“Can Adam come in my room with me and watch TV?” asked Donna.
Adam’s eyes widened. He looked suddenly excited, because he didn’t get to watch TV with hot girls very often, and also worried, because we all knew that Donna probably wanted to feast upon his beating heart.
Mildred folded her arms in front of her chest. “Now, Donna, what have we discussed about being presumptuous?”
“He’s been looking at me the whole time,” said Donna with a pout.
“No, I haven’t,” Adam insisted, stammering a bit. “I’ve been looking at my friend’s bloody foot.”
“Liar!” said Donna. “You can’t even see the blood through the towel.”
“Donna! You mind your manners. You’re not too old for the wrench.”
“Fine,” said Donna. “I didn’t want him anyway. He’s dog-ugly.”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately,” said Glenn, “but this attitude is going to stop in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. You apologize to this young man. He is not dog-ugly by any stretch of the imagination. No, he’s never going to be on the cover of fashion magazines, but how many people are? He carries off the gawky look better than most people your age. Say you’re sorry.”
I honestly thought she was going to resort to being a six- year-old and say something like “I’m sorry you’re dog-ugly.” But she didn’t. Her apology was simple (“Sorry”) and seemed sincere.
“It’s okay,” said Adam.
“So can I take him to my room?”
“Not tonight, dear,” said Mildred.
“Oh, I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with them watching some TV,” said Glenn. “She did apologize.”
Donna hurried over to the couch, grabbed Adam’s hand, and pulled him to his feet. “C’mon, let’s go!” she said.
“I, uh, shouldn’t.” said Adam.
“Adam!” said Kelley.
“I can’t,” said Adam. “I need to stay with my friend. He’s hurt.”
“He’ll be fine,” Donna assured him. “Mom found a squirrel once whose tail had been pulled off, and she cauterized the hole right up.”
Adam gave another halfhearted protest, and then Donna quickly led him out of the living room and down a hallway. We heard a door open and then close. Kelley just sat there, her jaw hanging open.
“If Donna gets Adam, then I get Kelley,” said Franklin.
“Objection!” I said.
Yeah. That’s what I said. “Objection.” I’m embarrassed to
even have to type that. Don’t you wish you had somebody like me to defend your honor?
Glenn chuckled. “Whoa! Did you see him bristle? It was like we had a porcupine in the house.” He patted me on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry. My boy was only kidding.”
“If he touches me, I’m going to claw his eyes out,” said Kelley. “Just throwing that out there.”
“That was uncalled for,” said Mildred. “You’re a guest in our home, and you’ll abide by our rules. In this household, we do not threaten to claw each other’s eyes out. If you want to do that, go someplace else where that kind of rudeness is tolerated.”
“Actually, I’d very much like to go someplace else,” said Kelley, standing up. “Adam! Get back out here!”
“Sit back down, young lady,” said Mildred.
WHAT DO YOU THiNK MILDRED SAiD NEXT?
A. "Ha ha! Just kidding, you little rapscallions! here's a free cell phone and a DiY book on how to undo voodoo curses.”
B. "i wish i had a free monkey for every time somebody ate a crouton.”
C. "i'm sorry, but you're not going anywhere.”
D. None of the above.
The answer is C.
CHAPTER 18
“You can’t keep us here against our will,” I said. Because in a hostage situation, the best thing you can do is inform your captors that they aren’t allowed to be doing this.
“We didn’t ask for you to disturb us,” said Mildred. “We were enjoying a peaceful evening of family time when you came pounding on our door.”
Alert readers will remember that we didn’t pound on the door. We rang the doorbell. Astute readers will guess that I didn’t correct her. I mean, why behave like an Internet troll?
Adam had not yet responded to Kelley’s demand that he get back out here. This was a source of concern.
“All we wanted was to borrow your phone,” I said. “I was even worried about bleeding in your living room.”
The logical way to handle this situation seemed to be to rush for the front door and get the hell out of this house of madness before we could be killed and served as stew. But what about Adam? Was it too late for him? Was his body already in the form of small cubes of meat?
“Just so you know,” I said, “all three of us are diseased.” (I considered being specific, but the only disease I could think of at that very moment was mad cow, so I decided that the vague approach would be better.) “If you eat us, you’ll catch it too.”
Mildred laughed. “Why does everybody always assume that we’re cannibals?” Then her face fell. “Is it my butt? Does it look big in this dress? Do I look like I’ve been eating too much?”
“No, your butt looks, uh, charming,” I said.
My heart was pounding. I’d had a bunch of guns pointed at me earlier, but that was somehow much less frightening than this creepy, smiley family. I looked at Kelley to see if she was thinking about the same RUN!!! plan that I was.
Adam let out a scream.
It wasn’t the good kind of scream. It wasn’t a scream that sent the message This is awesome! or That really tickles, but I love it! This was a scream of terror.
That said, I don’t want to give the impression that it was a terrified scream that echoed through my brain and would haunt my dreams until the end of my days. There wasn’t soul-deep terror in that scream. He just sounded scared. He definitely didn’t sound like he was having any fun.
“I love that noise,” said Glenn. “Worth every penny of the soundproofing we had to install to avoid alerting the neighbors.”
Kelley and I jumped to our feet. My plan was to shove Glenn out of the way, race down the hallway, throw open the door, let Kelley beat up Donna, drag Adam to safety, then let Kelley beat up Mildred while I beat up Franklin. Then we’d try another house.
Much of this plan was designed with the idea that Mildred would not pull out a gun from underneath her apron, so I was very disappointed when she did.
It was only a little gun, but still...
“Sit down,” she said.
Adam screamed again.
“I never get tired of that sound,” said Glenn.
Mildred probably wouldn’t have time to shoot both of us before we rushed her, but a 50 percent survival rate simply wasn’t acceptable.
“Our parents will be looking for us,” said Kelley.
“I know that, you silly duck,” said Mildred. “They usually do.”
“They know we’re here.”
“Yes, I’m sure that before you left the house, you told your mom and dad that you were headed out to go knock on strangers’ doors, asking to use their phone.”
“They at least know the general area.”
“I spy, with my little eye, somebody who is telling a lie. Can anybody guess who that is?”
Nobody answered the question, but we all knew it was Kelley. A couple of small patches of blood had started to seep through the towel.
“I’m gonna start bleeding on your floor,” I said, hoping this would provide enough distraction for our daring escape.
“I’m pointing a gun at you,” said Mildred. “Believe me, brain matter is a lot harder to get out of the upholstery than blood.”
I nodded. Her effort to intimidate me had been successful.