I wrote this for my friend's magazine and I'd like to get an opinion on it before I send it to her. so here you. beware, some parts may be dirrrrrty.
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We lived in a dumb little neighborhood named after a dumb little bird. I lived next door to two dumb little kids. Actually they weren’t little in age or in physical appearance, they were, like, fifteen and seventeen, respectively. They were juvenile, immature. My God, I hated them. Their names were John, the youngest, and Duane, the oldest. Their last name was Hendricks. They would always knock on my door and ask if I wanted to come over and play (here, play means “go over to their house and watch them play computer games for an hour and a half until I said I had to leave), and every time I would give them an obviously fake excuse as to why I couldn’t, thinking they’d take the hint and see I didn’t want anything to do with them. Try as I might have, I couldn’t get them out of my life. They were pretty pathetic, o-oh man. Puberty was not kind. Unibrows, stringy teenager mustaches, acne here and there and all over. The oldest, Duane, had this dorkus girlfriend, and I heard that one time at this party, they got caught in a room fooling around, and Duane was tossing her salad. Since then, he’s been known as Dirty Duane. John made up that he had two out of state girlfriends, though one was just a “****buddy”, as he so aptly put it, but his virginity shone through his lies.
One time I caught Duane looking out his window and into my sister’s. She had her blinds up and she was getting undressed, and I was pulling into the driveway when I saw Duane with his pants down and his hand jacking back and forth mercilessly like a man gone mad. I knew without looking where his eyes were pointed: my sister’s window was right across from his. So I went over to his house and went in without even knocking and beat the **** out of him. I got arrested for that. It was worth it. Anyone else would have done the same, am I right? I am.
So that was the last time I saw them for a while. Usually the lights in their rooms were on late into the night, but after a while the lights stopped coming on. The only lights on were the lights in the kitchen. Sometimes I’d be walking my dog and see the silhouettes of them and their mother sitting at the kitchen table against the closed curtains. Only, they weren’t moving. And also, they hadn’t been to school in a month. I didn’t suspect anything at the time. I guess now would be a good time to say their dad deserted them when John was born and ran off with his boyfriend.
So yeah, they had this annoying dog named Sweetie and she always barked at me and **** when I walked by their house. After a while, Sweetie disappeared and her doghouse appeared in their garbage can outside.
One night, I happened by and saw the shadow of their mom pacing back and forth through the kitchen while Duane and John sat at the table. Then John’s head fell backward like it was limp. Their mom stopped, pulled the shades open, and gave me a look to kill. She was ragged. So I went home.
My friend Will, he’s the guy who caught Duane licking his girlfriend’s butt, he hates them almost as much as me, so when he found out about this he wanted to see what was going on, so we decided to break in and look for weird things. Well, you can imagine we were surprised when we found their dead, rotting corpses in the kitchen, sitting at the table, heaps and heaps of food stacked on top of plates in front of them. They were wearing the same clothes they’d been wearing when I’d last seen them, and God did they smell. But I guess a month’s decomposition will do that to you.
Well, we heard footsteps coming, and we freaked. Why? Because we thought their mom had been at work. So we try to find hiding places but it’s no use. Their mom is in the doorway before we can run and she has an axe and a rope. Will tries to be a hero and tries to disable her but with one swing his head’s rolling across the floor.
She’s muttering under her breath, “leave my boys alone, you hooligans, can’t you see we’re eating?” Instinctively, I rubbed the scars Duane’s braces left on my knuckles. She hit me, hard, in the head, with the butt of the axe. I woke up a little while ago and I was standing on a chair. My neck itched and I felt at it and touched the rope. Oh God. Oh no. I glanced over at Will’s lifeless and headless corpse. Then I saw Mrs. Hendricks in front of me, glaring and shaking and smiling like a woman insane. My eyes moved down to her slipper clad foot as it knocked the chair out from underneath me and the rope was pulled taut, my feet inches from the ground. I heard a sickening snap instantly, and that was that.
Now, I’m stuck in this damned house, forever. Will and me, we’re ghosts, I guess. And John and Duane. And they ask us every now and then, when we take breaks from trying to break down the door, they ask us, “hey, do you guys want to play?”
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We lived in a dumb little neighborhood named after a dumb little bird. I lived next door to two dumb little kids. Actually they weren’t little in age or in physical appearance, they were, like, fifteen and seventeen, respectively. They were juvenile, immature. My God, I hated them. Their names were John, the youngest, and Duane, the oldest. Their last name was Hendricks. They would always knock on my door and ask if I wanted to come over and play (here, play means “go over to their house and watch them play computer games for an hour and a half until I said I had to leave), and every time I would give them an obviously fake excuse as to why I couldn’t, thinking they’d take the hint and see I didn’t want anything to do with them. Try as I might have, I couldn’t get them out of my life. They were pretty pathetic, o-oh man. Puberty was not kind. Unibrows, stringy teenager mustaches, acne here and there and all over. The oldest, Duane, had this dorkus girlfriend, and I heard that one time at this party, they got caught in a room fooling around, and Duane was tossing her salad. Since then, he’s been known as Dirty Duane. John made up that he had two out of state girlfriends, though one was just a “****buddy”, as he so aptly put it, but his virginity shone through his lies.
One time I caught Duane looking out his window and into my sister’s. She had her blinds up and she was getting undressed, and I was pulling into the driveway when I saw Duane with his pants down and his hand jacking back and forth mercilessly like a man gone mad. I knew without looking where his eyes were pointed: my sister’s window was right across from his. So I went over to his house and went in without even knocking and beat the **** out of him. I got arrested for that. It was worth it. Anyone else would have done the same, am I right? I am.
So that was the last time I saw them for a while. Usually the lights in their rooms were on late into the night, but after a while the lights stopped coming on. The only lights on were the lights in the kitchen. Sometimes I’d be walking my dog and see the silhouettes of them and their mother sitting at the kitchen table against the closed curtains. Only, they weren’t moving. And also, they hadn’t been to school in a month. I didn’t suspect anything at the time. I guess now would be a good time to say their dad deserted them when John was born and ran off with his boyfriend.
So yeah, they had this annoying dog named Sweetie and she always barked at me and **** when I walked by their house. After a while, Sweetie disappeared and her doghouse appeared in their garbage can outside.
One night, I happened by and saw the shadow of their mom pacing back and forth through the kitchen while Duane and John sat at the table. Then John’s head fell backward like it was limp. Their mom stopped, pulled the shades open, and gave me a look to kill. She was ragged. So I went home.
My friend Will, he’s the guy who caught Duane licking his girlfriend’s butt, he hates them almost as much as me, so when he found out about this he wanted to see what was going on, so we decided to break in and look for weird things. Well, you can imagine we were surprised when we found their dead, rotting corpses in the kitchen, sitting at the table, heaps and heaps of food stacked on top of plates in front of them. They were wearing the same clothes they’d been wearing when I’d last seen them, and God did they smell. But I guess a month’s decomposition will do that to you.
Well, we heard footsteps coming, and we freaked. Why? Because we thought their mom had been at work. So we try to find hiding places but it’s no use. Their mom is in the doorway before we can run and she has an axe and a rope. Will tries to be a hero and tries to disable her but with one swing his head’s rolling across the floor.
She’s muttering under her breath, “leave my boys alone, you hooligans, can’t you see we’re eating?” Instinctively, I rubbed the scars Duane’s braces left on my knuckles. She hit me, hard, in the head, with the butt of the axe. I woke up a little while ago and I was standing on a chair. My neck itched and I felt at it and touched the rope. Oh God. Oh no. I glanced over at Will’s lifeless and headless corpse. Then I saw Mrs. Hendricks in front of me, glaring and shaking and smiling like a woman insane. My eyes moved down to her slipper clad foot as it knocked the chair out from underneath me and the rope was pulled taut, my feet inches from the ground. I heard a sickening snap instantly, and that was that.
Now, I’m stuck in this damned house, forever. Will and me, we’re ghosts, I guess. And John and Duane. And they ask us every now and then, when we take breaks from trying to break down the door, they ask us, “hey, do you guys want to play?”
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