by Shane Dawson
KATY: This car is awesome! It smells like it’s lived such an interesting life.
KELLEY: Ya, someone definitely died in here. But I don’t get a violent vibe.
TARA: I love the fabric on the ceiling! It would feel so good if you were lying back here with your hands and feet up against it while some guy you met at Dave and Buster’s drilled you into the seat.
ME: You are aware that’s your life, not mine, right?
TARA: Ya, which reminds me. Can I borrow your car sometime?
ME: Definitely not. There are enough stains back there as it is.
KATY: So what should we do? See a movie? Go get fro yo? Drive to the beach?
KELLEY: Ooooh! We could drive to the cemetery and have a picnic on my grandpa!
TARA: Kelley, we’re never going to do that. Stop asking every weekend.
ME: I have a better idea.
I had never been a risk taker. I always did the right thing, and I never broke any rules in school. Even when the kids in my class were experimenting with alcohol or pot, I was experimenting with different mix-ins at Cold Stone’s. But there was one thing I had always wanted to do that I had seen in every teen movie as a kid.
ME: Let’s egg someone’s house!
My friends were shocked that I wanted to do something illegal but were all very much in for it. The craziest thing we had ever done on a Friday night was prank call my mom and tell her I had a heart attack. It’s sad how many times she believed it. When we got to the store, we walked down the aisles looking for our weapon of choice.
KATY: There’s the eggs! How many should we get?
ME: Wait . . . I have a better idea.
My eyes began to wander around the condiment section. I grabbed a few bottles of ketchup and ranch dressing.
TARA: We’re gonna make Thousand Island?
ME: No. What if we drive by people’s cars on the street and squirt ketchup and ranch at them?!
They all looked at me confused. I had seen a show on TV years before that showed kids driving around their neighborhood, and every time they passed a car on the street they would spray ketchup at it. It looked so funny and also pretty safe, considering we could just drive away as fast as we could. When you egg someone’s house, there’s a risk of them walking outside and catching you midthrow. When you are spraying condiments, you are already driving. It’s the perfect getaway. I’m not sure why it sounded like a good idea at the time, but I was dead set on it.
ME: Come on, guys, lets go KETCHUPING!
Even though my friends were confused, they were all on board. We filled up our cart with condiments and we were on our way! As we drove into the first neighborhood I opened up a bottle of ketchup, and Tara opened up a bottle of ranch. We unrolled the windows and scoped out our targets.
ME: Ok, what about that car. It looks super douchey. I bet whoever owns it is a total asshole.
TARA: He is. I hooked up with him last year during the fire drill. Afterward he told me he only hooked up with me because he didn’t know it was a drill and he thought he was gonna die.
KELLEY: Wow, you sure know how to pick ’em.
ME: Alright, everybody, get your bottles ready!
We stuck our bottles out the window.
ME: On the count of three! One, two, three!
SQUIRRRRRRT! We all squeezed the bottles to the breaking point and completely covered the douche mobile in layers of thick sugary sludge. I peeled out and drove away as fast as I could. We were all laughing like maniacs.
TARA: I can’t believe we did that!!!!
KATY: I feel like we just KILLED somebody!!!
KELLEY: Me too! It feels even better than I imagined!
ME: Let’s do it again!!!
And for the next three hours we went through about fifteen bottles of ketchup and ranch dressing and destroyed more than twenty cars. We firmly believed we were criminal masterminds. We were down to our last few bottles, so we had to make sure it was good. Our final mission!
ME: Guys, we should ketchup a teacher’s car.
The girls all screamed with excitement. We were drunk with power, and we were ready to devour another victim. As we pulled up to one of our teacher’s houses we noticed that someone was on the porch.
KATY: I think I see someone sitting out front.
KELLEY: Maybe it’s just a shadow.
KATY: A shadow shaped exactly like a human?
KELLEY: You would be surprised what form shadows can take in the darkness when they want to fool the living.
KATY: How are we friends? Seriously, how did that happen?
TARA: Guys, maybe we shouldn’t ketchup this one. What if they call the cops?
ME: Come on! Don’t chicken out on me now! This is our last time! Let’s make it special.
TARA: I’ve heard that one before and it definitely ended with cops being called.
ME: Trust me, we’ll be fine. Let’s do this!
We all unrolled our windows and stuck the bottles out, ready to squeeze.
ME: Ok, on the count of three! One, two, three!
SQUEEEEEEEEZE! The car parked in front of the house got covered in condiments. But then a figure popped up out of nowhere. We didn’t have time to stop, which meant our teacher’s husband got SQUIRTED with ketchup and ranch. I could see his shocked red-and-white-covered face as we sped away.
TARA: Oh my God!!!! We hit a person!!
KATY: DRIVE!!!!!
I peeled out as fast as I could and the girls were screaming in the backseat like we had just fled a drive-by shooting.
ME: Everyone, calm down! It’s gonna be ok!
A cop siren blared behind us.
TARA: This is just how it happened last time!
I could hear the sirens, but I couldn’t see any flashing lights. Maybe they weren’t trying to find me? Maybe it was a coincidence? Just when I convinced myself everything was fine, a cop peeled around the corner and was coming right for us! Instead of pulling over, I decided to book it and get the hell out of there. I didn’t want to get pulled over on my first day of driving, and I definitely didn’t want my mom to find out that I had gone around town throwing ketchup at strangers’ cars. She would probably have thrown me in rehab just as a precaution! Finally the cop car was far enough behind us that I didn’t think he saw my taillights, so I turned a few corners and ended up in the middle of a dark road near a park.
ME: I think I lost him.
KELLEY: Did we just seriously flee a scene and drive away from the cops?
ME: Yes, we did.
KELLEY: Cool!!
We all started laughing hysterically, mostly out of fear and built-up adrenaline. I started my car back up again and decided it was time to end the night.
ME: Guys, I think we should find a Dumpster and get rid of all this evidence.
As I pulled Bertha away from the curb, we heard a loud THUD.
KATY: What was that?
TARA: It sounded like you hit something.
ME: I’m sure it’s fine.
Then we heard a loud SCREAM coming from underneath the car.
KELLEY: You guys heard that, right? Or was that just in my head again?
Then we heard a scratching sound and when I turned to my left I saw a small figure crawling out from underneath my car and running into the wilderness.
ME: I think I hit a possum or something. But it seems to be ok.
TARA: Wait . . . Do you guys smell that?
And in a matter of seconds a smell filled my car that was so intense, so wretched, so absolutely awful that we all started to scream and gag.
ME: Skunk!!!
We all rushed out of the car and started coughing up our lungs. The smell was so bad that Katy started vomiting.
KATY: I can’t stop throwing up!!!!
As I watched her hurl her guts out on the side of a tree I couldn’t help but realize how much it looked like she was “ketchuping” that tree. Then it hit me. This was karma. This was God’s punishment for what we had done that night. And w
e deserved it. I checked the inside of the car to see if the smell was gone but it had only gotten worse! It was as if the skunk had left his ass inside the engine.
KELLEY: What should we do? Should we call someone?
ME: No! I don’t want my mom to know about this. Let’s just drive it around for a while and hopefully the smell will wear off. We can go to the store and get some Febreze!
TARA: Um, I’m pretty sure Febreze doesn’t make a scent that can cover rotting asshole. Trust me, I’ve looked.
ME: Please, guys! Let’s just roll down the windows and try to air it out.
We got inside the car and rolled down the windows. We all breathed through our mouths and kept our noses shut as tightly as we could. I drove for about ten feet when Katy started vomiting again. This time ALL OVER BERTHA.
KATY: I’m sorry! I accidentally sniffed!
She ran out of the car and continued spraying puke all over the place like one of those wacky sprinkler noodles kids play with in the summer. Except a lot less fun and a lot more chunks. I grabbed my phone and decided it was time to tell the truth and call my mom. I was so scared she was going to be upset and force me to live in my skunk-infested car, but instead when I told her she couldn’t stop laughing.
MOM: You hit a skunk?!
ME: It’s not funny! The smell is making Katy barf up blood! I think she actually might be dead.
Katy was laying on the side of the road twitching like roadkill.
MOM: Alright, I’ll come pick you guys up. Call the tow truck company and let’s have that car looked at in the morning.
ME: Thanks, Mom. I’m sorry.
MOM: Just know that what goes around comes around. And when you threw ketchup on those people’s cars, it was all gonna come back to you in some way.
She was right. Karma was a bitch. But I didn’t know how much of a bitch until the next day when the mechanic told me that the smell in my car would be there for six months and that there was no way to clean it out.
ME: WHAT?!
MECHANIC: Sorry, man. Skunk smell is powerful stuff. You got to just drive it around and air it out. You might need another one of these cupcake fresheners . . . or a hundred.
So for the next six months, anytime I stopped at an intersection the drivers in the cars around me would start gagging and roll up their windows. My friends refused to ride in my car because it would make them nauseous. The only reason I was ok was because I got used to it. My clothes, my hair, my entire being smelled like rotting asshole, and there was nothing I could do about it. All because I thought it would be a fun idea to throw ketchup and ranch at strangers’ cars. Poor Bertha didn’t deserve it. I failed her. But I learned my lesson and I never did anything that stupid again.
A couple of years later I traded in Bertha for another car and I have no idea where she is now. Every time I pass a busted-looking car that looks like a chicken nugget I think of her and wonder if she misses me. And every time I smell something so foul that it makes me want to gag it reminds me of how much I don’t miss her.
• • •
Good-bye, Big Lady Bertha.
The Ghost of My Grandma
About the Artist
TIN HOANG is an eighteen-year-old photographer based in a small town in Sweden. He discovered his passion for art at an early age, but later discovered the power of photography alongside fashion. Tin always pushes the boundaries and is using his photography to tell a story in an artistic, stylish, aggressive, and bold way, which makes him one unique young photographer to keep an eye on. Follow him on Instagram @TINHOANGS and see his online portfolio at tinhoangs.com.
Photograph by Thein Hoang Photography.
The year: 2011. The time: twelve thirty a.m. The mood in my bedroom: What the fuck am I doing with my life and why is there a box full of wigs sitting on my dresser? It was a typical Monday night, and I was sitting up in bed, flipping through channels on my TV that was so big it was embarrassing. You know those TVs that you see in people’s houses and you can’t help but yell DOUCHE when you see them? Ya, it was one of those.
As I flipped past rerun after rerun of some nineties sitcoms I heard a noise coming from my closet. The house I was living in at the time was pretty old, so I never got scared of the creaks that came from inside the walls. I just assumed the house was falling apart and there were probably rats crawling around behind the drywall. Nothing to be scared of. You can take the boy out of the projects, but you can’t take the projects out of the boy! But when I set my remote down on my bedside table, I noticed something move inside the closet. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt a chill go down my spine. I froze and started breathing heavily. I couldn’t move, and the room started to feel like it was closing in on me. I felt a pressure on my chest as if something was pushing into me with all the force it could muster. The figure began moving slowly. I knew it couldn’t be my cat or a breeze blowing through, so I built up the courage to slowly move my eyes toward my closet, and as I did I could feel energy building. I finally focused my eyes directly on the closet, and my heart stopped.
Standing in front of me was my grandmother. She was wearing her signature purple robe and had a look of worry on her face. Pretty typical for Grandma. There was just one problem. My grandmother was dead.
This was the first time I had ever seen a ghost. I’d had experienced many paranormal moments in my life, but none of them had ever been this real or this close-up. My grandma had died two years earlier, and I had felt her presence around me ever since. I was still having dreams at least twice a week in which she would come to me and just hang out like old times. We would watch TV, walk around the grocery store and talk about how expensive everything was, and of course try on each other’s clothes. I had a thing for big nightshirts and she had a thing for, well, big nightshirts. And considering my shirts were extra huge, they were perfect for her naps. I always wished that one day I would see her again in real life. The second I actually did and she was standing in my closet glaring at me, I changed my mind. It was horrifying.
I sat and stared at her for a few moments and wasn’t able to move. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t look away. It was as if I was in some trance and she had a hold over me. As she started to open her mouth to speak, I finally built up the nerve to get out of my bed and run out the door. As I ran into the hallway I started screaming for my brother and my mom.
ME: MOM! JERID!!
They rushed into the hallway to see what was going on. I fell to the floor, nauseous. I was in shock and I couldn’t quite process what the hell had just happened to me.
MOM: What’s going on??
JERID: Dude, are you ok?
ME: I saw . . . I saw . . .
As I tried to explain, my brother cut me off.
JERID: Grandma?
ME: How did you know?
JERID: ’Cause I heard her voice right before you started screaming.
MOM: I felt something too. I could smell her perfume in my room.
We all stood in the hallway feeling really confused but also really comforted by each other. If they hadn’t believed me, I don’t know what I would have done. There’s nothing worse than people telling you you’re crazy.
JERID: Let’s go look.
We all turned our heads toward my bedroom door and started walking slowly over to it. My mom grabbed our hands and started whispering prayers. With each step closer, I started feeling the hairs on my neck rising again. It was like a static-covered balloon was being lowered onto my back. As we opened the door we turned the corner and looked in the closet. No one was there.
ME: She’s gone.
JERID: Wait, was she right here?
Jerid walked over to the closet and pointed at a particular area.
ME: Ya. Standing right there.
Jerid grabbed something that had been hanging right where she had been standing. He pulled it out. It was my grandma’s signature purple robe.
JERID: Dude. She was standing in front of her
robe.
Every hair on my body stood up and every square inch of my skin was covered with goose bumps. When my grandma died each member of the family went through her belongings and picked out things that were special to them. Most everyone took stuff that was worth money because before my grandma died she’d said—
GRANDMA ON DEATHBED: Take whatever crap you want and sell it on eBay. I don’t care. Shane, make sure to eat the leftover pie in my fridge. I don’t want it to go bad.
What a caring woman. Instead of taking something I could pawn for cash, I decided to take the robe that I had seen her wear every day I’d known her. It was as if her job in life had been to make me fat and happy, and that robe was her uniform. I didn’t want it to go into the trash or to Goodwill, so I decided to stow it away in my closet. The pie, on the other hand, was gone the second I laid eyes on it. Damn, that woman knew how to pick out a good pie. It was peanut butter and banana in memory of her crush, Elvis. Her Elvis shirts were the only big sleep shirts of hers I didn’t touch. I was scared of what she did in them.
JERID: Dude. Do you think she wanted to tell you something?
ME: I don’t know. She looked worried. But that might be because she saw me jerking off to Cupcake Wars.
MOM: What?
ME: Sorry, forgot you were here.
The next day I walked down to the kitchen and my mom was sitting at the counter looking at old pictures of us with Grandma. She was crying as she flipped through an old, tattered photo album.
MOM: You guys really had a strong connection. She sure loved you.
ME: Ya, I think it’s ’cause we both hated everything.
MOM: Well, you definitely didn’t hate each other.
ME: Only sometimes. Mainly when she would ask me to try on bras at Macy’s so she could see what they looked like on.
MOM: I miss her so much.
