Peeves. Mike Waes Van

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СКАЧАТЬ you looking at me like that? What happened?”

      Thankfully, Dad was totally in the mood to answer that last question. “What happened, Leslie, is that you screwed up our schedules – AGAIN.”

      Lucy had already run upstairs to avoid getting roped into the drama. But I couldn’t pull myself away. It was like watching a car crash you’re powerless to stop.

      “I didn’t ‘screw up’ our schedules, Dale; you just never bother to listen to anyone.”

      Dad scoffed. “Oh, I hear you. Trying to control everything and everyone as usual.” And from there came a familiar litany of complaints – the missed opportunities, the forgotten anniversaries, the lack of empathy, the time we got stuck at that gas station on the way to Big Moose Lake. (Dad locked the keys inside the car!) I knew exactly how the rest would go and that it wouldn’t stop until one of them said something mean enough to end it. I didn’t need to stick around to witness that part. So, I trudged up the stairs after Lucy and shut the door to my model room in my model home right above my not-so-model parents, who I could still hear shouting.

      “Fire alarm?! After what Slim already went through today? Did you WANT him to have another episode?”

      “Slim was fine! He is fine! Well, mostly. And anyway, my focus group today was for a new treatment that could end up helping him when it’s released.”

      “Oh God, you sound just like that sociopathic boss of yours,” Mom shot back. “We agreed to this ‘medication vacation’,” she continued. “And I’m looking for a new therapist, since he won’t actually talk to the one we’re wasting money on. I just haven’t found the—”

      “TIME?” Dad scoffed again. “All those years and God forbid I missed one of your imaginary deadlines for mowing the lawn or replacing the Brita filter, but you can’t hit a deadline on helping our son?”

      No matter what the fight started about, it always included what to do about me.

      I always seemed to be the problem.

      I lifted the bottom edges of a life-size Spider-Man poster (one of the few personal touches I was allowed to add to our model life), revealing an almost unnoticeable little door in the wall. It was built to be a storage cubby, but it’s got a little light inside and over the past few weeks, I’d filled it with blankets and comics and a good-size candy stash. It’s my “safe space”. No one knew about it. I crawled in, shut the door, put a pillow over my face, and screamed my frustrations into it. When I was done, I felt a little better. I opened an X-Men comic, grabbed some Twizzlers, and gnawed down three at a time until my parents’ shouting faded away and I heard Dad slam the door and leave.

      Everything got very still and very quiet after that. I almost felt like I could breathe again, but as soon as I realised that, I began to feel guilty. Like I was happy my parents weren’t together. And that’s how I would feel if it really were my fault. I got a sinking feeling in my gut, and it wasn’t from the candy. My thought spiral was picking up speed again, so I started doing the mental exercises my therapist gave me to reframe my negative thoughts. I told myself that I’m okay. That everything is going to be okay. Then I got specific. I remembered Pauline Salt saying PVZ is for anxiety issues. So I thought to myself, Maybe I’m starting to calm down because the PVZ is actually working. It was a long shot, but I doubled down on it with, Maybe I’ll go to bed tonight and wake up tomorrow and be cured of whatever is really wrong with me. And then I glanced at the mutant heroes in the glossy pages of my comic book and really went for it with the ridiculous, Or maybe I’ll even wake up and discover this exposure to PVZ has given me some sort of superpower! A moment later, reality set in and I started to worry about the far more likely scenario that the PVZ would give me hives or brain zaps or make me grow hair on my eyeballs.

      It turned out I wasn’t totally wrong. It did give me something. Or some things, to be precise. But they definitely weren’t superpowers. And they definitely weren’t a cure.

      

      The sound was the worst. Every morning. The BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP of my alarm clock ruined my day before I was even awake. Every morning I’d rip my eyes open, annoyed, and swear to destroy it. And every morning I’d totally lose the energy to do so as soon as it was off.

      That morning was no different. BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. I shot up in bed and swatted the clock, silencing it by knocking it onto the floor. Then I sneezed really hard – a giant “ACHOO!” that blew my head back onto the pillow, where I was determined to grab a few more minutes of shut-eye anyway.

      But before I could even get comfortable, it started again – BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. Without opening my eyes, I lunged for the clock, falling halfway off my bed in the process. I managed to find it and hit the snooze button – but nothing happened. Really annoyed now, I yanked the power cord out, but still, somehow, the BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP kept going. Confused, I gave up on sleeping more and opened my eyes instead.

      And there it was. I didn’t know WHAT it was. But it was there at the foot of my bed – a furry little potato sack with two arms, beady little eyes and massive ears that twitched around like satellite dishes. Its big, gaping, froglike mouth was spewing out this horrendous sound – BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.

      I fell out of bed, hitting my head on my nightstand when I tried to scramble away. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, desperate for this to be a bad dream, but the little purple creature just sat there, looking up at me with innocent eyes, almost smiling as it rhythmically droned on BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. It was awful. I covered my ears, but the little creature seemed pleased that I did that. As if it had accomplished a goal.

      I jumped back up on my bed, grabbed the pillows closest to me, and threw them at it as hard as I could. But the creature seemed oblivious. It hopped up on my desk, happy as can be, and began to explore what seemed like a whole new world. It walked over my keyboard. CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK. It paused and stomped again. CLICK. It smiled.

      CLICK CLICK CLICK CLICK came out of its mouth as “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!” came out of mine. It hopped off the desk and approached the foot of my bed. I panicked and scrambled across the bed to grab my Wolverine gloves off a shelf. SNIKT! The plastic claws popped out with the pre-programmed sound effect.

      SNIKT! SNIKT! SNIKT! SNIKT! the creature said, hopping up on my bed as if I’d asked it to follow me. I jumped off the other side, swiping my claws at it, but it just kept coming closer, seemingly excited by the sound of it alone. My foot got tangled in the dirty laundry on the floor and I fell with a THUD.

      THUD THUD THUD THUD it said, smiling, as it stepped closer.

      “Get back. Get away. STAY AWAY!” I shouted, swatting the air in its general direction.

      THUD THUD THUD THUD. It was almost on me. I clenched up and did the only reasonable thing left.

      “MOM!” I yelled. What else was I supposed to do?

      She came rushing into the room. “What is all the racket up …” and then she stopped short, her eyes wide in horror at what she saw. “I don’t believe this,” she said, stomping in like she was ready to take charge and shut the creature up. “Slim, I’ve told you a hundred times that the floor is not a laundry basket.” СКАЧАТЬ