(Note: this essay was written for a college essay prompt, "When you look out your window, what would you change?". This essay is based entirely on actual occurences.)

An unholy presence lurks in my backyard. It rarely, if ever, moves but it torments my family and me. Its malevolent spirit, which must arise from a source of which no sane person can conceive, has turned an otherwise bucolic country setting into a monument to the pestilence and suffering an unwitting family can bring upon itself. If I could change one thing when I look through my window, in moments of weakness of resolve, of which there are many, it would be to obliterate that, that� Thing� from the face of the Earth. But I also have moments of steely determination, or sublime resignation to powers greater than myself, and then I resolve to reach an accommodation with this creature. So, for the time being it lives.

This Thing is an old riding mower that came with the house when we bought it. Or, perhaps, its previous owner could not coax it from its domain, the one acre in which it rules supreme, unsullied, and uncontrolled by the hand of mere humans. We thought it was a blessing. We were wrong. We had feared the bleak prospect of endless pushing of a mower during a Texas summer. Instead of that agony, we delighted with the knowledge that we could, instead, drive around the yard in the ease and comfort which this Thing promised, expending no more effort than that required to steer and brake. We were fools. Fools to think that our existence at the summit of planetary development made any difference to the heartless, cold, indifferent soul of this machine, which we now know can only have been forged by demons in the inner circles of hell.

Now to call this thing a machine shows how its evil influence has insinuated itself into our lives. It is no machine. �Machine� implies something mechanical, something that was designed and built with a purpose in mind and operates according to known physical principles to achieve that purpose. This Thing is not that. It seldom operates, and when it does, it is not in accordance with physical laws as humans understand them.

Since it was an old mower, we anticipated a few problems. The tires were flat, but they did not appear to be damaged, so it was a simple task to fill them with air. However three of these tires were flat within days, so they were replaced. The three brand new tires on the mower were also flat within days. The only tire capable of holding any air was the oldest tire on the mower. It has retained its pressure during all these months that the other tires have been emptying faster than a Democratic election watching party. And it seems somehow smug about it.

The battery was dead from the mower�s disuse, or because it chose to play dead, so it was replaced. The next week the battery was dead again. Well, not entirely dead; it holds on to enough charge to transmit a shock when being worked on, nothing more.

But this only begins to catalog the spiteful aspects of this malicious object. We spent many Saturdays attempting to solve the challenges of this baleful object. Hercules should have had such challenges. Gas lines were replaced. The fuel filter was replaced. We repaired the clutch, replaced blades and belts, and we rebuilt the carburetor. We removed, inspected, cleaned and replaced every pedal, lever, switch, and knob on the beast. The repairs would invariably prove to be a total success when tested, but wholly unsuccessful on one particular occasion� when the grass needed to be cut. Then, after we had spent the rest of the day cutting the grass with the push mower, it would start on the first try as if just taken off the showroom floor. And always there was the barely imperceptible noise of air vacating those three brand new tires. It mocked us, and it must have enjoyed mocking us. There can be no other explanation.

And not just us. It had no friends of its own kind. It came with a trailer and a tiller, but neither of those implements would attach to the Thing. A disinterested observer might think it was because the locking mechanisms were broken, but I know better. Those mechanisms were somehow gnawed off by the trailer and tiller themselves when they felt they were falling into the clutches of the black-hearted beast.

On one Saturday afternoon after several hours of tinkering, I aired up three tires, sat on the seat of the lawnmower, turned the key in the ignition, and received the obligatory shock. After much complaining, the mower turned over and began to run. I thought we had finally conquered the Thing�s will to dominate. It was a day of celebration, a triumph of the human spirit. It ran for about seven minutes. It stopped. It has never started again. If there is a road to perdition, this is surely the vehicle of choice.

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