Crack Attack: A Collection of One-Shots and Other Disturbing Shit

Noochonomics: An Introductory Course

I see them eying my milk. My chocolate-iest of all chocolate milks. I had to order it from Winder Farms to even get it down here in the States during the trip and these fuckers all want to take a sip. I see them check around to see if I'm watching before they get a glass and steal a bit. But a bit and a bit isn't a bit. It adds up. You see, boys... That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. And being the bona fide gentleman I am, I'm going to teach you classless udder lickers how the world really works.

You can eat lick someone's food when they leave the room and you can steal from someone's wallet while they sleep, but you don't kick a man in the balls and you don't drink his chocolate milk. Even Big Foot knows this and let's be clear – he isn't the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Do you know what you do when human decency and common sense fail? You bring out the negative reinforcement. We're going to go full Skinner on this one, and I'm sure somewhere out there, six feet under, even Sigmund Freud and Michel Foucault would be proud. I'll make them face their milky Oedipus Complexes while they're serving their time in the porcelain prison. This is a whole new version of the panopticon. It's a shame Merome only has three toilets in their house for six victims, maybe seven if Ryan shows up.

I pull the car back into Mitch's garage and breathe in a sigh of contentment while I listen to the gears of the garage door opener creak and grind up above. I can already smell the sweet, sugary scent of revenge and I'm not even in the kitchen yet. Everyone's outside chilling about on the back porch or in the pool, being their usual clueless, clowny selves. I watch for a minute to see if anyone is going to run inside to see what I brought back for them, but no one feels like being a defenseless baby bird today. What a shame. Could have saved them all quite a bit of pain.

I dig the empty cardboard carton of my silky sweet chocolate milk out of the trash can, glad to see that no one has taken it upon themselves to actually compact the trash in the trash compactor. And Mom said lazy never paid off! I don't bother rinsing it out – a little food poisoning is the least of their worries this time around. I grab the half gallon of cheap Walmart brand chocolate milk I just bought and pour enough of it in the cardboard carton to fill it about a third of the way. Next, I grab the family size bottle of Miralax Maximum Strength Laxative and pour it in, the bitter scent of chocolate-flavored milk of magnesia curling the hairs in my nose. Finally, I go to the fridge and dig around until I find the bottle of chocolate syrup I saw this morning and I squeeze enough of it in the bottle to hide the taste of the Chemical X, as Mitch would call it. Jerome thought the Death Cups were bad; wait until he downs a glass of this.

I screw the little yellow lid back on the carton and give it a good ol' shake-aroonie before I put it back in the infamous fridge. I hide the bottle of syrup in the nether region of the bottom drawer where no one else would dare to venture just in case I need it later, and I toss the empty laxative bottle in the compactor. With the flick of a switch, the evidence is gone, crushed beyond both visibility and recognition. I do a second look over the kitchen, making sure I didn't miss anything. Not a drop. I grab the rest of the fresh half gallon of untainted chocolate milk and head out to the back porch, waving it past Lachlan's and Preston's heads as I walk by them. Just to tempt them.

"What's up, boyos?" Jerome pulls his sunglasses up just enough that he can peer under them at me, and I raise my bottle of sweet success up to toast him before I take a good swig of it. By this time, even Vik has put his phone down and Rob and Mitch have paused their game of ping pong to watch.

"Goddammit, Nooch. Not again."

"Cheers, mate." All I can do is smile.