The creeps

Motion-activated sprinklers are downright creepy. There's one near a house along our walking route and when we walk by it spits at us. Even when we walk in the middle of the street it spits and spits. I always make a point of looking the other way. I don't want the occupants to see the expression on my face. As if they're looking. As if there's more than one. Tonight when I looked the other way, just before the sprinkler started spitting, I thought of Stephen King. It felt as if I were walking into a scene he'd written and something really bad was about to happen. A few steps later the spitting stopped, but it took my imagination a while to catch up. A couple blocks later it was still on my mind. I tried to snap out of it by picking up the pace, but the faster I moved the more it spit. By the time I got home I was drenched.