Mail Order Massacres. Hunter Shea

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      They paid forty cents for the issue, getting a ton of change that somehow made it seem like they had more money than when they had started. The boys jumped back on their bikes and pedaled home, anxious to get back to David’s room because it had an air conditioner.

      David read along with Patrick, just over his shoulder. Neither was a Wonder Woman aficionado, but neither could argue against the fact that she had one sexy bod.

      Sexy for a comic book character. Not as hot as, say, Mrs. Pendleton, freshly divorced and constantly on the prowl. The boys appreciated how difficult she made it for any straight male to not stare at her bulging rack or curvy hips.

      They were done in five minutes, the air from the AC making the pages of the comic flutter.

      “Well, that was exciting,” David said, rolling onto his back.

      “It would have made more sense if we had read the previous two issues.” Patrick flipped through it again. They’d decided they weren’t going to preserve this one. Wonder Woman just didn’t make the cut for the special-bag treatment.

      He perused the endless ads for gag gifts, magic kits, body building guides and footlockers filled with a thousand army men.

      His eyes paused on the all too familiar ad for the Amazing Sea Serpents! In the ad, a smiling family of creatures that looked like a cross between mermaids and anacondas, with almost human faces, waved back at him from the comfort of their underwater city.

      Sea serpents make the ultimate pet! No mess! Low maintenance! Just add water and let the fun begin!

      Patrick had always wanted to order the Amazing Sea Serpents, but his parents absolutely forbid him from, in their words, wasting his money on worthless junk.

      “All that stuff is a scam,” his father had once said. “When I was a kid, I ordered what was supposed to be a working rocket that could break the atmosphere. What I got was a balsa wood stick and a big rubber band.”

      But that was then, in the old days.

      There were laws and stuff now about scams like that. If it was in a comic book, it had to be tested and approved. Stan Lee would never pull one over their eyes. Excelsior!

      “We should order the Amazing Sea Serpents,” Patrick said.

      David had his eyes closed, his hands clasped behind his head. “Huh?”

      “They only cost $4.95. You get the serpents, their tank and everything.”

      Now David sat up. He’d wanted his own for a long time, too, but his parents felt the same way about the whole business as Patrick’s.

      “We have the money,” Patrick said. “And even after that, we’ll still have fourteen bucks for the new comics when they come in.”

      “What about our parents?”

      “We don’t have to tell them. It says it takes six weeks for delivery. It’ll be summer vacation by then. My mom and dad will be at work by eight every morning. I’ll be the only one home when the serpents come in the mail. We can set them up in your basement.”

      David’s basement had been a downstairs apartment until the tenants had moved out months earlier. Until his family found new ones, the place was all theirs. Most of the time, they just read comics on the overstuffed couch that had been left behind, eating from brown bags filled with chewy Swedish fish.

      “I’ll get an envelope,” David said, running to the dining room.

      Patrick found a pair of scissors and cut the ad out. He would never take scissors to X-Men or Spider-Man.

      At least this way, Wonder Woman was serving a noble purpose.

      He filled out the order form and David sealed it in the envelope along with a five-dollar bill, licking the stamp. They were going to be out a nickel, but what did it matter?

      “I can’t wait to see what they look like,” David said, a grin splitting his face in half. “I bet they won’t be boring as all those beta fish we’ve had.”

      On his way home up the street, Patrick dropped it in the mailbox.

      Six weeks couldn’t come fast enough.

      Chapter Two

      Nothing was better than the first day of summer vacation.

      Nothing, that is, until Patrick checked the mail and saw the box with a return address from the Bakura Corporation. That’s where the Amazing Sea Serpents came from. It took all his will power not to tear the box open. But he’d promised to wait to do it with David.

      The box was awful small.

      In the ad, it looked like the Amazing Sea Serpents lived in this huge tank surrounded by a veritable underwater metropolis. Whatever was in the box would barely be enough room for a baby hamster to bop around.

      Patrick changed quickly out of his school clothes and ran a brush over his teeth. He sprinted to David’s house with the box under his arm.

      “David!” he shouted through the screen door.

      “Oh hey, Patrick,” David’s mother said, stepping into the hallway. “Come in. David’s in his room.”

      “Thanks, Mrs. Estrada.”

      “You want something for breakfast? I just made pancakes.”

      “That’s okay. I just ate three cinnamon Pop-Tarts.”

      He didn’t bother knocking on the door. David was sound asleep in his room. It was as cold as a walk-in freezer.

      “Wake up, lazy ass.”

      One eye popped open.

      “What the heck are you doing in my room?”

      “Look what I got in the mail just now.” He held the box over his face.

      David rubbed his eyes and sat up. “Oh damn! I almost forgot about them.”

      “Come on, get dressed so we can put it all together.”

      They set up shop in the kitchen of the downstairs apartment. Taking turns tearing the brown wrapper and slicing open the box, they carefully extracted the diminutive, oblong plastic tank. Inside it were two packets and a bottle that looked like something eyedrops would come in.

      There was a small radio on the windowsill. Patrick turned it on while he shook the box. A folded-up paper landed in his palm. Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” came drifting through the lone speaker.

      “Nope,” David said, turning the dial until he hit on “Call Me” by Blondie.

      “All the directions are in Chinese or something,” Patrick said, unfolding the square of onionskin paper.

      “We don’t need ’em,” David said. “The steps are written on the bottle and packets.”

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