Mr. Anderson's Birthday Party (A Halloween Short-Short Story)

Dear Sister Hilda:

I am submitting this for the English assignment you gave us, to write a story about something true.  You are going to think I am making all this up, but I’m not.  It really happened.  My Mom will back me up, if necessary.  Even my brother Patrick will back me up, because he won’t tell a lie to a nun.

Theresa McMahon

My parents love old houses.

When I was nine years old, Mom and Dad bought a corner lot in our little town “for a song.”  The lot had a peeling, two-story wood frame house with one of those big verandas that had a swing.  It took them almost a year to bring that old house up to where it could be inhabited again.  It cost them more to renovate that old fossil than they had paid to buy it. When they were finished, though, it was really lit.  Mom planted a flower garden, and Dad re-seeded the lawn.  We moved in right after my tenth birthday.

People would drive or walk by our house, stop and take pictures.  “You should see what the McMahons have done to the old Wilkerson house!  It’s a miracle!” was what everyone was saying.  This got to be a real pain.

We had all heard the stories about the house being haunted, but nothing bad had ever happened there, and if there were any ghosts around, they didn’t seem to mind us or all the renovations.

One night, shortly after we moved in, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth after having washed my face, including the back of my neck and behind my ears (because Mom loved to pull surprise inspections).  I heard three loud POPs coming from the bathtub.  When I looked, I saw a tiny red bubble sneaking up through the drain and a yellow one trying to hang onto the faucet.  I screamed.

I heard loud footsteps on the stairway, and Mom and my little brother Patrick slammed into the bathroom.

“What is it?” screamed Mom.

All I could do was point to the bathtub.  By this time, it was filling with tiny bubbles of many bright colors, coming from the faucet and the drain.

“Shit!” said Patrick.  His mouth was hanging down about a foot.

“Don’t say that word!” said Mom.

Patrick managed to close his mouth and swallow.  “Sorry, Mom.  It just came out.”

“It must be coming through the pipes,” said Mom.  “We’ll have to go check them out.”  Mom is good in a crisis.

“You mean the pipes in the basement?” I asked.  “But Mom, it’s spooky down there!”

“You two won’t have to go down,” she said.  “I’ll go down.  You’ll just have to stand at the top of the stairs, hold the door open so I can run up fast if I have to and keep a flashlight ready, just in case.”

“Well, okay,” I said.  “But maybe we should call the Psychic Hotline or something first.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Sorry.”

We ran down to the basement – well, Mom ran down to the basement.  Patrick and I just kind of hobbled downstairs and fell over each other on the way to the basement door, trying not to get there too fast.

“Move, you little zit!”

“YOU move!”

We finally reached the basement door, where Mom was waiting for us.  We remained at the top of the basement steps while she went down into the darkness.  For some stupid reason, the light switch is at the bottom of the stairs.

Mom turned on the light.  This made the space even spookier.  It was so quiet I could hear Patrick breathing behind me.  Mom went over and inspected the pipes, but didn’t find anything.  She couldn’t find anything by the boiler, either.

“There’s nothing down here,” she said.  “I guess I’ll just have to call a plumber in the morning.”

She turned off the light and started to come back up the steps.  She was stopped dead by a voice that whispered, “Mrs. McMahon?”

Mom whipped around and turned the light on again.  “Who’s there?” she demanded.

“It’s only I,” said the voice, and a middle-aged woman in a long, pale dress suddenly appeared at the other end of the basement.

All three of us screamed.

“I am so sorry,” said the woman.  “I keep forgetting that one mustn’t materialize so quickly in front of people who are still living in their bodies.  Please forgive me.”

“Who are you?” asked Mom.

“Oh, where are my manners!  I am Rachel Wilkerson.  This was my family home.  We all perished in the influenza pandemic of 1918.  My sister Leah and I were the last ones to die.  She’s here, too.  Leah, come and materialize.  We have visitors.”

Another voice answered, “I can’t.  I’m not dressed for receiving.”

“Oh, nonsense!  You’re a ghost!  Nobody cares how you look.  You’re keeping our visitors waiting!”

A head, two hands and two feet appeared.

“Leah, this is Mrs. McMahon and these are her two children.  They live here now.”

“I am pleased to meet you, Mrs. McMahon.”

“Uh, likewise, I’m sure,” said Mom.  “Can either one of you tell me why we are getting colored bubbles in our bathtub upstairs?”

“Oh, goodness!” said Leah.  Her two hands clapped both sides of her face.  “They must have gotten into the water somehow!  How awful!  It’s my fault.  You see, we are having a birthday party for poor Mr. Anderson …”

“The man up the street who died recently?” asked Mom.

“Yes, indeed,” said Leah.  “We felt so sorry for him because he never had a birthday party when he was alive, so we are giving him one now.  I was trying to make colored bubbles and I guess I did something wrong.”

“Don’t worry,” said Rachel.  “We won’t do that again.  You can live in peace.  In fact, we will be leaving soon.  We have been waiting all these years for someone to come and fix this house and make it beautiful again, and you have done a creditable job …”

“A wonderful job,” said Leah.

“Yes,” said Rachel.  “Leah and I have decided that it’s time for us to get a new evaluation and, hopefully, progress on our way to the heavenly realm.  We’ll be sure to say good-bye before we leave.”

With that, they both disappeared, leaving the basement as quiet as before, but a lot less spooky.

“That was Gucci!” said Patrick.

“It sure was!”  I said.

“Okay,” said Mom.  “That was enough excitement for one night.  To bed, both of you!”

Two weeks later, we found a note in our mailbox from Rachel and Leah, saying good-bye and thanking us for being good to their house.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Anderson,
wherever you are now!

Sloppy Shopping

My shopping lists are useless.  I can never go to any supermarket, dollar store, bookstore or any other place that sells stuff and come out with only the thing(s) I intended to buy.

When I say never, I mean never, as in at no time whatsoever in anyone’s dreams.

I have the same problem with online shopping.  It’s my way of giving happiness to the many employees and shareholders of Amazon.com and other favored shopping sites, who depend on people like me to keep the business going and the stock values up.  I love to spread such joy.  It makes my life complete, along with the latest Stephen King novel, a 5-pound bag of M&Ms and that Capri set that I couldn’t resist because it had a picture of a cute puppy on one leg.

To illustrate the problem, let’s say that I am planning to do a small supermarket shopping.  I have searched my cupboards and my fridge to see what’s missing and have come up with the following list, or something like it:

1 quart of milk

1 quart of half & half (because I must have it in my coffee)

½ rotisserie chicken

1 loaf of whole wheat bread

A couple of apples or pears

A pint of frozen yogurt

Two or three frozen meals (because I hate to cook)

That seems sensible for a single person, right?

Think again.

Once I get into the store, choose a shopping cart and begin to wander around the aisles, anything can happen, and it does.

You can bet your last dollar that my final haul will look more like this:

1 quart of milk

1 quart of half & half

Some of those little Laughing Cow Babybel cheeses that are hard to open but so easy to eat

½ rotisserie chicken

1 loaf of whole wheat bread

4 hunks of Mexican bread

A bag of Double-Stuff Oreos

A couple of apples or pears

A couple of bananas

2 pounds of grapes

A pint of vanilla gelato

A half-gallon of frozen yogurt

A 2-liter bottle of A&W Root Beer, just because I used to drink it in college

Five Lean Cuisine meals, because they are on special

There’s more, but you get the idea.

What should have been an easy haul has turned into four double bags of groceries that are so heavy I am forced put them down on the sidewalk to rest my arms four times while walking the equivalent of three blocks home.

I would seek help for this compulsion, but then I wouldn’t have the dubious pleasure of buying “forbidden,” non-listed things like Double-Stuff Oreos and big containers of frozen yogurt.

What fun is that?

Harmony’s Cat Café and Spa

The Entrepreneur

Someone leaked the news to my cat Harmony that a new Cat Café is opening in Boston.[1]  This put an idea into her little cat brain.  Instead of opening a café where humans can come to have coffee or tea and play with adoptable kitties, she would open a café and spa for cats.  It would be the ultimate feline luxury experience.

I told her not to even think of doing that.  I forgot that she never listens to me.

She didn’t waste any time.  I went out the other day to run some errands and came home to find that my living room had been turned into a cattery.  Every stray and outdoor cat in the neighborhood was there.  Somehow, my cupboard had been raided and all my bowls and small plates were now on the living room floor, filled with milk, water, dry cat food or catnip.  Two tabbies sitting by themselves in a corner were drinking cream from my Rosenthal porcelain teacups.

The kitties nearest the catnip-filled bowls were either running in circles or sprawled on the floor, stoned out of their pint-sized heads.

Harmony saw me standing at the door with my mouth open and came over to me.  She bumped her nose on my leg and rubbed herself against me.  She always does this when she’s trying to butter me up.

“What in this entire universe and beyond have you done?”  I asked, when I could finally speak.

“Isn’t it great?” said Harmony.  “They each paid me one treat to get in, and I have a two-drink minimum at two treats per drink.  Spa treatments cost extra.”

“How did you get my things down from the cupboard?”  I asked.

“I paid the Great Dane across the street to take them down.  He’s clumsy and his breath smells like five-day-old farts, but he’s tall and strong.”

“Get those little hairballs out of here!”

“I can’t do that.  I took payment from them and promised them a complete experience.  If they don’t get what they paid for they’re going to shred every piece of furniture in the apartment.”

I rolled my eyes.  “How long do they plan to stay?”  I asked.

“Uh, well,” said Harmony, “These are the ones who wanted spa treatment.  That’s where you come in.  You have to be the one to give the treatments.  We couldn’t get any other human to do it.”

“Oh no!”  I said.  “Count me out.  I’m not going to take a chance on getting my arms and face shredded!”

“They won’t scratch you,” said Harmony.  “They want the treatments.  They said so themselves, and I made them hold up their right paws and swear they wouldn’t attack my workers.”

I agreed to become a kitty manicurist/bath attendant/masseuse for the afternoon, until we could get all the clients to leave.  I was sorry I made this agreement.  Harmony had lied.  Even though they had all asked for their treatments, they reacted to being massaged, bathed and manicured the same way almost every cat reacts.  By the time the last cat left the apartment, my arms looked like they had been put into a bread slicer and there was blood all over the bathroom.

I put alcohol and bandages on my arms, then proceeded to clean up the mess in the living room.  Harmony gave me some nose nudges and leg rubs, but I ignored her.  I was pissed.

After I cleaned up the living room and washed the dishes, I found Harmony in the living room.  Cats can’t smile, but, if they could, she would have given me the biggest fake smile she could manage.

“If you ever do anything like that again,” I said.  “I’m having cat for breakfast!”

“Ah, you know you love me,” she said.  “I’m little and cute and funny.”

She walked away, slipped into the closet and lay down for a nap.

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[1] https://www.purrcatcafe.com

UPDATED TALES: Jack and the Beanstalk

Maybe there's a beanstalk in there somewhere.

Somewhere in Iowa lived a kid named Jack Dahg, who lived with his mother, Daisy Dahg, and two twin siblings, Harry Dahg and Emma Dahg.  They were the poorest family in the region.  Jack’s father, Digger (the one Daisy called “Dirty Dahg”), had died and left everything to his other family in Missouri.  The Iowa Dahgs and the Missouri Dahgs had not been aware of each other, but they had made each other’s acquaintance at the reading of the will.  The lawyer and the sheriff were still in therapy.  The two families hated each other.  Being related wasn’t their idea.

Jack was a teenager and his two siblings were in the Second Grade, so he had to help support the family.  Mrs. Dahg had a minimum wage job at a local Chick Fil-A, so the family needed a second income to keep them just below the poverty line.  Jack was allergic to work.  It gave him a rash.  He decided to help support his family by becoming a burglar.

After his fifth arrest, Jack started to believe that he had no talent for breaking and entering.  He fainted at the sight of blood, so becoming a professional assassin was not an option, either.  He was sitting on the front steps of his home one afternoon, when Old Man Caruthers walked by and saw him.

“Hey, Jack!  Why so glum?” said the old man.  Old Man Caruthers was the kind of perpetually cheerful guy who made everyone want to punch him in the throat.

“Oh, let’s see,” said Jack.  “My father died.  He left everything to his other family.  Harry and Emma need dental work.  We have had nothing but potatoes for dinner the last three nights.  I can’t make it as a burglar or a hitman.  Life sucks.”

“Ah, don’t feel bad,” said Old Man Caruthers.  “Tell ya what.  I been savin’ this, figurin’ I’d keep it myself, but you need it more ‘n I do.”  He reached into his coat pocket, pulled something out and showed it to Jack.

“That’s just three bean seeds,” said Jack.

“Yeah, but they been shot with Miracle Gro.  They’re guaranteed to grow taller and thicker than any others.  You and your family will have all the beans you can eat and you can sell the rest to schools and prisons.  You can use the gas created by the beans to power up an electric generator so you won’t get an electric bill.  Just make everybody fart into a vacuum cleaner bag, then attach the bag to your generator and let all the gas out into it.  You give me your Mom’s old genuine cow leather recliner chair and I’ll give you these.”

“Thanks,” said Jack.  He reached for the seeds.

Jack took out his cell phone, called a couple of friends and asked them to come over.  The friends moved the heavy recliner from the living room and carried it the two blocks to Old Man Caruthers’ house.[1]  Old Man Caruthers gave Jack the three seeds, then danced down the sidewalk after the two friends, anticipating a cozy evening of falling asleep in front of his big flat-screen TV[2], watching movies on Netflix.

Jack planted the three seeds in his mother’s flower garden, between the snapdragons and the bachelor buttons.

When Daisy came home from work she found her recliner chair missing.

“Okay.  What did you do with the recliner?” she demanded.

“You’re gonna be happy when I tell you,” said Jack.  He proceeded to tell her the whole story about the three bean seeds and Old Man Caruthers, including the suggestion of the use of bean gas to generate electricity.

“Are you insane?  You gave a genuine cow leather recliner for three bean seeds!”

“Well … yeah.  I thought you’d be thrilled.”

“Thrilled!  How’s this for thrilled?”  She slapped him on the back of his head, hard enough to make him stagger.

“Ow.”

“Go rob a 711!  Get arrested again.  Give away all our furniture!  Break my heart and kill me!”

“Shit!  Try to do something nice and this is the thanks I get!”

“Watch your language, you little f**k!”

Jack went to his room, shut the door and stayed put all night without coming down for dinner.  The next morning, he went down to the kitchen and found his mother and two siblings sitting at the table, staring at him.

“You’re gonna get it!” said Harry.

“What did I do now?” asked Jack.

“Take a look out the back door,” said Daisy.  She was using her calm-before-the-storm voice, soft and monotone, which sent a tornado warning into Jack’s brain.

Jack opened the kitchen door and stepped outside.  There, among scattered and broken flowers, stood the biggest plant he had ever seen.  It was thick, and so tall he couldn’t see the top of it, which disappeared in a cloud.

“Whoa!” said Jack.

Daisy’s voice shot into his head from the kitchen and traveled down his body, paralyzing his nervous system.  “You have one hour to get rid of that monstrosity and get my chair back!”

Jack took a startled leap and landed in the back yard, on his butt.  He stood up, grabbed his sore buttocks and flew over to the massive beanstalk.  He grabbed a branch and scrambled up onto it, hoping to climb high enough to hide until he could come up with a plan to get out of trouble.  He kept climbing.  When he reached the top of the cloud he looked around.[3]

There was a long driveway leading to the biggest mansion he had ever seen, even in pictures.[4]  The grounds on either side of the driveway were well kept, and of such brilliant green that it hurt Jack’s eyes to look at them.

“I don’t think I’m in Iowa anymore,” he said.

He slid off the beanstalk, brushed himself off, slicked his hair down and straightened his clothes.  Then he started up the driveway.  He knew he should go back down and go home, but he figured that whatever was in that house up ahead was less dangerous than his mother right now.  He continued until he reached the front door.

He rang the doorbell, which played a phrase from “Big Bad John.”[5]  The door was opened by an enormous pair of red shoes – or, at least, that was how it appeared to Jack.  He looked up and saw that the shoes were attached to a 20-foot woman with bright red hair, dressed in a halter top and a pair of tight jeans.

“Whatever you’re sellin’, we already got some,” she said, and started to close the door.

“Wait!” said Jack.  “I’m not selling anything.  I’m hiding from my mother for a while and I wondered if you could give me a Pop Tart or something.  I haven’t had dinner or breakfast.”  After everything else that had happened, he wasn’t surprised to see a giant woman in a mansion above a cloud.

“Aw, poor kid!”  said the giant woman.  “Come in and have a nice breakfast.  But you gotta go back down that beanstalk before 1:00, ‘cause that’s when my husband comes down for lunch, and he gets real antisocial when he’s hungry.”

The lady giant picked Jack up and carried him into the house, where she deposited him on top of a 40-foot-long wooden table.  In a few moments, she returned with a box of Count Chocula cereal, a quart of milk, a spoon and a giant-sized shot glass, which was just small enough to serve as a bowl for Jack.

“Thanks,” said Jack.

“You’re welcome, you poor little thing,” said the lady giant.

While he was eating his cereal, Jack heard a guitar, followed by a bass voice spilling out what sounded like a good old down home country song.  The words went like this:

I knew I wasn’t the kind of man you like

That day you laughed and called me a dirty bum.

You broke my heart just like a steely spike.

Fee fie fo fum.

Jack stopped and listened to the song.  He liked it.  The voice sounded like a table being sanded, but it was interesting.  The second verse, the bridge and the third verse of the song were like the first, and the voice didn’t get any better, but Jack had tears in his eyes when the song ended.

“He sings real pretty, don’t he,” said the lady giant.  “That’s my husband.  He’s a singer-songwriter.  Trouble is, people take one look at him and run away ‘cause he’s a giant.  There’s lotsa prejudice against giants, even in the music industry.  Nobody wants us around.  We’re real nice people when you get to know us, but you can’t get to know someone when you’re runnin’ away so fast you’re makin’ a dust storm, like one guy done to me once.  All I was doin’ was askin’ directions.”

“If your husband can’t get work,” asked Jack, “How can you afford this huge mansion?”

“His father was a Wall Street giant,” she answered.  “My husband don’t hafta make a living ‘cause we’re pretty rich.”

Any mention of money and people who had it put Jack’s brain synapses into instant high gear.  A few ideas popped around, and he settled on one of them.

“Why doesn’t your husband form his own music company and put out his own songs with his own singing?  Then he wouldn’t have to worry about scaring everyone when he shows up for an audition.  And he could open his own club, right up here, and have a two-drink minimum and a cover charge and everything.”

The lady giant called her husband, who slammed the upstairs door and stomped downstairs.

“Bonnie June, what the hell do you want?” he bellowed.  “I told you never interrupt me when I’m creatin’!”

“Ashley, you behave yourself!  We got company!”

“You takin’ in stray humans again?  Don’t we have enough f***in’ trouble?”

“He’s our guest and he has a good idea for your music.  Shut your filthy mouth and listen!”

The giant glared at his wife for a few seconds, sat at the table with a huge thump that made the house rock back and forth, and looked at Jack.

“Well?” said the giant.  “I don’t have all day.”

Jack explained his idea, and the three of them wound up having a long, detailed conversation.  They worked out all the details of an agreement, with the help of the giant’s brother-in-law, who lived in their pool house and had a law degree from Cloud University.[6]  The contract was drawn up, handshakes were exchanged and Jack said good-bye and climbed back down the beanstalk, carrying his copy in his pocket.

Daisy was not angry when she saw him.  On the contrary, she hugged him, kissed him and cried about how she thought he was lost, how the police wouldn’t help because he hadn’t been gone that long, and how worried she had been.  She promised she would never yell at him or call him names again.  Jack cried, too, and promised he would behave like a saint from then on and make her proud of him.

That was the beginning of the ABJ Music Company and the stellar career of Ashley the Giant.  Jack started out as a simple agent, but ended up as CEO of a multi-billion-dollar company.  Daisy gave her boss the finger and never set foot in a Chick-Fil-A again.  She went to KFC instead.  Harry and Emma enjoyed being rich for a change.  Old Man Caruthers wished he hadn’t given up those bean seeds so easily.

There is probably a moral to this story, somewhere.

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[1] Jack supervised the work, of course.

[2] The one he conned his brother-in-law into buying for him by giving him a fake stock tip

[3] I know.  This can’t be true because Jack would have frozen to death that high up.  This is a fairy tale.  Work with me on this.

[4] See footnote no. 3, above, except for that part about freezing to death.  I already covered that.

[5] Jimmy Dean and Roy Acuff, Big Bad John.  Recorded by Jimmy Dean and released in 1961.

[6] The only university that had dormitory facilities for giants.