“It is. Let me get it for you.”
Soon the two were at the kitchen counter, Cindy using potato chip crumbs to scoop up the onion dip. “This stuff’ll go straight to my hips, but it’s nothing a quick puke can’t undo. Jeez, Jennifer, your blackheads are like Play Doh Fun Factories squeezing out charcoal-coloured Play Doh.”
Jennifer’s shirt had come untucked, exposing pale white flesh. Cindy zeroed right in. “Would it kill you to visit a tanning bed?”
Jennifer reached into the cutlery drawer at the same time that she grabbed Cindy. With a pair of scissors, she quickly and efficiently cut the flailing former child star’s signature sassy ponytail off at the crown and put Cindy back down on the counter.
Cindy stared at the tufts of her hair, which Jennifer had dropped onto the counter, and shrieked. “You crazy witch, what have you done!?” She ran over to the chrome-surfaced breadbox. “My ponytail! My long, beautiful signature hairstyle!”
“I’ve been wanting to cut it for weeks. Serves you right for never being supportive of anything I do, as well as fostering an unrealistic body image. Would it have killed you at least once to say that one of my outfits was flirty or fashion-forward?”
“You fat pig! I’m going to kill you!”
“You’re six inches tall and made of plastic. Good luck.”
Cindy put her tiny hands on her plastic hips. “Okay, then, you’re on. See you in the cemetery.”
Cindy hopped off the counter and ran into the living room, where she hid in the cold air vent, waiting for the right moment to kill Jennifer.
As she lurked in the chill aluminum tubing, Cindy recalled years ago hearing dark murmurings from people in the makeup and wardrobe departments about girls, and how they invariably cut off their Barbies’ hair, put them in microwave ovens or Magic Markered them with tattoos before chucking them into the trash. Cindy had never believed that could be true. But today showed her … well, today showed her that in life, all the weird, scary things—those things that keep you awake at night—basically come true in the end, and genuinely ought to be feared.
Cindy also looked at her situation realistically. It’s both hard and easy to kill a person if you’re a doll. Being small gives you tactical advantages, but it also means you can’t strangle a person with your bare hands, so one has to compensate by having a good, simple plan.
First she used a cellphone to hack into the house’s intercom system and hectored Jennifer no matter where she went.
“Look at me. I’m Jennifer. I’m eleven years old and fat and have no friends and my family doesn’t love me and soon I’m going to die. What’s that, Bwana—an elephant approaching? No, it’s merely that hideous carbohydrate dump named Jennifer.”
Jennifer tried to talk back. “I’m going to be big about this, Cindy, and I’m going to forgive you for all these mean things you’re saying.”
“Be big about it? Honey, you already are big—big as this house.”
Cindy decided that the most practical way to kill Jennifer would be to arrange for her to trip and fall down the staircase. Using the house’s ductwork, she went from room to room, gathering the equipment she needed: fishing line, books, string and a knife.
At midnight, when Jennifer’s parents were asleep, Cindy whispered on the intercom into Jennifer’s bedroom, “I’m really sorry I’ve been so mean to you. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was the wine and all the fat in the chip dip. It turned me into somebody else. You know I like you a lot. And I actually like my new short hair. It makes me feel like I just won another Emmy and I’m standing on the red carpet. Can we be friends again?”
Jennifer leaned down into her bedroom’s heating duct and said, “I suppose so. Where are you?”
“I’ll be right outside your door in a few seconds. Come out and we can have some fun flipping through magazines and making fun of peoples’ outfits.”
So Jennifer, who was a mostly peaceable person, opened the door and looked out. “Cindy?”
“Over here.”
“Where?” she called, heading towards the stairs.
“Over here on the top step. I’d come to you, but I have cramps from the chip dip. I think it was past its expiry date.”
“It was in the fridge a bit long. Next time, we’ll …”
Whump!
A pile of books bound together with fishing line and tethered to a string moored on the hallway chandelier swung down and whacked Jennifer on the head, knocking her towards the stairs, where fishing line at ankle height finished the deed. Jennifer tumbled down, ending up in a mangled heap on the floor.
SINCE THAT DAY, Cindy, the terrible role model, has been on the run, one step ahead of the law, her only goal being to systematically eliminate girls like Jennifer who treat their dolls with disrespect. They deserve it.
Kevin,
the Hobo Minivan
with Extremely Low Morals
THE THING ABOUT minivans is that they’re usually pretty boring and stuffy. So when Kevin the minivan adopted the hobo lifestyle, it stuck out more than it would, say, were you or I to adopt the hobo lifestyle.
Kevin would feed daily with the other minivans, shortly after three in the afternoon, at local schoolyard parking lots. The minivans huddled in one patch of the lot while the SUVs huddled in another. Like most hobos, Kevin worked hard to stay just clean enough, and in just good enough shape so as not to be towed to the local impound lot, which, as all hobos know, is basically like being sentenced to death. Kevin was especially afraid of his arch-enemy, a tow truck named Darrell who had a skull and crossbones on his mud flaps. Kevin had made the mistake of honking at Darrell in traffic once.
So Kevin would lurk by himself somewhere in between the SUVs and minivans. His dining strategy was to look very boring and forgettable. He would sit there, his doors invitingly open, until a child, exhausted by a day of school, would say, “That minivan’s for me.”
Once the child climbed in, Kevin would slam the door shut and begin to shake as violently as a paint shaker at the hardware store until all of the spare change had been extracted from the pockets of the child. If he was extra lucky, he’d also score small electronic devices and the odd laptop that slipped out of a backpack.
Then Kevin would open his door, spit the child out and drive to the local Liquor Locker. He had an arrangement with Tony, the clerk, who would come into the parking lot with a plastic bag and accept Kevin’s money and electronics. In return, Tony would pour forty ounces of cheap vodka into Kevin’s gas tank, and Kevin was good to go for another day.
But as with most addictive things, his need for vodka increased, and Kevin had a bright idea. He put a sticker on his sliding door saying, THIS VEHICLE NOW HAS CARTOON OPTION. Within days, he’d doubled his vodka ration. Kevin may have been a hobo minivan, but he was proud of his hard work and good ideas.
STILL, WEEKENDS WERE difficult for Kevin, as it was much harder to lure children inside for a shakedown. He tried hanging out at playgrounds and circuses, but he had trouble blending in with the crowd, so mostly he hung out at the local mall. But because it was the weekend, kids weren’t burnt out from school and had more energy. They wouldn’t fall for his ruse.
More than once, in desperation, he tried luring senior citizens inside, but when he started his shakedown, they sounded like snapping pretzels, which creeped him out. And all they left behind were coupons, dentures and half-used packets of Sanka. When Kevin presented such meagre hauls to Tony, he would smack Kevin on the side panel and tell him to wise up. To drive the point deeper, he’d take lusty swigs from the forty ouncer Kevin thought should be rightly his.
This smacking reminded Kevin of his original owners and how mean they were to him, dripping ice cream and barf all over his upholstery and driving him way too quickly up and down the freeway during custody weekends, making his tires sore. When Tony smacked Kevin, he felt awful and left an oil puddle on the Liquor Locker’s concrete.
THOUGH KEVIN LIVED the hobo lifestyle to the ful
lest, he eventually grew tired of Tony’s abuse and living in fear of tow trucks. He decided it was time to dream—and to make that dream come true! He would pull off the biggest shakedown ever and entrap an entire birthday party of rich, lazy and stupid children loaded down with cash and electronics. He’d take his haul to Tony one last time, who would fill him to the top with heavily advertised premium vodka, and then he’d drive to Florida, where his life would become a big, glamorous adventure. Goodbye to bad weather, mean-spirited SUVs and Tony’s mood swings. Kevin was going to live.
He shared his dream with his fellow hobos at their nighttime encampment beneath the train bridge in the town’s industrial section. They were highly supportive and encouraged Kevin to go for it. A pair of rusty shopping carts exclaimed, “We’re too old to do that sort of thing, Kevin. You do it for us.” Carl, the belligerent 1983 Chrysler K-car, emerged for a moment from his typical nightly pirate-like ranting and said, “Arrr, I’ll never get out of this town alive, Kevin. But you … you’re still young enough to get washed. You can still have your upholstery fumigated for bedbugs and have your rear-view mirrors reattached. My jig is up, Kevin, but all you have to do is say ‘yes’ to life.”
And so Kevin decided to go for the gold. On a Saturday morning he asked Tony to scour Facebook for rich children’s birthday parties in the vicinity, but Tony said he didn’t need to go on Facebook. Rich people were always phoning him for liquor deliveries, and they told him a lot about their social lives.
Tony gave Kevin an address and helped prepare him for the mission. He washed Kevin’s front window and then taped to his hood some half-deflated birthday balloons that had snagged in some tree branches at the edge of the parking lot.
When Kevin was ready, Tony said, “Okay, buddy—I’ve got fifty gallons of primo Grey Goose in the back loading dock waiting for you. Go and shake those rich brats something fierce.”
THE PARTY WAS in a snappy part of town. Kevin was slightly intimidated by the absence of tow trucks and of people pushing around shopping carts full of discarded random objects. Where was the rich pageant of life? The sidewalks were free of people. All he saw were automated lawn sprinklers and well pruned trees whose branches contained no snagged white plastic shopping bags.
Kevin parked in the driveway of a posh home where young Amberly was celebrating her thirteenth birthday with a large crowd of friends. He opened his side door invitingly as his tailpipe sneezed with glee. On the door was a felt-penned sign he and Tony had cooked up:
Sure enough, on her way into the party, Jenessa saw the sign and texted two friends to quickly and quietly come out to the van to go to the fashion show and score fifty free tanning bed hours. She texted, “I like Amberly but I like 50 free tanning hours better!” Jenessa’s friends arrived and they, too, texted friends. Within minutes, the minivan was full of ten party guests.
Kevin felt young, free and athletic for the first time in years, and he slammed his door shut and began to ferociously shake his load of teens. Coins, cellphones and gold jewellery began to fly around the minivan’s interior. Kevin could already taste his Florida freedom.
That’s when Kevin saw a big black tow truck come around the bend—his worst enemy, Darrell. Kevin quickly stopped shaking his passengers, opened his doors and coughed them out onto the sidewalk. He fled. Fortunately for him, Darrell was too preoccupied trying to learn the ins and outs of his new in dash navigation system, and he missed seeing the clump of sunbed worshippers as they landed in the flower bed by the roadside.
Back at the Liquor Locker, Tony said, “Let the treasure counting begin!” He flung open Kevin’s doors and was shocked when he saw how little loot there was on the floor. “What happened?” Tony asked. “Did you shake them up or not?”
Kevin said, “Tony, I wasn’t cut out for the good life. It was wrong for me to want something better for myself.”
To this, Tony said, “Well, okay. I, too, learned long ago that it’s really a lot easier in life if you have small, manageable dreams. Big dreams are for losers.”
“Amen,” sighed Kevin as Tony poured a bottle of discount vodka into his tank. “Dreaming leads to failure.”
Mr. Fraser,
the Undead Substitute Teacher
MR. FRASER LOOKED like most substitute teachers, with the exception that he was a member of the walking dead. If you were to stab him with a sharp pencil, he wouldn’t bleed. Instead, all he’d do was drip a bit of undead goo from the hole.
If the teachers in the staff room noticed that Mr. Fraser was a member of the walking dead, they never said anything, because subs were hard to come by. The female teachers had a secret agreement among themselves as to how to divvy out once-a-month spa days. Exposing Mr. Fraser as a walking corpse would have wrecked their system.
One morning Mr. Fraser showed up to cover for Miss Lincoln, who had told the principal she was going in for diabetes counselling, but who was actually across town getting an exfoliating moisture mask done with heated mitts to the sound of soothing New Age music. Her class quickly noted that Mr. Fraser’s skin was as white as photocopy paper and that you could see his veins, as well as holes and gashes and bruises where he had injured himself, because members of the walking dead can’t heal.
The class wasn’t sure if Mr. Fraser was one of those substitute teachers who accept no guff from their students, or if he was one of those subs who love receiving ritual humiliation from their class. He just sort of sat there at his desk in his white short-sleeve dress shirt, not breathing.
One girl, Jane, raised her arm to ask if he was okay, but he snarled at her like a raccoon defending a piece of six-day-old Kentucky Fried Chicken, and didn’t answer.
Everyone began texting.
IZ HE ALIVE?
I THINK HE MIGHT B DEAD.
HE’ZNT BREATHING.
I CAN C HIS ARTERIES
One student, William, got up to go to the bathroom, but Mr. Fraser roared, so William quickly sat down. Mr. Fraser picked up a piece of chalk and wrote on the board:
Shivers passed through the class of twenty.
Mr. Fraser sniffed the air and then grunted and picked up his desk like it weighed nothing and put it in front of the room’s only door. He then walked up and down the rows of seats and motioned for the class members to put their cellphones into the cardboard box he was carrying. Everyone did so, except for a cheeky student named Brian, who thought he was being very clever by saying that he didn’t have a phone.
Mr. Fraser put down the box of cellphones and leaned down to put his freezing cold nose up against Brian’s ear. Brian squeaked with fear and handed his phone to Mr. Fraser, who ate it in three bites, spitting out the glass display plate like it was a bone. He then walked to the chalkboard and wrote:
Mr. Fraser leaned on the edge of his desk and remained very still while his students began their in-class essays. To their credit, the students put a good deal of thought and effort into them.
For example, Krista described her friend Brody, to her right:
“I don’t think Brody would taste very good. She hardly eats anything, so I don’t know how she manages to keep what meat on her she actually has. Like yesterday she ate five dried cranberries and a can of diet soda that I’m convinced she threw up afterwards. So if you ate Brody, she’d mostly be bones. I suppose you could put her into a pot and boil her for a few hours to make gravy, but it’d taste funny because she uses this stinky new hair product she got a sample of at the mall from this salesman guy who probably didn’t even realize her hair is fifty percent hair extensions.”
Young Kyle wrote the following words about Pablo, to his left:
“I suppose that if I were stranded in the Andes and had to eat one of the people in the room, it’d have to be Pablo. The guy eats and eats and eats, and it really shows. I mean, he’s got a muffin top on his wrists above his watch, so don’t tell me he wouldn’t make a kickass barbecue. He’s also really slow on his feet, so if you had to chase him, he’d pretty much be yours. But i
t’d be easier to put a bag of chips in the middle of a rope lasso and snag him that way. He has no free will with food. Punchline? He thinks that if he goes to the gym twice a week his stomach’s going to look cut. As if.”
Young Caitlyn wrote about Steve, to her left:
“I think with Steve the issue isn’t quantity so much as quality. At first glance you’d think Pablo is the best candidate, but then you have to look at what he actually eats, which is chemicals, chemicals, chemicals. He’s got so many preservatives in him that he could easily be a member of the walking dead. (Not that there’s anything wrong with being a member of the walking dead.) But for a more gourmet experience, you’d have to be choosier. Steve’s grandparents are hippies, and some of it stuck with his parents, so in general Steve doesn’t eat as much junk as everyone else does. On the down side, he has zero body fat, which means washboard abs, but also zilch in the tastiness department.”
Jason wrote this about Cleo:
“It depends what you’re looking for in a human. If you want grease and have no regard for your own body, throw Pablo onto the roasting spit and you’re done. Be sure and bring ten gallons of barbecue sauce, and after you’re sated, you can leave him on the spit and the seagulls will take care of the remains. I’d choose … Cleo. She’s not a jock (no tough fibres; much more tender) and she doesn’t buy junk food from the vending machines.
“I also don’t think she’s on any meds or anything. I don’t know if meds would change the flavour of a person, but my uncle’s a chef, and he says it’s the details that make for a dining experience. Oh—she also has a stable home life, so she wouldn’t taste like fear.”
Highly Inappropriate Tales for Young People Page 3