“Why don’t you walk Janie around the block and introduce yourself to the neighborhood kids?” Mom asked as if there was something pleasant about the change of scenery.
“Mom, No”
“Okay, let me rephrase that, Jim, take your dog for a walk around the block and don’t come home until you’ve met another kid from the neighborhood.”
Ugh, I hate how she tries to force me to be social. If it were up to me, Janie and I would still be in our tree house in Alabama, where we belong.
“Well Jane, I guess we better go outside”
My loving little companion jumped up and followed me out the door to the curb where I began to walk the length of the street. A few blocks down from my house there was an empty lot that a group of kids were playing kickball in. This… bigger fellow… was up to kick and I stopped to watch. The ball went up really high and lobbed over the neighboring house, all the way down the street onto the porch of a not so inviting home. Of course, Janie had to chase it. As I went to chase after her one of the bigger of the kids ran ahead of me and stopped me.
“Just let the dog go”
“Are you crazy??? I’ve had her my whole life I’m not just gonna let her run off in a place she doesn’t know”
“You’re better off”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“We don’t go NEAR that house. It’s not that it’s haunted or that a mean old man lives inside that will yell at you for kicking a ball into his yard. It’s just…
“WHAT??? WHY CAN’T I GO GET MY DOG???”
“That house is alive, it’ll eat you.”
“Are you kidding me? I may be from out of town but I’m not stupid”
“Don’t believe me? Wait til’ the sun goes down”
So I did. I went home for dinner and waited for sunset. I was so worried about Janie. As soon as the sunset I went out to go after her. The same group of kids that were playing kickball were standing just short of the fence.
“Where’s Jane?”
“She’s right there on the porch but I’m telling you, wait for her to come out here. If you go up to that house you wont come back.”
“Whatever dude”
I walked up the sidewalk and sure enough I got about 50 feet inside the fence and something happened. The ground started shake, Janie ran out the fence and towards the house. Before I could follow her I looked at the house, and froze. The windows had become eyes, the front porch and its overhang a mouth, and the nearby trees had become hands. No joke, it was real. I heard all of the kids yelling at me to run but it all seemed like distant mumbles as the house hunched toward me, and just as the tree hands came close enough to grab me reality set in and I ran faster than I ever have in my whole life. Just barely escaping the grips of the man-eating house, I became the first and only kid to ever successfully escape. From that point forward Janie and I decided to be a bit more social, but we never ventured toward that house again.
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