Thursday Night Sucked

I have been asked to explain why I was found standing threateningly in front of my neighbor’s car with a baseball bat and broken beer bottle with my trash can flaming behind me and a bearded hippy threatening me with aggressive yoga.  I know, I know..self explanitory.
Fine, let me rewind a little.  I am proud of my little city-residential home.  It’s 1400 square feet of middle-income average existence and it’s fucking mine.  I get to decide whether I want to let it descend into a pile of shit or put a little effort into keeping it respectable. If I want to keep my lawn mowed and generally weed-free or just piss on it every morning and yell obscenities at the dandelions that’s my call.  I pay the mortgage.  That’s the way it goes.  So that means you don’t get to fuck with my little blue heaven.  And by “fuck with it”, I mean you don’t get to park your rusting, piece-of-shit 1989 Buick LeSabre in front of it.  Especially if you’ve been warned about twenty fucking times not to.  Ranging from the casual “Dude, don’t”, to the more candid “Get your piece-of-shit car away from my house”, to shoving your exhaust pipe full of my dog’s feces (harder than it sounds, by the way).  By that point, you just cannot pretend to be shocked when you roll up onto the edge of my lawn with your Phish-blaring, rattling, shit-bucket for the twentieth time and see me charging out of my front door with a Louisville slugger.  You just can’t.  Nostradamus saw this coming.  But my asshole neighbor did just that and even threw in a “Are you fucking crazy!?  Get away from me!” just for effect.  Please.  Drama queen.  But as he was flailing his puny little hippy arms at me, his fucking clove flew out of his hand and into my trash can.  Well, he says “flew”.  I say he threw it in there, regardless if his eyes were clenched shut, his back was turned, and he was screaming in hysterics (Fuck YOU, Ms. Polaski and your bullshit deposition!).  So, yeah…that’s how the fire started.  The fact that there was a teddy bear soaked in gasoline in it is beside the point…and I am not explaining that part again (It was part of a failed bluff to get my daughter to clean her room and it didn’t work so let it go).  So I guess at some point his roommate came running outside to aid his friend in ruining my good home’s visage and I may have pointed the bat at him and told him to get his scrawny ass back inside.  May have.  It all happened so fast, who knows?  (Ms. Polaski sure-as-fuck thinks she does!  Bitch.)  So then he backs up, gets all serious and shit and calmly says

“Look.  I’ve been practicing Tai Chi for ten years.  I don’t want to hurt you.”

That’s when I dropped the beer that I was holding in my other hand and it smashed on the sidewalk.  And yes, I dropped it.  DROPPED IT, Ms. Polaski.  I did not throw it down and tell to him to “back off or eat some fucking glass.”.  That is just not me.  I don’t litter.  And so, it was then that I bent over to pick up the said bottle and, as I was standing back up, it may have looked like I was about to hurl it at the cop car that was just then pulling up to my house.  It was bad timing and a little trick-of-the-eyes, but Officer Delany did not agree.  I suppose the only reason I’m not sitting in a cell right now is because my neighbors declined to press charges.  That may or may not have to do with the fact that my wife threatened to tell Officer Delany about their “green house” in their basement.  And she would know, she’s like their number one customer.
So that was my Thursday evening.  How did yours go?  Never mind, no time.  That fucker just pulled up in front of my house again.

The Legend of Jack

This week, Dave requested that everyone from the group tell a revealing story about themselves from our past that “draws a straight line to our current emotional state blah blah blah pigfuckerWhocaresWhatever”.  You ain’t cracking this shell, but I’d be more than happy to regale a fine tale of my youth just for shits and giggles.  I’ve got plenty.  Pull up a chair. 

 This here is the story of Jack: the infamous, diabolical, and most bizarrely terrifying piece of white trash to ever walk the earth. And this is how our paths crossed for just one night, for just a few terrifying and ultimately perplexing hours.  Be warned, it ain’t pretty.

Back in my college days (yes, I spent five years at a prestigious community college achieving the highly sought-after 4-year degree in Communications…but I don’t wanna brag) my good friends and I often put together what we liked to call “Drink-till-you-puke-and-punch-someone-fuck-fests”.  Other short-sighted and less creative people called them “parties”, but we never held that against them.  My friends and I just knew what we were looking to achieve and everything starts with a name, so…  Anyway, to set the scene, me and six other guys lived in a decrepit piece-of-shit rent house about a mile from college packed in a low-income, decidedly white-trash neighborhood off Ballentyne Road (that name is important to know, trust me).  And that description is not open for debate.  I mean the guy across the street lived in what looked like a pile of painted wood and drove a jacked up Dodge with custom exhaust stacks and Confederate flags across the back window and on each mud flap.  He named that truck.  It was “The Outlaw”.  He named his wife too.  “Bitch-Whore”.  Guess who he loved more?  And that guy was considered “the rich snob” of the neighborhood.  When you drove through our block, that “Dueling Banjos” riff from “Deliverance” just played on repeat in the back of your head.  In fact, these people probably consider “Deliverance” a promotional vacation video:

“Ahh, Momma…I want to go there and make a man squeal like a pig too!”

“Maybe next year, honey…Daddy gets out on parole then.  Now wash that lice shampoo outta yer’ head.”

Point being, it was an interesting place to live.  But we pretty much kept to ourselves and they did the same.  We had giant fucking keggers every other weekend and they didn’t call the cops.  Every other house on the street was a meth factory ready to blow but we didn’t say shit.  Worked out pretty well.  Pretty well…until one of them decided to mingle into our world.

 It was probably around midnight when, through a half-drunken haze, I noticed a rather old-looking biker-type guy in the corner of our living room.  We had probably 150 people crammed in this fucking shack, but this guy still stood out-primarily because he had about 25 years on every one there.  Short, missing-tooth grin, slicked black hair, leather everything, a bizarre fanny pack around his waist, pock-faced, skinny John Waters mustache…a real looker.  Looking back, he was a spitting image of William Forsythe in one of his grittier roles.   He looked drunker than shit and fucked up on something (yeah, I’m guessing meth) and was getting the queer-eye from everyone at the party but, at the time, he seemed to be behaving himself quite well.  I asked some roommates and he apparently just slid in undetected but the beer-bitch (the roommate that gets stuck manning the kegs and taking the money for plastic cups) said he paid so…fuck it.  He was ogling every chick that walked past him like they were hanging from a stripper pole, despite the fact they were all young enough to be his daughters (and probably, some were)…yet, he was surrounded by horny 20-year-old men doing the same fucking thing.  Creepy?  Yeah.  But tolerable. 

The night progressed into a fog and people finally starting filing out sometime after 2am, I think.  Maybe later.  But at some point, he was pretty much the last guest there.  Him and his teenage lackey.  We never got the story on that kid, but he was from the neighborhood as well and just hung around this guy.  Quiet, thick glasses, and classic inbred facial features (common for these parts). Total fucking stooge.  The old guy suddenly began striking up conversation with us in the kitchen and said his name was Jack while his lackey remained stoic and nameless and once Jack got rolling, he would not fucking shut up.  Rapid fire motor mouth, cackling laugh between every sentence (umm…meth?).  The kind of guy that thought every thing he said was fucking gold and “why the hell ain’t you laughin’?”  And he had a slight tremble to him, like he could just fucking blow at any time, so we were hesitant to push him along.  Finally and abruptly though, he said a rather heartfelt thank you to all of us and left with his stooge in tow.  Me and another roommate collapsed on the living room couches and slowly began to recap the night while we faded.  Curtain ready to fall.  Good night.  Or so we thought.

This is what happened next.  Follow me now, cause it all happened like raging dominos.  About five minutes later, our front door was suddenly shoved open and Jack and his sidekick came bolting in like Walmart on Black Friday.  They rushed into the kitchen before I could even connect what was happening and then the screaming and swearing started, followed by some very loud slaps.  Someone was getting their ass beat.  Fuck me.  We jumped up and ran into the kitchen to see Jack slapping (not punching, slapping) the shit out of some young kid I didn’t know but stayed from the party.  Come to find out, he was a neighborhood local who lived in the area but his family could somehow afford (yeah, I’m guessing meth) to send him to college (and a prestigious COMMUNITY college at that) and he took some classes with one our roommates.  This kid, I’ll call him Neil (’cause his name is Neil) and his father apparently knew Jack or something.  And apparently Jack’s meth-induced paranoia led him to, when he left our party, to NOT ACTUALLY LEAVE OUR PARTY but instead creep over to our open kitchen window to listen to what Neil was saying about him.  I guess Jack was very keen on rumor control.  I also guess that Jack was tweaked out of his mind on meth (did I mention that before? I think I may have mentioned that).  My roommate had innocently asked Neil about Jack after he “left” and Jack didn’t like what he heard.  Maybe they thought his mustache came off as too “film school” pretentious?  No one truly remembers what was said, only that is was incredibly bland and brief.  Not to Jack, though.  Anyway, when we and the rest of the housemates all met in the kitchen to see what was happening, we managed to push them apart just long enough for Neil to launch into a string of high-pitched curses and a truly perplexed “what the fuck is wrong with-WHY ARE YOU HITTING ME!?”  To which Jack responded with his own string of vulgarity and then launched back into a smacking fit.  Again, not punching him, SLAPPING him.  It was both violent and comedic…and strangely paralyzing.  Then, as quickly as it began, Jack suddenly stormed out of the kitchen and out the front door, muttering some kind of apology.  Okay, fucking weird.  We all let out some nervous laughter until we suddenly realized his stooge hadn’t left the kitchen.  He was just leaning against the wall, which is where he had silently been during this whole affair.  I looked at him cockeyed, about to ask him why the fuck he was still there…and then I caught his eyes…and saw a small smile crack face.  What did he know?  In a flash and out of nowhere, Jack was back in the kitchen and smacking Neil again.  It was like a fucking rerun.  What the fuck was happening?  Neil responded in kind.

“Wha-why are you…STOP SLAPPING ME…I’M SO FUCKING CONFUSED!”

I looked at the stooge again.  Same smile.  Same knowing smile.  He’s been through this before.  As Jack’s little bitch, he knew what were only just finding out: this was far from over.  My stomach dropped a little.  Then the sound of white-trash biker hand slapping terrified young skin brought me back.  Fuck this.  Jack Slap-Happy was going down and getting carried the fuck out of our house.  But before we could close in on him, the whole fucking world just tipped down the rabbit hole.  Jack took Neil by the neck and dragged him to the corner of the kitchen, where he began the most awkward and perverted dialogue my still-young ears had ever heard and I’ll just paraphrase out of a sense of decency (and yes, this is the extremely edited and tamed version, folks):

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO YOU IN PRISON, BOY?! WE’D PASS YOU AROUND LIKE A CARTON OF CIGARETTES, YOU PIECE OF SHIT!  WE’D ALL FUCK YOU IN THE ASS!  WE’D MAKE YOU SUCK ALL OUR DICKS!”  He grabbed Neil’s head.  “SUCK MY DICK RIGHT NOW-”

“Holy fuck, I’m gonna puke!”

I don’t remember who said that, but it pretty much summed it up right fucking there.  We had an ex-con male rapist in our kitchen assaulting a guy we didn’t know and attempting to obtain…umm…oral satisfaction from him.  They don’t have manuals or standard operating procedures for this stuff.  I don’t care who you are.  If that kitchen had been full of hardened, Special OPs Rangers they would have been equally horrified and perplexed.  Do we attack? Do we run?  Do we start screaming like little girls on a haunted hayride?  I looked at his stooge, still leaning against the wall.  He looked me in the eye and mouthed “he’s crazy, man.  He’s craaaazy.”  You think?  Do ya’, fuck face?  Do you think your perverted rapist biker buddy is just a little head-fucked?  Then the stooge took us to the very bottom of the rabbit hole.  He nudged his head toward Jack and his fanny pack.

“Gun”, he mouthed.

I think we have all had times of extreme stress when we truly wished, regardless of what we have achieved to that point, that we had never been born.  That, right there, was example numero uno.   You see, we were already paralyzed by the fact that if any of us attacked Jack and somehow got our ass beat…it might not end there. This guy had already made it VERY clear what his little hobby was.  And now there was the very real possibility of a gun being pointed at someone’s head in the near future.  The room began to spin.  The “Dueling Banjos” were in full, thunderous swing in my head.  Neil suddenly looked like a very young Ned Beatty.  I found myself wishing for a well-aimed arrow to  whip into Jack’s neck from the bow of a very spry Burt Reynolds. Then, unexplainably, by some lucky twist of fate, Jack’s meth levels must have leveled off as he suddenly threw Neil to the side and rushed out of the house again.  This guy was like the male “Cybil”.  Okay, we know where this was going this time.  I grabbed the stooge by the neck and forced him out the front right behind Jack, slammed the door and quickly dead bolted it.  I turned around and we all stared at each other.  Every face was pale.  Every mouth wide open.  Neil was slumped against the wall still whining to himself.

 “What…the…FUCK…is wrong…with that guy…a carton of cigarettes?”

Before any of us could say another word, we heard Jack screaming from outside.  I carefully peeped my head into the window and saw Jack standing in our yard, arms extended.

“If I ever catch any one of you out here..I WILL FUCK YOU IN THE ASS!  WELCOME TO BALLENTYNE, MOTHERFUCKERS!”

And he was gone.  We honestly didn’t know what the fuck to do.  Call the cops?  We just served alcohol to about 100 underage kids.  Neil was already gone, out the back door and back to wherever he crawled from.  We had no idea where Jack lived or if his threat was valid or just the last remanents of a drug-fueled rage.  Jack held all the cards…and we never saw him again. 

What ever became of Jack is still a topic of debate among us boys to this day.   Maybe he’s dead and gone, a victim of the crazy world of leather, meth, and fanny packs.  Maybe he one day saw the light and cleaned himself up.  Maybe he has his own WordPress blog talking about the virtues of sobriety and the dangers of selling people for cartons of cigarettes.  Or maybe…just maybe…that really was William Forsythe, partaking in a little role research with some unsuspecting college punks.  But what he definitely was and is…is a fucking legend.  Pure lore.

Now what do I believe?  (pause for dramatic effect…I’ll wait)  I’ll just say this…I LOVED you in  Duece Bigalow, you crazy old man.

Four Wheels of White Trash Cool

I’m pretty fucking cool.  This is not a statement I make ignorantly or without some significant foundation underneath it.  I can make this claim because I earned it.  I earned it a long time ago.  Let me explain, because I know you’re fucking dying to know.
According to written lore, as well as countless legendary Hollywood movies-which are the true bearers of unassailable knowledge- there are several, but very specific, ways of which someone may climb the cultural ladder of their era to claim a status that others look upon and proclaim “dude, he is so fucking boss.”.  You can get there just with one specific awesome act, like depantsing your fifth grade teacher in front of the class.  Or through a progressive series of really awesome acts like depantsing your fifth grade teacher, banging your tenth grade teacher, and beating the shit out of your eleventh grade math teacher in the school parking lot (dude took my cigarette right in the middle of class).  I know what you’re thinking and no, I don’t currently teach a class in awesomeness but am considering it.  But the fact is, I was cool well before all this.  Because I became cool another way, the way: I had an “EPIC MOMENT”.
Now these are not easy to come by, people.  In order to have one, you need two key elements: the right time and the right place.  Examples?  The 60’s generation had the hippy culture and Woodstock.  The 70’s had disco and Studio 54.  Me, I had the mid 80’s…and the roller rink.

Behold…Heaven. Try to ignore the smell of popcorn and condoms.

Surprised?  That’s because you’re a freaking herb, now shut up and let me educate you.  In the 1980’s, the youth of that era had two places to go to achieve coolness: breakdancing on a piece of cardboard in the inner-city in front of an oversized ghetto blaster…or…rolling on pine to hair metal in the suburbs (Country folk were just fucked, but that’s the way it’s always been and they know that).

Now it is crucial to understand exactly why the roller rink was a perfect location and why it was only the perfect location during the 80’s.  The roller rink has been around for over a hundred fucking years in some form or other, long before the 80’s obviously.  It probably took on the style we know today around the 50’s and was the birthday party place of choice from then on through to approximately 1989.  It actually hit its peak popularity during the 70’s with disco (a link due primarily to the excessive ass shaking necessary for both disco dancing and propelling roller skates forward…and roller skates just looked fucking cool in bell-bottoms).

During all of this, roller rinks were popular…but they weren’t cool.  However an interesting thing happened after disco died in the very early 80’s: roller rinks survived…but changed.  Roller skating was still fucking awesome, but with the glitz, glamour, excessive lighting and money of disco now gone, the roller rinks turned from trendy…to trashy.  While you once rubbed elbows with the upper class of adult party goers and trend followers….roller rinks were now all but owned by their new #1 clientele: white trash kids.

My personal circumstances led me to cruising the boards circa ’84-’89.  I spent my summers at an area youth center that bused us to a local roller rink twice a month and when I saw my dad on the weekends he usually carted me over there too.  This allowed me to explore the seedy underbelly of white trash youth and allowed him to legally drink and listen to loud music in front of me in a socially acceptable way.  We both won, you know?

I still clearly remember my earliest experiences of that ratty roller-dive. I think it shared plaza space with a hair salon and a porn shop-both of which were probably cleaner and better run.  Walking in, the first thing that hit you was the clouds of Camel smoke, instantly aging your young lungs to that of a 70-year-old with tuberculosis.  Then the ear splitting bass of a Van Halen song rattling your chest until your heart gave up and let the subwoofers move your blood for you.  The cheap carpeted floors were littered with popcorn and used butts and various other unknown substances- but this was an important incentive to quickly learn to keep upright on your wheels. The entire complex smelled like feet and melted butter- they probably sold that car freshener scent at the ticket counter. Every girl was in spandex or tight, rolled up jeans, side ponytails, and off-shoulder sweaters.  Every boy had a mullet or a rat tail (both if mom and dad were alcoholics-that’s how you could tell). And there was maybe one adult for every twenty kids.  Yeah, do the fucking math.  Basically, you walked through those doors and you entered heaven.

Now with such little adult supervision, it was basically like juvie hall; you had to join up with a set, fast.  Otherwise, you’d get eaten alive on that wood floor.  You just never went out there alone.  There were usually several to choose from but they were all about the same: a pack of maybe ten kids ranging from seven to fifteen-all with IQ’s equal to that range.  They didn’t rent their skates, they had their own.  This is probably where you saw your first nine-year-old smoke a cig while spitting on the lockers, showing off his new tattoo, and complaining about his head lice while telling some 10-year-old she had a nice ass.  Again, heaven.  The first time you saw that, your balls officially descended.

I remember my group.  I was eight.  They cornered me by the lockers one day, flicked a lit butt in my face and asked me where I was from.

“Umm…Brockport?”

“You like chicks, man?”

“Umm…yes.”

“You like Judas, man? You like the Priest!?”

What the fuck were they talking about, I wasn’t religious? “Yeah, he’s cool.”

“Well come on, geek.  Let’s fuckin’ skate!”

Some kid who looked like he had just crawled out of fucking kindergarten handed me a cigarrette and shoved me on the boards.  And it began.  It apparently didn’t matter, but I was outclassed in skill by a hell of a margin.  I mean these fucking kids could roll like they were born doing it (and from the rumors you heard about the women’s bathrooms, they quite possibly were).  They hit the turns like butter, crossing over faster than the human eye could detect.  If people got in their way, they got shoved to the side and ate wall.  Every chick got her ass slapped…and was grateful.  The smallest of the children huddled in the middle of the rink for protection.  It was mother fucking Lord of the Flies on wheels.

Over time, I got cooler with them and some other groups.  The “moment” was almost there.  I could feel it building.  Then, one day, after being forced to smoke two Camels with my nose after my second Bic pen tattoo, I hit the boards…and the DJ dropped the next record.  With the first chords of the guitar, the entire fucking hall came alive. Screams erupted and the rink was instantly choked with wheels.  I hadn’t heard that song before, but apparently the rest of the world had…and it was apparently awesome.  It was Def Leopard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me”.  An electric chill ran through my little spine.  As I was bounced between bodies, trying my damndest to mouth the words I didn’t know, the chorus came on.  Everyone raised their fists in unison and began pumping as all voices became one.

It was time.

I raised my own fist.  I kept my balance.  I tasted the cigarette residue on my tongue.  I felt the itch of my first lice infestation.  My rat tail flapped on my neck behind me.  I screamed my first hair metal anthem along with my peers.  And it hit me.  This was it: my “Epic Moment”.  I did it.  I fucking did it.  I…was…cool.

As I noted earlier, I’ve done plenty since that day to add to my cool bank, but it was only the icing on the cake.  See, while some douche bags will compare my moment to the time they were at some pussy Coldplay concert and the guitarist totally looked at him and he had “a moment”-nah, I’ll stop you right there.  When he’s on his death bed he won’t be thinking of the guitarist from Coldplay and reflecting about how he really “lived” life from that moment forth.  But me?  I’ll be lying there with my wrinkly fist in the air, confusing the shit out the hospice nurse while I mouth “pour…some….sugar…on…meeeeee.”.

Dr. StrangeGoth…or…How I Learned To Fear The Goths

Not a lot of shit scares me.  I mean, I’m a pretty straight-forward guy.  I always feel like if something really threatens me, I can just drive my fist through it, or my truck, and that’ll be that.  That’s why I’m more likely to be scared by a late mortgage payment than some guy sneaking into my house with a butcher knife.  See, I can shoot the guy, bury him in the backyard and be done with him.  Trust me, the neighbors don’t say shit.  Mortgage companies tend to be more difficult to get your hands around…but you get the point.  Straight forward, chin out, bring it on.  And that’s generally served me well.  Okay, no it hasn’t, hence the whole reason for this fucking blog, but regardless…that’s how I deal with shit and it’s led me to a state where very little actually gives me the fucking shivers.  You know…like spooks me out.   Horror movies are great, but ultimately more hilarious to me than anything else.   They are primarily blueprints on how not to function in any form of crisis and incredibly amusing in that regard.  “We’re stuck in a dark, abandoned warehouse with a psychotic killer loose in the area…we should totally fuck on this rusty bench!”  Supernatural shit?  Well, it’s just that…shit.  Ghosts, Chupacabra and Mothman are nothing more than mental creations of the weak-willed…and cable television caters to them very nicely.  There just isn’t anything of that nature that gets to me.  Except one: Goths.
Yes, I know.  I too have spent many a hour laughing and pointing at the skinny, pale dorks with mascara and black nail polish.   The torn fishnet stockings and poorly-fitted black bra underneath a Bauhaus t-shirt, dyed black hair unwashed in weeks.  And the girls are pretty ridiculous too.  I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t stuffed my fair share into a locker or dumpster in my youth…or a couple times last month while my daughter watched and laughed from the car (push the lid down again, Daddy!).  I’ve never made much of any attempt to understand them or psychoanalyze.  They are different and frail and my knuckles fit so well in the crook of their jaws.  What’s to question?  And there sure-as-fuck isn’t anything to fear.
But I write to you now a very changed man.  A foolish and fearful man.  I know now not to be lulled into a state of superiority simply because these children of the dark are seemingly unable to detach their chins from their chests and get their skin care products wholesale from funeral home supply chains.  I know now not to point, stare or touch.  I know that fear has never been so real and so tangible.  Terror…thy name is GOTH.  It happened last weekend…
Saturday evening.  My wife and I had dropped the little one off at my mothers and were going to take in a nice romantic viewing at the cineplex of “We Bought A Zoo” (Shut the fuck up, my wife was paying.  I figured I could ogle at ScaJo’s breasts for a couple hours.  Oh fuck off, I can still hear you laughing).  We walked into the front lobby and got in line to buy a ticket.  We were a few groups back and had settled into a comfortable debate of whether or not I had just agreed to come to this movie so that I could stare at ScaJo’s boobs when we came around the corner of the ticket booth and the most ridiculous sight suddenly sat before me.  Scrunched into the corner on the floor, between the ticket booth and the wall, was what appeared to be homeless lady with a giant, black hooded coat, tracing the brick with her painted-black fingers.  My wife and I both paused and stared longer.  Black coat. Black fishnet stockings into black boots.  Long black hair falling from the hood held tight around her head and-wait.  This was no homeless wino.  Far worse!  An annoying, teen goth acting out and desperate for the attention that her parents surely refused to give.  We instantly broke into laughter at this pathetic little girl wallowing on the dusty tile floor, trying to muster every bit of teen angst she could derive from living in a four-bedroom colonial with DirecTV…but NO XBOX (GOD!).  But as I raised a finger to point out the goofy Sponge Bob barrette clinging to a waxy strand of hair, her hood turned toward me…and a face of pure evil gazed upon me with eyes darker than the cheap eyeliner surrounding them.  I dropped my hand as her mouth arced in a tiny sneer.  A dark chill went down my spine.  Why was she looking at me-

“Rick, were next.  Come on”.

My wife called my attention back to the ticket booth as she paid for our tickets and handed me one.  As we rounded the booth toward the main lobby door, I looked again to that corner…but she was gone.  Stupid fucking goth girl.  Probably snuck in to see Twilight for the fifth time.  Ha! Yes, I am so clever.  We wandered up to the concession stand to get my wife the obligatory bucket of popcorn and diet Pepsi.  As I reach down to check my cell for any messages my eyes wandered around the main lobby and suddenly stopped at one of those couples photo booths by the arcade.  There she was, sitting in the booth.  Her dark hood up, looking directly at me…into me.  Smiling.

“The fuck?  Is she actually following us?  Is she stalking us?”  I blurted out.

My wife turned back to me.  “Who?

“That little goth girl that was in the corner.  She’s over-”

Gone.  Fucking little rat.

“Do want your own drink,” my wife asked, completely ignorant of the terror unfolding before us,  “’cause you always drink half my shit…”

“I want to know who that kid’s parent are so I can tell them to leash their animals.”

“Wait, are you talking about this Zoo movie?”

“No!  That goth girl…never mind.”

We started walking to our theatre, my mind trying to prepare for boobs, stupid animal tricks, and Matt Damon’s ridiculously square head that I was about to be subjected to for the next two hours.  As we reached the theatre door…there she was, leaning against the wall, waiting for me.

“Rick, isn’t that the weird girl from the ticket-”

“Yeah,  I told you!  Shit.”  I walked up to her, “Listen, Dutchess of the Dark, scram or when you come down from your Robitussin high I’m gonna drag you back to your shitty parents.  Fuck off.”

My wife pushed me past as the little demon just stood there and smirked.

“I am not afraid to punch a kid!” I yelled.

“Jesus, Rick.”

“How did she know what theatre we were going to?  Did she fucking eaves drop at the ticket counter…creepy rat.”

“Probably had a quickie seance in the hall.  Please don’t threaten children when we’re out.  Reminds me of our honeymoon,” my wife pleaded.  But those kids at our hotel pool had it coming.  And only one of them cried.  I don’t care if they were still wearing diapers, you don’t spit your pacifier into the pool….but anyway…

I looked back and gave the girl one more mean-mug as we walked into the darkened theatre and chose our seats close to the side-it was all that was available.  Apparently the story of family-run zoos really captivates people.  After the initial previews the theater darkened further and the feature began,  but I couldn’t help but notice a bit of chill entering the air.  Regardless, I settled in and patiently awaited the boobs and, hopefully, some great animal fart/poop jokes.  I mean, with all these animals, there has just got to be some good lion poop jokes-that’s new territory.  The seat next to me was empty and next to that was the wall.  Yet I kept feeling something bump my leg.  Ignore it.  My eyes hadn’t really adjusted so there was nothing to be seen anyway.  The movie progressed.  It was terrible.  They bought some family zoo.  Not a word about animal poop yet and not a single tight shirt on Ms. Johansson yet.  Somebody was finding this all quite hilarious though.  An incessant giggling was hitting my ear just off to my right.  I tried to ignore it for as long as possible but it quickly became maddening.  Finally, I leaned forward to tap the person on the back but paused when I happened to look down and see the actual source of the giggling and leg bumping.  There she sat, wedged between the row of seats, ass planted on the sticky floor, knees up to her chin…her pale face now contrasting the dark of the theatre.  She smiled at me and actually hissed out loud.  Yeah, hissed!  That chic had somehow snuck in and squeezed under the seat next to me!

“Holy Shit!” I cried as I jumped back.

“Rick…Scarlet’s boobs are not that big…shut up,” my wife whined.

“Look, she’s right there…the goth bitch!” I screamed as I started kicking in her general direction and leaning against my wife.  “I think she teleported!”

My wife looked and saw the little white-faced demon as well and jumped up.  “Holy shit, what is wrong with her?”

“Out!  Let’s go!” I yelled as I herded her past the legs of annoyed patrons.  “Sorry, Sorry….rabid goth bitch behind us.  Might want to move to another row…”

We hustled up the aisle and walked out of the theatre.  “Well I’m gonna find a manager or something and get her kicked out,” my wife proclaimed as we walked back down to the lobby.

“Fine.  Whatever, that bitch is creeping me-”

There she was, leaning against the wall a few feet ahead of us.  Impossible.  There was no way.

“Rick. What the fuck…”

“Quick, inside here!” As I pushed my wife into a maintenance closet and locked the door behind us after turning on the light.  It was a small room with some mops and shelves full of cleaning supplies.  Smelled like bleached popcorn.

“Rick…let’s just go.  What is she gonna do?  She’s just a kid…right?  Rick?”

I was suddenly overcome with urge to have sex with my wife on the rusty bench in the corner.  No idea why.  I shook my head, “I…yeah…I don’t know.  I’m freaked out.  You saw that.  She can teleport!  How do you stop black magic?!  I mean…I saw “The Craft”!  Shit is about to get real!”

We paused and caught our breath and tried to regain our senses.  “Okay, maybe it’s just a differant girl. You know?  They do kinda all look the same,” my wife replied.

They do.  That’s true.  Those goths.  Maybe she came with a little pack of dark weirdos and they were all just fucking with us.  Like a goth version of “The Brood”.  Still, we both had the unmistakable emotion of terror coarsing through us.  Okay.  We were gonna unlock the door and just book to the closest exit and out to my truck.

“Should I say a prayer first?” I asked.

“You’re an atheist.”

“Right.  Okay…you saw those Harry Potter movies…say a spell or something.”

My wife gave a look of disgust and shoved the door open and we spilled out, B-lining straight to the first exit we saw and out into the parking lot.
By the time we got to our truck, we were actually laughing.  We had run from some eighty-pound, thirteen-year-old girl who liked to dress in black and write bad poetry.  She was probably inside right then getting yelled at by her mother for sneaking out of The Muppets movie.
Then we saw it.  A black, fishnet stocking.  Torn.  Flapping in the wind from my truck’s antenna.
We didn’t talk on the way home.  Fear the Goths.