Part two of my writing assignment for LA 11. This is second person, present tense with a horror genre. We'll see how it goes....thank you so much for indulging me.
You don't know why you agree to stay over with Tim on Friday nights. His parents stay out late, which is awesome, you can do whatever you want, but they get up early on Saturday and start working on the lawn and it's stupid loud. You ave no idea how he sleeps through it, although you do have certain vampire-esque suspicions. You don't sleep through it, because you are not the undead, and you wake up and then sit down here in his room and stare at him until his creepy eyes open. They are always black when he first opens them, you swear they are. His mom always yells down asking if you want eggs, and you always say no even though you love eggs. Your mom never makes eggs. She makes cinnamon rolls, because her mom made her cinnamon rolls, so you guess she loved them, she thinks you love them, but you don't. You just eat them. She's a nice lady and you'll need her when Tim finally flips out and murders someone. You'll need a character witness. Also, there is a such thing as too much sugar. You get headaches when you eat too much. Which you heard from Brian meant you committed suicide in a past life, but he's probably making that up because he's diabetic and can't have sugar.
You stayed up last night and watched Creature Features which you love. This time there was a possessed bird that attacked, but it did a body snatchers thing where it took over the person, so they went crazy and acted like the bird and killed people. It was like watching a zombie bird person, they moved like birds but they were people.There was that movie The Birds that was on a few weeks ago and your old man made you watch it, swearing it was his favorite when he was a kid. What was wrong with those birds? That was terrifying, why would they all gang up on people like that?
Creature Features has stories about a lot of animals, birds and snakes a lot, too. There are a lot of possessed animal movies, you swear you and Tim have seen them all. But something was up with this bird thing last night, and you had nightmares. People turning into pelicans, ducks, geese, ostriches! OK, the movie had ostriches but that was dumb, where are there ostriches in Colorado? You live in the suburbs, there are birds everywhere. And ducks, you have a lot of ducks and geese, the ponds are right down the street and there are geese in the ditch when you walk home. You had one run after you one day, you didn't scream you tried to kick it, but Tim just laughed his head off like it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen and chased the goose across the park. Sometimes you wonder about Tim. You wonder a lot. His parents are hardly ever home, and when they are they don't pay a lot of attention to him. In fact, there have been times you've been convinced the whole family could be vampires, as they're out all night, and there's a lot of noise in the morning with lawn stuff, but you never see them. You've never said yes to eggs partly because you're afraid to go up there and see the Munsters for yourself. But you smell cigarette smoke, so you know somebody's smoking, and you hate that smell, so you say no to eggs so you don't have to sit in a dark kitchen with cigarette smoking vampires. Although your mom is always saying "When in Rome..." and then she laughs. You just figure she's having a stroke and she'll be dead soon. You have no idea what she's talking about most of the time, but nobody in your house smokes, or is a vampire, for that matter. Your little sister is a monkey sometimes, but that's it.
The thing with those movies is they don't show you how it happens. They show you the eyes of the animal, and the eyes of the person, and the eyes of the animal, and the eyes of the person, and then there's a scream. That's it. Eyes and scream and the next thing you know Marge from the diner is waddling and quacking and killing people.
So Tim came down with a plate of eggs and some toast. That's the other reason you say "No thank you" when his mom asks, you know he's gonna bring some down, anyway. She makes the eggs over medium, they're perfect. You don't look in his eyes, though, because they're black with a spot of red in them before he eats his eggs.
"What're we doing today?" he asks. He always asks you, and then he just tells you what you're doing. You don't care, but usually he has some good ideas. There's a swamp by the park at the end of Garrison three blocks west, between the church and the ranch. Usually there's a dumped washing machine or car battery there he can mess around with. Nobody bothers with that side of the swamp, it's right next to this nice park with a sweet dock built by the pond, which is crazy. Whose idea was it to build such a nice park next to a barren, dirt patch next to a swamp? People just dump stuff on the dirt path between the two like they're supposed to, like it's an actual dump. You've seen the guy who owns the ranch on the north side of the park on Sundays cleaning it up. He loads whatever was dumped into his truck and hauls it off, you guess to a real dump. It's not even his property, it's not his problem, but you bet he can see that mess from the top floor of his house.
"Wanna go to Jewell park? See if any little kids need a lesson?" Since he's awake and eaten eggs his eyes aren't as black, they're more brown. Now they have a red rim around them.
You shrug. You don't like teaching little kids a lesson.The rumor about Smear Day keeps them pretty much in line, but occasionally Tim gets a hair up his butt and he needs to go stare them down on the monkey bars. He never touches them, he doesn't even talk, he just stares. You wonder about Tim. Not just Tim, but why do these little kids all freeze or run home when he stares at them? Do they see something you don't? Like that poem, "The Raven", only it's not the bird that's staring at them, it's Tim.
"Nah. Too many birds, man," you shrug.
"That movie get to you?" He laughs, but you know him. You know it bothered him, too. Or gave him ideas, you aren't really sure which. Why are you friends with him, again? The birds in Tbe Birds were black crows, and nobody likes those things. But last night they were ducks. Ducks are not supposed to attack and possess. Ducks are just ducks. That was just weird. Also, the duck stickers in his bathtub, the one downstairs in his room, are black. Where do you get black duck bath slippy stickers?
"It bothered you too," you shoot back. "Ducks who possess people and attack? What is that?"
"It was so fake, those people were not ducks, man. They ran like them, but weird people can run like that, anyway:Zombies. Retards. Second graders. Most of those actors were zombies on the show last week, I recognized them." He grins, and you feel your skin goose pimple. "I recognize some from my family, man." He throws his head back and laughs. You are frozen to your spot. Is he kidding?
You wonder about Tim. You wonder a lot.
"Whatever, let's just go outside."
You are on the sidewalk when you muster the nerve to ask, "You have family that are actors?"
"No, why would I?"
"Because you said on the show last night you recognized your family..."
Tim just laughs. He stares straight ahead. "Ghouls, man. Ghouls are my family."
You suppose Tim's your best friend. You've known each other since kindergarten, and you live two blocks away from each other. You have a trampoline in your backyard and he has a basketball net in his driveway, so you just sorta became friends. You went to elementary school at the cottages, right across from his house, until third grade. Now you're at the main building, in fifth grade. Next year is your last year there, and you'll probably get smeared by the 7th graders on the last day of 6th. Which is fair, 'cause you smeared the third graders when they went to the main building for fourth grade. You stole your mom's lipstick and chased them down the street. You could have caught one, but they're just so scared and you have a little sister. When she gets to that age, you'll punch anyone who comes near her. But in sixth, they say, the seventh graders carry razor blades. You have a whole year to worry about it, and you probably will. You worry a lot.
You take your time walking to the park, kicking a rock along the sidewalk and not paying attention. When you look up you're at Jewell park, not the swamp. "Dude...." you say, as he laughs.
"Immersion therapy," he laughs. "I read it in one of my dad's college text books. Throw you in the pond with the ducks, you won't be such a pussy about ducks any more."
You should just go home. You really don't know why you're even friends. You try to stay behind him, away from the pond. There are ducks all over the pond. Yellow ones, white ones, brown ones, black ones. And they're all looking at you. Silently. They're just staring at you. Trying to get into your head and infect your brain. You can feel them, their duck eyes burning through your skull.
Tim picks up a handful of rocks. "C'mon, see?" he chucks a rock at a duck, who flaps his wings and quacks. "Just a dumb duck."
You watch the animal closely, waiting for it to charge, like it did in the movie. You think it's looking right at you, it's just you and the duck: eye contact person, eye contact duck, eye contact person, eye contact duck- when you hear a scream coming from the monkey bars. You look at the duck, because you think he's screaming at you and looking right at you. Your eyes are locked with the bird and you are sure he's screaming inside of your head.
"That duck lady last night was crazy, huh?" he chucks another rock at the duck. "I wish they'd show how she killed those motorcycle gang guys, though. They always pussy out and they never show how they do it."
Tim has now turned toward the scream, like he's just now hearing it, and is laughing. The scream is not coming from the duck, who is still staring at you. Tim chucks another rock at the duck and yells at the little girl who is charging toward you.
It's a little girl. You've seen her before walking to school. She's got a freckle face and looks like that Opey kid on Andy Griffith except blonde, and she's a girl. She walks to school every morning with her head looking at the ground, but now...she's charging right at you.
Charging.
Her head is forward and her arms are behind her, and her legs are short so she's kind of waddling/running and she looks like a duck.
And she's looking right into your eyes. Her eyes, your eyes, her eyes, your eyes-scream.
Tim looks at you. "Remember that Duck Lady in the movie? Muwahhhhhh!" Then he starts laughing.
"She killed three people, Tim. She was possessed." Your eyes are still locked with the little girl's.
You hear her quack. In your head. Is she quacking or is it in your head? Or is she really quacking? You can't tell, your eyes are locked.
"Duck Lady!!" You scream at her and start running back toward Tim's house. "Tim, she's gonna kill us. Move it."
Tim holds his spot for a moment, and waits until she gets a little closer. He's used to staring down little kids and having them run away. She keeps coming, so he spits words at her "I know you. I'll get you on smear day." But she keeps running. You grab his shirt and pull him. "I'll get you Duck Lady!" he screams over his shoulder as you run off.
You stop at the edge of the neighborhood, and look back. Your chest is heaving and Tim is either laughing or crying, and there's spit coming out of his mouth and tears from his black eyes. You turn to make sure the girl isn't right behind you.
The crazy little duck girl has stopped at the edge of the pond and is talking to the duck, who has swum over to her.
"See?" You shake your finger at the pond, "The duck is controlling her. He's telling her what to do. We gotta go."
"The hell she is, she's just a little girl," he says as he looks at her. His eyes are fully black again.Your skin goose pimples again and you swear you feel a cold breeze, but it's coming from Tim. He is rooted to the spot, like he does when he teaches little kids a lesson.
She looks up. She looks right at Tim, and her eyes are black,too, with a little dot of red in the center. She stares at Tim. But unlike when he teaches a lesson, she seems to be in charge. Tim looks like he's listening to something inside his head. She looks like she is reading his mind, and then the duck comes out of the pond and stands next to her.
Then the duck turns and both of them look at us.
Tim screams and runs.
I was one step ahead of him.
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