.

SEPTEMBER 28, 2002

A mere day after my initial experience with this “Jesus” character, I had all but forgotten it happened. I needed a couple stitches, and my neighbors warned me about getting too close to that dog again (you know it had its vocal cords cut out, right?), but otherwise things were back to normal for a few days.

Normal, that is, except for an alarming rash of hubcap thefts! Not an evening would pass without someone losing as many as one hubcap, and sometimes even two. These burglaries were apparently random—though, without my hubcaps being stolen, I was viewed as the prime suspect. Accusations were brought to me, neatly riposted, I thought, with enough colorful commentary about their respective mothers to send them running home in tears.

But yet, I knew time was running out, and soon, I, too, would suffer the fate of the hubcapless. So I resolved to stake out my garage and catch the criminal in the act. Hours passed, and no sign of the perpetrator was forthcoming, but still I waited, until at last I greeted the breaking dawn with the pallid, hollow, and blank stare of the undead. My hubcaps were safe for now, but how much longer? I retired to my sanctum and consigned myself to blessed oblivion at last.

Hours later I awoke to the sound of furtive, yet desparate, scraping and scratching. I swore on the first book that came to hand (a remarkable book on psychic energy, as it chanced) that if it was the dog from across the street (the one with its vocal cords cut out) again, I’d take care of it once and for all. But no…it was twilight, and the sound seemed to be coming from the back of my house, maybe kind of close to—THE GARAGE! I rushed to the back window to look out, and sure enough, I saw a dark shape apparently having violent sex with my front passenger tire. It wasn’t very large, maybe about the height of a lawn gnome and, with a scrape of metal on metal and a ringing clang, I realized it wasn’t having sex with my tire! It was stealing my hubcap! No way I was going to let that fly! I took off out of the house and gave chase to the thieving lawn gnome.

At first I was afraid I’d lost him, he was low to the ground and moving fast across my back yard, but I got him in my sights and he was all mine. If I’d had heat-seeking missiles for arms, I’d have got him dead bang, but no such luck. I was gonna have to do this the old fashioned way. He had just cleared the back of my garage and I was in hot pursuit…I thought I’d get lucky because the people behind me put up a wooden fence back there, painted to ward off evil spirits, but the gnome was unfazed, slipping right under the fence like he was sliding into home base. Pure adrenaline and rightness of purpose was consuming me, and I meant to run through the fence with all the force of a locomotive on fire.

The fence just kind of shuddered as I fell back on my ass. I picked myself back up and, as dignified as possible, vaulted the fence instead.

I think the gnome had stopped to laugh at me (the nerve!), because as I landed on the other side of the fence, he wasn’t much further away than he’d been before, and I immediately took up the chase again. As it turned away, I caught sight of his baleful yellow eyes, much larger on him than I would have expected. But the hunt was on again, and we took off, bursting from backyard to backyard, bush to tree to bush to fence and back again.

And then, just when victory was in sight and I was sure the gnome could take no more, he disappeared. Just like that! I smote the ground with my fist in rage. I HAD him. I knew I had. Nursing my bloody and damaged fist (the same one I’d nailed Jesus with, as it chanced), I walked over to the spot I’d seen the gnome disappear.

“Clever…clever, Mr. Devilgnome,” I said to myself. Just where I’d seen him disappear, I saw his trick. There was an open sewer grate there, wide enough for him and the hubcap, but not enough so that I’d be able to follow him easily. “This isn’t over yet!” I called after him. And it wasn’t.