by Jeff Strand
Glenn let out the most girlish scream I’d heard since that time earlier in the day when I’d let out my own girlish scream.
“I still don’t believe you, but you’ve proven your point,” he said. “We’re not giving you our car.”
“Bad aura!”
“But we’ll drive you where you need to go. It’s a minivan. We’ve got plenty of room.”
“Yeah, I saw that in the driveway,” I said. “It’s kind of like the one my aunt has.”
“We enjoy it.”
I looked at Kelley. She nodded.
“That’s fine,” I said. “Now let’s go get my friend out of your daughter’s room.”
“Are you quite sure you want to do that?” Mildred asked. “Yes.”
Mildred and Glenn glanced at each other, then shrugged. “Oooookaaaay, if that’s what you want.”
CHAPTER 20
Can you believe it? We’re more than two-thirds into this story. Unless you’re one of those weirdos who always skips ahead to the two-thirds point of a book, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank you for sticking with me this far.
Some of you may be reading this book for school. Not as an assigned reading project like Lord of the Flies or Animal Farm, unless you have the coolest teacher ever, but maybe for a book report. Which means that around this point, you’re probably sweating and thinking, Aw, man, did I ever pick the wrong book! There’s no literary value at all! How am I going to write a report on this thing?
Don’t worry. I’ve got your back. I’ve crammed examples of everything your teacher wants to hear about into this one chapter. Pretty sweet, huh? Stephenie Meyer wouldn’t do that for you.
The four of us (Franklin was still unconscious) walked into the hallway. As I stared at Donna’s bedroom door, I couldn’t help but think that when I opened it, I would bear witness to a horrific sight. [Foreshadowing.]
The hallway was eerily silent like a graveyard at midnight. [Simile.] [Also cliche.] It was the spookiest hallway that had ever existed in any house at any point in recorded history. [Hyperbole.] I [narrator] was a quivering bowl of jelly [metaphor] as we walked down the creepy crawly corridor [alliteration].
“This hall reminds me of The Shining,” I said. [Allusion.] [Actually, that’s probably more of a reference than an allusion. An allusion would be more subtle, like if I’d said, “I feel like I’m about to walk into Room 217.”] [It’s Room 217 in the book and Room 237 in the movie. They changed it because the hotel where it was filmed had a Room 217 but not a Room 237, and they didn’t want to use a real room number, I guess because they didn’t want guests to worry about a scary, naked old woman rising out of the bathtub.]
Our footsteps squeaked like a mouse. [Personification.] [Poor writing.]
I noticed that Kelley still had a piece of my ear on her shirt. It seemed to represent how I hadn’t listened to her. [Symbolism.] I [hero] [sort of] reached Donna’s door and thought about how you shouldn’t mess with forces you don’t understand [theme] and also about how my head and foot would feel better if only I had a cool, refreshing, raspberry ice tea Snapple [product placement]. I scratched the lightning-shaped scar on my forehead [shameless rip-off of more successful authors] [quote unquote homage], thought about what I was going to post on MySpace [outdated social media reference that fails to connect with readers] and then opened the door. It was truly a horrific sight.
This chapter is kind of short, but a couple of earlier chapters ran long, so I think it’s okay to cut this one off here.
CHAPTER 21
Adam screamed again. “Tell her to quit nibbling so hard!”
My (former) best friend without clothes was truly one of the most horrific sights I’d ever been unfortunate enough to see. I wanted to throw back my head and let out a shriek of terror that would forever reverberate through these walls.
You saw that coming, didn’t you?
You’ve been reading all this time thinking, Adam’s not in any physical danger. It’s all a big fake-out, and when Tyler opens the door, he’s going to write about it like it’s this shocking moment, but it’s only Adam naked.
I wish that were true. Unfortunately, the first two paragraphs of this chapter were a lie.
Adam lay on the bed, still wearing his jeans but no shirt. His eyes were filled with terror. And Donna had what looked like a pizza cutter, and she was rolling it up and down his chest, leaving red lines.
Black candles were everywhere, creating a creepy atmosphere and a fire hazard.
There was a dead chicken on the floor.
Also a pentagram.
And a bowl filled with, if we want to pretend that the ghastly horrors of the world don’t exist, red paint.
What are you even supposed to say when you stumble into that kind of environment? Standing there for a moment in stunned silence works, which is what we did, but what about after that? Are you supposed to say, “Hey, this is wrong,” or is that pretty much a given?
Adam wasn’t handcuffed or tied down or anything, which was kind of odd. Usually if somebody is slicing up your chest with a pizza cutter, you try to get away.
His arms were at his sides, and he was shivering. He looked sort of paralyzed.
Kelley expressed my thoughts: “What the hell?”
“Excuse me, hello, you ever hear of knocking?” asked Donna. She glared at Kelley and me then addressed her parents, “I thought you were going to kill them.”
“Your father and I decided against human sacrifice for the night,” said Mildred.
“Well, that’s lame.”
“Let him go,” said Glenn.
“I’m not holding him down. He’s free to leave whenever he wants.” Donna scooted away from him.
“Uh-huh. And I’m sure you didn’t inject him with the paralyzing spider venom.” Mildred sighed. “What dosage did you use?” “The small one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure! I know where to fill the hypodermic needle! Stop treating me like I’m a baby!”
“Well, put on your shoes. We’re going out.”
“To Chick-fil-A?”
“No.”
“We never go to Chick-fil-A anymore!”
“And we’re never going back if your attitude doesn’t improve,” said Glenn. “Your mother said to put on your shoes. We need to take these people to meet somebody very important.”
“You’re really letting them live?”
“Yes. I already said that. Your mother and I don’t like having to repeat ourselves.”
“But they’ve seen our faces! They know where we live! They’re looking at me right now with a pizza cutter in my hand! We can’t just let them walk out of here with their heads still on!” “They’re not walking anywhere. We’re driving them. Don’t make me tell you again to put on your shoes.”
“You cut off most of his ear! You can’t let somebody go after you cut off most of his ear! You guys are stupid!”
“Not that we owe you an explanation, but we didn’t cut off anything. His ear exploded. Exploded. From the power of voodoo. We taught you about voodoo, remember?”
“Yeah, you poke a doll and somebody’s leg hurts. So what?” “‘So what’ is that this young man has somebody holding a voodoo doll hostage, and that’s why his ear exploded. How popular do you think you would be in school if your ears exploded?”
“I don’t know. It might look kind of badass.”
“That’s enough!” said Mildred. “Young lady, as long as you live in our house, you will respect our rules, and when we say that there will be no human sacrifices tonight, well, that’s exactly what we mean.” She looked more closely at Adam. “He’s going to survive, right?”
“Of course he’s going to survive. You didn’t give me enough time to cut him deep.”
“Why aren’t you putting on your shoes?”
“I’m going to put on my stupid shoes! Jeez! Why are you guys always so testy? How come you never yell at Franklin to put on his shoes?”
“Because Franklin puts on his shoes when we tell him that we’re leaving the house!” said Mildred. “We never have to keep telling him over and over. You’re way too old for us to keep having to treat you this way. Keep up the attitude problem, and I promise we will take away the pizza cutter, the spider venom, the daggers—all of them, even the one with the hidden compartment—those special pliers that Grandma made for you, your TV, everything. All of it, gone into storage until you go to college! Don’t think we don’t mean it. Don’t think that for one single solitary second we’re kidding around, because I know exactly which storage facility we’ll use, and they’re open twenty-four hours a day, and I have never been more serious about anything in my life!”
Mildred and Donna stared each other down angrily. Then Donna bit her lower lip and nodded. “Okay, I’ll get my shoes.” Some more of my right ear exploded.
Again, not the whole thing, but at least another inch of it came off. I screamed (and though this wasn’t on my mind at the moment, thinking back, I do have to say that this house really did have some impressive soundproofing. How many times had someone screamed since we’d arrived? I’m not going to go back and count, but it was a lot, and nobody had come to investigate the noise. I’m no expert on soundproofing, but this was quality work. My most sincere compliments to the designer) and dropped to my knees.
It hurt worse this time. I guess the upper half of your ear has more nerve endings than the lower half.
As far as I knew, it was only my ear. But were there other parts inside your body that could explode without you knowing it? Maybe some crucial internal organ had popped too, and I was minutes away from death without even knowing it! This night sucked! Sucked! Sucked!
“It’s gonna be okay, Tyler,” said Kelley, using the bottom of her shirt to wipe blood off the side of my head. “You’re going to be fine. I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
I was going to die!
It hadn’t been thirty minutes! Not even close!
I was going to die!
What had I accomplished in this life? Some good grades, a girlfriend.but had I done anything to improve the economy? Had I created any lasting works of art? Would anybody remember my high video game scores after I was gone?
I was going to die!
I’d never see my mom again. My dad. My grandparents. My friends. My teachers. The lunch lady who never openly judged me for unhealthy food choices.
I was going to die!
I didn’t want to die!
But I was going to die!
I didn’t deserve this. I deserved bad things to happen to me, yeah, but not this. Not death! I was too young to die! I didn’t want to die when people would throw themselves on my casket and say, “He was so young! So very young! What a tragedy!” I wanted to die when people would say, “Wow, we thought that shriveled old geezer would never kick the bucket!”
And then—
Hello. My name is Herbert Gellsteinner. I am a professional ghostwriter. This does not mean that I write about ghosts. It means that I write books for people who put their names on the cover but did not actually write anything. You know that reality TV star whom you secretly suspect can’t even read but who suddenly announces a seven-figure deal with a major publisher? I wrote that for her.
Sometimes there’s an “As Told to ” credit where I sit
in a room with a celebrity and they babble for a few hours and I turn the transcript into a book, and sometimes I do not get credit at all, and the celebrity goes around on his book tour, saying, “No, I wrote it. I wrote it all. I’m a good writer.”
Sometimes there are more tragic circumstances for my involvement, such as cases where the author really was writing their book but was not lucky enough not to die during the writing process. In those sad cases, it is my job to complete the book, because otherwise you would have to read a book that just ended with “And then—” and you would never know what happens.
However, that is not the case here. If the next part was “And then Tyler’s brain exploded,” well, how would he have written everything you have read so far?
No, I am writing this because I believe that teenagers are the future, and I believe that at least one of you reading these words right now will become a rich and famous celebrity, and you will sell a book for a lot of money, and you will need somebody to write it for you. Please consider me for that task. I work cheap. Very cheap. And you can yell at me all you want while I am writing. I don’t care. I welcome it. I really need this. I need it bad. Please become a celebrity. Please.
—Mildred’s phone rang.
She glanced at the display. “It’s that Zeke guy. Should I answer it?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
She pressed a button on the phone and held it to her ear. “Yes? Yes. Yes, he is. Yes. Yes, you may.” She held the phone out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”
I took the phone from her and held it to my nondisgusting ear. “Why did you do that, you crazy—”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Zeke. “That was my cat’s fault. Is your ear okay?”
“No, my ear’s not okay! It’s all over the place, you insane—”
“I wasn’t reneging on our deal, I promise. It was an accident.” “Well, be more careful, you psychotic—”
“We’re still meeting at the junkyard. I do apologize for that. I’ll be more careful. I just wanted to call and make sure you weren’t dead.”
“No, I’m not dead, no thanks to you, you rotten piece of—”
“I’m hanging up now.”
I wanted to fling the phone to the floor and stomp on it a few times while bellowing with frustration, but that would be unproductive. “No, no, wait a second. Tell her about the aura of destruction.”
“Aw, man, are you back on that again?”
“They think you’re faking. Explain exactly what it does.” I handed the phone to Glenn.
“Hello?” he said. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Our eyeballs? Uh-huh. No. Okay.” He hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket. “He made a pretty good case for the aura of destruction. Donna. Shoes. Now.”
“We really aren’t going to sacrifice them?” Donna asked. “We’ve already established that,” said Mildred. “Your problem is that you don’t listen. All of the other teenagers of the world listen to their parents, but not ours, oh no!”
Donna’s face contorted into a pout that was almost exactly like the one her brother had done earlier. But then her face quickly shifted from the not-so-threatening pout to a mucho threatening mask of rage, and she dove at me. The pizza cutter got me in the shoulder.
“Get her off me!” I shouted. “I don’t want to hit a girl! I don’t want to hit a girl!”
Kelley dragged Donna off me and then delivered the most brutal punch that had ever been thrown by an honors student. Donna’s head flew back, and though it remained attached, she dropped to the floor and didn’t get back up.
That’s right. My girlfriend knocked somebody unconscious.
I don’t approve of the use of violence, and you shouldn’t either.. .but my girlfriend knocked somebody unconscious.
Yes, it meant that in the future I’d lose more arguments than I already did, but still, I couldn’t help but be a proud boyfriend. The only thing Kelley did wrong was that instead of saying something clever (“That’s how you cut a pizza!”) (That doesn’t even make sense, does it?), she threw her arms around me and began to cry.
I was still proud. Then, of course, I remembered my ear and my toes and the pain, and my sense of pride was replaced by pain and panic and stuff.
“I understand why you did that,” said Mildred. “Harm my children again, and I’ll kill you, but I’m letting that one go. Now let’s get out to the minivan, so we can go to the junkyard, so you can outwit the cabdriver, so you can get the doll back.”
CHAPTER 22
Franklin was still unconscious in the living room. I don’t mean to be rude, but what a freakin
g wuss.
Mildred and Glenn decided to leave Donna and Franklin behind, a decision of which I totally approved, but Glenn and Kelley carried Adam (now with his shirt back on) out of the house and put him on the rear seat of their dark blue minivan. The back of the van was covered with bumper stickers advertising several different religions, and the dashboard was lined with bobble- heads of religious figures who can’t/couldn’t possibly have been happy with that kind of depiction.
Adam could move his arms a little, so the venom was wearing off, which was good, because despite his lack of helpfulness so far, we might need him later.
Kelley and I sat in the second row of seats while Glenn drove and Mildred sat in the front passenger seat. “We need a plan,” I said, holding what had once been a purple towel against my head. (It was still a towel, just not purple.)
Mildred turned around and looked at us. “Excuse me, young man, but we’re right here. We can hear you.”
“Not a plan against you. A plan against the driver.”
“Oh. That would make more sense.” She turned back around. A small suitcase rested on my lap. It did not have ten thousand dollars inside. Instead, it contained a few newspapers (approximate value: $2.75). If Zeke actually opened the suitcase, we were pretty much solidly screwed, but my hope was that there was a way to get him to do the trade without opening it. Not likely, I know. If we’d had more time, we could have come up with a plan better than “Hope Bad Guy Doesn’t Open Suitcase Containing Blackmail Money,” but we didn’t.
“Can you sit up yet?” I asked Adam.
Adam very slowly sat up, wincing with the effort. “Do you think spider venom has any long-term effects?”
“You mean like superpowers?”
“No, that would be a nerdy thing to ask. I meant like muscle damage.”
“I don’t know. Probably not.”
“You’re just trying to make me feel better, aren’t you?”
I removed the bloody towel from my ear. “Do you think I want you to feel better?”
