i was all over him

2

Sorry this took a while to come out, I just wanted to make sure it was quality and writing this story can be a little draining emotionally. The flashback parts begin in 1952, and they'll end around 1955 or so, with the current parts taking place in the early 1960s. Hope you enjoy! x Milo

October 31, 1952

Looking back nearly a decade to remember the day I met Josh, everything was obscured by that dreamlike haziness that childhood so often casts. A lazy autumn floated in on golden tinged wings and froze the town of Columbus in a season so begotten by tradition that one felt they lived in an old painting back in the settlers' times. Often I looked down my street and imagined the clunking of hooves, a breath of steam, and a headless man cloaked in silks roaring down the street, until my mother would cease my daydreams with the honk of her automobile.

"Tyler, stop holding my hand, you're crumpling my sleeves," my brother begged in a tinny voice under his aluminum robot costume. I looked down to see that indeed, I had left a dent in his pipe arm that dad had wrestled off the washing machine and dusted off.

"Tyler, watch Jay's sleeves, we've only got two of those pipes and we won't be visiting a laundromat when the streets freeze over." My father grumbled, his nose in a newspaper, groping around blindly beneath his lawn chair for another beer. There was a distaste in his voice as he found the last can and plead with my mother, "While you're at the grosh, Honey, can you get another pack of PBRs? I think this is the last one."

"What are you dressed up as Daddy?" Jay asked by my side.

"I'm a dad on vacation."

"He'll be a drunkard if he keeps going, Tyler, seriously, watch your brother's sleeves. Maddy, buckle yourself up." My mother snapped from the car seat, in that same exhausted tone she maintained for 19 years. "Ok, I'm going to go get a new crown for Maddy, Chris this is your last beer, and don't let Jay out of your sight, Tyler."

"Why am I getting stuck with Jay? Why not Zack, he's still home."

"Zack is going out tonight, seeing that Tatum girl again."

"But he owed me from last time!"

"You weren't even planning on going out Tyler, I'm sure it won't hurt you or your new high school reputation to leave the house and watch your brother."

"But--"

The look that flashed across her face was one that stopped thought, stopped arguments immediately, and it was all that needed to be said. Words are unnecessary when mothers have trained themselves in the art of the look.

"Fine." I grumbled.

A great bright smile flashed my way as she patronizingly chimed, "Great! We're going now, you two be back by ten. Chris, no more drinks." My father only grunted in response.

In those early years, it always intimidated my mother to drive, she told me she was a city girl, and was used to city rules. Her family had never had a car, and just a year earlier, in her late thirties, my father had taken it upon himself to teach her. She kept her bible in the glove box, and a prayer always in her heart each time she rolled down the street.

And so my brother, father and I watched her, as she gingerly reversed her way out of the driveway, past ghouls and witches, but no headless horseman.

It took my brother a firm tug at my shoulder to bring me back. "What are we waiting for? There's candy out there and we're on a limited time schedule!"

Jay had meant it when he said schedule, I stifled a groan as he pulled out a folded piece of paper with a few faintly sketched boxes of our cul-de-sac and the streets on either side, scratched in names with arrows pointing to houses.