Found

The Elves and the Shoemaker

Alice was having a bad day. Or more specifically, a bad night. She was working graveyards. It was full moon, Saturday night and the day after payday all at the same time.

She had been at work for about an hour before a drunk threw up on her. She had changed into her back up uniform only to be within blast radius of a 6 month old with explosive diarrhea a couple of hours after that. At which point, she was down to hospital provided scrubs, had six hours left on her shift and the bars let out.

By the time she got home she was bone weary and still had to walk the damn dog. She was deeply regretting agreeing to dog sit for Earl. She wasn't entirely sure how he had talked her into it, to be perfectly honest. She got home, they did a quick zombie like walk around the block, then Alice fell into bed and almost immediately lost consciousness. But not before Sammie made a worried little whimpering noise. "C'mon on." she mumbled. He jumped up on the bed and she spooned him as she fell asleep. Her last thought was, "huh, not as stinky as dogs usually are."

Her alarm went off at six (pm) and she hit snooze a couple of times before getting up. She wandered into her surprisingly clean shower and frowned. It had been getting gross yesterday. She had been meaning to clean it for a couple of weeks now. This morning, it was positively gleaming.

That was.... Odd. She didn't remember washing the coffee pot and getting it ready to go either, but all she had to do was push the button, it was all set up. While it dripped, she looked around the kitchen and noticed her dust free baseboards. She fed the dog and took her coffee out through her streak free patio doors to have breakfast on the balcony.

She sipped her coffee thoughtfully for a few moments. There was no way someone broke into her apartment to clean. That meant that either she was sleep cleaning, or cleaning and forgetting or she had finally gotten dementia and just didn't remember hiring a cleaning service.

Aw fuck.

She looked down at Sammie who wagged his tail, encouragingly. "Well, I'm certainly old enough to be getting dementia." Sammie looked alarmed and whined at her. "Whoops! Yes, walk the dog." Alice scrambled in to clothes, pulled her still damp hair into a messy bun and took the dog for a walk.

Smithers was already full dark by seven PM in December, and everyone said that trail running in the dark was dangerous. Alice just shrugged and stopped talking about it. She never had any trouble seeing where she was going. Her prefered loop took her about an hour. She ran it every "morning," which, given shift work really meant when she woke up before work. It was a path she knew and loved, through the woods, past a stream with a pretty little waterfall and back to her house.

It was lovely.

Mostly.

There was about a hundred yards or so where she was the furthest from her house that always seemed a little creepy. Sammie had picked up on that the very first day. He always stayed closer to her for that stretch.

Aside from that, he sort of mostly stayed in sight, occasionally darting out into the trees after a rabbit, or probably to poop. Alice felt bad about that. She was more than prepared to pick up after the dog, but he would disappear into the underbrush. She had him for three days now and hadn't seen him poop once. She was sure he must, which meant it must be in the brush under the trees.

Today when they got to the part of the path than made Alice nervous, Sammie put on the breaks and started growling. Sarah stopped running and looked at him. He moved in front of her and started snarling and backing away, pushing her back with him as he went. Alice looked up and saw... a shape. It was upright and furry and her brain supplied the description 'bear,'