Jeff Strand - A Bad Day for Voodoo

“Because Franklin puts on his shoes when we tell him that we’re leaving the house!” said Mildred. “We never have to keep telling him over and over. You’re way too old for us to keep having to treat you this way. Keep up the attitude problem, and I promise we will take away the pizza cutter, the spider venom, the daggers—all of them, even the one with the hidden compartment—those special pliers that Grandma made for you, your TV, everything. All of it, gone into storage until you go to college! Don’t think we don’t mean it. Don’t think that for one single solitary second we’re kidding around, because I know exactly which storage facility we’ll use, and they’re open twenty-four hours a day, and I have never been more serious about anything in my life!”

Mildred and Donna stared each other down angrily. Then Donna bit her lower lip and nodded. “Okay, I’ll get my shoes.” Some more of my right ear exploded.

Again, not the whole thing, but at least another inch of it came off. I screamed (and though this wasn’t on my mind at the moment, thinking back, I do have to say that this house really did have some impressive soundproofing. How many times had someone screamed since we’d arrived? I’m not going to go back and count, but it was a lot, and nobody had come to investigate the noise. I’m no expert on soundproofing, but this was quality work. My most sincere compliments to the designer) and dropped to my knees.

It hurt worse this time. I guess the upper half of your ear has more nerve endings than the lower half.

As far as I knew, it was only my ear. But were there other parts inside your body that could explode without you knowing it? Maybe some crucial internal organ had popped too, and I was minutes away from death without even knowing it! This night sucked! Sucked! Sucked!

“It’s gonna be okay, Tyler,” said Kelley, using the bottom of her shirt to wipe blood off the side of my head. “You’re going to be fine. I promise. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

I was going to die!

It hadn’t been thirty minutes! Not even close!

I was going to die!

What had I accomplished in this life? Some good grades, a girlfriend.but had I done anything to improve the economy? Had I created any lasting works of art? Would anybody remember my high video game scores after I was gone?

I was going to die!

I’d never see my mom again. My dad. My grandparents. My friends. My teachers. The lunch lady who never openly judged me for unhealthy food choices.

I was going to die!

I didn’t want to die!

But I was going to die!

I didn’t deserve this. I deserved bad things to happen to me, yeah, but not this. Not death! I was too young to die! I didn’t want to die when people would throw themselves on my casket and say, “He was so young! So very young! What a tragedy!” I wanted to die when people would say, “Wow, we thought that shriveled old geezer would never kick the bucket!”

And then—

Hello. My name is Herbert Gellsteinner. I am a professional ghostwriter. This does not mean that I write about ghosts. It means that I write books for people who put their names on the cover but did not actually write anything. You know that reality TV star whom you secretly suspect can’t even read but who suddenly announces a seven-figure deal with a major publisher? I wrote that for her.

Sometimes there’s an “As Told to ” credit where I sit

in a room with a celebrity and they babble for a few hours and I turn the transcript into a book, and sometimes I do not get credit at all, and the celebrity goes around on his book tour, saying, “No, I wrote it. I wrote it all. I’m a good writer.”

Sometimes there are more tragic circumstances for my involvement, such as cases where the author really was writing their book but was not lucky enough not to die during the writing process. In those sad cases, it is my job to complete the book, because otherwise you would have to read a book that just ended with “And then—” and you would never know what happens.

However, that is not the case here. If the next part was “And then Tyler’s brain exploded,” well, how would he have written everything you have read so far?

No, I am writing this because I believe that teenagers are the future, and I believe that at least one of you reading these words right now will become a rich and famous celebrity, and you will sell a book for a lot of money, and you will need somebody to write it for you. Please consider me for that task. I work cheap. Very cheap. And you can yell at me all you want while I am writing. I don’t care. I welcome it. I really need this. I need it bad. Please become a celebrity. Please.

—Mildred’s phone rang.

She glanced at the display. “It’s that Zeke guy. Should I answer it?”

“Yes, please,” I said.

She pressed a button on the phone and held it to her ear. “Yes? Yes. Yes, he is. Yes. Yes, you may.” She held the phone out to me. “He wants to talk to you.”

I took the phone from her and held it to my nondisgusting ear. “Why did you do that, you crazy —”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Zeke. “That was my cat’s fault. Is your ear okay?”

“No, my ear’s not okay! It’s all over the place, you insane—”

“I wasn’t reneging on our deal, I promise. It was an accident.” “Well, be more careful, you psychotic —”

“We’re still meeting at the junkyard. I do apologize for that. I’ll be more careful. I just wanted to call and make sure you weren’t dead.”

“No, I’m not dead, no thanks to you, you rotten piece of—”

“I’m hanging up now.”

I wanted to fling the phone to the floor and stomp on it a few times while bellowing with frustration, but that would be unproductive. “No, no, wait a second. Tell her about the aura of destruction.”

“Aw, man, are you back on that again?”

“They think you’re faking. Explain exactly what it does.” I handed the phone to Glenn.

“Hello?” he said. “Yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Our eyeballs? Uh-huh. No. Okay.” He hung up and slipped the phone into his pocket. “He made a pretty good case for the aura of destruction. Donna. Shoes. Now.”

“We really aren’t going to sacrifice them?” Donna asked. “We’ve already established that,” said Mildred. “Your problem is that you don’t listen. All of the other teenagers of the world listen to their parents, but not ours, oh no!”

Donna’s face contorted into a pout that was almost exactly like the one her brother had done earlier. But then her face quickly shifted from the not-so-threatening pout to a mucho threatening mask of rage, and she dove at me. The pizza cutter got me in the shoulder.

“Get her off me!” I shouted. “I don’t want to hit a girl! I don’t want to hit a girl!”

Kelley dragged Donna off me and then delivered the most brutal punch that had ever been thrown by an honors student. Donna’s head flew back, and though it remained attached, she dropped to the floor and didn’t get back up.

That’s right. My girlfriend knocked somebody unconscious.

I don’t approve of the use of violence, and you shouldn’t either.. .but my girlfriend knocked somebody unconscious.

Yes, it meant that in the future I’d lose more arguments than I already did, but still, I couldn’t help but be a proud boyfriend. The only thing Kelley did wrong was that instead of saying something clever (“ That’s how you cut a pizza!”) (That doesn’t even make sense, does it?), she threw her arms around me and began to cry.