Sunday, July 20, 2008

"Peter And The Dead Men" - Page 5




“Pff, he doesn’t just seem crazy, he is crazy. I watch the windows up there sometimes at night, like, two or three in the morning after the midnight monster marathon is over? Lights all over the place, floating from room to room. Creeeee-py. You wanna piece of gum?”

The kid produced a grubby pack out of his pocket.

What the heck.

Peter walked over and was about to take a piece –

“Sorry if the wrapper’s sweaty, it’s been in my pants,” the kid said.

Ew.

Peter hesitated, then took it anyway.

“Uh, thanks. I’m Peter.”

The kid stuck out his hand through the rails in the fence. “Dill.”

Peter’s eyebrows shot up. “Dill?”

The kid glared. “No jokes about pickles. I heard ‘em all, I’m sick of ‘em, I don’t wanna hear ‘em. Got it?”

Peter shook his head. “I wasn’t going to say any pickle jokes.”

Dill relaxed. “Good. How old are you?”

“Nine and a half.”

“Ha! I’m almost ten, my birthday’s in November. I could beat you up.”

Peter looked down at Dill. Peter was almost a foot taller and probably twenty pounds heavier.

Yeah, right.

“But don’t worry, I won’t,” Dill reassured him. “I’m just sayin’. But you and me, we could beat up a twenty year-old.”

Peter frowned. “How do you figure that?”

“Nine and a half plus almost ten is…” Dill paused to count. “Okay, I don’t know what that is, but we could definitely beat up a sixteen year-old, cuz together we’re older.”

“Uh-huh.” Peter nodded, totally bewildered by Dill’s logic.

“So, you ready for school?”

“No.”

“Neither am I. I HATE school. Starts on Monday, though.” Dill looked around the yard like an old man taking stock of his life. “The time, where does it go?”

“It starts on Monday?” Peter asked in shock.

“Yeah.”

“That’s in two days!”

“No duh. I see they taught you the days of the week .”

“School doesn’t start for another two weeks in California!” Peter fumed. Great, he’d moved to a giant shack out in the middle of nowhere, and now they’d stolen two weeks of his summer from him, too.

“That where you’re from?” Dill asked.

“Yeah.”

“And school starts in two weeks there?”

“Yeah.”

“You think we can move there?”

“Uh…"

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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm reminded of Dill from To Kill a Mockingbird, though probably a good bit more troublesome.

Anonymous said...

Closet Monster -

That's exactly who I was thinking of when I wrote this. In fact, when I came up with the idea of a kid who's surrounded by the weirdness of a hundred horror movies, I thought, "He should have a fun, weird best friend/next door neighbor...just like Dill in MOCKINGBIRD." I went through about 50 names for the kid and finally decided that there IS no better name for a Dill-like character than "Dill," and just gave in.

I also resisted going back to read MOCKINGBIRD for quite a while because I was sure that the two Dills were too close for comfort, and that MOCKINGBIRD's Dill would be hilarious and make my Dill look like a sad, poor imitation. When I finally broke down, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they're very distinct, and that MOCKINGBIRD's Dill is...ahem...far more realistic and less of a cartoon character than mine. Which is fine, PETER is a horror/comedy. But I'd always thought of as TKAM's Dill as this hilarious crazy kid, yet he's a lot more subdued than I remember. And that's saying a lot, considering he was based on Truman Capote as a child.

Anonymous said...

I'm actually glad to hear that. I like your story thus far, it's started fresh and has my rapt attention, and I agree the Dills are fairly distinct while at the same time of a similar stock. I'll be sure to check up regularly on this story even if I don't comment regularly. Thanks for the read. ;D