Today I have a strange feeling, almost as if someone is following me.
I plunge onto my bed. My little sunshine sister follows me and destroys the wooden boards of the bedstead.
"Kaithleen is fat!"
The little dung beetle giggles gloatingly. I shove her away and get up groggily.
"MOM! I'm going to a friend's house!"
I announce, grab my jacket and yeet myself out of my house.
The way leads me to Manuel. I stare at the doorbell signs...
The names are all Greek to me. Mrs. Butcher, Mr. Cook, Mrs. Meat, Mr. Lamb, Mr. Butcher. Manuel's surname must be Lamb.
"HEWWO?", A deep male voice blasts from the intercom.
My six sensory organs flinch back with fright. It doesn't sound like a lamb, more like the machine they are shredded with.
"I-I-I want to talk to Manuel! I-i-i-i-i-is he t-t-t-there?"
"Who is Manuel??? Don't know him."
"I don't know either. Krusty Krab pizza?!"
"Keep your mitts off the doorbell or I'll get the Flying Dutchman!"
A cold shiver runs down my spine and I decide not to say anything at first. After about 15 minutes of silence I finally hear the liberating click at the other end. So Manuel's surname is actually "Butcher".
I ring the bell.
"HellOoOoOo,"
I am greeted by the almost embarrassingly sugary high voice of a woman. It sounds more like a butcher who bumped his toe really bad.
"I... um... Manuel?"
"CoooOOOOme IIIIINNNN!"
Somehow, I don't want to go. She sounds like she wants to fry and eat me like the ones in that fairy tale - although - they were plumped up with sweets before that. I imagine worse deaths and push the door open.
Holy sh-it.
I am greeted by the sight of Manuel crouching in a dirty corner and nibbling on a piece of rope. The deprivation of juicy, freshly prepared burrito must have been what caused his ordeal, as his emaciated body shows. He mumbles incomprehensible sentences to himself. His brain has probably shrunk due to the lack of nutrients. He is reduced to a shadow of his former self.
His mother approaches me laughing.
"So you're the girl Manuel has been raving about for ages!"
I feel very weird.
"Come in! Let me offer you something. My husband is still at work. Toilet cleaner, you know.", She winks.
Toilet cleaner. That sounds so stupid. You don't call autopsy examiners a corpse cleaner or a chimney sweeper a pipe cleaner.
If Angela Merle dies, she definitely needs both, including the pipe cleaner for her vape-baked lungs.
"Okay. Mom. You're embarrassing."
Manuel hid the chewed-up rope behind him and led me to his room. If you can call this a room. I'd call it ruin of despair.
There are strange spots on the walls that I don't want to inspect any further. And somehow it smells a lot like old tires.
"Sit down, Kaithleen."
He offers me something that resembles a chair. I sit on it. It collapses. Kaithleen the fattie, of course.
Manuel walks up to a bookshelf, if you can even call it that because it is built out of pizza cartons, and pushes into a blue book. The wall turns and a door to a kind of secret laboratory opens. Oh, man, what kind of blatant sh-it is this.
"Boomer's bequest."
He points to an object on a pedestal that is wrapped in aluminum foil and smells very piquant. My stomach is growling. It has triggered the hunger.
NO- is that... the last burrito?!!111!!?
Manuel, shamelessly dressed in a long frock with little lambs on it and a pair of kebab patterned socks, walks up to the holy grail and opens the packaging. The whole room is filled with the spicy smell of Boomer's creamy burrito sauce.
"Manuel, how are we going to save this place?" I interrupt the totally epic scene.
He drops the burrito in shock.
"Easy." He smiles. "We kill the greasy anti-burrito guy."
I take two steps back. Manuel frightens me, standing there in the ruins of his room with his frock and bloodshot eyes.
My hand starts to tremble and I cling to the next best object, a dead hamster.
Daisy.
I get flashbacks. My scream is louder than Mr. Lamb who is still roaring out of the intercom.
"YOU FOOL!" I inhale sharply. "You better think of something or I'm leaving!"
"WAAAAAIT!!!"
Manuel yeets the hamster corpse into the garbage can, then takes out a card with a badly drawn sketch of the greasy man and our classmates.
Our co-conspirators are all equipped with a knife here.
"We can do it!!!"
Uh-
"We can't kill a man!!!! This is foolish and illegal!!1111! Pride comes before the fall or something!!!!111!"
Manuel ignores me and continues with his plan.
"First, to the guns 'n' ammo shop - get knives for everyone. Then RIP, RIP! Best in the neck and skull!"
"How about we hurt him differently...."
"What do you mean?"
"We look for what means the most to him and tear it up in front of his eyes like he did with us!1!1!"
"Tear up his wife?"