Short Scary Stories

Pale and Afraid.

"Quick, grab some drinks and some seats, let's go!" I yelled to Dominic as he fumbled through my uncle's fridge. The night of the Super Bowl, I always like my drink on hand and a bag of chips before the game starts. Likewise, I prefer to send my best friend Dominic into the kitchen to do it for me. As a result, I was left sitting on the couch waiting for him to get back with the stash. That is, the snacks.

I heard the toilet from across the room, and the sink followed it. My Uncle Nate emerged from the restroom refreshed and ready for the game.

"Let's go boys; time for some football!"

As my uncle declined from standing and flopped onto the couch, Dominic emerged with our drinks and tossed one to me. At fifteen, Dom and I probably shouldn't have been drinking beers, but my uncle is just that cool. He did warn us that pairing the chips with beer and the various chocolate snacks he had laid out in front of us would give us vivid nightmares, but he didn't know the science to prove it.

Dominic popped open his can of beer, and I opened my own. Oddly, Uncle Nate was sipping on a cola instead, but there was no reason to complain.

Three guys, drinking soda and beer, eating chips, watching the Super Bowl in a cardboard box of an apartment; it's the American dream. This guy knows how to live.

"Alright, here we go!" My uncle grabbed some chips from the bag as the Super Bowl started.

****

"Shitty game, huh?" I yawned to Uncle Nathan. I turned to see him cleaning up the mess we had left; soda, chips, candy wrappers, and vomit. Don't ask how the vomit got there.

"Yeah Jeff, but at least our team won."

Dominic just laughed, "Uncle Nathan, the Browns versus the Bears isn't exactly a great match up anyways. The Browns are the best in the league; the Bears are the worst."

My uncle just snickered in attentiveness to the obvious mistruth of this statement. The Browns aren't exactly a very talented bunch of athletes. That's not to say the Bears are though. Let's just say it was a sloppy, unexciting Super Bowl.

It took about ten minutes to relocate the disarray of the living room to the garbage can in the kitchen. We all pitched in, but all I had to do was wash the barf off the boring, brown and dingy carpet. Eventually though, we all retreated to our bedrooms for the night.

"I get the bed, Jeff!" Dominic shouted tossing his bag of clothes and video games onto my bed.

"I give you the bed every weekend Dom, you gotta let me sleep there this time!"

"Jeff, I'm the guest!"

"I am too!"

I picked up my pillow and whipped it across the room at Dominic, making contact with his face. It was just a pillow, so all it did was make him smirk and leap across the half-made bed to knock me over. It was a very unfair fight, as usual. Every weekend, we come over my uncle Nathan's apartment, play games, watch sports, and when we get to bed, we find something to argue about and we wrestle. I can never manage to win, since Dom's a beast. He's not on any sports teams or anything at school, but I think he lifts weights. That's enough to trump my nonexistent fighting abilities and lanky body.

The fight ended with me tapping out of a triangle choke, just as my Uncle shouted from the other room to "Go to sleep!"

"You really need to start working out, Jeff." Dominic laughed matter-of-factly as he set up my bed and hopped into it.

"You need to stop working out." I mumbled as I tossed some blankets and a pillow onto the floor.

It took about five minutes for Dominic to start snoring, but I was awake well into the morning. I checked my watch with a click of the glow button; one thirty. My left ankle itched a little bit so I scratched it with the sock on my right foot. I sighed and fluffed my pillow up against the leg of the bedpost. I figured if I curled up comfortable enough, and spaced out, I could lull myself to sleep soundly. It came as a surprise.