I’ve told this in another thread, but it’s worth telling again.
I was about 15 or 16, one nice summer night me and three of my friends were walking home from a party we stayed at later than we were supposed to. Three of us lived within about 4 houses of each other, the fourth was on the next block. We started getting back towards our houses around 2:30 AM. Our friend T, who was the “kid living with the step-father and crazy mother” and who had essentially no rules to live by, told us that we should all just stay at his house, and risk it in the morning, because our dads were going to stomp us when we got home. D, who lived next door to T looked at me, said he’d take his chances. I did too. R, who lived on the next block said T obviously didn’t know HIS dad, because his dad only got madder every moment.
So, we all said “g’night T”, and all walked home. I walked in, as quietly as I could, and just as I got to my room, heard my dad say “good morning”.
Ah fuck.
At 5 AM, I hear my dad’s footsteps coming down the hall. Into my room, and drops the car wash bucket on my bedroom floor. Tosses the mitt on my face. Reminds me we have four cars, and it’s only going to get hotter the longer I wait. Ok, fine, this isn’t so bad. I stop in the kitchen, grab some Frosted Flakes or something like that, and my mom walks into the room.
She hands me a pile of letters to drop in the mailbox, reminds me there is a huge pile of pop bottles to take back to the grocery store for the refund (remember that? then you’re old!!), and that my room looks like that place in Nevada they assplode nuk-u-lar bombs.
Geez, they’re all on me. My sister is loving this, like she never stayed out late.
First things first, the mailbox is around the corner, just across the street from Tand D’s houses. As I turn the corner, I am hit by the sight of ambulances, police cars, state police cars, and a van from the coroner’s office. I get to the mailbox and see D’s sister sitting on the curb just staring and crying silently.
“Uh, Pam…what’s going on?”
“They’re dead”
“Pam, WHAT’S happening?”
She gets up, hugs me and starts crying on my shoulder, which under other conditions I would have been surprised and overjoyed and seriously aroused, but today just makes me worry more.
Turns out, here’s what happened. T gets home, and sees stepdad sitting at the kitchen table with a friend in from town. They’re tossing back shots of Jack, and as it came out later, T joined them for a bit, when he went to his room, and step-pappy went downstairs to his room.
About 4:30, friend for a reason no one ever got out of him, goes into the garage, finds a Very Heavy Hammer, almost a sledge I think. Walks into the bedroom where T’s 12 year old sister and her friend who’s sleeping overnight are. First two dead.
Then into T’s room, who of course, having arrived a bit drunk, then having had some more was probably pretty out. Moments later, he is also dead.
Then downstairs where this time, there are two in the room. Decides his friend has to go first. We figure later, that Step-husband is chosen to be first because (A) Wife will be easier to handle if she waked up, or (2) He had ‘other’ plans for her, because while way way insane, she was probably quite the 70’s MILF, provided you didn’t know she was crazy.
Anyway, one more down. Except he woke up the wife, who while crazy, and naked managed to dive out her basement, ground level window and run across the street, screaming like…well, like a crazy, naked, scared woman. The neighbor is woken up to the sight of, well you can imagine to the sight of what.
Instant chill goes through me. Because, yes folks, had I wavered just a bit, I’d have been right there on the floor in the sleeping bag next to T’s bed where I’d crashed probably a half dozen times before.
The only good thing that ever came of the thing was that D’s Pam. who had always treated me like her brother’s icky friend started talking to me like a friend. And while I seldom kiss & tell, I do have to point out that by Thanksgiving we were swapping bodily fluids like bodily fluid swappers. Which later led to one of those “stop doing that with my kid sister…no I won’t…yes you will…no I won’t” fights that neither of us took seriously, but it is worth pointing out that it happened on the front lawn of The Killing House, where T’s mother STILL LIVED!~!~!, and where she came running out telling us to stop, there’s been enough violence!
I told my dad about that night a few months later. We decided it would be good for mom to not have to worry about it. So I waited until I was about 30 to tell her. She was not pleased, said she never liked that T, he always was trouble.
PS: After I came home from the mailbox an hour or so later and told my folks, my dad walked to the corner, saw what was going on, talked to a couple neighbors, came back and helped me wash the cars, then we all went out for pizza that night. I always wondered if he knew who I was out with that night, and how close I came. I had a few different groups of friends, and it wouldn’t have been a good assumption I’d be with that particular group, but still…