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Prolific Writer
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: zeebyville USA
Gender: Male
Posts: 226
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Bits and Pieces (3000 words)
I couldn't stand the quiet much longer. I swear it could've killed me. I was shivering from the cold, though I had my favorite blanket wrapped around me tight. The stars were bright, and the cabin was lit up like it was the fourth of July back home. I thought of all the people I'd left, of how crazy I was to even be out here. What was I thinking?
It all started one day at the mall. I was standing around doing a whole lot of nothing with a good friend of mine. I turned to him and said, "you know what would be sick? Just living in the woods. I could learn how to make my own guitars and I could live out there and play music all day. I could do whatever, and I would never have all this pressure weighing down on me."
My friend looked at me and with slight interest said, "Yeah I've thought that. It isn't a real option though. You know that band did it?" Of course I knew, the Band is where I'd even gotten the idea in the first place.
I'd always known that this kind of life wasn't for me, city life I mean. Sure, I like girls and cars and the fast life sometimes, but it just ain't for me. Not that I'm not social or anything, cause I am. It's just that, I am so terribly bored of this whole deal. All the unnecessary drama, all the pressure, all the deadlines. School has damn near killed me, though I haven't done shit in all the years I been there.
My parents are good people. I don't know whether they recognized that I had issues with the whole deal, but I sometimes got the feeling that they did. Most people just thought I was pretty damn lazy, and that was all. I don't think thats it. I have always maintained that I have a learning disability, but I don't think its that.
Thinking back, learning disabilities are damn embarrassing. Those people you hear about with disabilities, they always have problems reading and stuff, and they always seemed just plain dumb to me. That's why I don't think I got one. I'm not saying I think I'm smart or anything, I'm just saying that I am SMARTER than those people. I remember I was once with a girl, beautiful but not always the brightest, she had one of those disabilities. I always thought she had a good understanding of people, and plenty of depth, but not a whole lot of intelligence. Who's to say what intelligence is anyway? Not me.
I like to see myself as a thinker. As somewhat of a philosopher if you will. I spend alot of time thinking. I often get confused when other people don't think. I can't see how you could go through life without asking questions. Maybe that's my problem, maybe I ask too many questions. I've found that asking questions leads to depression. That saying "ignorance is bliss," sometimes I think the guy that said that wasn't too far off.
You know how time changes your perception on events that happened in your past. I got that problem with time. That, mixed with a pretty bad memory, is a killer when your telling stories from the past. I will, however, try my hardest to remember this one. I was around ten, and it was the fourth of July. This was around seven years ago. I was at a friends house. His mom was having a BBQ. He was a good friend of mine, though he was a ginger. We always railed on him for that, a damn ginger. Anyway, we were just hanging out, doing what kids our age did with a our free time. There were older people all around me. I remember he had this sister I always thought was hot. She had friends over. His brother wasn't home.
We had never had fireworks before. They were hard to come by in our town. Looking back, that is pretty surprising, because we were deviant little bastards. We were always on odd adventures and such, doing bad stuff or dumb stuff or whatever. Going to his house was always a good time. One of the things that made going to his house so fun was that his mom was so goddamn negligent it was unbelievable. Sometimes I got the feeling that she missed the adventure of being a child, so she let us have it for her. I had a couple friends with moms like that. They were always letting us smoke at their houses, and bring girls over a drink. We were deviant bastards.
This fourth of July had an exciting air to it. I could just feel it, I remember. Tom and I were bored as hell, standing around with a bunch of adults, waiting for burgers. Suddenly, I heard this terrible crack come from the sky. I got so excited I damn near pissed myself. Someone had fireworks just down the street.
I remember Tom's mother moved around a whole lot. Her ex-husband, Tom's dad, was a fireman. Very strict. That juxtaposition always made me laugh. Anyway, I remember those two years she moved around a whole damn lot. She moved from Hampshire to Point Lookout damn near every season, and then back again. She had four houses in that span, but this house was probably my favorite. It was a two family, but what made it nice wasn't the house itself, but where it was. It was way the fuck in the West End, in a place that before he'd moved there I had never even seen before. The house was light green, and it was only bout 100 feet from the beach. That house was too much fun.
Anyways, when the thunderous boom from the fireworks kissed my eardrums that night, I was sprung. I grabbed Tom's arm and said, "Dude lets go see who it is." Tom didn't have to beg his Mom. I think she already knew our hearts were set on going. After getting the O.K from his mother, Tom and I ran out the gate, up the stone driveway to the street. Right outside, I remember, there was broken glass all over. I remember that later that night, in fact more like early into the next day, I had walked out in bare feet to find my jacket or something, and I got glass all in my feet. I don't think I cried.
So there we were, standing on the glass ridden street, looking for the man with the fireworks. He was nowhere to be seen, so we set ourselves toward the beach. The beach was always so much fun. It always got so damn dark you could hardly see sometimes, but it always gave me that feeling of fear laced with anticipation. That feeling was the best feeling of childhood. It was like finding out the answer to a new mystery. Kind of like reading the end of a book.
So as we got to the beach, we saw this car, an old beat up tub kind of car. The kind I want to get when I have the money. It was an old, red, Cadillac El Dorado. It looked like in the movies, when somebody tries to kill themselves in their cars. It gave me the damn creeps. On any other day, I could've seen that car and thought nothing of it, but that night it scared me good. I didn't even want to see who was inside.
I could see that the window in the front seat was down, because this white arm was hanging out of it. The guy's head was bobbling around inside the car, and I could tell he was reaching for something with his other hand. Tom and me stood there, neither of us wanting to take the first step. He was just as scared as I was. It must've been the night, it was particularly dark that night.
Anyway so the guy stopped bobbling his head and brought his left hand into the car. I saw a faint light come from inside the car, and then there was another loud crack. I thought the damn guy had shot himself. My heart jumped outta my throat. I was petrified. We both jumped when the noise was issued, but its source was not a gun. We looked up just in time to see a damn fireball stain the air, and explode into a billion pieces above us.
We both stepped toward the car, slowly but determined. The guy's arm was hanging out the window again. His skin was gross, milky white, I recall. I was already repulsed by this guy, after only seeing the guy's damn hand. As we approached the window, we looked at one another as if to say, heres our last chance to turn back. Neither of us did though, we were deviant bastards.
I looked inside the front window, and saw a man drenched in shadow. I was shivering with fear, but I didn't want either Tom or the man to see me. I tried to act brave. "Hey, you got any fireworks left for us?" I looked in this guy's eyes. He was a scary kind of guy, he reminded me of a damn creature. "Have I got any fucking fireworks? How old are you anyway?" I was always lying about my age back then. "We're twelve." I said. I remember I was always telling girls I was older, I never wanted to be my own age. I was embarrassed. "Twelve?" He didn't sound much like he believed me. "Hmm... let's see here. What has old Dusty got for these two twelve year olds?" He reached his hand into a box. It was a huge box, and it sat in the passengers side where you would normally put your feet if you were sitting there. "Aha!" Dusty pulled a rather long Roman candle out of the box. It was red, white, and blue, and it was thick as my damn leg.
"Here's your fucking fireworks! HAHA." The crazy bastard pointed the roman candles at us, point blank, and lit the fuse. We booked it, as fast as our legs could take us. I didn't know what it would feel like getting burned by a fireball, but I sure as hell was not ready to find out at that moment. At least not from that big fucker anyway. We were about ten steps from the car when I saw the fireball hit the ground in front of me. I think I might have been crying, or laughing. One of the two. The second one was over our heads, which really made me jump. The third one was the closest. I remember I looked over, and as I was turning my head I saw the fireball in my peripherals. So did Tom. When he saw it, he jumped higher than I'd ever seen him jump. The fireball passed right between his damn legs. Lucky deviant bastard.
"See you later! HAHA." The white man couldn't stop laughing. I could hear him all the way down the block. I looked back once more to see him. He was back in the front seat, arm hanging out the window, laughing his ass off. I hated him, but it gave me a good feeling. Adventure was strange like that. By the time we both stopped running, we were three blocks down from Tom's house. We looked at each other, and burst out laughing. It was a nervous laugh, and I almost felt like crying, but we couldn't stop. Finally he said, "Fucking guy was insane." He could hardly speak, he was still panting so hard. "Yeah." was all I could muster.
We just kept walking from there, for some reason away from Tom's house. I guess that we just felt like wandering. It's strange how, when your a kid, stuff like that amuses you. Anyway, we walked and walked. "Wanna hop fences?" I always loved hopping fences. It was so adventurous. I remember nights where we would spend hours just sneaking around backyards, pretending we were army or thieves or maybe not pretending at all, just enjoying the danger and suspense of it all. "Sure." Tom was always in the mood for that type of thing.
We knew a good portion of the backyards by heart then. That summer I think we'd seen damn near every backyard and hopped damn near every fence. I always thought that one day, one of us would break our wrist, or get caught by a monster of a dog, but we never did. We never even got caught once. Well, we sort of did once, though it was odd in how it happened. It had been earlier in the summer, when he had been living in Point Lookout. We were just hopping fences like we normally did. It was a whole group of us, maybe seven. Anyway, we had just hopped this big damn fence, and we were running like crazy, giggling all the way. Finally, we stopped to take a breather. We were standing just inside this guys driveway, half on the sidewalk, and half on his property. All of a sudden, this guy comes out and starts hollering at us. He was so angry, it disoriented me. I didn't get it. It was so ironic I almost laughed out loud. We, for once, had not been doing anything wrong. We hadn't been on his property or anything like that. We were just standing on the sidewalk near his driveway.
We scattered as I screamed out "RUN!". The only one that stayed behind was a friend of ours that had been rather slow. He got in a car with the guy, and the man drove him all the way back to Tom's old house. When we got there, Tom's mom was having a screaming match with this guy, who was accusing us of all kinds of crazy things. Apparently we had been fishing around in his shed stealing his bikes. It was so unreal that I couldn't even defend myself, I was so shocked. That was the only time we were ever caught hopping fences, even though we hadn't even been doing it at the time.
Anyway, back to the Fourth of July. So there we were, hopping fences for the hell of it. It was a good time. After about a thousand houses, we decided to take a break. We just kind of sat down in the middle of the road. That was the beautiful thing about that part of the West End, you never had to worry about cars. The streets weren't even really necessary in the first place.
So, there we were, sitting in the road, when we hear this vicious bark. I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard it. It sounded more like a damn bear than any kind of dog. Turning to my left, I locked eyes with this big fucker. I don't even know what kind of dog it was, but man was it big. He had blonde fur, and was about up to my damn shoulders. His teeth were like giant fangs, and I thought I could see him drooling. His eyes looked red, and they weren't staring straight at me. He had no leash.
Tom saw him too, and for a split second, something odd, and almost comical happened. It was one of those moments where, despite the intensity of the situation, all parties involved kind of froze. It was as if we were all deciding what to do next. We all sat there, motionless, break held deep inside. It seemed like the whole damn world was still.
The silence was broken as Tom whispered to me, "What do we do?" I had no answer. Instinct had already kicked in for me, and when instinct is behind the wheel, there is no need for words. "High tail it on three... One, Two, Three!" We sprinted so fast, I couldn't believe it. To this day, I have never ran that fast again. My heart was thumping at a million beats per second. I kept thinking to look behind me, to see whether or not he was following, but I was so scared I didn't even WANT to know. I just kept running. After a block or so, we saw our chance. There was a low wall in the front yard of this white house. We both headed towards it, and cleared it without touching it. It's funny what fear can do to you.
Anyway, I just let me head rest against the wall as I sat there. My back was straight, and I was panting heavily, more out of fear than fatigue. "Did you see whether or not he followed us?" Tom just shook his head. "Lets check." I knew before I even peaked my head over to see, that the dog had followed us. I could just tell. My eyes were just above the wall as I looked out onto the street. There he was, right in the middle of the road, nose to the air, sniffing and looking wild. I quickly withdrew behind the wall again.
I mouth the Tom, he's outside! He nodded and pointed across the street. I knew that if the dog realized we were there, he'd come after us again. Our only chance was to get shelter inside somewhere. Somewhere the dog couldn't go. We hopped the wall again, but this time Tom stumbled and fell on his landing. He never ever fell, but this time he did. I kept running though, because I was selfish and I was damn petrified. You would be too if you'd seen the dog. I climbed up onto a ledge, and went up the stairs to the front door, it was high up. It gave me a perfect view to watch the drama unfold on the street. Tom had recovered from his fall, and was heading towards the ledge I had climbed. He was pumping his arms wildly, and his legs were moving like road runners in those old fashioned cartoons I used to wake up early on Sundays to watch. I was screaming "RUN! RUN!" at the top of my lungs, though I don't know how much that was helping. It was just kind of reflex. His face with mingled with terror, but I could see, deep down, that this may have been the most exhilirating thing he had ever expirienced in his whole life. The dog was full extension, mashing its jaws behind him with ferocity. It seemed that every time the dog lunged at Tom, he would connect. It was so amazing to watch, like watching a lion chase a gazelle.
As Tom jumped toward the ledge, the dog made a final desperate attempt to bite him. He got hold of his shirt, and ripped with terrible strength. Tom pulled himself up, and collapsed on the ground, out of reach of the terrible beast. As I ran down to check if he was alright, the owner of the house came out of the front door. She was very pretty, and had been talking on the phone when she heard me screaming from her doorstep.
"Is he alright. My God what happened? What happened to his shirt?" He was fine, luckily the dog had only managed to rip the back of his shirt a little bit. We hung out inside of her house a little bit, and told her what happened. She got us food and water. She was very kind to us. "We really should go." Tom said. "My Mom is probably very worried."
We walked out, and checked the street one hundred times to make sure everything was safe. Everything looked fine. We walked slowly and deliberately towards the house. We didn't talk at all, but we both had wide smiles on our faces. It had been a good night. We were deviant bastards.
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Everybody's got something to hide except for me and my monkey
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