by J. A.
"Yes, ma’am."
We both got out at 4:45.
* * *
As we walked home from school, Roger told me his life story, which even for a seventh grader was pretty uneventful. He’d lived in Arizona all his life, until his dad got a job in Chamber, Florida.
"What is there to do in this town?" he asked.
"Well...you can go to school, I guess."
"Joy."
"Do you like comics?"
"They’re okay."
"You can buy comics."
"Okay."
"There’s a guy who wanders around quoting TV shows while he’s giving everybody the finger. He’s been doing it since before I was born. You can watch him if you want."
"So basically, you’re saying that Chamber sucks."
I shook my head. "No, it’s not that bad. We’ve got a movie theatre, and they’re going to be opening this new place called The Blizzard Room that I think is going to be an ice cream shop."
"So basically, you’re saying that Chamber sucks."
"Okay, yeah."
"There aren’t even any cute girls in school, except for Ms. Peckin."
"Don’t even joke about that. The whole school will beat you up."
"Did you know my neighbor is a psycho killer?"
I stopped walking, unsure where this sudden shift in the direction of our conversation had come from. "Huh?"
"He is. I think. He wanders around his living room waving a butcher knife and talking to himself."
"How do you know this?"
"I saw him through my telescope. I was watching his house hoping that Ms. Peckin lived there."
"I mean it, stop joking about Ms. Peckin. Even the band geeks will kick your ass."
"I just thought the whole butcher knife thing was kind of weird, that’s all."
"Well, yeah. Did you call the police?"
"No. They’d just tell me to stop peeking in people’s windows with a telescope."
"What does he talk to himself about?"
"I don’t know. I can’t read lips. But he’s done it the past couple of nights. He’s quaint."
"I’d like to see that," I said. "I’ve never watched a psycho killer rant before."
"Well, what are you doing this weekend?" Roger asked.
I shrugged. "Watching TV."
"Anything good on?"
"Does it matter?"
"If you wanted to come over, we could watch TV and my neighbor."
"Sure. Sounds like fun."
* * *
"How did your skit go?" asked my dad as I walked into the living room.
"That was last week."
"Well, how did it go?"
"Pretty good."
"What was it about again?"
"Shakespeare."
"Oh, yeah. That’s right."
"Hey, can I spend the night at a friend’s house tonight?" I asked.
"Which friend?"
"Roger. He just moved here."
"Is he a miscreant?"
"No."
"Did you take out the garbage this morning like you were supposed to?"
I hesitated. "Part of it."
My father sighed. "You really need to get out of the habit of lying, son. Guilt doesn’t make a very fluffy pillow."
"I don’t even know what that means."
"Someday you’ll understand. Yeah, you can spend the night, but do the dishes first."
I peeked into the kitchen. "There aren’t any dishes."
"Then clean your room."
"I haven’t messed it up since mom cleaned it yesterday."
"Then...I dunno, do something to demonstrate responsibility."
"If you give me some money, I’ll spend it responsibly."
"Don’t be a smartass."
"I wasn’t. I was offering to demonstrate fiscal responsibility." I didn’t get that C+ on my economics test without learning a few things.
"You know what, Andrew? You’re going to have smartass kids just like you, and they’re going to drive you to an early grave."
"Yeah, right."
"And I’ll be having a big ol’ laugh at you from the early grave that you drove me to. Go on, get out of here."
"No money, huh?"
"Oh, all right. But don’t tell your mother."
* * *
Roger’s second-floor bedroom consisted of a bed, a dresser, a telescope, and lots of unpacked boxes. We’d spent the evening watching television in a pleasant state of zombie-like vegetation, and now I was unrolling my sleeping bag out onto his bedroom floor.
"See anything?" I asked.
"A few naked women having a pillow fight. Ooooh...good hit! That had to hurt!"
"What about your neighbor?"
"He’s just sitting there, reading a book."
"What if he looks up and sees you?"
"I’ll scream like a girl and faint."
"Good plan."
"Thanks."
We just hung out in his room for a while, chatting about subjects that were awe-inspiring in their lack of substantive content, until finally—
"Oooh, he’s doing something," said Roger, adjusting the telescope. "He’s walking around, yep, he’s got the butcher knife...take a look at this!"
I peeked through the telescope. Roger’s neighbor, a slightly overweight, balding guy who looked about forty, was indeed pacing around his room, waving a butcher knife.
"Holy cow," I said. "He’s gone nutzo."
"I told you. Can you figure out what he’s saying?"
I stared at his mouth, but there was no way to translate. He was speaking very quickly and animatedly, poking the air with his butcher knife for emphasis.
"He’s saying, ‘Roger...Roger...the time of reckoning is at hand...sweet, delicious Roger, I’ve killed for our love and will do so again...’"
"Shut up," said Roger, laughing.
"He’s got your picture tattooed on his chest."
"Seriously, what’s he saying?"
"I can’t tell. Something funky, I bet."
"So is that weird or what?
"Pretty weird. But it doesn’t mean he’s a killer. He could just be a torturer."
"We should go over and get a closer look."
"Yeah, right. What if we get caught?"
"Death. Dismemberment. Extra chores."
I peeked through the telescope again. "We’d better not. There’s definitely something wrong with this guy. At least there’s no blood on the knife. That’s a good sign."
"Let’s go over."
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I don’t do dumb things that will get me in trouble."
"Oh, come on. Don’t be such a wuss."
"I’m not a wuss."
"You’re a large, large wuss."
"I’m not sneaking over there," I said. "Especially not with you. I barely even know you. You could have bodies stacked in your closet. Here, open your closet so I can make sure there aren’t any bodies stacked in there."
"Fine, whatever," said Roger with a sigh. "I didn’t want to go over there anyway. I hope he gets the part."
"What part?"
"The play part."
"What play part?"
"He’s practicing for a play audition. Something about a serial killer who paces around with a butcher knife."
I gaped at him.
Roger grinned.
"You dork!" I said. "You made this all up?"
"No, I was absolutely serious when I said that he was practicing for a play audition."
I looked around for something to throw at him, preferably something with jagged edges and an internal combustion engine, but there wasn’t anything. I settled for calling him a dork again.
"Don’t blame me," said Roger. "It’s your sorry excuse for a town that forced me to resort to this kind of entertainment."
"There’s nothing wrong with Chamber."
"Where else have you lived?"
"Chamber. But there’s nothing wrong with it."<
br />
"Well, then what should we do?"
"We could watch some more TV."
* * *
Two hours of quality television later, Roger chugged the last of his can of soda and let out a belch that freaked out his cat. "I was lying about him auditioning for a play," he said.
"No, you weren’t."
"Okay."
I finished off my own drink and emitted my own, less-effective belch. "You know what would be funny? If somebody thought he really was a psycho killer and called the cops."
"Wanna do it?"
"No."
"Good. That would be wrong."
"What if we just called him up and said ‘I know where you buried the bodies.’? We could go on and on and say ‘We know what you did, you sick twisted bastard’ and at the end of the call just say ‘We hope you get the part!’ and hang up."
"He’d know it was us."
"How?"
"Because we live next door, dorkwad."
"We could pretend we were strangers from out of town who were peeking in his windows."
Roger grinned. "It might be kind of funny."
"Do you want to call him?"
"No, but you can."
"I might."
"Go for it."
"What’s his name?"
"Dennis Catovin."
"Have you got a phone book."
"In the kitchen."
We tiptoed into the kitchen (well, not literally, we just walked quietly) to avoid waking up Roger’s parents, although if they could sleep through the monster belches, they could sleep through anything. Roger handed me the phone as he looked up Dennis’s number. "Make sure you disguise your voice," he said.
"Yes, sir," I said, disguising my voice.
"Disguise it better."
"Yes, sir," I said, disguising it better. I was going for something in a low, raspy, vaguely sinister motif, but thinking back, it probably just sounded like puberty gone terribly wrong.
I dialed the number and waited.
"Hello?"
"We saw the butcher knife," I whispered. "We know..."
"Fuck!"
A click on the other end, and then a dial tone.
"Oops," I said.
"What happened?" Roger asked.
"He said ‘fuck’ and hung up."
"Why did he do that?"
"I dunno."
"Well, call him back. Let him know we were just kidding."
I dialed again.
No answer.
And then an answer: " Leave me alone! You didn’t see it!"
"Uh, Dennis...?"
He hung up again.
"Okay," I said. "That was...weird."
"Did he know it was you?"
"He’s never even met me!"
"Is he coming over here?"
"How should I know?"
"Let’s go look!"
We hurried upstairs into Roger’s room. He immediately peeked through the telescope. "He’s there in his living room. He’s lying on the floor."
"Is he hurt?"
"I can’t tell. The knife is next to him. Oh, jeez, what if he killed himself?"
"Should we call the police?"
"I don’t know…I don’t see any blood…"
"Maybe we should go over there."
Roger nodded. "Yeah, let’s go."
We hurried back downstairs, quietly opened the front door, and then rushed across Roger’s yard over to his neighbor’s house.
"Should we knock?" I asked.
"No, we shouldn’t knock," said Roger, giving me a "You’re a rather dumb person" look. He threw open Dennis’ door and we walked inside. Dennis still lay on the floor. No pool of blood that I could see. The door swung closed behind us.
"Dennis?" I asked. "Are you okay?"
No response.
"Is he breathing?" I asked.
"I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?"
"We should check his pulse."
"You check his pulse!"
"Fine." I cautiously walked over to the body, then knelt down beside it. I pressed my fingers to his wrist.
"Anything?"
"I’m not sure I’m in the right spot."
"Well…poke him with something."
"I’m not going to poke him!"
"Then breathe on him. Do something to wake him up!"
Suddenly Dennis sat up, arms outstretched, and shouted something that sounded approximately like "AAUUGGHHAAA!!!!"
I scooted backward at 37,916 miles per hour and shouted something that sounded approximately like "Shit!" Then I punched Roger in the shoulder as hard as I possibly could. I struck a particularly solid part of his shoulder and it felt like I’d smashed the bones in my hand into bite-sized chunks, but it was worth it.
"Ow! Why’d you hit me?"
"Because you’re a jerk!"
"What’d I do?"
"You planned this whole thing! I almost wet my pants! You probably wanted to tell everybody at school that I wet my pants, didn’t you?"
"It wasn’t me!"
"Yes it was!"
"No it wasn’t!"
But then I discovered something truly shocking. Roger had wet his own pants. Would somebody who had plotted out this scheme spontaneously urinate over the revelation of the surprise? Unlikely. So Roger was innocent. I’d struck the shoulder of an innocent man.
I turned my attention away from Roger and toward Dennis. The smug bastard who’d scared me half to death was looking...well, not particularly smug. Not smug at all, in fact. He looked somewhat depressed, and somewhat homicidal.
"Did I scare you?" he asked. I could see the butcher knife on the floor where he’d been lying.
Roger and I both nodded.
He wiped a tear from his eye. "I knew I could scare you. I was good, wasn’t I? I can act, right?"
"You sure can," Roger said, eyeing me nervously as if to say "Did you perhaps notice that this gentleman is sounding depressed and homicidal?"
"I know I can! I spent days practicing for that audition! I spend days practicing for every audition! So why the hell don’t I ever get the part?" He picked up the butcher knife. "Huh? Tell me why I never get the part?"
I said the first thing that popped into my mind: "Because... you have...you’ve got...um, facial features...that...that...you know, they aren’t traditional...and...and...and...you know how Robert De Niro doesn’t really look like a movie star, but he’s famous, but it probably took a long time because he doesn’t...you know...he’s got that mole and people who make movies took a while to figure out how good he was, but now they all love him...that’s you...you’re like Robert De Niro."
"Yeah," said Roger.
Dennis considered that. "De Niro is a god to me."
"He’s a god to everybody," I said. "So you just have to keep trying and someday you’ll be the next De Niro."
"But he won the Academy Award for Godfather II when he was barely thirty years old! I’m forty-six!"
"Well, he probably had a better agent," said Roger.
Dennis raised the butcher knife. "I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to give the performance of a lifetime. They always say I should be more real. Well, I’ll show them just how real I can be! They’ll have a pretty hard time saying I’m not real when I gut one of you with this knife, don’t you think?"
Though I admittedly couldn’t find any holes in his theory, it wasn’t a plan of action that I wanted to encourage. "Look, just let us go," I said, as Roger and I cautiously backed toward the door. "We won’t say anything."
"If you don’t say anything, that wrecks the whole point!" said Dennis, swishing the butcher knife through the air. "I can either go lie in the bathtub, slit my wrists, and die in obscurity, or I can kill one of you and go to prison a celebrity! I sure as hell will get a role in the prison Thanksgiving pageant, that’s for sure!"
He took a menacing step forward, and I suddenly relaxed. He was still acting. This was all payback for the phone call prank. He was just try
ing to scare a couple of whippersnappers, to teach us the error of our ways, to provide a life lesson that would suit us well as we entered maturity.
"I think I’ll kill..." Dennis hesitated, looking back and forth between Roger and I, and then pointed the knife at me. "You."
He rushed forward. I still kind of thought he might be trying to help me with my development of a moral core, but my bladder disagreed.
There wasn’t time to get the door open, so we rushed across the living room into the kitchen, screaming, with Dennis right behind us. " Does this seem real? Are you scared?"
Though of course we couldn’t have known the floor plan to Dennis’ home beforehand, it still sucked to discover that the kitchen was a dead end.
I grabbed the first available object to defend myself. In a kitchen that no doubt contained knives, forks, meat cleavers, tenderizers, cheese graters, and rolling pins, I felt a little silly trying to be intimidating with a plastic measuring cup, but, hey, sometimes you just have to make the best of things.
"My uncle knows a Hollywood producer," Roger said. "He can get you a big part, I promise."
"Oh yeah? What’s his name?"
"Uncle Phil."
"The producer’s name, jackass."
"Ummm..."
"Don’t try to out-act me, kid. And don’t worry, you’re not the one who’s going to die tonight. You’re just the audience."
"Then you can’t kill me until we make some popcorn," I said.
Dennis raised an eyebrow. "You’re moments away from a horrible, painful death and you’re able to make a joke about popcorn?"
I shrugged. It had kind of surprised me, too.
Dennis grinned and pointed the knife at Roger. "Maybe I should kill him instead and make you the audience."
"No!" Roger protested. "I want the popcorn!"
Dennis shook his head. "No, I need to go with my original instinct. That’s what they tell you in acting school. Go with your instincts." He gestured at Roger with the knife. "Step out of the way."
"No."
"No?" Dennis asked.
Roger shook his head and stepped in front of me. "No. I’m not scared of you. You’re a lousy actor. In fact, you suck."