Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26021179-20150720060122

Anonymous #1: “It’s our job to make sure people are frightened, to make sure they hear that whirring sound or feel that unsettling sense of fear; we’re here to make this world that bit more interesting,”

Interviewer: “Are you aware that such activities are inhumane?”

Anonymous #2: “Me and my partner... My partner and I, we only see what’s wrong, and aim to correct,”

Interviewer: “Right... Might there be a reason why you’ve been so reluctant to inform the authority of the location of the victim’s body?”

Anonymous #2: “not entirely, no reason, no, no,”

Anonymous #1: “Well, honestly, it’d be pointless. I’m sure they can smell him right now. He was, after all, a very smelly boy” ◾◾◾

It was late, too late for a child to be out, yet I heard the Hooper’s child ride past my lounge-room window; his pushbike squeaking with all the years of neglected repair. It was midnight on a Thursday, all too late for 13 year old schoolboy; now I understand I’m sounding like an intrusive old prick, but I’m concerned for the health of Mr. and Mrs. Hooper’s child. And at times I feel like the only one. Their 70 year old neighbor who’s years of worry should’ve shriveled with retirement.

I hear their door open; I glance out from my window. The door way casts its light over the kid, the light from inside silhouetting his parents. Who I guess to be Mrs. Hooper, grabs him by the left ear and yanks him inside. Mr. Hooper slams the door shut behind him; my window collects the force and rattles in fear.

I hear their child scream from inside the house. I hear Trent, from the house beside them; awaken with his bedroom light. He must be disturbed by the commotion, for he shouts:

“Quit it, or I’m calling the cops!” but little does it do.

I hear a generator kick-start with violent racquet, sounding like an assortment of disproportionate dentist tools dancing around their house. And with this new addition, I hear the Hooper’s child yell louder.

Mr. Hooper’s voice booms over the machinery “You did this Trent, just shut the fuck up, God damn it you don’t want to be involved!”

Their son shrieks like a baby, perhaps I should do something? ◾◾◾

'“Look, he cries like a baby. Come on let me at him,” Joel pushes past his friends who kick “I bet I can make him piss his 'pants,” I try to hold my saliva and grunts behind my mouth. A fist is driven through my gut, pushing my lunch through my back, causing me to release a fart, causing me to release the saliva within my mouth in an array of see-through sticky streamers. I moan.

“Robert Hooper... More like Robert Pooper, did you hear that fart?” Joel and his gang all laugh and kick my surrendered body. No teachers around to save me just gravel to hold me from falling through the earth. Despite what they said, never cried, and I never do.

I lay there for a while before I get to my feet to wipe the dirt painted across my forearm, and wipe the product of saliva and blood from my mouth. I’m going to have to explain the bruises to Mum and Dad when I get home.

That is unless I don’t come home, for that’s the worst part about a beating, the explaining. I might wait a while before I enter their tempest of parenting.

I decide to see a late night movie, prolonging the explaining till midnight... But now is the hour I fear.

My Bike squeaks past my nosy 70 year old neighbor's window, I could see the bastard leap from his chair in the light of his television. My chains scratch the screaming cog, just the way I like my bike ‘Decaying’.

Where did I go wrong? Their pretend praised popular little Robert Hooper, in reality a battered beating bag.

As I reach for the door’s knob, I hear a stir of sound clank behind the door. It opens as soon as the light inside flicks on. But something hits me, it hits me as hard as Joel, the people standing at the door are not my parents. They loom over me menacingly, their features obscured slightly by the shadows, a hand shoots out and seizes my left ear.

With a blur I’m yanked forward, the door shuts behind me, nipping my heel.

I wish I came home earlier. ◾◾◾

It’s been three days since the Hooper’s midnight incident. Their house has been desolate for quite some time, not a car engine start up or any garbage disposal, although, their trash appears to be already positioned for clean-up.

One fact to note was the movement I heard last night around my house, I awoken later that to find all the lights in my home flicked on. Something is happening, as I’m reassured by my alarmed subconscious, whose nails I feel break off into my skull as it scratches the interior of my cranium.

Recently there’s been an awful smell wafting through the air, it radiates strongest from my wardrobe. It’s the type of smell that turns the fat behind you sinuses green, and lathers your eyes shut with tears thick like smokers phlegm.

I have a feeling that not everything is running with smooth splendor over at the Hooper’s block. Perhaps I should investigate, bring back the skills of my old profession.

I went through their trash, causing me to feel more at par with a skunk than an investigator. All I found was a single trash bag filled to the brim with family photos and time tainted crayon drawings. I analyzed one family photo, Mr. and Mrs. Hooper kneeling over their son with unsettling smiles. The first time I saw their child smile, and it was from a photo buried in the trash.

I continued to search the bag, pushing aside drawings done in Crayola and high school certificates, when I found a photo speckled in blood, a school photo of the boy; and the picture beneath that one too, coated in more browning crimson red. The papers were absorbing something from the bottom of the bag. Whatever answer I needed, it was lying at the bottom of the heap.

With haste I started to dig aside the reddened Hooper’s history, only to be interrupted by a dry crackly voice.

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” It was a stranger; with him was his stranger girlfriend. Both were as ragged as each other, patchy clothes that mimicked olden styles. Starved and dragged through a blistering dust storm.

His girlfriend spoke before I could reply “Are you stupid, he asked you a question?”

I smiled, face red as the hands they caught “Ah well, I was just worried about my neighbors see, so I thought I should check on them,” their distaste couldn’t be clearer, expressions that spoke ‘old senile fool’.

“Why don’t you just fuck off, filthy old fuck,”

“Excuse me; I’m merely a concerned neighbor. It’s just that ever since that night I’ve...,”

“Yeah we all heard it, their kids a little shit, needed discipline,” he cocked his head to one side and spat varying shades of yellow mucus onto the lawn “The best thing to do is give them space. The last thing they need is an old fuck masturbating over their sons school photos,”

“Okay, um, I guess you’re right,” I felt my eyes glaze over like the unfeeling way sharks do. I turned and walked back to my property with haste, moving over my absent wife’s garden bed. One point that struck me later that night was what that man said “... sons school photos,” how could’ve he known the contents of the bag?

That smell still holds itself in the air; I’m surprised the paint hasn’t peeled off the walls. It has begun to soak into my wrinkled skin; I’ve started to scratch like a diseased dog.

Two weeks have passed. Edit

The Hooper’s have been confirmed dead, despite the absence of their corpses to conclude... Their deaths wear confirmed by an anonymous couple, who admitted to the act in exchange for public obscurity.

The anonymous couple are being interviewed on the television tonight, their faces are blurred, and voices distorted. Their voices are all too familiar, even behind the alteration.

The interviewer asked them a question about the reluctance to inform the authority of the corpse location, but their reply gave no helpful indication.

“..., it’d be pointless. I’m sure they can smell him right now. He was, after all, a very smelly boy” the blurred face panned towards the camera; I could see the whites of his eyes through the distortion.

At that moment I caught a whiff of that same repugnant smell, perhaps I should do something, I’ll have to check the walls tomorrow. I have a feeling there’s a rat nest cooped between the jip-rock.

It’s sad to think I will never see the Hooper’s again, but I have a subtle notion that I will, perhaps in a dream. 